Last days at Wonderland, Incheon and first days at Kid's College, Gangseo-gu, Seoul.

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Wow, so it turns out I wasRUBBISH at keeping this blog up to date. I say 'was' because I intend to correct that.

Last thing you heard from me I was still in my 1st year in Korea and loving every second, well things didn't change much. My contract came to its natural end at Wonderland School in Mansu-dong, quiet a challange for most people in Korea who get sacked just before the end of 12 months so that their employer doesn't have to pay the months bonus promised!
I had such a lovely time there, OK at times I had to psych myself up to go into the class with my worst/least controllable kids, and there was that one incident of the girl peeing down my leg, but apart from that I had a lovely time in Mansu. There was a lot of change at my school towards my last few months, change of teachers and feelings of unrest however my replacement teacher was unbelievably funny and all my kids took to him straight away. Lets just say he had the charm of the Irish and could talk himself out of anything.

Even though my time was up in Korea, I just wasn't ready to leave yet! So I had a plan, I had to return to England for a dear friends wedding anyway so staying on at Wonderland just wasn't viable. I decided I would go home for 1 month, see the friends I needed to, top up my clothes supply (new bras and underwear as they were impossible to get in Seoul, not true now though thanks to Forever 21 and H&M) and of course my English chocolate. Then after a month was up I should have completed all my paperwork required for a new visa and would be well on way back home by the end of Oct. Of course it didn't quite work out that way! I had problems getting my criminal record check (not because im a dodgy dealer, because all the newly qualified teachers were blocking everything up) so it turned out I was in England for 2 whole months. It wasn't bad being back there, I did get to bug my best mate/PA for the entire time, catch up with some fantastic mates in London and Oxford and I also met a lovely young man at the wedding. So plusses all round.

When I got back to Korea it just felt right, any doubts I may have had vanished as soon as i landed in Incheon Airport. Catching my bus i felt pleased to be able to help a fellow expat find his bus and sort out his ticket, the sun was shining on my face and even if it was a bit nippy I felt like I had come home. After a few weeks I was offered a new job in the area i desired, Gangseo-gu. It's near gimpo airport, about 10 mins taxi from Hongdae station (university area where all the bars are and some great food) and right on the new subway line 9 so pretty perfect!

This school was set up totally different from Wonderland, the biggest difference was that I would only be teaching my class of kids. In Wonderland I would have my classes of kids that I was responsible for (I would have 2 responsible clasess in the morning and 2 in the afternoons) but I would also teach other classes throughout the day. At the new school I had my class, K-Frontier, in the morning and I was the only teacher that ever had them. They were my kids for the whole year and that meant we had a much stronger bond. It also helped that my kids were brand spanking new to the school, their school shut down unexpectedly, so they all new each other and they had strong friendships immidiately. I also had a class in the afternoon that were great, they were just so sweet with great individual personalities. My last class in the evenings were a trial, they were older and so didn't really want to be at school anymore, awkward teenagers but with great personalities. In the afternoons we would get to swap around classes, and believe me on certain days you were glad of the change. I got lucky and for my last class on the longer days (mon,wed,fri)i got to swap my class with Ashley's class who were amazing, they were pretty much fluent in American-English. I say that because they all spoke with American accents although one would try and copy my English accent, towards the end she was pretty good at it. With these kids I got to go through grammar structure and actually get them to have a proper conversation with me, we talked about everything from problems in thier schools, current envirnmental issues, Korean culture, pop stars and of course being a class of mostly girls - GOSSIP!

The other great difference at this school was that there were only foreign teachers there, no Koreans actually taught although we did have a couple of amazing women who were there to give out punishments and deal with the parents. They helped out so much with lesson planning and organising the school in general. When I first got there Amy (Korean teacher) was massively pregnant and very scary to both the kids and me because I thought every time she stood next to me she was going to pop!

All the teachers live on the 3rd floor of the school building, if you think this could get a little claustrophobic, you would be right! There were times when it seemed you never left the building, like when the weather wasn't very good or before parents Open day. But as well as the bad times there were some fantastic times! We had a themed Christmas party just after I got there, the teachers teamed up and hosted a country themed party in each apartment. So food and drink in each country until we got to the biggest double room (2 people had to share a big apartment with 2 bedrooms and a lounge area) where we all rested and just drank away. This apartment just happened to be 'Thailand' themed so there were many buckets being passed around!!

When I first got to Kid's College, there were roughly 7 Canadians, 4 Americans and 2 Brits (incl me), then over time the ratio changed to mostly Canadians and poor little me as the only Brit. I got picked on so much for my use of the English language, the Americans would constantly say I was wrong and even pretend not to understand me, but you know what? The clue is in the title! It's called ENGLISH therefore I and always right! hahah. Ah im just kidding, we had friendly banter in the teacher's lounge with everyone picking on each other in a funny way. For Canadian day the 2 Canadians, Nick and Dianielle, stuck up pictures all around the school of typical canadian things, then all the teachers became honourary Canadians for the day. The kids didn't really know what was going because Nick came to school with his face painted as the Canadian flag! There were so many good times had at that school, the people and kids really made my last year there such a great experience.

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Photos

Sports day @ Kids College
finally go them into some sort of order for a photo!