week one

Wow! What a week. To tell the truth I really don’t know where to start.
I might start with my apartment. I’m really lucky as my apartment is quite big compared to what a lot of the different English schools provide their teachers. You see the schools generally supply the apartment as part of the contract so it is generally a small studio apartment that you are given. However, we are very lucky at our school as all of the teachers have a decent sized apartment. My apartment has three rooms that could be used as bedrooms. The one I uses as my bedroom has a double bed, cable television and a table that I have turned into a dressing table. Then the second room has all these polls set up for hanging your clothes on. I use this room as my walk in wardrobe and storage. Then I have a kind of sun room. This room has a single bed in it and I have also set up my computer with a 51cm flat screen so I can watch all my downloaded shows. There is no download limit here and things download super fast, so I already have quite a nice collection of shows to watch. In the middle of the house I have a room with a couch and a small table to eat at, a fridge and a microwave. Connected to this room through a glass sliding door is the kitchen. The kitchen is a small rectangle room which has a gas burner stove and two sinks, some cupboard space and a small pantry. I don’t have an oven so there won’t be any baking unfortunately. However, with food here super cheap such as a Korean sushi called gimbap for $2 and a vegi and rice dish called bibimbap for $3.50 is cheaper to eat out. I’m also really lucky because on the road that my apartment complex sits on is a kind of fresh food market. People line the streets and sell the fresh fruit, vegetables, rice and snacks for dirt cheap. I purchased these beautiful apples the other day and they were super delish.
Connected to my kitchen I have a little alcove with a washing machine and shelving. I also have a small little bathroom with a shower, sink and toilet. What I think is the funkiest thing in my apartment is, is the balcony. The thing that makes it so different is the fact that it is an enclosed balcony meaning that it has glass panels and fly screens on the outside. This makes the balcony yet another room which is used to hang out your washing. So all up I have 8 rooms… so lucky 
I live on the top floor of my apartment. The apartment building is 6 levels and there is NO lift so every time I leave and return I have to walk up and down 96 stairs (yes I have counted lol). Now I struggle at the best of times so I am yet to work out how I am going to do it when I pissed or even hung over hahahhaa.

My school is approximately a 10 minute walk from my apartment. I walk down a long busy road so there is always something going on which is good. I think the thing that I struggled with the most is the fact that every stares at you as you are walking. At first all the staring would make me feel insecure and I wouldn’t look forward to going out but now I just ignore it and don’t think about it and I doesn’t bother me anymore.

My school is quite a small building which three floors. The bottom floor is the kindy which I don’t have much to do with. The second floor is the teacher’s office and a few class rooms and the top floor has a computer room and classrooms. The teacher’s office is a big room with 12 desks - one for each teacher. I can see all the other teachers from my desk which is really good because I can talk to them all. There are 4 other foreign teachers - two from Canada and two from the UK - and there are 5 Korean teachers. Each teacher has a variety of classes assigned to them but you usually co-teach with a Korean teacher. What this means is the Korean teacher teaches the students half the text book and the foreign teacher teachers the other half of the text book. So, although we are teaching the same books we teach the students at different times for example, I will teach the class page3 at 5pm and the Korean teacher will teach them page 4 at 6pm. So we still teach them independently in the classroom but you have two teachers teaching the same content in different ways, which helps the kids understand more.

Some of my students are really quite and some of them are really attentive and smart. These students are a pleasure to teach and I really enjoy it. Other students are loud and cannot stay seated in their seats. These students are a challenge and they can get very frustrating and you leave the class thinking ‘what the hell am I doing’ but then you’ll have a really good class afterwards which will make you remember why you are here lol.

I haven’t really gone out much since I have been here. Just on walks to shops slowly homing my apartment and to get supplies from the supermarket. When I was at the supermarket yesterday I found some Wolf blast, Hardys and James Creek wines which my pantry now holds.
Here are a few other little interesting facts

• Swine flu is freaking everyone out. Kind of like it was for us for a bit
• The water system that heats my water also heats my floor. So I can only turn it on 5 minutes before I have a shower. The reason it does this is because it is common for Koreans to sleep on the floor and the floor heating makes it more comfortable sleeping on the floor.
• All students (even grade 2 students) have mobile phones
• No helmets are worn here and some people ride there scooters on the foot path
• A lot of people here wear the mouth masks - even some of my students
• I live 1km from the beach

That’s all I can really think of for now but keep your eye on this space because I’m sure that I will have a lot of crazy stories for you soon. also check out photos of my apartment and a few other places on my facebook
Hope you are all well,
Giaxx

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