The first days of teaching...

The last four days have been nerve racking, confusing, and exciting. Monday I went to get my medical check at a Korean hospital with Quinn and Andy. Andy was the liaison between the doctors and nurses and us. We got a bunch of tests done, including blood draw and a chest x-ray...

Later on Monday, we went to a large Korean grocery store named Home Plus that is owned by a larger British company. This means they have some more "Western friendly" food than other Korean grocery stores, for a price. Try $6 for a small jar of no name peanut butter packed full of hydrogenated oils! Too bad I still bought it. Some things you can't live without...

I will explain the program that I work for before I go into details of my first days. I work for a program through Woosuk University that hires English teachers to teach in schools within the county of Wanju, which is right outside the city of Jeonju where I live. I have two schools that I work with through the program, one on Monday-Wednesday and the other on Thursday-Friday. At my M-T-W school, BongSeo Elementary, I have 6 different classes on Monday and Tuesday and 5 on Wednesday, all ranging from first to third grade. So basically I go from one classroom to the next and give an English lesson for each class. There are 30 kids in each class at this school.  The classes are 40 minutes long and there are 10-minute breaks in between each class.

My first day at BongSeo was Tuesday. I was put on a bus by my boss's helper, King, who drove me to the bus stop and told the bus driver to make sure I get off at the stop for the school. It's about a 45 minute ride to the school and I kept thinking the bus driver forgot the instructions to drop me off at the school. He did not, I made it to the school just fine. No one was there to meet me at the bus stop, so I wandered around the school grounds until I asked a mother if she spoke English and she got a child to show me where to go.

I met the lady in charge of the program (Grace is her English name) and she took me to my first class, where I was expected to teach. I had no lesson plan prepared, so I went off the top of my head. Which may have been good or bad? That's basically how the whole day went. I have 2nd and 3rd graders on Tuesdays, so they are somewhat knowledgeable in English. Wednesday, I had 1st graders all day. A lot harder to communicate with in English. This was made even more difficult if the teacher did not speak English and could not explain directions to the children if they could not understand them coming from me. At BongSeo, about 1/3 of my teachers speak decent English, 1/3 can recognize some English and they attempt to help discipline their kids, and 1/3 do not speak English and do not intervene at all while I am teaching.

This can be frustrating on many levels. The first and second graders do not have an English language textbook and I have to way to know what they have been working on already. So if the teacher does not speak English, it only exacerbates the situation, because I have no way to ask. This is the case in most of the classrooms so far. That being said, the teachers that do have a decent knowledge of English are very sweet and very helpful. I look forward to when I will not be so overwhelmed with the introduction to the classes/planning process all while adjusting to the time change and Korean culture. Let's just say, I am more than exhausted when I am done with school in the afternoons.

Wednesday, I managed to get lost walking home from the bus stop to my apartment (for the first time by myself). I freaked out a bit, but decided I would just walk until I saw something that was familiar. King, the boss' helper, had given me directions home, but I botched them, so I just wandered. I managed to find the bus stop where I had gotten on the bus in the morning, which I knew how to get back from, but I decided to retrace my steps and try to get back to the apartment another way. I oriented myself using some buildings and got myself back to the apartment all on my own! Super excited about that!

On a side note... I am kind of loving the Korean lunches! They generally consist of one or two types of meat and some type of soup, rice, and a fruit or vegetable. Kimchi is served in bowls that are placed on every lunch table, every few seats. For those who don't know what Kimchi is, it is basically spicy, fermented cabbage. That sounds kind of gross, but I had it for the first time yesterday at my school and it was delicious! I have heard that you can get not so tasty batches of it though.

Yesterday, I had my first day and YoungJin Elementary. Here I am teaching a third, fourth, fifth and sixth grade class along with a short kindergarten class, and an adult class. Yes, you read right, an adult class. All women except for a man who I can only guess was forced to come by his wife who is in the class. My teachers at YoungJin were good for the most part. My sixth grade and kindergarten teachers do not speak English. My third grade teacher is a man who is very sweet and eager to learn English. He is friendly and even sat next to me at lunch. The fifth grade teacher is also a man. He speaks some English and teaches about half the class and gets me to step in for pronunciation and to do some exercises. 

The adult class is very interesting. I was at a loss for what to teach. The ladies told me to talk about American culture... I had no idea where to begin or what to classify as a ubiquitous American culture. I ended up opening the floor for questions and asking them what they would like for me to teach. One of the ladies who spoke English pretty well said that they are all housewives and they would like to hear stories about romance and love. So that should be interesting. 

I like YoungJin Elementary a bit more... it's a little closer and the class sizes are much smaller, with 15 kids a class on average. I also teach the same classes Thursday and Friday, so I feel like I will be able to bridge more of a relationship with the kids. I already had a student give me a present in my third grade class! He asked me if I like fish or birds more and he gave me an eraser in the shape of a fish. So sweet! The location of YoungJin is also more rural and the school is smaller. Between the two class buildings there is a nice courtyard that you can see the mountains from and sit in the shade. The walk to the bus stop from school is through a smaller farming community and on a road next to a river. It offers incredible views of the mountains. From the bus stop I can see Jeonju in the distance. 

After school yesterday, I got the results of my medical test (I passed/all tests were normal) and went to the immigration office to get my Alien Registration card. Still fighting off jet lag, I ended up passing out around 8 o'clock. I felt much better today. I don't know if that's a side effect of the extra sleep or the fact that it is Friday and I have finished my first week of teaching and I am looking forward to going out tonight with new friends to explore Jeonju. Either way, I'll take it. 

Today, I got REALLY lost on the bus ride home and ended up getting off the bus in a completely different part of town and hailing a cab to take me home. Funny thing about Korean cab drivers... they don't know addresses. They use landmarks as their address. So King wrote down the name of a building near my apartment in Korean and I keep that piece of paper with me wherever I go. If I get too lost, I just hail a cab. I hope to get past this point, but for now it works. Plus, cabs here are incredibly cheap. 

Sidebar... still getting used to being somewhat of a novelty everywhere I go. Koreans, particularly older Korean women, have no qualms about staring you down. Literally, they openly stare at you even after you make eye contact which should make things awkward. In school, the kids stare as if you are a complete anomaly. During lunch today I had a little girl actually stop, do a double take, take a few steps back with wide eyes and exclaim, "Whoa!" I can tolerate the kids, because they are sweet and once you make eye contact with them they will smile/giggle and say "Hello teacher!" I am still hoping the novelty wears off or it begins to be less noticeable to me. 

One more sidebar, favorite quotes of the week: A little third grade girl saw my ipod yesterday and said, "Ohhhhh ipod. You know Steve Jobs?" Another golden quote during the question/answer session in my third grade class via a translation by their teacher: "Student says you so skinny, but when she see pictures of people from America they are fat. Why is that?" 

Tonight, I am going out with Quinn, the girl that arrived the same day as me, and a new friend Rosa, who is from New Zealand. We are going to check out some of the Western/Expat bars and I am hoping to meet some hiking buddies and rock climbing buddies.

Until next time...