Snail Town

It is rather telling that our third learned Korean phrase (following “hello” and “thank you”) was “ppalli ppalli” – quick quick.

We have only been here for a week but we can already tell – time passes fast in Korea.

Everything seems to happen fast here.

In 1998 there were 300,000 foreigners living in South Korea.

This week at orientation we’ve befriended EPIK teachers not only from the U.S. but Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa and the United Kingdom.

Together we will join the collective 1.4 MILLION non-Koreans who are now calling Korea home – a home, by the way, that consists of roughly 50 MILLION people all in a land area equivalent to the U.S state of Indiana.

"smoke monster soup"

With full days of lectures and university cafeteria meals of kimchi, rice, some variety of pork and what we’ve lovingly named “smoke monster soup” – we look forward to evenings when we can visit the on-campus convenience store and buy something sweet for our American sugar-addictions. 

Nothing out of the ordinary for two QuikTrip loving Midwesterners – BUT – in Korea the first 24-hour convenience store wasn’t opened until 1989. Today the country has over 20,000 convenience stores

Not impressed?

that’s  2.3 stores opening

every day

365 days a year

for the last 24 years.

We have only been here a week – BUT we’ve

–      learned how to break a board with our fist during a Taekwondo lecture

–      learned to read and write basic 한글 (a.k.a hangeul, the Korean alphabet)

–      already acquired an addiction to the glorious Korean snack that is Choco-pies

–      visited a palace, eaten a traditional bibimbap meal, watched traditional Korean performers, and toured the National Museum of Korean Contemporary History 

Yeah. Things happen fast in Korea.

That is, until this afternoon.

Post lunch, the minutes crawled by. We attempted to look engaged as the last of our class gave their condensed lesson demonstrations. Even the finest of highly intonated, energetic teacher voices couldn’t keep our minds from wondering to the fateful meeting that would happen later – the revealing of our placement schools.

“Anduh Reeeeya – Pyeongchon Elementary School, Yesan, Gareduh Reeeeya – Geumo Elementary School, Yesan”

With a fervent fist bump we celebrated both getting an elementary school – exactly what we’d hoped for – before frantically scanning the tourist map of Korea we’d brought to locate where we’d be spending the next 12 months.

In the ultimate game of “Where’s Waldo”, our eyes scoured the map for Yesan. We’d already memorized the names of the big cities in our province and knew the icon identifying a metropolitan area. This was taking too long – where the heck was Yesan? And that’s when we saw it.

A snail.

In the dead center of our province Chungnam, an icon of a tiny orange snail next to the words “Yesan”. Using our 6^th grade geography skills, we referred to the map key.

Snail = “Slow City”

Using our iPhones, we referred to Google. Yesan, South Chungnam Province is Korea's sixth and the world's 119th "slow city."  

"Slow cities commit to preserving the natural environment and traditional food production and ways of life while pursuing sustainable development”.

So, maybe not EVERYTHING happens fast in Korea.

Tonight, we look forward to the unexpected surprises that await us in snail town.

Andie's fave Korean snack "chocopie"

Bibimbap at the Korean House with fellow EPIK teachers