Blogs from South Korea, Asia - page 336

A girl in one of my classes asked me, "If Americans go to school less than Koreans and study less than Koreans then why does America have more geniuses than Korea?" This is a question that requires more thought than usual because it asks about deeper implications on the differences between the Korean education system compared to the American education system. Koreans are very smart. They study much harder than the average American. Koreans are taught to memorize. They go to school Monday through Saturday for an average of 3 hours more a day than Americans. At age 13 they take midterm tests and final tests for which they study for several weeks in advance. I teach at a private academy where kids come after regular school. Right now, during exam season, I have kids not ... read more

Hello Everyone! This blog highlights some of the fun things we did in the month of November.... The first and largest group of pictures is from a Seoul bus tour we did last month. We took this tour with some of our English Village friends, Nathan & Natalia, who set the whole thing up with the church that they go to. We ended up seeing quite a lot of things on this tour, some of which we've briefly seen before, and some of which were a completely new experience for us! On this day we were picked up by a large bus, and first taken to a historical place here in South Korea known as Gyeongbokgung Palace. This palace was built in 1392, and was restored from the Korean War in just the past couple of ... read more

My plight in the land of god's biggest joke yet continues this week with a few new twists, turns and subsequent sicknesses... Picking up where I left off... since then Fiona has arrived back in Korea and is settling in well to a life of dipsomania, vertical drops and photography. Her first night here was an endulgent one, beginning with a bottle of Korea's finest and finishing with Wolf Blass Shiraz... nice. Since that time, photos have been taken, sights have been seen and people have slept. Come Saturday we decided bungee was in order and myself, Scott (our new teacher) and Fiona relocated to Bundang for a 46m drop... thrilling to know that you (most probably) won't hit the water at the bottom... but conversation on the way up is nervously morbid and often leaves ... read more

So November comes to a close, and Winter is definitely starting to make its presence felt here. The temperature has gotten pretty cool, and the coat, hat and scarf that I've recently gotten are coming in very useful. No sign of the snow yet, but I'm sure its coming soon. School is starting wind down too, the students have their final exams starting next week so are all frantically preparing for them. The textbook material is basically finished now, so its just a case of trying to keep them interested for the remainder of my lessons. I'm getting pretty excited now because I don't actually have too much teaching time left until I leave. Sure, its another five months, but I think this time is going to go very fast. It breaks down like this: 1. ... read more

Hello everybody! How are you all doing? We hope that you all had a great Thanksgiving and that your Christmas/holiday plans are well underway. Our Thanksgiving holiday was a lot of fun this year. Although we missed being home on this day, our evening was memorable nonetheless, and special in its own way. We spent Thanksgiving here in English Village, and we had dinner with at least 50 other teachers! It was nice because we created families and a nice "potluck" dinner to look forward to this holiday evening. Unfortunately, because it was a Thursday, we both had to work this day - myself from 10am - 6pm, and Larry from 1pm - 9pm - but it all worked out anyway. Larry had his dinner break for an hour, and so we did nearly an entire ... read more