Splendid Saturday

This Saturday is one of the best Saturdays I have experienced here in Seoul and I know many more are to come. I met Casey and a few of her friends for an afternoon visit to a Buddhist Temple, tea shop and some shopping. Jamie a friend of a friend of Casey’s has been teaching here for the past nine months and has a better sense of the city and offered to take us to Jogyessa Temple. The architecture and color scheme of the temple is similar to the other palaces and temples here in Seoul and I’m guessing Korea. Never the less, it is absolutely beautiful and I never get tired of taking photos of all the colors and intricate drawings on the temple. The inside was just as beautiful if not more then the outside. I think one of the best temples I have ever seen. There were several people mostly older “wiser” women inside praying and we grabbed ourselves cushions and found an empty floor space off on the side. Sitting, soaking up the décor and watching people pray, a little old women came up to us and gave us another cushion and motioned to us to start praying. Feeling uncomfortable and out of place, I did three or four bows out of respect and then proceeded to grab my stuff to leave. Before leaving we walked around to the front to see the three big beautiful gold Buddha statues in the front and all the offerings people brought. Shortly after, a monk came in and started to chant. Wooed in by his chanting we grabbed another cushion and just soaked up the peaceful atmosphere the temple had and prayed. With all the prayer lanterns hanging from the ceiling, Buddha sitting so peacefully and the monk chanting an overwhelming feeling of peacefulness filled my body. It was a great feeling especially since it is so hard to feel a sense of peacefulness in this loud and busy city.

An hour had passed and we finally left the temple and headed towards one of Anguk’s popular shopping streets which is just down the road from the Temple. This street is full of art galleries, street sellers and one amazing yet hidden tea shop. Jamie took us to this tea shop and we indulged in plum tea, pear tea and honey cakes. Everything was amazing, my plum tea was so sweet and delicious I couldn’t get enough. Fortunately to our benefit the staff brought over complimentary jasmine tea. The jasmine flours were sitting in the small glass tea pot and as Jamie pored the hot water in to the teapot the flowers began to bloom. It was absolutely beautiful watching this happen. The jasmine tea was not sweet and mild in flavor in comparison to our fruity teas but still just as amazing. Apparently this tea shop is a popular spot for many of the monks to pop in for a relaxing cup of tea. After this experience I can see why and will most definitely be returning quite frequently to this tea shop.

Feeling sweet and warm from the tea we roamed the streets popping into the various art galleries and looking at all the great stuff the street sellers were selling. Do expect your gifts to come from this shopping street because the stuff here is awesome. Amongst the great gift items are food stands with interesting foods, most of them looking delicious and amazing. After I get my first pay check I plan to return and stop at each of the food stands sampling the various foods so that I can better acquaint myself with Korean street food. One stand took rock hard honey and stretched it out to several hundreds of threads as they mixed it with corn starch and flour. Hopefully you can get a sense of what I am saying from the pictures but either case it was fascinating to watch. To end our splendid day we stumbled upon some traditional Koreans drumming and dancing in this open cemented gathering space. Not sure why still, but it was a neat thing to see and plus there is a nice tile wall right there as well.

Field Trip

Last Thursday we were told that this Thursday (today) would be our first field trip to the National Museum of Contemporary Art Korea and immediately we all looked at each other and though “oh no.” In preparation for the museum, I mentioned to my students yesterday (Wednesday) that tomorrow (Thursday) we were all going to go on a field trip to the museum, but of course they didn’t really understand. So today I reminded the students that we were going to the museum and they all needed to be well behaved. I went over the rules (no running, no pushing, no hitting, talk in soft voices and asked them to stay with their partner and the class) and got them ready for the bus. Stressed and unsure as to how our one hour at the museum was going to go I was shocked by how smooth everything went. We had a nice stroll through the museum taking in all the fabulous art pieces and ended with a nice stroll through the children’s museum. Trying to do my best to keep the students engaged I would ask them questions like, “what colors do you see?”, “what shapes can you find?”, and “what do you see?” (tree, flower, person etc…) Without even realizing it, the hour had passed and I was getting my students ready to get back on the bus. We headed back to school had lunch, treats the students drew a picture of what they saw at the museum and the day was over. This field trip experience has given me a new found respect for my students. I officially now know that they can be good students who follow direction like no talking. The no talking when I am talking is such a hassle with my homeroom class and all the other classes but after today I saw a new light. I trust that tomorrow and the weeks to come are going to be so much better. I cannot wait till our next field trip and I am most defiantly returning to the museum because it had a lot of great pieces.

Birthday Celebration

Today I experienced my first birthday celebration and it was an experience. Lara, my student who spent the first two weeks crying everyday, came in with her near perfect English and started to sing the happy birthday song. With her big smile and overly excited body she told me it’s her birthday and so I wished her a happy birthday. Shortly later, Angela comes in to tell me that during lunch we will have cake in celebration of Lara’s birthday. Lunch time came around and Angela reminded all the children to eat quickly so we could have cake. After the students finished their lunch and we cleaned up Angela and another helper come in with party hats, banner, cake, chocolate milk, oranges, candy, and cookies. I immediately thought overkill but put on a smile and joined a long in the celebration. We put up the banner, wore birthday hats, sang happy birthday, took lots of pictures and then proceeded to stuff our faces with sugar. Amazed at all that was brought in I asked Angela if the school provided it and she told me this is all Lara’s mothers doing. Sharing my experience with the other teachers it is apparently common to have a birthday celebration similar to this one. I can only say I look forward to eight more of these celebrations and hay I am never one to say no to sweets. I just feel bad for Miss. Alison because she has my students after lunch, kids on a sugar high never any good. Sorry Miss Alison :)

Wild Korean’s

I was under the assumption that Korean’s and most Asian children are amazingly well behaved and I am going to say that I disagree. None of my students are ridiculous wild but they are no different then any child one would find in the rest of the world. The reason I bring this up is because earlier this week I came down with a cold and lost my voice or really my voice became very strained. Now if this assumption were to be true it would be fairly easy to teach these Korean angels because I would never have to raise my voice, the students would sit perfectly in their sets and be nothing but good listeners. Oh how I wish this was to be true because it is very hard getting your students attention when you have no voice. Truth be told, I spend most of my days talking in a very loud voice because these students are rowdy and well I hate to admit it but wild at times. It doesn’t help that there is a language barrier but these kids have a hard time remaining in there seats, shutting up when I the teacher is talking and simply following order. The first five or so minutes go really smooth and then once we break into our lesson activity they start talking, moving around and simply not following instruction. Now I love each one of my students and they are all amazing children but it is exhausting having to talk over these children. It is even more exhausting when I am sick and in no mood to deal with this nonsense. I can only hope that with time and discipline there will be a day when I don’t spend most of the day speaking in a loud tone. As for now I continue to remind myself to stay calm and assure myself that in this chaos the students are learning something.

St Patrick’s Day Let Down

Yesterday was St Patrick’s Day and I planned an impromptu gathering to get people out for drinks at the Dubliner. Last weekend when were walking to our recruiting event we found an Irish pub and that night I suggested to people to come out for drinks on St Patrick’s Day. I thought it would be a good way to reconnect with these teachers and make new friends, plus I invited my fellow co workers. One would assume lots of people would come and an Irish bar on St Patrick’s Day would be packed. This however was not the case at all. Four of us girls my girls I can always rely on to go out for a drink went to the Dubliner and found it completely empty, well near close to empty. Disappointed we opted to leave and try this new bar we heard of called the WA bar, it to was empty. Finally we decided to go to Woodstock’s which is another bar we had been to before and foresee ourselves frequenting often. Woodstock’s was defiantly not packed but had more of a full feel then the other two. Disappointed and ready to drink past it we had a drink or two and sadly ended our St Patrick’s Day night before midnight. This is what I call a St Patrick’s Day let down :(

Finally Photos

Here are some pictures I have taken so far. There are some of a palace I visited which I have yet to blog about but promise to do so soon. Enjoy.

Internet and Beer

Thinking I was going to have internet in my apartment Friday night it unfortunately wasn’t working do to the cable being down. Unsure as to why the cable was down I woke up Saturday morning feeling optimistic and gave my cable tv a try, low and behold the cable was back on and so was my internet. This is a first for me so I was and still am very excited to finally have internet in my place. It’s not as fast as I would like but that is something I can work out later. I spent my Saturday emailing and skyping with friends and family and it was just wonderful. With the day gone I got ready to attend the Adventure Teaching gathering with Alison, Megan and Casey. Our recruiting agency organized this event and invited all new and old English teachers to come and mingle. We met at Big Rock Brewery which was about a 15 minute walk from where we live (some people traveled over an hour, we definitely lucked out) and had a really fun night. This brewery brews their own beer, which is surprisingly good and also serves a killer Sunday brunch which all of us girls look forward to eating some Sunday morning. It was really nice to meet other English teachers and listen to how things were going for other people. Everyone lives in various parts of Seoul and Korea and work in such a wide range of schools. From what I gathered each school has its ups and downs and everyone struggles with the lack of inefficiency here. There is a group of girls that get together every Wednesday night to drink wine and hang out so I think I will be joining them a lot on Wednesday night, wish will be fun. I really enjoyed my time at the brewery and I look forward to meeting more and more people.

After the event, us girls grabbed a cab and met up with another co teacher to celebrate her birthday. Earlier in the night they had gone to a noreabang which is a karaoke bar/facility where you can rent out rooms to karaoke. Sadly we missed out on this part of the birthday bash but we made it for the dancing. We spent the remaining of our evening dancing and drinking out of buckets which gave me a flashback to Siem Reap, Cambodia’s Angkor What? Bar. Buckets can be deadly if not drinking in moderation but what I like about them is that you can share with your friends. Plus, there is just something fun about drinking out of a bucket verses a glass. Either way it was a fun night celebrating Robyn’s birthday.

Costco in Korea, What?

That’s right, Seoul, Korea has Costco and a bunch of us girls spent or Friday night shopping and eating at Costco, it was wonderful. Going to Costco was like walking into the United States. It looks the same as home, for the most part, and has a lot of the same stuff as home as well. Hungry, we immediately went to the food court to order pizza and some soft serve ice cream. Shocked at how environmentally conscientious Costco is, or maybe just Korea, they served our pizza on reusable plates and also had real silverware. I think this is something the US could put into effect. Any how, with our tummies full we were ready to shop. Overwhelmed by all the American food I forced myself to simply pick up some basic necessities, frozen veggies, bagels, pasta, evoo, tofu, carrots and apples. Doing my best to not go over board I opted to create an imaginary list in my head for what I will pick up the next time I go, at the top is balsamic vinegar and wine. It’s a good thing I don’t have a car because I think I might go shopping crazy at Costco if I did but since I have to carry home everything I buy I know I cant buy more then what I can carry. Our Friday night adventure to Costco was tons of fun and I only wish I would have known ahead of time because then I could have brought my own card. Hey mom…you think you can send me my card?

Dear Ricky's Mom

I bet you can’t guess why this blog is titled “Dear Ricky’s Mom.” Feeling good about completing my second week of school, I got the students ready to go home on the school bus. Every Friday the students have to take home their house shoes to be washed and then brought back on Monday. To make things easy we all have our students remove their house shoes and place them in their backpacks in class before walking down the hall to the elevators and shoe shelves. With most of my students ready, primarily the boys, I let the students play in the class room till it was time to leave. Boys being boys got a little wild and started to run around the class room. Shortly after, the boys came tumbling down to the ground as they all slipped on the floor, do to not wearing any shoes and Ricky takes a nice face plant. I immediately grab Ricky and hold him to comfort him but also to look at his mouth. Just my luck, he cuts his lip and there is blood but nothing to sever. I have him drink some water to rinse down the blood and I make sure everything is okay. Angela, my Korean helper, comes in the room to help me get the students on the bus and it is then that I tell her what happens. Angela immediately gives me this look of fear and explains to me that she has to now call Ricky’s mom and explain what happened and assured me that she will be very upset. I instantly respond saying, kids get hurt and there is nothing to fuss or worry about. Shortly after, Angela comes in my room and tells me Ricky’s mom is very upset and I am expected by the head office lady to write an apology letter to Ricky’s mom. I just laughed and said, if this is what I have to do I guess I will. So then I proceeded to handwrite an apology letter explaining what happened and assured her that I will do my very best to not let this happen again. How ridiculous is this, in my opinion very. Never the less it makes for a good story and this is how I ended my second week of teaching.

White Seoul

Yesterday, I had some friends over for Domino’s Pizza (so much better then home), ice cream bars and raspberry wine (a specialty of Korea, I guess) and on there way out they noticed the snow. We were all very excited to see the snow but had no idea it was going to snow all through the night and early this morning. When I woke up this morning I was shocked to see the snow falling out my window. Anxious to leave and enjoy my walk to school in the snow, I absentmindedly paid no attention to my footing and the first step out of my building I slipped and fell right on my bum/hip. This put a little damper on my mood but I cheered up seeing a beautiful white Seoul. I can’t believe its March and we are still able to get about three inches of snow, that’s just crazy!

School today was much more successful then the past two days. On Monday I worked with the kids on the concept inside and outside and it was such a stress getting them to understand and apply it to their worksheets. The math books I was given to use with the kids have these brief stories which are supposed to briefly cover/teach the students the lesson at hand. However, after the experience I had reading the story to the kids I don’t think I will be reading any of the other ones. They are just ridiculously stupid and the kids simply cannot make sense of it nor understand it really. Doing my best to explain and go through the worksheets with the students telling them exactly what they need to do, the students simply were not responding. It was as if I had spoken to a wall the whole time. Determined to get the students to understand the difference between inside and outside I came up with some more interactive activities for the next math day.

Today was the day I executed my inside and outside activates and I believe that each of the students finally grasped the concept. I gave each of the student’s five pieces of play fruit in a cup and we took them out of the cup, placed some inside left some outside and so on. After the fruit cup activity I had all the students step into the pre-taped circle on the floor and then would send various kids to different parts of the room and ask if they were inside or outside. Finally, I finished with one last worksheet where they had to circle the bear outside of the tent and mark on x on the bear inside the tent. Feeling better about how I executed the lesson, I was assured by Alison after work that while I was doing the inside, outside activities with Oak class my Cedar class, these are my homeroom students, were shouting out the answers during Alison’s class. (Alison and I have adjoining rooms with a removable wall so we hear each other teach often.) This made me happy and if my Cedar class understood the difference I gather the other classes did too. Everyday my Cedar students are slowly showing progress towards responding to the English language, which excites me.

My First Week

With Monday being a holiday, Tuesday was orientation, and well most of you know how my Wednesday went, the last two days just flew by. Thursday is science day and the school has purchased weekly science kits for each of the classes. The perk to the kits is the science project is all ready for me; the challenge is simplifying the vocabulary to where I can actually teach the project to children who understand very little English. For example, our project was Configuration of Electricity, in essence the kids made a little flashlight with battery, wire and a light bulb. The project itself is moderately easy, explaining electricity on the other hand, very hard. In the end we just executed the project,they played with there flashlights turning them on and off and anything else they may have absorbed is beyond me. Although it was hard to actually teach the science behind it all, all the kids seemed to enjoy the project, so told to me by the other teachers.

The following day Angela my Korean helper came in during morning snack and told me she called all my student’s parents. Supposedly Andy, one of my students, went home and told his mom all about the science project plus told his mom about the letter B and wanted to go around the house looking for B items so he could work on his B sound. (Alison had gone over B’s with my students). Hearing this from Angela made me very happy because Andy is so shy and you just don’t know if he gets it but apparently he does. Also I have a girl named Lara who cries all the time and Angela said, that her mom told her it’s because Lara just really wants to speak English. My heart went out to Lara once Angela told me this however; if Lara just stopped crying she would realize she can speak English. For Friday’s math class, we went over our shapes and Lara new all her shapes and would say them out loud, I was shocked. Most of my students are bright its just going to take time to get them to actually verbally use their English.

MY FIRST OFFICAL DAY OF TEACHING

Hurray, I did it! I completed a full day of teaching. Unsure as to how things were going to go I reminded myself to simply go with the flow. I welcomed my students in the morning and offered them there morning snack while realizing that my students know very little English. Smiling and doing my very best to do mannerisms while talking, I would say my students and I got along very well. I think in a matter of time they will be speaking English beautifully. As for how the day went with each of the classes, we went over the class rules, we introduced ourselves and I went through a little poster board I made of myself. I shared with the class where I am from, my favorite book, color, food, animal, and brought in pictures of my family. I think they enjoyed seeing the pictures the most. After they learned about each other, I had the students work on a connect the dots worksheet so that I could see if they knew there numbers. Afterwards we played a lovely round of color and shapes bingo. Before I knew it the day was over and the students were getting on the bus to return to there homes. My favorite part of the day was lunch because my Korean helper Angela asked my students which class they enjoyed the most and all of them said my class. Now, I don’t know if the students simply said this because they were in my classroom being served lunch or if they really meant it. Either way, I hope I can always keep my class fun and enjoyable and most importantly I just simply want to bond with my students.

A RECAP OF MY FIRST WEEK

To recap my first week here before the actual school year started, I left the United States at 6am on Monday February 22, 2010 and arrived in Seoul, South Korea the evening of Tuesday February 23, 2010. Excited, tired and overwhelmed my nerves slowly calmed once I saw my dear friend Alison. Pep my driver, a kind one at that had mentioned to me that he had picked up Alison just yesterday and would be kind enough to take me to her place before taking me to my new living space. Alison along with Pep and the realtor helped me with my bags up to my 15 by 15 foot room or should I say closet. Unsure as to what I just stepped into, Pep and the realtor smiled and waved good bye before I could think of any questions, all of which I have thought up now with a more clear and non drowsy head. Any how Alison distracted me with the story of her day and within the hour of being in my new home I fell soundly to sleep.

Pumped and ready to go, Alison and I meet up with the other new teachers (most of them being from Canada) at one of the local Dunkin Donuts. After about 20 minutes we arrived to our school, Bambini, and meet the other English teachers as well as the Korean teachers and the Bambini staff. Unsure as to what today held, I roamed around the classes taking in the layout while envisioning what the new school year would be like for me. By around 9:10 some of the students arrived for there last day of school and wow are they cute, don’t be shocked if I snatch one and bring he or she home with me. The school morning started and sadly they sent all the new teachers to the hospital for our health check. Overall the health check is pretty standard; weight, height, chest size (really as if this is important), ear and eye test (including color blindness), chest x-ray, blood test and to top it off we all had to pee in a cup. By the end of the week our results were to be in and fortunately we all passed, hurray non of us will be deported . After our excursion we returned to school in time to wave good bye to all the students and then spent the remaining two hours roaming around wondering what exactly we are supposed to be doing right now. This continued on the following two days and I think will be the being of my existents the whole time I am here. Well that may be an exaggeration but really Thursday we were told to prepare our room, okay but how I ask? Well with little response back I simply start observing the other rooms and just printing, laminating and putting things together. By midday the staff gave a bit more guidance but still no define list. Well, five o’clock roles around and we are all ready to go but the staff reminds us the rooms must be finished by Tuesday, ideally tomorrow (Friday) so no one has to come in on the weekend. Well with no precise instruction none of us no what it is we are supposed to be doing. This continued on to Friday and over to Saturday and a bit on Sunday. At the end of it all I can say that Koreans are some of the most inefficient people I have ever met and I think this is to do with there strict abidance to there culture. No one is allowed to talk against there elder so if the elder tells you something to do you must do it without question. This is very different from us and luckily it is expected of us not to abide to this rule. Nevertheless it is very hard to get any work done when the directors are coming to you an hour before its time to go to tell you exactly what needs to be done. I just think to myself, I could have been told this in the morning or the day before. Well I can only reflect on my many months of traveling and that is, nothing goes according to plan so it is best not to over plan because most often things will change.

THE FIRST DAY OF THE SCHOOL YEAR

Well here I go again embarking on another adventure…I arrived here in Seoul, South Korea a week ago today. Today was my first official day of teaching at Bambini and it went as smooth as I could have expected. My homeroom students, which are a class of eight, are new comers to Bambini so my day consisted of a 30 min orientation and a quick hand out of binders and schedules to the parents. I co-teach with three other teachers and we each have our core subjects, mine is math and science (shocking, I know). Unlike today, we generally rotate the four classes amongst the four teachers so that each class gets forty minutes with each subject. Since my class, the Cedar class, was on a different schedule for today we skipped out on rotation and the other three teachers spent the day getting to know there homeroom students and went over the class rules and behavior chart.

For the afternoon we felt it would be good idea to get all the other students together to do a project so that we could acquaint ourselves with the other students and the students could acquaint themselves with us. Since I was told this morning that I wasn’t having my children at all I offered to do the project I planned for my students with all the other students since I had already put the time and thought into it. We gathered the other three classes together and had each of the students write there name, favorite animal and then draw a picture of that animal .To introduce the project each of the teachers including myself introduced ourselves and shared with the class our favorite animal and explained briefly why we picked this particular animal. After the students finished with there project the school day was basically over and this thus completed mine and the students first day of school. Although I can’t say I got a full grasp of everything since I spent no time at all with my students, I will say, I look forward to tomorrow.