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...

Getting to Jeonju

I wrote this in Word when I couldn't sleep Monday morning and didn't have internet yet. First blogpost! Enjoy... 

So it’s 5 AM on Monday morning, and I am wiiide awake. I am trying to adjust to the time difference. It’s been a long two days of time traveling prior to this.

My trip started Friday at 1:15 PM in Norfolk. I flew to Newark and on my layover I enjoyed a Guinness with Brandon and Patrick. They were headed to Ireland for a Notre Dame and Navy football game. Very funny guys; good conversation helped shorten a long layover.

My flight to LAX was delayed and left around 7 PM instead of 6 and we switched planes. That ended up being a blessing in disguise. The plane was literally half full. I think everyone got their own set of 3 seats to themselves. After admiring the breathtaking (once in a blue) moon from the window, I watched some free comedy re-runs on the headrest TV and passed out across 3 seats. When I arrived at LAX around 9:30 PM (West Coast time) I had to switch terminals, and go back through security. I spent my last hour in the states checking emails and searching unsuccessfully for an IPA to drink. (I guess someone has to send me one now…)

The flight to Korea was on Asiana airlines. We took off around 12:30 AM Saturday morning (West Coast time) and arrived in Korea at 4:30 AM on Sunday (Korean time). The flight was not too bad. We were served dinner about an hour into the flight. There was a Western choice and a Korean choice; I went Western, since it was probably my last chance for a while. 

I tried to sleep as much as I could, but I would wake up every two hours and realize we still had multiple hours left. I sat next to a very nice Filipino man named Jay that works at the CLIF Bar distribution plant in Fullerton, CA. He was on his way to see his two children and wife in the Philippines, and possibly adopt a third child. We chatted about what I was thinking about doing for the next few years, about his family, and places we had been/would like to go. With about an hour left in the flight, we were served breakfast. Again with a choice, eggs and Canadian bacon or spicy chicken and rice; this time I went Korean. It was incredibly delicious… they even gave you your own tube of hot sauce! 

I must say this about the stewardesses… they were all incredibly sweet Korean girls. They were flawlessly beautiful and I swear they changed outfits three or four times over the course of the flight. Jay and I were commenting on the food and he told me that the stewardesses were good examples of how good traditional Korean food was for you…

After arrival in the Seoul airport, I did the usual picking up of bags and going through immigration and customs. This took all of five minutes since the airport was empty. After waiting for the counter to open, I got my bus ticket to Jeonju and called my recruiter Paul to let him know I had arrived. The Incheon airport that I flew into is an island off the coast. The sun had just risen when the 6:30 bus ride started, and the morning light highlighted the mountainous coastline beautifully. 

We passed by Seoul and the cities around its outskirts. I noticed the Korean cities are very built up, but also very populated with green spaces and directly next to the “breadbasket” farming areas and national parks. I guess you have to make good use of space in a country the size of Kentucky. We made a stop at a rest stop where there were a ton of buses full of mostly older Koreans stylishly decked out in hiking gear offloading to use the bathroom and buy snacks. After that we made 3 residential stops, one where a lot of people got off and I followed thinking this could be my stop, the bus driver was helping people unload their bags, and he told me immediately to get back on. Once we got to my stop, the last one, he put in a tape of a lady speaking English, “This is the last stop, Jeonju Core Hotel…”

We had gotten there a little earlier than my ride was instructed to pick me up. The bus driver was very sweet and was concerned that I didn’t have a ride. I tried to explain to him that I was waiting for one, but he did not speak English. He ran and got his phone and tried to get me to speak into it for a translation, but it wasn’t working right. A few minutes later a mother and her daughter walked up and the mother said hello and gestured to her daughter who spoke perfect English. I got her to tell the bus driver that I had a teacher from Woosuk University coming to pick me up. He immediately chuckled, shook his head and was on his way to loading up the next bus back to Seoul.

Andy, one of the Korean teachers in charge of the program picked me up and took me to my apartment. He is incredibly nice and very smiley. One of the other English teachers, Chris, was hanging out in the patio area underneath my building with his mother that is visiting. He helped us carry my stuff up. My apartment was still being cleared out by the previous teacher, John, whose girlfriend, Noreen, lived across the hall. They were both in the process of moving out. I was told that I was taking over Noreen’s two schools. She was supposed to come discuss the school and the position with me after she ate breakfast and did some packing. I unpacked most of my stuff for an hour or two and tried to stay awake as long as possible, but I ended up passing out around 1 PM. I woke up a few times, but didn’t truly wake up until around 10:30 PM.

I knew that Quinn, the other English teacher arriving yesterday, would be getting in around 11 PM, so I stayed awake and said hello to her when she got here. Sometimes the world feels really small, Quinn went to UNCW as well and she majored in Environmental Science and Political Science. I think her and I will get along well, and I am glad that there is someone else going through the orientation process at the same time that I am.

Aside: the apartment is a studio on the third floor of a four-story walkup. It has awesome matte wood floors and a huge mural of a forest on the ceiling that I wake up to in the morning. There is also a sliding door to my own personal porch where my washer and drying rack are located. From the patio I can see between a few buildings into the downtown area of the city and you can see the mountains in the distance. There are also some landscaped beds with trees and what looks like a children’s school with a playground next door. Andy brought me a new bedspread and pillowcase, and there are some new pots and pans in the cabinet above the sink. I will post pictures in another blog post.

The initial arrival in Korea was not very stressful and I am really looking forward to exploring the area more. Today, I am going to go get my medical check with Quinn and my co-teacher Andy. Quinn and I talked about an adventure to the grocery store, since my apartment is currently devoid of toilet paper and food.

This post is a tad long-winded and a bit boring. I apologize. Hopefully, the other ones will be shorter and more exciting! Also, the photos are from my Ipod... Not the best quality! I will get some with the DSLR once I orient myself with the city a bit more.