One Week Down

Hellooooo rest of the world! Well, I have been here a little over a week now and just finished my first week of solo teaching. Saturday is a national holiday called Chuseok, which is essentially the Korean Thanksgiving. So we have Friday off. It was nice to only have to do 4 days my first week. But I'll get to that in a bit. Let's start from the beginning.

I knew this post was going to be really big, so for the past week I've been making a mental outline of all the stuff I need to write about. I'm going to split this post into two sections for easier reading. First I'm going to just go over the touristy type things that I've been doing. Then I'll talk about the actual teaching.

As some people may know, I didn't know a great deal about what my situation was going to be like once I arrived here. I didn't know what my apartment was going to look like or if I would have a roommate; I didn't know much about the school or how many other teachers there would be; I didn't even know how old my students would be or how many classes I would have. My flight was paid for by the director of my school and he told me that once I landed in Seoul I should get a bus ticket to Daegu and borrow someone's cell phone to call and tell him. After I did buy my ticket, I wandered up to a payphone (digital touchscreen operation, of course) and gave up after I couldn't find an "English" button. Just then, these two young Korean women came up to me and asked me if I would take a survey for their University class. I was kind of in a hurry, but I cut them a deal. "I'll take your survey if I can borrow your phone for a quick call." Done. So I got on the bus, which was quite nice, and slept most of the way. We got into Daegu around 11pm and got off the bus with all my stuff and just stood there waiting. My director told me that Abraham was going to pick me up. A taxi driver asked me if I needed help but I said someone was on the way- hopefully. About 15 minutes later a car pulled up and Abraham jumped out to help me with my bags. We chatted on the drive over to my new apartment. When we arrived at the door he knocked, and my new roommate opened the door. I didn't know I was living with anyone until right then! So I chatted with Analisa for a bit before going to bed. She's 22 like me, and let me know that we are the babies among foreign teachers because everyone else is in their mid-late 20s. Analisa is from just outside of London and has been here almost 9 months. She's really cool and it definitely helped a lot having someone who could help me out with directions and meeting other people right off the bat. I found out I was lucky to have some time off and a few days of training. New teachers often arrive sometime late at night and have to go to school the next day to observe a few classes before taking their own on in the afternoon.

My bed, which takes up half the room. I use the half closer to the wall to hold a bunch of stuff. And my room does have a chair for my desk, but it doesn't fit there so I sit on the end of the bed! I actually like it.

Bathrooms here don't have separated showers. So you just use that shower head in the corner there.

Small kitchen space.

Pretty sweet living room arrangement.

I had Wednesday off, then I observed Thursday and Friday. On Wednesday one of the foreign teachers who is leaving showed me around for a few hours. We walked over to the school that I teach at, called Ding Ding Dang. DDD is a private school that teaches mainly English. There are actually a number of DDD schools in Korea because it is a franchise, and the director of my school owns three others. After seeing where the school was we walked over to the Geheum River (I think) and walked along the path there before heading home.


Later that night, Analisa and I headed downtown to meet up with some other foreign teachers. The nightlife in Daegu is pretty active and there is always a lot going on. We went to eat galbi which is thin strips of beef or pork and veggies that you grill yourself right at the table. Then you put what you want in a big lettuce leaf, wrap it up and eat it! Delicious. After that we went to a few bars. I should note that "last call" as we know it doesn't really exist here. Some bars do close at 4am or so, and others just close when everyone eventually leaves, which might not be til 7 or 8am! I haven't experienced this yet, but I have been assured that I will at some point.


Thursday and Friday I observed Christina, the teacher I'm replacing. I took notes on her teaching methods and on the behavior of the students. I'm quite lucky because Christina is an awesome teacher and all of the kids are well behaved. As I have no real teaching experience, it was very helpful to observe. But after two full days of just sitting there, I was ready to try it out on Monday. My plans for the weekend consisted primarily of finding power adapters for my electronics, namely my computer. Saturday I went down to Homeplus, which is just a big department store. It was the first time I took the subway, and luckily most of the maps and directions are also in English, so getting around isn't too hard. I looked all around the electronics floor and couldn't find anything. I then tried asking someone who worked there and we both tried to figure out how to let him know what I was trying to find. Eventually we figured it out and he walked around with me for about 5 minutes trying to find something but never did. Then I went to another electronics store across the street and tried there but they didn't have anything. Saturday turned up nothing. Sunday I tried again. I went downtown and tried my luck at a large bookstore that sells Western books. Didn't find anything there, but below that was a huge underground mall-type walkway. Eventually I found a few plugs, bought a watch for about $3, and went home happy.

So EVERYONE uses umbrellas here. It's warm enough when it rains that you usually just wear a T-shirt. I felt weird wearing my raincoat.

Then I saw this. Woohoo!

Underground shopping.

I taught from Monday to Thursday and now we have a 3 day weekend because of Chuseok, which I mentioned earlier. Most of the people I have met here so far are all going to Seoul for the weekend. However, I don't have any money yet so I have to stay here aaaall alone. It gave me a good excuse to finally do this epic post and to do some exploring. Tomorrow I'm going to go to some big parks and temples, and hopefully I will find the National Museum which has tens of thousands of archaeological artifacts. Should be a fun weekend, hopefully cheap too!

Teaching:
This last week was pretty much just spent teaching. Two of the teachers from our school went on vacation for a week so the rest of us have to sub for them, adding more classes to our schedule. Though I only had 3 extra classes the whole week, so it wasn't too bad. Where to start? I guess just by saying that I really love teaching so far. The kids are full of energy and really enthusiastic most of the time. A frequent question I got from people before I left was: "How are you going to teach them English when you don't speak Korean?" Pretty much all of the kids at the school can understand English and put together some basic sentences. Others are more advanced. Classes range from preschool up to 15 and 16 year-olds. And age doesn't correspond to skill level. I have a class of preschoolers who can read, write, and speak very well already. I was so blown away and impressed by how advanced they are already. The one main rule during class time is NO KOREAN! Think about this: if they can only communicate to me and each other in English, they progress faster and can help each other figure things out. Each class that meets with a native English speaker also meets with a Korean co-teacher, to help explain the points of the lessons.  Also, all the students and Korean teachers have English names, so it is much easier to remember them all.

Because I teach at a private school, I don't have standard hours. Monday, Wednesday and Friday I start at 1pm and go til about 8pm, with a few breaks in between. Tuesday and Thursday I start at 10am and finish at 7:30pm, but I have a 4 hour break in the middle of the day. The reason is that all of the kids also go to public school, and usually have other private lessons to attend as well. Some of these kids go to school for 10 or more hours a day! Going to public school, then English classes, piano, taekwondo, math, Chinese, etc. These kids work so hard!

Each class is only 40 minutes, which usually goes by very quickly. I'm still learning how to manage the timing of the lessons. The curriculum of each level is set up pretty well and laid out for teachers to follow. The learning materials are mainly books with stories and characters, songs, writing exercises, and all sorts of other things. How I decide to teach the points is mostly up to me. We use a lot of games and songs to help learn and get them excited. Because these are kids you have to be very goofy a lot of the time and make them laugh. But it isn't all fun and sometimes I have to yell. The first few days were rough on my throat, but it's getting fine now. One of the other Korean teachers was explaining to me that in Korea, the teachers are not the students friends and they are very strict. So a lot of the advice I've been given from other teachers during my orientation was to be very strict and harsh for awhile. I think I have a pretty good balance of being fun enough for the kids to like me, but strict enough that they don't get out of line.  And the class size is generally 6 or 7 students, but I have one class of 9 and one class of 3.  So all in all it is quite a fun experience so far.  One thing is for sure though: it is VERY exhausting!

This is Christina, who I am replacing.  And this is the workspace for a lot of teachers.  It's crowded.

One of the preschool classes working hard!

My two preschool classes during PE time. Normally they aren't in the same room together.

My next post is probably going to be my observations of and thoughts about Korean culture thus far. Check back soon!