Gwangju: City of Intensives/Gwangju: Cidade de Intensivos

These days, Gwangju seems to be a city of intensives: intense partying with all of the new teachers we've been welcoming (and departing ones that we have been sending off), intense work (and intense stress) because of school summer vacation, intense hiking, and intense weather over the last few weeks.

Intensives
I've been less consistent about blogging in August because Joel (along with two of our afternoon teacher co-workers) was doing summer intensives all month. The students here all have vacation during the months of August and January, so many hagwons offer summer and winter "intensive courses" for students to have extra exposure to English language and (in theory at least) to have the opportunity to study English in greater breadth and/or detail. In practice, what this means is that a few lucky afternoon and evening teachers have to get to teach several classes in the morning, before lunch (and, incidentally, lose the only free time they have to be productive during the day. Naturally, this results in teachers who are overworked, exhausted, stressed, and cranky.

What this meant for us was that Joel was working from 9:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. (MWF) or 8 p.m. (TR) with only a break for lunch. With him at work for virtually ever waking moment of the day, I was left to do all of the housework, including cooking, cleaning, ironing, doing laundry, taking shirts to and picking them up from the cleaners, going to the bank and other miscellaneous life-curveballs. It was pretty bizarre here for a while, with Joel the Workaholic and Jessica the June Cleaver-esque housewife (who, by the way, was also still working full time). Also, it's a wonder we didn't kill each other.

But that's all over now, and the nice wad of overtime-pay cash will surely feel good when it finally comes around.

Intense Weather
In case the news has bypassed you because you are living under a rock, we had not one, but two typhoons come through last week. The first one, Bolaven, came through last Tuesday and was so bad that nearly all of the schools and hagwons (including ECC!) closed for the day. While I didn't get much sleep on Monday night because the windows were banging around so freaking loudly, we had a very nice day off hanging out with our co-workers. Unfortunately, this resulted in pretty much everyone at work running around like chickens without heads for the rest of the week, as the schedule had to be adjusted and the new session pushed back to make up for the lost class day.

Yay for typhoons! Because we don't already get enough of them in Texas...

As if that weren't enough, the typhoon that thrashed Taiwan did a little loop in the South China Sea and then decided to make a longer-than-average trip north to bring us yet another storm.

Because one typhoon just wasn't enough.   어떻게  (WTF) Korea.

Because of all of the activity from tropical storms in the region, we've had way more rain than is typical for this time of year. It's rained at least once a week throughout August and now into September. It's so unusual that one of the apartment building residents actually spoke to Joel in the elevator: "Rain is crazy!"

Normally I don't mind the rain, but it is starting to get old, especially now that I have been trying to get to know the hiking trails in the area. Which brings me to...

Intense Hiking
I'm happy to report that I have been to Mudeungsan, the mountain just outside of town, three times now. After going for the first time the weekend of Joel's birthday, I went again several weeks ago with one of my co-workers and hiked up to Jeungsimsa, one of the better-known temples on the mountain. I really want to hike up to the top eventually, so when I discovered that our Korean teacher is also a hiking enthusiast (who has been hiking Mudeung pretty much his whole adult life), I asked him to go with me one morning to show me the way to the top. He got all excited and started to make plans that instant to do it one morning because he has evening graduate classes. "Six o'clock, is it okay?"

No, teacher, it is not okay.

We negotiated to hike up to the halfway point, 중머리제 (Jungmeorijae), and settled on 8 a.m. this past Monday morning. True to his word, he hopped off the bus at the base of the mountain at 7:45 and, after buying some water bottles and some kimbap, began the trek up the trail. And by by trek, I mean sprint - this guy practically ran up the mountain. I was pouring sweat when we reached the clearing at 9:15 and was wiped for the rest of the day at school. Still, it was a great experience, and we talked about going a little further up next week.

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Hopefully now that intensives are over, we can settle into a routine that will hold more or less steady for the rest of our time here. We are definitely getting excited for our upcoming trip to Kyoto and to some beautiful fall weather and foliage!