Teaching My Own Classes

---

Hi!

Today I started teaching classes by myself, which is MUCH more interesting than watching someone else teach. Though I had to do some of that as well. I finally got my schedule for the month, so I can really prepare for classes now. In the morning I have Winter Intensive courses, which are for the super smart kids whose parents make them do extra school. Today they had to show me homework that involved writing a story about discovering a planet and one of the kids had me absolutley riveted. It was crazy exciting! And the grammar was at least as good as a native-speaker his age. So those classes are really easy. Everyone's done their homework, everyone knows what I'm talking about. Wednesdays and Thursdays I do lunch duty and supervise gym for kindergarteners and on Fridays I have lunch and science with kindergarten boys. Then I have a phonics class which is pretty painful. These kids are absolute beginners and it's clear that some of them care and some of them have no idea why their parents make them come. After that I'll have a class that's topic I'm not sure of yet. I sat in on the class on Wednesday, but they covered all sorts of things. MWF I have another Winter Intensive speaking course. One of the girls used to live in Austin, so she knows more English than Korean. Which is pretty funny when part of her homework is to write the Korean translation of vocabulary words to make sure they know what it means. She said her mom tells her what the Korean words are.

I went grocery shopping the other day at the corner store, creatively named "Korea Mart". I had almost no clue what anything was. Not all food cans have pictures on the front, and even if they do that doesn't always tell you exactly what's in the can (I'm speaking of cans in general, not Korean cans. Think tomato paste. It has a picture of a tomato on it, but you'll find no whole tomatoes inside) I found a bag of spaghetti, which was pretty cool. Of course, it has microwave instructions on it, but in Korean. So I'm doing a bit of guesswork. That also applies to the microwave itself, which has a total of 5 buttons (as far as I can tell: high, medium, low, start, and stop) I knew the word for tea, so I picked out a couple of boxes of that. I almost screamed with joy when I found Mountain Dew in the store. Of course, it tastes a bit different. But it was exciting, nonetheless.

I have a bit of a fear that one day I'll need to call someone and not be able to because I don't have a phone yet. Yesterday was a good example, but luckily someone was with me. After getting back to my apartment from the store, I found my hallway door closed and locked. It had never been closed before. And nobody told me anything about a combination. The other teacher had to call the school and find someone who knew the combination to my hallway. One other teacher lives in my hallway, but he wasn't there. I got to go up a level while I waited and at least 4 of the teachers live there (2 Canadian, 1 American, and 1 Korean) They have a really cool common area with a couch and TV. I was pretty jealous.

I was originally supposed to come in February but they asked me to come earlier and I found out why. The girl whose apartment and desk I know occupy fled the country in the middle of the night. You have to talk to girls to get to the bottom of these things. I asked a guy and I got "I don't know. She had problems". I asked a girl and I got the entire breakdown. Apparently she decided she was going to leave early, so she told the administration. They said that was fine, but she had to reimburse them for her flight. She wasn't excited about that idea, so she told them she was staying. And then one day, all of her stuff was gone. Which I think is incredibly weird. It also puts me at a disadvantage since I can't buy stuff she won't need anymore and I didn't live with the Director, which most people do. Living with Elia means you find out all of the secrets of living in a Korean apartment and where to buy necessities. This just means I ask everyone a lot more questions. Today I felt like I had to ask Robin (the staff supervisor) a million questions about books and computers and lesson plans and tests.

This weekend the other teachers have already talked about going ice skating at this new apartment complex that has a shopping mall as well. At least 6 people have told me about this ice rink and one of the other teachers told me it's because there's not a lot else to do in town. The town was built very recently, solely with the idea that Samsung's employees could be housed nearby. Apparently nobody thought about the entertainment aspect. But sadly, I will not be ice skating since my knee surgery is so recent and I REALLY don't want to be on crutches again. Supposedly I'll be able to go downtown Seoul this weekend as well, which everyone tells me is really awesome.

---