Another day, another adventure in Korea! Today both Natasha and I were a little nervous and we had a rough day the day before. We had a meeting today with our boss and it was our first official meeting about our jobs. We didn't know the aspects of the meeting and we had some rough interactions with "criticisms" from our bosses because of translations, so we had no idea what to expect.
My day today was great. I went into the day after finishing up some things that needed to get done the night before. I had also mentally prepared my whole day before i went to sleep and got a really great night of sleep. Not a common accurance for me, especially with the shitty beds here. Anyways so my classes were good and I think I am getting the hang of this teaching thing.
We have basically three parts to our school day. First is our three morning classes before lunch. I have the same books and the same material for the first three! it can be hard because you do the same thing over and over, but on the same level it makes you understand the differences in class dynamics and child preferences and that is great for a new teacher.
Then we had some sweet-assed BLT's for lunch. Cuz our school is in the same building as we live in, we just go up to our place and hang out! we have a whole hour!
The second part of our day is two more kindergarten classes, and mine are particularly tough. My first post lunch class is Seattle class and they are really advanced for kindergartners, but still young. they are also bored and there are eleven of them! They can get very out of hand. I have a trick to keep them in line and today it worked like a charm. I write S-T-I-C-K-E-R-S on the board and when they are loud and crazy i erase one letter. If i erase all of them, no stickers! I also have started showing them the sticker book. it helps a ton!
My second post-lunch class is New York and they are tiny little kids. there are some smart ones but they are filled with crazy little boys. Danny, Louie and Kevin are all nuts. Danny talks like Mikey did when he was seven (if you know my little bro) and gets the other kids into a frenzy. Much like sharks when they find some food! So today i made Danny cry and then brought him back by giving him smiley faces on the board! he was all over it! AWESOME!
Then after the post-lunch kindergarten i have a block of five forty minute classes of elementary classes. ouch.
the first one is great, my 406 class. They are all smart and attentive and they appreciate that i am their teacher! weird. My favorite in that class is benjamin, his vocab is limited but he is cool!
The second class i teach the same material as i do in the last class but because it is such a rambunctious class i don't get nearly as far as i do in the 406 class
My next class has had it's dilemmas. There were only five kids. they are all at least twelve so i thought i could just be myself in that one and hang out while teaching. Not so. Two of the kids quit LCI school because they were bored. The book sucks and that isn't my fault, but i thought they were "mature" enough to realize the material sucks. Not so much. So i brought in the Simpsons and made them answer questions about it! it was a lot of fun!
My next class is funny but they are all girls except one poor boy who just gets made fun of all of the time, Jude. it's rough being little Jude.
402 is my last class and it is filled with 12,11,10 year olds. They are all over the map. Most are on the same level but because of the age disparagements some are smart and some are not! One kid has brought me in a very very realistic toy gun already and is obsessed with wars! he is a good kid though. they are my last so a lot of times i pretend to play a game that gets them to do their work, like Simon Says. Simon Says, "Open your books to page......" yeah ha ha ha!
So we finished our classes and we had our meeting today. Our teacher Candy is, I'm totally convinced, a dominatrix in real life. So i am a little nervous of her. Anyways we were worried about a reaming from them about our job.
it turns out that we are doing a fine job and that our concerns were justified and very similar to the other korean teachers. The problem is really the language barrier. We don't know what other teachers are thinking because they don't/can't talk to us and us them. So anyways we joked about how weird some kids are and how some of the parents must be crazy and that some kids will be rock stars and some will power ships with their mouths when they grow up. good stuff. we ate some pizza and called it good.
Then natasha and i had a little bit of freedom. We went out for some alcoholic refreshments. We went to a new place. We only "knew" it had alcohol by the rice beer pots on the outside. We can't really read the signs and we can't really tell if it is just decor. So on a dare we went in and asked if they had Makgeolli (mak oly) which is just fermented rice drink. it is really really good. So we got a pot of that for 3000 won (about three bucks) and a bunch of food which we ordered and were very proud of ourselves. We ordered stuff we actually knew and didn't get anything we didn't like! oh yeah. try doing that sometime at a restaurant that isn't in English!
Then as we sat and ate our meal and drank our Makgeolli, I got to watch baseball and Natasha deciphered the menu! She figured out about ten different things just by looking through our travel book! The Hangul (korean written language) is surprisingly easy to read, once you know what to look for.
So we sat and drank and ate and had just the most relaxing time ever. All of the food we could eat, including some sweeeeet assed kimchi, the pajeon (onion pancake) and other stuff was only 7000 won! about seven bucks. Korea is amazing.
now we get home i am writing this and Die Hard is on TV in English! Ahhh Sahh (Korean for Awesome)
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