How do you communicate with the teachers at your schools?

Classes have been cancelled for today and Friday because of the Swine Flu...but teachers still have to be at school! Lovely! I suppose it leaves me with time to blog, at least.

In another post I was asked if teachers at my school speak English or Korean when they are around me, and it seemed like a good enough question to make a full blown post out of.

The short answer: Unless they are addressing me directly, they speak Korean. Many of them speak English to varying degrees, but I'm the only native English speaker here, and obviously it's much easier for them to communicate amongst themselves in Korean.

The looooong answer: I suppose this means that I often find myself unsure of what is going on exactly, but frankly, it doesn't bother me that much. In fact, I kind of enjoy trying to figure out what they're saying, and you'd be surprised how much you can understand if you can pick out a word or two and then interpret tone and body language.

I think I should also say that I expected it to be like this, and I appreciate it. One of my big reasons for coming here, and my primary goal while I'm here is to learn the Korean language. So, having people around me speaking natural Korean all day is bound to help me out in that regard. For the time being I don't really understand anything, but it will come with time as long as I in the effort. Also, this is definitely the reason why I decided to work in a public school rather than in a private, after school English school where I would probably be surrounded by English all the time. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but for my purposes, I feel I made the correct choice.

I could probably rant more, but I want to keep it short this time. If you're curious about my motivations or anything else, feel free to ask!