Korean Job Discussion Forums

[freebeerandchicken]

hey all,

i'm set to arrive in seoul to teach for the first time in about 2 weeks! i was thinking about bringing some little gifts and things to give to my school director and whoever else i get to know from korea.

anyone else do this? recommend it? what kind of gifts should i bring? the obvious thing i guess is maple syrop. (what would they do with the maple syrop though once they got it? what would it go with over there?) anything else? thanks,

freebeerandchicken

[buddy bradley]

If you're going to bring syrop, make sure it's the spicy syrop - Koreans go wild over that stuff.

[thorin]

Bring maple leaf backpack patches. There's a critical shortage of them here.

[tzechuk]

what is syrop? Is that syrup?

[buddy bradley]

[Mr.Mulder]

Hey - I brought smoked salmon and Canadian chocolates for my director - you'll probably have an hour or so to kill in Vancouver, and they have all that at the cluster of duty free shops. That went over well. If you have roomates, you should bring a bottle of Crown Royal as a house warming - that went over well also. Apparently you can only bring in two litres of booze, but they didn't check at all, and now I wish I had brought a bunch of small bottles as gifts. Don't make a big deal out of giving gifts - do it casually, and use two hands to give it to them. Some Kraft Dinner would have been a smart thing to bring also, for personal use. I'm babbling.

[trevorcollins]

[freebeerandchicken]

[Mr.Mulder]

No prob. Where are you going to be living? Oh yeah, things you should bring from Canada if you use them: deodorant, face cleanser, toothpaste, advil/tylenol!!(stuff for colds, peptonbismol etc), good coughdrops(you will lose your voice yelling and talking all day), gum, condoms, lip balm, - not necessarily in that order. Some of those things you can find here, but they are hard to find or in far away (or nonexistent) stores.
Have fun, and don't listen to the gloomy people - they are the noisy minority who like to complain - Korea is great.

[Swiss James]

I can never understand why people recommend bringing tylenol- I'm sure I've seen it in the pharmacies everywhere?

Same with lip balm and toothpaste- are there subtle differences that I'm missing?

[Grotto]

K toothpaste doesnt have flouride.

KD is available here in Korea...dont worry about it(you just have to find a black market store) If you really feel the need buy a bunch of boxes and just bring over the cheese powder.

Gifts, if you must go for smoked salmon or maple syrup but buy it at a supermarket...the prices at the airport are insane!

Go to your doctor and get a prescription for tylenol 3's with coedine...its impossible to get a K doctor to prescribe opiates for pain.

Maple fudge was a big hit.

Visit your MLA and MP and get a bunch of free Canadian and provincial pins, flags, stickers and whatnot for your students(dollar store is a good place to pick up schmaltzy stuff that your students will love, I brought about 50 pencils with the maple leaf on them and a bunch of stick on tattoos)

[sheba]

I brought heaps of stickers, pins, lollies etc for the kids and all the Korean teachers nick them before I can get them near my classroom! The kids also love stationery with foreign designs. And bring some Canadian currency. Teachers and kids alike seemed to like foreign money.

They dont have a huge sweet tooth though so they didnt like any of the chocolates I bought. Do you have a maple flavored wine? It sounds stupid, but I bought a kiwifruit (NZ) flavored wine and it went down very well!

Is there much of a native culture influence? Like in NZ we have the Maori. They seemed to like the carvings and jewellery.

Actually they really liked trying almost anything from overseas!!

[captain kirk]

Canadian coins. You've seen them but to kids these are far out. Enough pennies, nickels, dimes. Get some rolls of coins from the bank.

If there's a stamp collector's shop in your city a big plastic bag of stamps. Used stamps, cancelled, for collectors. A grab bag selection. Lots of them, cheap, no big deal. But lots of kids collect either world coins or world stamps. Maybe Dad travels or they've been on vacation. They have little, by the by, collections.

Candy. Canadian Candy. Over here Mars bars, snickers bars are available. But there's no red licorice. Bring some of that, some twizzlers ropes. It's really unusual to them. But the black licorice they won't eat. Also, some of those banana and/or strawberry marshmallow candy things. You know, they look like mini sculptures of bananas or strawberries but they're marsmallow sort of candy. And swedish berries. Those red berry jelly candy things. Not here, and I miss those things. I think the kids would eat those; there's nothing comparable to swedish berries here.

[Mr.Mulder]

Yeah, you can find tylenol and lip balm and real toothpaste in Seoul, in one store or another - but not always in the boonies in a small pharmacy or store when you want it. It's just way more convinient to have them at first, instead of going on a 3 hour trek for lip balm, is what I was getting at. The Canadian coins idea is great - I only have enough to show the kids - giving them some would have been so much better, so do bring some. I wish I had brought more little thingies with maple leafs on them. What's the going rate for blackmarket KD? Maybe freebeerandchicken can make a quick profit upon arrival... (I'll have 12 please)

[freebeerandchicken]

right on dudes, thanks for the tips! today i grabbed some cheap canadian stickers at the dollar store, and 3 small maple syrup containers with the maple leaf on 'em.. $2.99 each. i figure it'll go a long way. good call on stamps and coins!! i'll be sure to pack those.

i'm going to be living in seoul.. more specifically in Sungbuk Gu and/or Nuwon. (same place??). I'm on line 6, at the stop called Korea University. I tried to get a thread going to obtain some info on this spot.. If anyone can contribute to it, heres the link:

http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/korea/viewtopic.php?t=43320&highlight=