Sleepover

It's been awhile since I've written anything here. I have a lot of things I could write about, positive and negative, but I haven't really been in the mood to share. I'm not exactly in a writing mood right now either, but I have some downtime at school and a story to share, so here goes.

My co-teacher and her family have been very kind to me, so a few weeks ago I offered to invite them out to dinner, my treat. The date was postponed a couple of weeks, but it finally happened this past Saturday.

We started out at a shabu-shabu restaurant, with 5 people: my co-teacher, her husband, her daughter, one of her brothers, and me. We ate some delicious shabu-shabu and drank some soju. It was a pretty good meal, although in a rare display, I was actually have a little bit of trouble with the soju. I think I can blame Friday night for that...

Anyway, the food was good, and afterward we went up to my co-teacher and her husband's apartment. To be honest, in many ways, it really wasn't anything special. We just sat around, ate some more, chatted about random things, and played drinking games. Eventually my co-teacher's other brother showed up. I had met him briefly one time before, but I had a chance to interact with him a bit more this time. Both of her brothers are pretty cool, and they do their best to communicate with me despite limited English ability, which I appreciate.

This continued until pretty late, and I eventually started to feel pretty tired, so they let me go to sleep in one of the side rooms. Then I think the people who were still up played some Wii Sports. Late the next morning, everybody woke up, we had some breakfast, and then I went home with my co-teacher's brothers in a taxi. And that was that.

As I said above, on the surface this experience might not seem like anything special, but it was actually pretty important to me.

Why?

Well, I've been in Korea for about 3 months now, yeah? Especially the past few weeks, I've really been feeling like an outsider here at times. And I suppose that's only natural, because I am an outsider here. And because of my living and working situation, I think I feel it here even more than I did in Japan.

So, to chill with my co-teacher's family for a night, and feel almost like a part of her family for that time was a pretty big deal for me. It reminded me that despite Korea not being my home, it's still possible to feel at home here.

Really, I wouldn't say I'm homesick. If you asked me right now if I'd like to stay here another year, I'd say yes. I've having a good experience overall. But some days are better or worse than others, and that's something that's probably amplified a little bit here. Today I'm feeling a little down, but I'm sure something will come along to cheer me up.

And frankly, despite what I've been feeling recently, I know I've felt like an outsider before even in my home country, probably to an even greater extent than I feel it here now. So, I know I can survive this feeling. The key is to keep moving forward, and that is something that I know I can manage.

A busy week, in brief

Monday: Okay, nothing special happened Monday. Fair enough.

Tuesday: Went to Outback Steakhouse with some teachers from Seonhwa Elementary. I'd never been there before actually, in the US or Korea. Not bad, and it was fun. The same group is going to go somewhere again in two weeks, with some drinking this time.

Wednesday: School got out early for some reason, and I went to get noodles with 2 teachers from Jungang Elementary. And tonight I'm meeting a group of teachers from the same school for some food and beverages (probably soju).

Thursday: Some kindergarten teachers are taking me on a hike to a temple. Too bad the weather is so cold these days...

Friday: My main co-teacher has been really generous to me, so I offered to take her and her family out for dinner. Should be fun. Also, I don't have to go to school, because there's a big EPIK teachers conference during the day. That should be a nice break from the usual "grind".

Yeah, busy week, but it's better than being bored in my apartment. I'm the kind of person who needs a good bit of alone time, so I probably couldn't handle this much stuff every week, but it's fun on occasion.

Now...to find something to do on Saturday...

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!

View of Daejeon

Jungang Elementary School is kind of up on a hill, so there is a pretty good view of the city. I took a few pictures and I'm posting them here for you to see. Click to enlarge.








That's all for now. Enjoy!

The Power of a Donut

Last Friday, I decided to bring in a little gift to my main school, Jungang Elementary.

At EPIK Orientation, one of the recommendations I heard was to bring in some sort of food to share with the teachers at your school after you get your first paycheck. I actually got my first paycheck a couple of weeks ago...but better late than never, right?

Anyway, I decided to bring in some Krispy Kreme donuts! There are only a handful of Krispy Kreme stores in Korea (Dunkin' Donuts is the big thing here), but one of them happens to be in Daejeon. Lucky me!

I brought in four dozen, which I'm pretty sure was enough for everybody. Overall, I thought it went over pretty well, I received a number of "thank you"s. I'm thinking it was definitely a good thing for me to do. While I think the school definitely still has a positive opinion of me, a little extra show of gratitude on my part will hopefully give me some extra "brownie points". And it can't hurt that Krispy Kreme donuts are the most amazing thing in the world. Just looking at a picture makes me krave them...



Haha, alright, enough of that!

In other news, this week I start teaching afternoon English classes for the teachers at Jungang. My co-teacher had told me about it at the beginning of the semester, but it wasn't until this Friday that I was told they would actually be beginning. It happened after I brought in donuts...probably a coincidence, but who knows.

I'm probably going to make the focus of the lesson on English self-introductions, but I'm going to think of some other fun, light-hearted activities as well. One of the things that has been difficult for me has been getting to the know teachers at my school. I'm a little shy sometimes, and in the first month I don't know if I've been as outgoing as I'd like. So hopefully these classes will offer me a fresh opportunity to build some friendly ties with the other teachers.

Alright, that's all! Oh, and I think I might be starting a new "blog feature" on Mondays, hopefully beginning tomorrow. Stay tuned!

PAYDAY!

I became a multi-millionaire this weekend.

I bought an AM/FM/Cassette Radio.

And a broom.

Don't worry mom! That new house you've always been dreaming of will be coming soon!

Oh, did I mention that my millions are in South Korean won? Presently, 1 US dollar is worth ~1184 won. So a million won is actually worth less than $1000.

Uh...on second thought, that house might be a while mom! Sorry!

Actually, on a somewhat related note, I showed my 5th and 6th graders some pictures of my parent's house this week. It's a fairly standard sized two-story house. It's quite old (think early 20th century), but it's well built and I do think it's a fine house. But by Korean standards, it's VERY big. So all of my students think I'm rich now...

If only they knew the truth...

Finally, Pictures! (At School)

Alright, here's some pictures, as promised. These are all from my schools.

You can click the pictures for a larger view!

Seonhwa Elementary




This is a view of the school from the front. Only half of this building is actually the school, the other half is some sort of Educational Office or something.





This is the English room at Seonhwa. It's also my office. It has 3 big LCDs, and one of them is actually a touch screen that you can use to control the cursor on the computer. The touch screen is nice...but for whatever reason, even if you turn the TV off, the touch screen is still active. Needless to say, students can't seem to keep their hands off it while I'm using my computer...*sigh*

Jungang Elementary



This is the view from the front. This is actually the only picture of it I have, I think I'll try to get some more.






This is Jungang's English room. I'm in an office with some other teachers at Jungang, so it's only used when class is being taught. It has only one LCD screen...and it isn't even a touch screen! Actually, I think I like this setup more because it's nice and simple, and I don't have students molesting the TV after classes. I there are 5 computers in the middle of the room, I haven't seen those used at all. And the desk in the back (by the 2 tables) was originally going to be my desk I think, but I'm glad I'm in a shared office at this school.



This is a semi-staged shot of me teaching. My co-teacher wanted to get some photos for a local newspaper, so we brought in the class that had missed my lesson and ran the bit about American lunch.




These photos were basically staged, I never get to work with a group this small. It was pretty easy to get everybody to laugh doing my "Hello, how are you today? How is the weather today?" shtick though. But wait, it gets better...




Soooo...my co-teacher told me that she gathered the unmarried teachers in our school to be in some photos with me...um...thanks Mrs. Choi! *blush*

Alright, that's all for now! See you next time!

One week down... :-)

It's been awhile!

It's Saturday now, and I've completed my first full week of classes. Overall, I'd say it was a success!

I teach at two elementary schools, so I'll break it down.

Seonhwa Elementary

I teach at Seonhwa Elementary School on Monday and Tuesday. I have 7 classes there on those two days, and I teach with 4 different co-teachers. They all greeted me when I came in on Monday, and seemed fairly receptive to working with me. Out of the 4 teachers there, 3 of them are comfortable with spoken English, but one of them really isn't, which is a little difficult. He seemed friendly though, so I'm sure it'll all work out!

On Monday, I worked with 5th and 6th graders. I showed them a Powerpoint about myself, and then played a bingo game which involved them asking questions about me. Invariably, in every class, the question "Do you have a girlfriend?" would arise. Older elementary kids are funny like that. Some of them tried to ask for my phone number too. I told them "000-0000-0000". I'm sure I'll be getting a lot of calls soon!

On Tuesday I taught the 3rd and 4th grades. They don't know much English at all, so it's quite difficult, but I did my best. My co-teacher for those classes, Tiffany, had to do a lot of translation into Korean, but that's to be expected. When they only have English class once a week, I think it would be quite difficult for them to make any headway in a class that is completely in English.

At Seonhwa, my office is also the English room. It's a nice room, but it also kind of isolates me from the rest of the school. At the same time, it doesn't offer me any protection from students after school. I'm at school until 4:30pm, but the students get done well before that. And they decided to come visit me in the English room. It was fine for awhile, and I definitely enjoy interacting with them, but I really wanted to get some lesson planning done and I couldn't really do that. I'll have to find some way to deal with them in the future.

I felt like my time at Seonhwa went well, and I look forward to going back there next week. My co-teachers were all friendly, and the other staff were friendly too. On Tuesday I ate lunch with some of them even though none of them spoke English. Like I said, the English room isolates me from the other teachers a bit, but hopefully I can build a good relationship with the school in time.

Jungang Elementary

I spend Wednesday through Friday at Jungang Elementary School. It's my main school, and the school that my "handler" (the person who helps me deal with stuff I can't do myself) teaches at. I was actually there Thursday and Friday the week before do to some lesson planning, but I didn't start classes until this week. I have a much busier schedule there, with 15 classes over 3 days. I only have 2 co-teachers though, which is nice and I think it will allow me to co-teach with them more harmoniously. They both speak English well enough, one of them was a bit shy about it at first but she's been getting more comfortable with speaking to me, which is good!

On Wednesday, I worked with 4th graders. As in Seonhwa, their English level is quite low, so my co-teacher did a lot of talking in Korean to them. I introduced myself, and then I walked around the class and they all introduced themselves. We then played a bingo game which involved them pointing at each other and asking "Who is she?" Simple stuff, but it was pretty enjoyable for me.

Thursday and Friday were spent with 5th and 6th graders. Their English level is a little higher, so my co-teacher for those classes uses less Korean, but still a heavy dose to explain rules for games and things. We played some educational games, and then at the end of class opened things up to allow them to ask me questions. The asked me all of the expected questions, and also made me "sing" the chorus to a song called "Nobody" by "Wondergirls", which is a very famous K-pop song. All in all, things went pretty well. On Friday after school I also kicked a soccer ball around with some of the kids for a bit. I was wearing dress shoes, but I still had a solid showing, and it was fun!

At Jungang, my office is located in a room with some other teachers, so I have some protection from the students after classes are finished. I also like it because it affords me more opportunities to interact with other teachers at the school. The cafeteria at the school was under construction this week, so everyday me and some of the other teachers would order in some food, and actually on Thursday I went to a restaurant with some of them. I really appreciated that, and it makes me feel like I'm a part of the school. I also had some of the non-English teachers stop by and chat with me in English. There are a number of teachers who speak English quite well, which surprised me a little bit. Hopefully I can find some time to interact with them outside of school sometime, because I think it would be fun.

Thoughts

Because I'm not a teacher by trade, I was a little worried about how things would go, but overall I'd say everything went fairly well. I definitely need to improve my classroom management skills, but it hasn't been a huge issue because my co-teachers do a lot of that for me.

Also, I should say that's it's really interesting just being in these schools. In both schools, I am the first ever foreign teacher, so the kids are really intrigued by me. On Tuesday at Seonhwa, they all decided that they wanted by signature! I must've signed my name over 50 times, it was pretty nuts. I'm a good sport about it though, and I'm glad that they're reacting positively towards me.

I guess that's all for now, I'm sure there are a lot of things that I'm forgetting but feel free to ask me any questions about my experiences and I'll get back to you. In fact, I'd appreciate questions, because they help me organize my thoughts better and also let me know what people want to hear about. Maybe I'll post up another Q&A thread...

As I say at the end of class, "Goodbye! See you next time!"