Friday, July 31, 2009

THE kids!

So, it just so happened that birthday celebration day was on Friday July 24th this month. I guess we celebrate birthdays every month on the third Friday. The whole school, (all the kindergarten and pre-k) meet in the library and sing a song or two and recognize all the birthdays for that particular month. After we did this, we met back in the classroom and enjoyed some cookies and juice that my KT (Korean teacher) had brought to celebrate the last day of one of the girls in my class. She is moving to a new area of Seoul and of course a new Poly. I brought my camera with this day to work and got a couple memorable pictures to share - they are really THE cutest kids ever! ENJOY!















Top: All the kids gathered in the library - SO many Korean children
Bottom: All the July BDays. I teach Danny (3rd from the right) and Yujin (2nd from the right)
















Top: My class again... this time enthralled in a video I put on as part of the bday celebration! Bottom: MY CLASS!!! I love them. They are the best - really. Missing one though... and the girl right in front of me is moving! :( (CHECK OUT MY PEACE SIGN!) haa
Oh and lastly, the view out my classroom window... Cool. I live in the city no doubt. Multiple times a day we hear beeping. Koreans love their horns. Weirdly, it is just part of life for these kids. I always turn my head and want to look out the window to see what is happening. I'm sure this tendency will fade fast.

weekends = GOLD!

Now that I have explained what I do during the week here in Korea, I will share about my last couple weekends here. Weekends are wonderful here! It is a great break away from the school and all the comes with school - kids, planning lessons, correcting HW, etc. The past two weekends, my friend Taylor who is teaching in Ilsan, Korea (it is about an hour and a half away from Mokdong, where I live), has come to visit. Taylor and I have gone to school together since junior high, including college. It's nice to see a familiar face here. The first weekend Taylor visited, my coworker/friend Elyse and I showed him around our area. We first showed him where our school is and the surrounding area. In the picture on the left, there is a blue and white POLY sign. That is my school, it occupies the 5th and 6th floor of that building.


There is a park nearby the school, Paris Park. Most of the parks here in Korea have exercise equipment in them, which is extremely entertaining. Here is Taylor and Elyse trying out the equipment. Of course, there are Korean children in the background watching because we, foreign people, are very amusing and fascinating to Koreans. We are constantly pointed at, waved at, smiled at - haven't decided if I like it or not. Don't really mind the attention from the children because they are usually cute and very excited to see us but from adults, it's just sometimes all together uncomfortable. Ah, oh well. It is just something I am getting used to, slowly. :)





After spending some quality time in the park, we went to a delicious sushi restaurant that had a conveyor belt with different colored dishes going by you. You would pick whatever you wanted to eat as it passed you, stack your dishes up, and then would add up the amount in the end. This restaurant is right by my school! I will definitely go back to it. A bit pricey, but totally worth it.















Delicious sushi restaurant! --->






To continue our exciting weekend, we headed to Itaewon, a city district of Seoul about 30 mins by subway from Mokdong. This is a very popular area for foreigners as well as US Army personnel because of a military base located there. I found it to be a very refreshing area because of the diversity there. For once since I arrived here, I did not feel like an outsider and that I stuck out. I was surrounded by many other foreigners - about every other person I passed on the street was not Korean. In my own Seoul neighborhood (mokdong), I only pass a foreigner about every 3 days, if that. So Itaewon was very exciting! Along with the foreign people, there are many Western restaurants and stores. Here are a couple examples! A Subway below an Outback Steakhouse. You can also find a Quizno's next to a Coldstone as well as the Hard Rock Cafe.


As well as many Western food options, Itaewon also has numerous options of other types of food including, Indian, Thai, and Turkish - just to name a few. We opted for Thai food, which was delicious. Here is Taylor, Elyse, and myself at the Thai restaurant in Itaewon, enjoying a bottle of red wine! :)

GO Twins!

So much to update about... and many pictures to add too!








OF course I am missing my Twins here in Korea so I follow as best as I can. Just swept the White Sox - WOO! Sadly, I cannot watch the games here, I can only be a follower by reading the scores and occasionally on weekends catching the play-by-play, which provides each and every play LIVE as the game goes on. Here is something I caught on TV here my second night here... quite comforting. :)

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

http://english.visitkorea.or.kr/enu/SI/SI_EN_3_1_1_1.jsp?areaCode=32,5

LINK TO THE AREA I AM GOING FOR MY SUMMER VACA! :) looks gorgeous!

Where I spend most my days...

Well, the many reason I am here in Korea is to work so.... I think it's time for me to share about my job and what a typical day involves. So I am living in an apartment that is about a 5-10 minute cab ride OR a 30-35 minute subway/walk away from school. I arrive at school by 9 AM and usually grab some sort of breakfast on the way to the building - Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, etc. From 9 til 9:35, I have prep time. Then from 9:35 to 2:00 (with a 1/2 hour lunch break) I am teaching kindergartners! They are SO SO SO cute. I will have to take some pictures to show you all. Besides being cute, they are THE smartest little beings really I have ever seen. They know how to spell words you wouldn't believe, disagreement, philosophy, photojournalism, synopsis... just to name a few! I teach them many different subjects - all in English of course! We have gym, writing, arts and crafts, computers, phonics, and reading. It is a lot of work. a lot. always planning, planning, planning. My afternoon is filled with teaching 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 5th grade depending on the day of the week. They operate on a MWF and T TH schedule. So some kids I only see twice a week. I teach either vocabulary/grammar/writing class (M = vocab, W = grammar, etc) OR a reading class. I have 1 first grade, 3 second grade classes, 2 third grade classes, and 2 fifth grade classes! SO many faces and names. its about 80some. AND we are doing monthly report cards this week. Sadly, I don't know all the kids personally yet. Only the ones I see everyday (my kindergarten, my partner kindergarten, and my 1st grade class and 1 of my 2nd grades). Forgot an important detail, I work until 7:45 on MWF and 7:00 on T TH. LONGEST DAY EVERRRRR (9:00 - 7:45) that is just about 11 hours. and I speak with children for about 8 of those... yes, I have lost my voice already.
The schedule/curriculum here is very confusing when you first start here but I think I am finally finding a routine and understanding of what is going on here! Well... I could go on forever, however I have writing exams to grade! haha... Can anyone really believe that I am a "real" teacher? :-)

--- Summer vacation starts on Friday... the one thing teachers dream of.... only mine is a week long. darn. Slowly making plans for a trip straight east of Seoul to a national park right on the coast of Korea... will add pics when i get back.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

1 Word... Overwhelming

I am here!! I have officially been living in Korea now since Friday July 10th. After much frustration and many calls to the Korea consulate, I received my passport with my visa in the mail on Wednesday July 8th and left the country on July 9th at 7:00AM!!

The only word I can use to describe my first week in Korea is overwhelming. There is so much going on around me...bright lit signs with characters I cannot understand, hearing no English on the streets, being pushed by Korean women who obviously have somewhere to be, and the always fun and exciting meal ordering at restaurants. This involves many hand gestures and pointing while the waiter speaks Korean. In return, I sit with a confused look upon my face.

My very first day here I met 3 co-workers who took me out for a nice galbi dinner. Galbi is very fun and popular here in Korea. It is a great way to socialize over dinner. In the center of the table is a little grill where you cook raw beef along with garlic and a couple other goodies. Once the meat is cooked, you add the meat, some "salad" (bean sprouts mostly), some garlic, and spicy sauce all wrapped up in a lettuce leaf. The tricky part is that you are supposed to eat the entire thing in one bite - completely impossible. It was very delicious and I got to know my co-workers better. All in all, a great first night.

Another memorable meal was lunch the second day I was here. Many of us on the staff do not speak any Korean and the on going joke is to try and pick places to eat that have pictures on the menu so we don't have to pick solely based on the Korean characters. We call them picture places. We ended up at a restaurant where there were no pictures but we still wanted to eat there. It was an ice cream, smoothie, etc shop that had swinging chairs to sit in. So I ended up with a bowl of ice with fruit and red beans in chocolate sauce and a small dollop of frozen yogurt on top. All I can say is that it was very very interesting. Along side my huge concoction came a side of buttered toast. The entire experience was very different but fun and comical at the same time.

I have been enjoying my time here in Korea and been slowly adjusting to my new life.