I’ve been in Korea for five weeks now, and tomorrow will be the one-month milestone for my time in Daegu (as well as my first payday). It’s incredible to me that I’ve already fulfilled 1/12 of my contract. I’m feeling pretty comfortable here these days; I know where to go to buy anything I need, and I think I finally have most of the little quirks of my studio figured out, or at least the ones I can’t ignore (the latest issue was last weekend when I thought my washing machine was broken. My landlords happened to be wall-papering next door, so I called them in and we all had a good laugh when they discovered that the water valve going into the machine had been turned off. They blame me, and I blame the hot-water mechanic). Now I need to work on expanding my comfort zone – I have yet to use the subway by myself, and I also want to figure out the country-wide bus and express-train system so I can start moving around and see a bit more of Korea outside of Daegu.
For the first time, I’ve been feeling a little homesick over the past few days. Since my Internet is working I talked to some people from home for the first time last weekend – my friends Michele and Erika, my sister Jessica, and my parents. School this week was also difficult and just dragged on. The kids are stressed about mid-terms next week and don’t feel like listening to me just now, and while sometimes I really like my lesson topics and it’s easy to think of explanations and activities, sometimes I’m just at a loss for interesting things to do – and that happened with every one of my classes this week. So I’ve just been trying to get more sleep (it’s a constant game of catch-up from the weekends) and stay active – I had dinner with Hyun Joo last night, and tonight a bunch of the EPIK teachers are meeting downtown for Indian food. There’s also talk of visiting an amusement park this weekend, which by definition should cheer me up J
My school schedule for the next few days is also sure to cheer me up. As I mentioned before, next week the students have midterms on Monday and Tuesday. Even though there aren’t any classes, all the teachers have to come to school until around noon, except me (this has happened to me before – a few weeks ago I had a random Friday off, because the students were being tested for physical fitness all day instead of having normal classes. All the other teachers had to be at school to help with the testing, except they told me not to come. I’m not sure really sure why, but I’m telling myself that they’re just being nice). Anyway, so I have Monday and Tuesday off, and then next Friday and the following Monday schools are closed for Chuseok. Chuseok is a Korean harvest festival – like Thanksgiving – and most Koreans eat a big traditional meal and visit their families and ancestral hometowns – again, like Thanksgiving. I’m really looking forward to having the time off and maybe traveling somewhere over Chuseok. I have no ideas yet, but since most places will be closed, and most people will be gone, I’d rather not sit at home alone for four days.
My fellow EPIK teachers are really fun and awesome support, but I owe my non-EPIK friends so much for making me feel comfortable and welcome here. All the teachers at Jeil, even the ones who don’t speak English or that I don’t teach with, are so friendly and considerate, and bring me little treats or coffee and try to include me in things. My co-teachers have been wonderful – Carrie and Bosun are so helpful all the time, even with stuff that falls outside their job duties like making phone calls for me, driving me around, or helping me with my studio. And all four of my co-teachers are very patient with my attempts at teaching and creating lesson plans – I learn so much just from watching them and taking in their feedback.
Hyun Joo, or Jessica (her English name) has also been amazing. I’m so, so glad I met her. She’s taken me around to different restaurants and tea/coffee shops, shown me a market near our building that gives you a free garbage bag if you spend \10,000, shown me another big bookstore with a great English-language section, introduced me to some of her friends, and overall has been very thoughtful, kind, and a great source of information. She told me that she worries about me – when I mentioned that I don’t like to cook she brought me some sweet potatoes and yogurt, and when I mentioned that I had been feeling homesick this week she bought me a little miniature tree from a florist!
Thanks for reading and stay in touch! Email or message me on Skype if you want to set up a time to talk – I can also call land-line phones for about 2 cents a minute, so don’t hesitate to ask!
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Saturday, September 19, 2009
I Live for the Weekends
The weekends here are so much fun, and so busy. I’ve met a really cool core group of people, and we usually meet downtown Fridays and Saturdays to eat, drink, dance, unwind and talk about how fun/strange/annoying Korea can be. We always find other people we know too, since most of us foreigners tend to hang out at a lot of the same places. The downtown area in Daegu is awesome because 1: It’s a ten-minute walk from my studio and 2: It’s very concentrated. Hundreds of bars, clubs, shops, restaurants, karaoke places and department stores are crammed into a few square blocks, and it’s busy every day and night of the week. This makes it very easy to move around but very difficult to find anything specific – it’s like a maze in there, and all the streets still look the same to me. I have to constantly keep in mind which direction I came from, and which way is out, so I can find my way home! There are a lot of expats in Daegu, so there’s always something happening like beer pong tournaments or a bar crawl or a band playing somewhere; it’s like going to college in a small town, where everyone has the same social life as everyone else and you can be sure of running into people you know. I also sometimes see my co-teacher Carrie on the weekends – she invited me to lunch with her husband, son, and in-laws on my first Sunday in Daegu, and last Sunday while they were all out hiking, we went to lunch again.
This past weekend I actually had Friday off, and during the day I was wandering around in the subway (sounds weird, but the subways here are like underground malls – they have multiple floors with food courts and every imaginable kind of store; people here also cross the main streets underground, because the traffic is so heavy) and I actually met a Korean girl that is close to my age and lives in my building. Her name is Hyun Joo, and she just graduated from university and is studying English full time. I was so happy to get to know her – weekdays I’m busy at school, and weekend nights I’m with my Western friends, but anytime I’m in my studio I feel really isolated and even lonely – my landlords don’t even live here, so I didn’t have anyone. It’s so nice to know now that if anything were to happen, there’s someone living down the hall that I can run to. Hyun Joo and I went out Friday and I introduced her to some of my friends. Hopefully I’ll see a lot more of her!
Last Saturday several of the EPIK teachers headed to Duryu Park for the International Bodypainting Festival. It was really cool. We arrived in the late afternoon, paid 10,000 won ($8-9) entrance fee, and wandered around for several hours, watching the models get painted in their tents and enjoying the freebies (a tee shirt, face-painting, henna, manicures, and makeup). We watched the show (each of the models just walked around to music for about a minute), got some supper, and headed downtown again.
Just wanted to throw something in here about my landlords. They’re a very nice older couple, and they’ve been very apologetic about all the mess with my hot water. They speak a few words of English and have brought in their son, Thomas, a few times because he's fluent. Thomas even gave me his cell phone number and told me to call or text if I have any problems so he can tell his parents. Thomas told me that his parents are very happy to have me, because the wife actually taught at Jeil Middle School for four years and also because they’re Catholic. The first day my landlords met me they asked my religion and were really happy to hear that I’m Catholic too. They immediately asked me my Catholic name, and now they call me Victoria! Last Monday they came over and brought me a gift-wrapped crucifix, and on Tuesday they brought tools over and nailed it to the wall! Thomas told me that they want me to come over to dinner sometime and also go to church with them.
I have Internet in my apartment now, so add me to Skype if you have it! Looking forward to hearing from everyone, so keep in touch and thanks for reading!
This past weekend I actually had Friday off, and during the day I was wandering around in the subway (sounds weird, but the subways here are like underground malls – they have multiple floors with food courts and every imaginable kind of store; people here also cross the main streets underground, because the traffic is so heavy) and I actually met a Korean girl that is close to my age and lives in my building. Her name is Hyun Joo, and she just graduated from university and is studying English full time. I was so happy to get to know her – weekdays I’m busy at school, and weekend nights I’m with my Western friends, but anytime I’m in my studio I feel really isolated and even lonely – my landlords don’t even live here, so I didn’t have anyone. It’s so nice to know now that if anything were to happen, there’s someone living down the hall that I can run to. Hyun Joo and I went out Friday and I introduced her to some of my friends. Hopefully I’ll see a lot more of her!
Last Saturday several of the EPIK teachers headed to Duryu Park for the International Bodypainting Festival. It was really cool. We arrived in the late afternoon, paid 10,000 won ($8-9) entrance fee, and wandered around for several hours, watching the models get painted in their tents and enjoying the freebies (a tee shirt, face-painting, henna, manicures, and makeup). We watched the show (each of the models just walked around to music for about a minute), got some supper, and headed downtown again.
Just wanted to throw something in here about my landlords. They’re a very nice older couple, and they’ve been very apologetic about all the mess with my hot water. They speak a few words of English and have brought in their son, Thomas, a few times because he's fluent. Thomas even gave me his cell phone number and told me to call or text if I have any problems so he can tell his parents. Thomas told me that his parents are very happy to have me, because the wife actually taught at Jeil Middle School for four years and also because they’re Catholic. The first day my landlords met me they asked my religion and were really happy to hear that I’m Catholic too. They immediately asked me my Catholic name, and now they call me Victoria! Last Monday they came over and brought me a gift-wrapped crucifix, and on Tuesday they brought tools over and nailed it to the wall! Thomas told me that they want me to come over to dinner sometime and also go to church with them.
I have Internet in my apartment now, so add me to Skype if you have it! Looking forward to hearing from everyone, so keep in touch and thanks for reading!
Monday, September 14, 2009
So I'm a Teacher Now...
The 2 ½ weeks since I arrived in Daegu have just flown by; I’m still a little bewildered by the fact that I’ve moved into – actually settled into – a new apartment in a new city, as well as started a new job. I still find it hard to believe that I’m really doing this, really going into middle-school classes every day with my own lesson plans, and then coming home to this apartment every night.
My first day at school was Monday, August 31st, but for the first three days I didn’t teach. I sat at my desk in the teacher’s room (teachers don’t have their own classrooms at Jeil. They move around to different rooms for each period and have desk space in a common room), started putting some lesson plans together, tried to familiarize myself with everything, and met my co-teachers. Jeil Middle School has three grades (in Korea they say middle school grades 1, 2, and 3, but it’s the same as grades 7, 8, and 9 in the States). Grades 1 and 3 are divided into three levels for English classes, with C being the lowest, B being intermediate, and A being the highest. Grade 2 English classes have mixed levels. I teach several of each type of class each week, as well as two after-school conversation classes (I didn’t have a choice about doing them, but I do get paid extra because it’s outside normal working hours). So in total I have 22 class hours each week, of nine different types or levels, and I see over 440 different students every week.
Carrie is my co-teacher for all the A-level students; my B-level co-teacher is Um Soo; my C-level co-teacher is Bosun; and Sook Hee is my co-teacher for all the grade 2 classes. They’re all very nice and helpful women. They tell me what topic or chapter to teach, I make the lesson plans, and they help me in class with discipline, translating directions or phrases, and modeling games or activities. I have a lot less interaction with all the other teachers at Jeil, but they also seem very nice. The P.E. teacher sits to my left and knows a few words of English, and a man who teaches Korean sits across from me. He’s always working on his English, and I often look up to see him reading the grade 1 English textbook and listening to the textbook’s CD! Sometimes I get questions from other teachers (and even the principal once) about how to say something correctly in English, or requests to proofread something. I don’t mind doing it at all – it’s nice to be the expert on something when I can’t even do basic things like read the ‘on/off’ button for the printer or operate the water filterer.
Bosun sits right next to me in the teacher’s room, and she is the closest to my age. She also helps me outside of school – she went with me to the Immigration Office to apply for my Alien Registration Card, and is coming over when the Internet/cable guy comes to my studio to set up the Internet this week. The ARC is just an ID card for foreigners, and you generally can’t transfer money or get cable TV, Internet, a cell phone or a bank account without it. EPIK very conveniently took care of our cell phones and bank accounts for us at orientation, and for some reason the cable/Internet guy came to my studio two weeks ago and agreed to hook up the cable without an ARC, but not the Internet. But I just got the ARC today, so the plan is to have Internet by Wednesday. And the hot water is FINALLY fixed, after three visits from the mechanic and two weeks of cold showers (luckily the weather’s been hot!). I continue to kill a lot of strange insects but overall I am very satisfied with my studio.
Teaching is REALLY hard work. At first I thought I would just set up a few lesson plans at the beginning of each week and then do them over and over again, but it definitely does not work like that. I’m still trying to get a handle on all the different grades and levels that I’m responsible for, what each class is capable of, what is possible within a forty-five minute period, and what activities work or don’t work. Some of my lessons have gone really well, and others have totally bombed. I find myself making adjustments after almost every class, until I finally feel like I have it down and then it’s the last day of the week and I’m already behind in planning lessons for the next one. It’s draining and time-consuming – I often take work home with me nights and weekends – but I’m already beginning to feel how rewarding this can be. I really like the challenge of appealing to the different demands that go along with the varying abilities of the students, and when a class goes really well and the kids have fun and actually understand me, it’s so empowering.
I know it’s been a while since I’ve written, and since my original goal was to write once a week and I still have quite a bit to say, I’ll try to write a few more shorter posts over the next few days to catch up on everything. So keep coming back! And please email me, Facebook me, leave comments here, or whatever – I do have Internet at school and I can’t say enough times how much it means to me to hear from everyone.
My first day at school was Monday, August 31st, but for the first three days I didn’t teach. I sat at my desk in the teacher’s room (teachers don’t have their own classrooms at Jeil. They move around to different rooms for each period and have desk space in a common room), started putting some lesson plans together, tried to familiarize myself with everything, and met my co-teachers. Jeil Middle School has three grades (in Korea they say middle school grades 1, 2, and 3, but it’s the same as grades 7, 8, and 9 in the States). Grades 1 and 3 are divided into three levels for English classes, with C being the lowest, B being intermediate, and A being the highest. Grade 2 English classes have mixed levels. I teach several of each type of class each week, as well as two after-school conversation classes (I didn’t have a choice about doing them, but I do get paid extra because it’s outside normal working hours). So in total I have 22 class hours each week, of nine different types or levels, and I see over 440 different students every week.
Carrie is my co-teacher for all the A-level students; my B-level co-teacher is Um Soo; my C-level co-teacher is Bosun; and Sook Hee is my co-teacher for all the grade 2 classes. They’re all very nice and helpful women. They tell me what topic or chapter to teach, I make the lesson plans, and they help me in class with discipline, translating directions or phrases, and modeling games or activities. I have a lot less interaction with all the other teachers at Jeil, but they also seem very nice. The P.E. teacher sits to my left and knows a few words of English, and a man who teaches Korean sits across from me. He’s always working on his English, and I often look up to see him reading the grade 1 English textbook and listening to the textbook’s CD! Sometimes I get questions from other teachers (and even the principal once) about how to say something correctly in English, or requests to proofread something. I don’t mind doing it at all – it’s nice to be the expert on something when I can’t even do basic things like read the ‘on/off’ button for the printer or operate the water filterer.
Bosun sits right next to me in the teacher’s room, and she is the closest to my age. She also helps me outside of school – she went with me to the Immigration Office to apply for my Alien Registration Card, and is coming over when the Internet/cable guy comes to my studio to set up the Internet this week. The ARC is just an ID card for foreigners, and you generally can’t transfer money or get cable TV, Internet, a cell phone or a bank account without it. EPIK very conveniently took care of our cell phones and bank accounts for us at orientation, and for some reason the cable/Internet guy came to my studio two weeks ago and agreed to hook up the cable without an ARC, but not the Internet. But I just got the ARC today, so the plan is to have Internet by Wednesday. And the hot water is FINALLY fixed, after three visits from the mechanic and two weeks of cold showers (luckily the weather’s been hot!). I continue to kill a lot of strange insects but overall I am very satisfied with my studio.
Teaching is REALLY hard work. At first I thought I would just set up a few lesson plans at the beginning of each week and then do them over and over again, but it definitely does not work like that. I’m still trying to get a handle on all the different grades and levels that I’m responsible for, what each class is capable of, what is possible within a forty-five minute period, and what activities work or don’t work. Some of my lessons have gone really well, and others have totally bombed. I find myself making adjustments after almost every class, until I finally feel like I have it down and then it’s the last day of the week and I’m already behind in planning lessons for the next one. It’s draining and time-consuming – I often take work home with me nights and weekends – but I’m already beginning to feel how rewarding this can be. I really like the challenge of appealing to the different demands that go along with the varying abilities of the students, and when a class goes really well and the kids have fun and actually understand me, it’s so empowering.
I know it’s been a while since I’ve written, and since my original goal was to write once a week and I still have quite a bit to say, I’ll try to write a few more shorter posts over the next few days to catch up on everything. So keep coming back! And please email me, Facebook me, leave comments here, or whatever – I do have Internet at school and I can’t say enough times how much it means to me to hear from everyone.
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