The public school system in Korean has a specific program called EPIK, English Program In Korea. And a few times a year they host big conferences/training sessions for the foreign teachers at public school. This includes elementary, middle, and high school. While in reality, people should participate in this when they first arrive to Korea, giving different hiring times, it's pretty impossible. Since this is my first year teaching at a public school, I had to attend the EPIK training. In fact, so did many other people who have already been to an EPIK conference. But, there were many people you didn't have to go. So we're not really sure what the standard is for the requirement to go, but since it's my first year that's why I'm here.

The conference is 6 days long in Daejon, and those six days include a Saturday and a Sunday unfortunately. I didn't really mind. It's one weekend out of the hundreds I have in my lifetime, plus I know it's hard to pack so much stuff only into Mon-Fri. So the day started by meeting at a middle school by my house. I met a few people there, one guy from my building was there, and another couple that play soccer with Daniel. We boarded a bus and headed for Daejon around 9:30am. For the most part the ride was uneventful. They were showing coverage of the one-year anniversary of the Cheon Ahn sinking on the TV and it was quite sad. There were some annoying people on the bus, including a 60 year old man who referred to himself as "Santa" he was constantly giving the Korean teacher shit, and just basically wouldn't shut the fuck up. I'm sorry about the language, but annoying people really irk me. I took my head phones out for about 10 minutes and decided that was a bad idea.

We got to Daejon late, and we also had to pick up people from another bus that broke down. Again, Santa went on a little tirade because the bus driver got a little lost. We were supposed to have arrived at 11:30am, but in fact got there at nearly 1pm. We had to rush to eat lunch, which was less than satisfactory. We were then shuttled to our dorms. Yes, you heard me, I said dorms. I'm under the firm belief that once you reach a certain age, you should never have to have a roommate. Anyway, we got our keys and dropped our bags off, then headed to the class we were already late for. The classes were ordered by where in Korea we came from, so all the people from my group were from the Gyeongnam and Busan area for the most part.

After a brief introduction about the conference and the classes, we went over the the large auditorium for the opening ceremonies. First we got to watch a gayageum performance which was interesting. I was sitting by Paul, the guy from my apartment building, and he was basically asleep the whole time. Then we watched a dance performance called a Sogo Chum, and finally a musical performance called the Samulnori. We then got to hear a lecture about Korean culture from a man whose English was amazingly good. He had a great presentation and he was really funny as well, which is a weird combination for Korean people.

After the opening ceremony we had dinner in the cafeteria, which was much better than the lunch earlier. We had a break afterward, and then went to Korean language class. I asked to be put in intermediate, but it was boringly easy, so I asked to switch after class was over. Korean class ended at 8pm, and there was a voluntary movie afterward, but a bunch of us decided to go out for a drink instead. We have a curfew of midnight, based on prior occurrences of belligerent idiots getting drunk and messing around. So we couldn't stay out long, but we found a foreigner bar down town and got in a few beers and a few round of pool. Paul and I teamed up and kicked some major pool table ass. We also picked up a hotdog on the way out before going back. We got home around 11:30pm, and we were all pretty dead tired.