it started off with the medical exam. standard stuff: blood test, eye exam, breast exam, took blood and urine sample. afterwards, all the trainees grouped up and collectively took the subway to our training area and broke up to find a place to eat

ddokboki in soup, don't know what it's called, don't want to know. this was bland and disgusting

at least i had good company

our teams for the introduction meeting with maria kwak. 18 people x 6 groups = 108 fellow trainees. we did the quiz that we all studied so darn hard for and i ended up passing grammar without a hitch but failed the reading portion! that quiz was NOT easy

this is when the real training began. i was so unlucky to get two 3 hr training sessions, one first thing in the morning and last thing at night. i was under a lot of anxiety and had lack of food and sleep. in the morning, there was training for Par Reading. the training taught me nothing and only left me more confused. i didn't know what the hell i was doing or whether or not i was doing it right. we had to mock and i was pissing my pants in fear, i totally botched it up and made myself look like a fool

oh wells, lunch time!

i had kimchi fried rice

we found this quaint cafe that i fell in love with, and it turned into our daily hang out spot where we made our practice lessons before our next nightly training sesion

these cupcakes were so bomb

Listening Par training was more interesting. my trainer Eugene had this laid-back, Californian attitude. he was a cool guy but he did not make training any more easier. again, i had no idea what we were supposed to do. we took a 40 minute subway back to the hotel and i stayed up all night with no sleep or dinner prepping my lesson plans that we had to mock the next day. it's a tad difficult when you have to mock your own bullshit

my tweets @ the time:

reading mock i effed up, and listening mock i EPICALLY effed up. i messed up so bad that my trainer had to stop me mid mock and question what the HECK i was doing. then he proceeded to give a long rant to everybody about how we should thoroughly prepare... but I DID! i just had no clue what i was doing and just when i thought i was getting it, i wasn't.

you see, guys. at Chungdahm, we don't teach English. we teach test-taking skills IN English. we learn transition words, patterns of organization, verbal cues, context clues, annotating main ideas and major details of a passage... of course, i know and understand all of these NOW. in training, they throw these terms at you with lack of explanation and clarity and expect you to understand what the heck they want from you. so you can see where things got super confusing... and the lack of food and sleep didn't help my situation either.

oh wells, lunch time! some jigae (soup) and mondu (dumpings)

me, Karla, Omari and Mike roaming the training centre area

another day of prepping. these guys are so lucky they have memory

this day started off rough. my reading mock went terrible, again. our trainer asked us to mock on the spot and i just froze and gave up mid-mock. everyone else seemed to make a big improvement and i was seriously falling behind

i hate you

Mike Lee posing as a trainer. to add to our miseries, we had to go through a Critical Thinking Project seminar in my free time between both lessons...thus, seriously cutting down precious and necessary prep time

green tea Mcflurry to console myself

they called me in to talk to Ben Ha, one of the recruiters. apparently my trainers informed him that i was struggling and had a chat with me to basically up my game or else i would fail training. after this talk, i went into hyper panic mode (not that i wasn't already suffering from enough anxiety already)

i upped my game for listening class. i literally recorded the entire training session on my MP3 and copied exactly what my trainer did, word for word. my mock went extremely well and even Eugene was shocked, saying i did a complete 180. this is the moment when listening kinda clicked in for me

DO OR DIE DAY.

my twitter:

i somehow missed the memo that we were all supposed to pack and have our stuff ready downstairs by morning. i went downstairs and saw everybody with their luggage waiting by the bus and was like, o shit damn son. i ran back up and threw EVERYTHING in my suitcase last moment in even more panic. with the help of linze, i was able to do that in 2 minutes and went back down and thankfully everybody was still there. while waiting, i was studying for the test that i didn't even bother to look at while up all night vigorously prepping for the final mock.

Reading Mock - FAILED.

listening group which i preferred 100x more

Listening Mock - PERFECTED. Eugene said i taught like an experienced pro and he even told me that i was going to fail training because of my reading mock, but my listening mock picked me up so much that i was able to scrape by. which meant...

goodbye Karla and Melissa, my two pillars of support through this arduous ordeal

breathing a sigh of relief during the "passing party" where they showed us videos, gave out awards, made us sign our contracts and said our goodbyes...

i found it particularly funny that they mentioned PURPOSELY making the training week arduous just to put us in the shoes of our Korean students (who go to school all day only to have to go to private schools late into the night with barely any breaks). that comment made me frustrated... so basically, we didn't HAVE to go through hell?!

no matter. the hardest part was over. they stuck me in a taxi headed to Hwaseong. fully expecting to live in a rural town somewhere in the mountains (man did google steer me wrong), i arrived at this quaint metropolis known as Dongtan.

Mr. O greeted me downstairs, took my luggage to the 6th floor right as everyone was finishing class. briefly met everyone and then headed to get a MUCH NEEDED rest in what i would call home for the next 12 months of my life...

home away from home. i miss the days when there wasn't junk all over my floor... maybe i should go clean right about now.