Itaewon's Foreign Restaurant

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If you remember our post on Bucheon's Sala Thai Restaurant, or even Hongdae's Dos Tacos, then you might come to think that foreign food in Korea isn't what you're looking for. Sure, it may taste good, the way it has been modified and all, but - if you're looking for authenticity - then you might start to worry. We were starting to feel this way, and were a bit worried before we stepped into Itaewon's Foreign Restaurant. Boy, were we ever wrong. Hands down, Foreign Restaurant has given us the best experience of foreign food in Korea we have had thus far. It serves Indian food, with genuinely delicious naan bread, which we happen to love. 16,000 won will get you into the all you can eat buffet, which is what you really should be going for, after all. The food there is so good that we'd pay double to eat there. Seriously. If you want Indian food in Korea, go to Itaewon's Foreign Restaurant. For directions on how to get there, and a look at what the restaurant is like, click on the picture above, or click here for our Visit to Foreign Restaurant.

Bucheon Cherry Blossom Festival

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Last week we went to the Cherry Blossom Festival in Bucheon. The trees were in full bloom for that weekend only, so we dropped everything, took our cameras, made some movies and took some pictures. We went specifically to the Azalea Garden in Bucheon, which is on Dodang mountain, right beside Bucheon Stadium. There was another cherry blossom festival in Seoul, which supposedly was bigger and far more popular, but - since there was one in Bucheon - we felt we had to go to this one instead. Anyhow, we made both a video and a Flickr gallery for the whole deal! Click on the picture above for our video tour of Bucheon's Cherry Blossoms (or check the sidebar for other versions). Or, if you want to see the pictures, click here for our Bucheon Cherry Blossom Gallery.

How to Get Your Korean Driver's License

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Want to drive in Korea? Let's rephrase that: drive legally in Korea? If so, you're going to need to get a Korean Driver's license. Don't know how to get one? Don't worry! That's why you came here! Follow this guide, and you'll be driving on the maddening streets of Korea in no time, where illegal maneuvers are the norm, and red lights are suggestions rather than the law. To get your license, you're going to need a few things. The first two are obvious:

1) Your Alien Registration Card.

2) Your passport.

3) Your driver's license from your home country. If you don't have one, then you need to take a different approach. For this how-to guide, we're only dealing with people who have a driver's license from their home country.

4) 3 headshots that are 3x4 centimeters. You can get these done at Emart, for example, for a few thousand won.

5) 11,000 won in cash. The first five will be spent on your physical exam, and the last six will be spent on buying stamps. We're not sure what these stamps are for, but we had to buy them anyway.

Once you've got all of this, then you're ready to roll! Take everything your closest Department of Motor Vehicles, sign some papers, pass your physical exam, buy some stamps, and - voila! You can legally drive in Korea. Be warned, though; going this route means that you have to trade in your home country's driver's license for a Korean one. You can get your license back at any time if you trade back your Korean one. You're essentially doing a swap. We don't really understand the reasoning behind the swap, so if any of you know why this is done please tell us!

If you don't know where your closest DMV is, then watch our video! At the end of it, we have a list of all the different locations, along with their phone numbers. Hopefully, if your co-teacher is nice (or your Korean skills are rocking) then you can call the DMV in your area up and ask how to get there. We went to the one in Incheon, and explain how to get there in the video as well. So click on the picture above for our video on How to Get Your Korean Driver's License, or check out the sidebar for different formats.

Teaching a Lesson in Korean Middle Schools

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We have received a lot of questions about teaching in public schools. If we don't speak Korean, how do we communicate with our students? What do we teach them? What do the classes look like?

We decided to start taping some of our classes to show everyone what they're like. This video here is of Simon's Middle School classes. Here you'll see the students come into class, sit down, Simon instruct for a bit, and then the students play the game. Finally, a lot of your questions will have been answered!

Simon's situation is a bit unique, though, so don't assume that all classes are this way. For starters, Simon teaches half of his class one week, and the other half the other week, meaning, out of a class of 40, he teaches 20 while his co-teacher deals with the other 20 in another class. As well, some schools expect their teachers to be teaching for the entire class. Simon's school - thankfully - believes that students should be given as much opportunity to speak in class. Less lecturing, more participation. And so, Simon usually explains the rules for some English speaking activity for the first few minutes of class and gives the remaining time for the students to partake in that activity. There's more facilitation than dictation.

So, without further ado, here is one day in Simon's classes. Click on the picture above to see the video, or click here to see a Korean Middle School Class. If you like the lesson, and want to teach it yourself, head over to the ESL Resources page to download the handouts and the presentations.

Eat Your Kimchi Version 3.0

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So we've got a lot to mention. Here goes:

1) The big announcement is that we are now Gepik Representatives for Bucheon City. What does this mean? A few things: one, if you have any questions about dealing with your school, please contact us! We'll do our best to answer your questions or direct you to the higher powers that can solve the problem for you. We're here to help! If you don't live in Bucheon, we can direct you to your local rep who lives close to you. As well, this means that next week, (April 6th-9th) we will be working at the Gepik Orientation for Middle and High School Students. We'll be helping out at the workshops and we're also giving a presentation on Classroom Management. Yes, we will be up on stage for two hours talking about classroom management. If you're going to be there, then please be nice to us! We're nervous!

As for the website, there are a few updates as well:

1) We drew on our website. See the pictures all around? Yeah. Martina likes to doodle. The wider your window, the more doodles you'll see.

2) Sorry for the delay in videos. We've been either working on our Gepik Orientation Presentation or trying to remodel the site into something more usable. We've had issues with the Movies and ESL Resources page, so we remade them from scratch.
Now EVERY ONE OF OUR VIDEOS EVER is available on YouTube, and the YouTube links are available on our Movies Page. A lot of people prefer YouTube over QuickTime, so we made every video available. The few we haven't made available are of ones specifically of our students. Even though our schools have given us permission to upload the movies, we still want to refrain from putting some of those videos up.

3) The ESL Resources page now has more to offer. You can browse our lesson plans by tags, rather than just School Levels. If you're looking for games, click on the games tag; handouts? Click on the handouts tag. As well, every lesson that has a Powerpoint presentation is updated, so that you can preview a movie of the Powerpoint to see if you want to download it or not. All lessons come in both Mac and PC formats.

4) As well, since we're not web-coding wizards, this took a lot longer than it should have taken any competent human being. We're worried that there might be some bugs. Feel free to tell us if you find any. We won't take offense, honest! We'll be mighty thankful!

Finally, now that the boring stuff is out of the way, we've got more fun videos in the works, so check the post above to see what a class is like in a Korean Middle School for starters!