Our trip got off to a good start when the nice United representative at SFO kindly overlooked the fact that all our bags were about a pound or two over the maximum 50 lbs. Then, since United has a horrible policy of assigning seats in the order that they're booked, we were stuck with the middle two seats of the middle 5 seats in the second-to-last row on the plane... But when we asked if there were any other available seats, we were upgraded to United Plus for free (yay legroom) and had seats across from each other, next to the aisle. Good start!
The flight took about 12 hours and we arrived early in Seoul, breezed through customs (have any other Americans noticed how much easier it is to leave the country than to come home to the States?), and collected our luggage. This year (maybe it's a second-timer-bonus), instead of being driven to our school, our "driver" collected us, walked us to the appropriate bus, and told us the station that we should get off at (Jeongja). Hmmm. We napped for about an hour, then arrived at our new home at roughly 7pm, greeted by Helena (our school's director) and her brother, Mr. Na. They showed us our apartment, gave us food (Dunkin Donuts and fried chicken), and said that Mr. Na would come pick us up the next day at 9:00. Would we be observing classes? Oh no, they said. Teaching. ...Great.
Fortunately, we were way too tired to be nervous, so we made a pitiful attempt at unpacking and crashed for the night. We woke up the next morning, had breakfast (Jay went shopping to find kimchi), and met Mr. Na at 9:00. He walked us to the school across the street from our apartment, explained the daily schedule, and gave us a vague idea of what we were going to do.
If for some strange reason you're interested, our schedules look a little something like this: (if you're not interested, skip this part)
| Time\Day | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri |
| 9:30-9:50 | Prep for classes (the kids play and dance) | ||||
| 9:50-10:50 | Kindergarten class | ||||
| 10:50-11:00 | Break | ||||
| 11:00-11:50 | Kindergarten class | ||||
| 11:50-1:00 | Lunch (we normally leave for lunch, though there is a cook who cooks for the kids and the teachers) | ||||
| 1:00-1:30 | Kindergarten class | Yoga | |||
| 1:30-1:50 | Break | ||||
| 1:50-2:20 | Kindergarten class | ||||
| 2:20-2:30 | Break | ||||
| 2:30-3:20 | After-school class 1 | ||||
| 3:20-3:30 | Break | ||||
| 3:30-4:20 | After-school class 2 | ||||
| 4:20-4:30 | Break | ||||
| 4:30-5:20 | After-school class 3 | ||||
| 5:20-5:30 | Break | ||||
| 5:30-6:00 | After-school class 4 | ||||
Cynthia (the 3rd full-time foreign teacher) teaches the six 7-year-olds (6 outside of Korea, since Koreans consider their children to be 1 year old at birth), I teach four amazing 6-year olds (really only 5), and Jay has four 5-year-olds (4). His kids just started taking classes a few weeks ago, so their level is very basic, but the older kids can communicate quite well. We teach the same group all day, and the classes include phonics, reading, singing, science, math, and games. We have a huge amount of freedom over the curriculum (the only requisite book is the phonics book, which Jay's kids don't even have yet).
Our after-school classes are all different: Jay has a group of 4 young elementary school students (maybe 1st or 2nd grade). He teaches them social studies, science, and reading and has them for the first two afternoon classes every day. He then has a break during the 3rd class and (just for July) will then teach my older students for half an hour at the end of the day (maybe a conversation class).
I have two 7-year olds (at a very basic level) Monday and Wednesday for the first class. On Friday I lead the 6-year-olds and 7-year-olds in a conversation class, and Tuesdays and Thursdays (starting tomorrow), a conversation course for Jay's 5-year-olds. They can't speak, so I'm not sure how that one is going to work... I then teach a great (practically fluent) group of 2nd-graders for 2 hours on MWF (reading) and 1 hour on TTH (science) and that's it.
We have a Korean co-teacher in the class with us for all of our kindergarten classes and most of our afternoon classes.
In total, we have very few students, a good amount of break time, and a lot of freedom in planning our lessons. This can be stressful as well as nice, but we're enjoying the change from last year so far.
Additionally, our second day at work (Wednesday) was a field trip! We went to Seoul Forest with our kindergarten students (well, 12 of them - Jay and Cynthia were each missing a student).
Here are some videos and photos from the trip:
Other than that, there's not much to report. Our apartment was pretty bare when we got here (no closet/sofa/shelf space), but since the community's so wealthy here, people in our apartment complex dump out perfectly good furniture. We picked up a sofa, mirror, shelf, and closet on our first weekend (with the help of the building's security guard, who pointed out the mirror once we expressed interest in the couch). That weekend, plus a couple trips to E-mart (a Korean department store) and now our apartment's looking pretty good. We're on the 3rd floor, overlooking the 탄천 (Tancheon), a stream that leads into the Han River in Seoul. It has biking and walking/running paths, so we've been running there every other day. Here are some photos and videos to give you an idea of our new home:
That's about it. We're doing well and keeping busy, so I'm sure more updates will come in the future.
From Korea, with love,
-J&J
1 comment:
Hi Jay and Jessie,
Sorry to do this in a comment, but I didn't see an email address for either of you anywhere on the site. I'm a former native English teacher (lived and worked in Korea for two years) who is now a Master's student at the University of Glasgow. I found your blog through the Korean Blog List and the reason I'm writing to you is I'm hoping that you (either separately or together) would be willing to complete a questionnaire that forms part of the research I am conducting for my MSc Information Management & Preservation dissertation.
My dissertation will examine the role of blogs in helping to form and shape a sense of community identity amongst expats living in South Korea. This is being done in order to determine the archival value of these blogs and examine if, and how, they should be preserved.
Basically, I believe that today’s archives are rife with personal diaries and papers which allow us a glimpse into the past. But, what of the archives of the future? How many people today actually keep a pen and paper journal or write letters home? More and more native English teachers living in Korea have replaced diaries and letters home with blogs. Furthermore, due to the nature of the native English teacher community in Korea, much of the information about this community can only be found on the Internet on sites such as blogs (like yours). Therefore, a failure to preserve blogs may create a black hole of information for future generations of archives users.
You can read more about my project as well as fill out my questionnaire by visiting http://2009msc.wordpress.com Some of the issues I'm examining are what happens to blogs when their authors decide to stop writing or leave Korea and if blog authors would be willing to have their blogs digitally preserved, so I'd be interested to hear your views on these matters. I’d really appreciate it if you could find the time to complete the questionnaire.
(And, if any of your readers want to complete the questionnaire that would be great too, since I'd love to hear from them as well.)
Thank you,
Kim
Post a Comment