finally caught up...

I'm finally caught up on my blogs. I hate writing about things that happened in the past because I either go into pointless detail in an effort to remember what I did each day, or I forget the good parts!

GETTING USED TO IT:
So, day 3 of real teaching arrives. By this point I know "kind of" what to expect when I enter the classroom. I mean, I had already given the same lesson 5 times, so what's a few more times? lol. I start the morning with Ms. Kim. I can tell I am going to love her classes due to the behavior of her students & their level of respect. I love the bow I receive at the beginning and end of class, and I'm considering asking my other co-teachers to do the same. It's not that I feel special when they bow, it's more like a sign of respect and gives a start and finish to my lesson.

Now normally on Wednesdays & Fridays I will have a conversation class with other teachers who want to improve their English. It's open to all the teachers, but for this week Mr, Bahn said I didn't have to do any of my conversation classes (including English Zone time during lunch & meeting with the higher level students for conversations). While I'm sure I will enjoy my conversation classes more than my lecture classes, I was glad to just teach for the first week.

"MAYBE" TURNED IN TO TODAY!:
After teaching Ms. Kim's class I went back to the office where I was informed that they had finally fixed the screen in my classroom! YAY! I run to the room to make sure, set up my powerpoint, and prepare for my first lesson in my own room. :)

My second class with Mr. Lee consisted of the normal chaos...but not as bad this time. Perhaps these students were at a higher level of English than Mr. Lee's previous students.  After class I stayed in the room for awhile as to avoid eating lunch in the break room. I felt bad, but I really just wanted to eat my leftover pizza without being force fed Korean side dishes! So, my plan worked...this day atleast! I go into the empty break room, heat up my pizza, eat, and return to my room for the 3rd and final class of the day.

Mr. Jun brings in his students, all males, and they sit down. He makes a few announcements, then calls up a student. I don't know, once again, what the boy did, but he made him kneel down on the floor and repeat things in Korean. He then has the boy sit in squat form on the ground while he proceeds to give a lecture on appropriate classroom behavior to the rest of the students (I'm assuming that's what it was about, who knows!)

During the time I'm sitting at my desk waiting to start my timer. I put a timer on my I-pod touch in order to keep track of time and make sure I'm not going too slow or too fast. At this point my timer is on 40 minutes. I'm supposed to teach for 50 minutes. By the time his speech is over, my timer is at 27 minutes!! LOL. There goes half of my lesson! I then stand up in front of a half-asleep class of Korean boys and try to encourage them to have a conversation about their hobbies with each other. I got mainly blank stares and heads down on desks. It's after lunch, hell I was sleepy myself! Especially after a 15 minute lecture from Mr. Jun! Finally I catch about half of their attention with my hobby guessing game. I put four words on the screen and they had to say them out loud with me, then guess which hobby the words were hints for.

EVERY DAY IS DIFFERENT:
Needless to say, every class is going to be different. I just need to be one my toes and ready for whatever the students present me with. Over time, I will hopefully figure out a system that works regarding behavior and lesson planning. I just hope it's not on the last day of teaching here, haha!

Since I had about two hours left at the end of the day, I decided to stay in my room and check out some of the materials I came across in the cabinets. I pop in a few CD's and DVD's and realize that half of them are either crap & useless, or don't even work! What a waste of money for the school! I'm still intent on finding a way to use something though! As I'm getting ready to head back to the main office my co-teacher pops in my room. He says he was looking for me because the Vice Principal wanted to know where I was at. Ooops! Guess they need to actual atleast see my physical presence to make sure I'm ok, or not doing anything inappropriate...who knows their reason! Lesson learned...cannot hide in my room, darn!

BUS RIDE MINI-DRAMA:
I was happy to be finished for the day, so I went back to the office, collected my things and left to the bus stop. Half way to the bus stop I realize I still have on my "school slippers" lol. I say screw it, and keep walking. They are also rather uncomfortable because they are new and probably one size too small for me even though that was the biggest size I could find in Korea to fit me! To "escape" hearing Korean all day long, I often listen to music on my I-touch. As I'm waiting for the bus I have a giggling girl sit next to me, get out her phone, and point at the key pad. She wanted me to give her my cell phone number, lol. I explain to her that my I-touch is not a phone and that I do not have one. She starts speaking in Korean and staring at me for a response. I smile politely and return to my music. She then grabs my arm and starts pulling me off the seat. Turns out the bus had arrived outside, so she was "assisting" me, haha!

I board the bus & get off at the stop in Seonsan. I search for the people I had met the day before, but with no luck I get on the bus alone. The bus stops alot on the way home at different places so once we got to the downtown area I tried to remember where I had gotten off the day before. I see a sign that I think is familiar, and get off. Then I look up the road and see the train station in the distance, damn! Got off too early! So I start to walk, in my uncomfortable shoes, when I feel someone tapping my shoulder. Apparently I left my scarf on the bus, so some stranger was kind enough to catch up with me! :) I've already lost one scarf at orientation & I've discovered scarves are a necessity with the cold weather in Korea!

Finally I make it back to my apartment. After my eventful trip from school to home I feel the need to open the wine I had bought at DC Mart. It said "rice wine" of course, but I figured it couldn't be that bad. Wrong! It was gross, so I opened a Hite beer instead. I then get into a movie that was on the English channel called "Hachi." Turns out it's a super sad movie, but I liked it.

MINI-CELEBRATION:
As I'm watching the movie I get a message from Paul asking if I wanted to join him and Ali for dinner/drinks. I say yes of course! Especially since I didn't have any lectures the next day due to national testing for high school students! Time to have a mini-celebration for surviving teaching so far! I meet them at 8pm, along with Rita, a friend who lives a town away from Gumi. We wander the streets in search of a place we haven't been to yet. I tell them I don't care what kind of meat we eat, as long as I get to eat more meat than vegetables! We go to another one of those types of restaurants where you cook the meat yourself, but the lady (waitress) insisted on cooking it for us. We then start the shots of Soju and rounds of beer. Alex joins up with us and we decide to move on to Corona bar. We walk in and I see Adalet and Tom, the friends I made on Saturday night! I talk to them briefly and then play a couple rounds of darts. I actually won twice :) As it nears midnight I am talking to Adalet and Tom and figure I need to head home to get some sleep. Regardless of whether or not I had to teach I still had to be up at 6am!

DESKWARMING:
I figured I'd sum up today on this post as well. This morning I woke up, feeling super tired, as I expected, and dragged myself to the bus stop. Since I knew I had no lessons to teach I didn't even bother to work on my appearance lol. My intention was to work on some lesson plans half the day, and then read/blog/facebook the rest of the day. In other words, a normal day of "deskwarming" like I had done the previous week. Thanks to my new friend Scottie, I started my day chatting with him on facebook and ended my day chatting with him on Skype. LOL. I did of course work on my blogging, but that was about it! Didn't even open an educational website once today!

The highlight of my day was that one of the teacher's walked by my desk and I heard her say "color of my mind." She was reading my screen, nosy! haha. She then sees the picture of me with long hair on my blog website and says, "Oh, so beautiful!" Next she calls over her friend to look at the picture. I now have two Korean teachers hovering over me staring at my blog. I finally switch the screen to Skype and they disappear.

On my way home from school today I managed to conquer the bus system. I noted down the name of the big store that I got off near the train station in order to prevent future mistakes! On the bus ride I immersed myself in a book that I brought from home. It is a neat book in that you can make decisions on how you want the story to go and how it will end. It's called "Pretty Little Mistakes" so you have to use your own judgement on which path to take in the book. You either end up in a good situation, or in some cases your character dies and you start over! Keeps me entertained!

TIME TO COOK:
I then decide to stop at the grocery store inside the train station and grab a few things to make dinner. I like going out for dinner, but sometimes it's nice to just cook at home. This brings me to where I am now. Deciding what to fix for dinner...hmmm! Ok, I'm done blogging. All of my posts from now on will hopefully be current and up to date!

By the way, I intend to upload pictures to go with my blog posts, but my computer is stubborn when I try to add them. They are all on my facebook page, but I still want to add a few to go with my stories. Check back for pics later!

XOXO,
Amanda