Adventures from around the World

Ok, so I left off after my first week of teaching.  So lets see if I can catch us up to date as quickly as possible. 

That weekend (Sept 8-9) was kinda exciting.  I started my day like any other Saturday, well like the Saturday before anyway, by watching some tv and cleaning the house.  Around 2pm my vice principal stopped by to pick me up for the volleyball tournament.  The whole thing was kinda boring really.  I sat in the stands surrounded by koreans who don’t speak english, eating the food they kept throwing at me, and watching some amature volleyball. The exciting part came  when I got to sit on the sidelines and watch our school’s team play.  They won both their games, which meant that they were to play again on Sunday.  So on sunday I was picked up again around 2 and taken to the tournament.  The game was already in progress when we got there, but I was able to see most of the humiliating defeat…so I was able to go home after about 1 hour.  

I decided that I had not seen quite enough of Mokpo, so I rode my bike on Sunday night to the old part of the city and then looped back to my house in the new part.  The whole thing took about 2.5 hours but it was a lot fo fun and I got to see most of the city.

The next week of teaching was very similar to the 1st in that I taught 6 grade 3 classes, 6 grade 4 classes, and the extra class….but instead of teaching 8 grade 5 classes I taught 2 grade 5s and 6 grade 6 classes.  The class structure was pretty standard for a Korean English class….I put in the CD and taught using the gigantic television that is hooked to the computer in the class. Basically the class starts like this:  

Greeting: Good morning, how are you? how is the weather? What is the date?
Warm-up/review: usually some sort of game or guessing thing, whatever the online lesson plan says
Pre-Listening: Listening to 3 short series of dialogue (I ask questions)
Listening: Listening to the full dialogue (I ask questions)
Listen and repeat
Song/Game

The whole thing is laid out for me online and it follows the text book and CD-rom exactly.  The listening stuff also has some hilarious videos which amuse me greatly, though it can still get pretty redundant.  So it sounds pretty easy eh?  Well it is and it isn’t.  The first 20mins are usually filled with all of the listening, which leaves the other half of the class for the game.  The game is laid out in the lesson plan, problem is these games are rediculously lame!  It is hard to believe that these things have been tested.  Anyway, it is my job to come-up with a fun filled activity that the students will enjoy, and which will force them to utilise the skills that the lesson is trying to teach.  The other tricky part is the preparation, finding flashcards, making handouts, etc….it eats up my time, and since my only source to the internet is at school (for now), I really can only do it there. The problem come when they kick me out at 5:00, so if I haven’t finished I have to come in early the next day which is super fun!  

I worked with the CD for the 3s, 4s, and 5s.  But the 6es were a little different.  I had to create an entire lesson on my own.

The first time I taught grade 6 was Sept 13/14.  I had to teach them past tense.  This was a fairly simple lesson.  The first 10-15 mins were filled with me introducing myself the same way as with the grade 5s, only with less words.  The rest of the class was spent talking about the rules for past tense, proper pronouciation (t, d, or id), and finally a little matching game.  The whole thing was really successful and the kids seemed to have a good time. Soo said that the kids were incredibly well behaved though, and that usually they are completely rambunctious….I guess I’m new for now and they are less likely to misbehave with someone they hardly know….give it a few weeks I suppose.

On the 14th I went to dinner with Soo.  We decided to go to Pizza Hut, which was cool.  It was very similar to Pizza Hut back home, with a few differences.  1st, they serve complementary pickles as an appetizer with the meal, they have the cheezy bites pizza all the time not a promotion like at home, they have this weird pizza called the golden ring (I will explain a little more later), and they are really in to putting shrimp on Pizza.
We started off the meal by making these origami shrimp, their thing to promote the shrimp pizza, this was fun, but also surprisingly challenging.  But if you managed to make the shrimp successfully you got a coupon for 15% off your next meal….and yes I finally managed to do it!  The waitress came around with pickles and took our order.  We ordered a half BBQ chicken (bul-go-gi) half pinapple golden ring pizza.  The golden ring loos like this:

 
So working our way from the outside in we start with a regular crust, then a layer of cheeze and herbs, a ring of sweet potato, then the regular toppings.
Overall it was pretty good, but there was a strange texture when you ate the potato that I am not sure if I really enjoyed….but generally pretty good.

While we were eating Soo told me that she is going to take some time off because she thinks she might be pregnant, and if not she really wants to be pregnant.  So her doctor suggested that she remove the stress in her life, ie. no work.  So she is going to take a month or two.  So what does this mean for me.  Well it mean that when I teach her classes (grades 4 and 6) I will be alone, unless the homeroom teacher stays with me.  This may make things difficult in terms of discipline, as the students may not care as much about what I say, plus they might be able to get away with more in Korean.  It could prove challenging because of the language barrier as well.  If there is a translation issue I won’t be able to help. but we will see, hopefully it won’t be that bad.

On the 15th I was supposed to get the internet in my house.  So I waited for the guy to show up, but he never came.  This really pissed me off.  So on Monday I told Mi-rah and in the middle of class she is on the phone with KT, the internet company, yelling something in Korean.  She then asks me if it is alright if they come then to the apartment as there is a key with the superintendant.  I said it would be fine.  About an hour later Mi-rah gets a call from KT…they can’t find the apartment.  So we have to check the address again, give it to them and help the step-by-step get to the apartment.  Mind you classes are running while this is going on.  After this 2nd call I never heard from them again…and when I got home…INTERNET!  it was fantastic, I started downloading movies and calling people on Skype.  There is so much freedom when you have your own internet.

Monday the 17th was also my 1 month ‘versary of me leaving Canada…time has certainly flown by, its hard to believe that there are only 11 months to go, 3 of which are holidays.

The week went by pretty smoothly.  We have a holiday on the 24th-26th so for the grade 3s and 4s I had to condense two lessons into one.  This was a lot easier than I would have thought.  It was kinda cool, because we got to sing songs…like “I like Chicken” and “Who is She.”  There were also some fun games that made the class just fly by.  The grade 4 classes were the first without Soo.  Things were good for the most part.  Half of the classes had there homeroom teacher present, the other half did not.  The ones that had the teacher present were incredibly quiet.  This sounds like it would be a good thing, but it is not.  It didn’t feel like they cared about the lesson.  I find that if they are louder they are more engaged.  I actually prefered teaching the classes alone.  The kids were still well behaved, but they were participating more and they seemed to have a better time.  
The reason why they are so well behaved and quiet with the homeroom teacher is because they are afraid of them.  Corpral punishment is common in schools in Korea, so the teacher can hit the kids, and it is very common for parents to hit their kids as well.  Now I have never actually seen this, but trust me it happens.  The english teachers however, are not allowed to use that kind of punishment, hense the behaviour difference.

On Tuesday (18) we only had to teach until 10:30 because there was an inspection taking place.  Members of the school board were in the school watching the Korean classes.  Our school is a center for innovation in teaching Korean.  So essentially they are guinnea pigs and they try out different teaching techniques on the kids.  Whatever.  Basically all it meant for me was that I had from 10:30 until 5:00 to do whatever I want. 

The end of the week signified the beginning of the Cheusok holiday (or mid-autumn festival to the Chinese).  The holiday is similar to our Thanksgiving, but it lasts 3 days and falls in accordance with the full moon.  For me it meant a 5 day weekend and a present from the VP.  He gave me a cooking oil giftset.  Giftsets are a pretty standard gift for Cheusok, and they fill all the stores with them…The most popular are the spam giftsets.  mmm several tins of spam…the cooking oil is looking pretty good right now.    

My first week of teaching looks something like this:

So, while this looks busy, it really isn’t.  If you add up my class time (160×4+200)/60=14 hours.  So I am only in class for 14 hours this week.

On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I teach grades 3 and 4, who are adorable, and who unfortunately were taught the same introductory lesson.  I say unfortunately because it meant that I did the same thing 12 times in a row!  Let me tell you how happy I was when it was Thursday.  So the grades three and four lesson went like this:

I told the class that I wanted them to learn my name, but I was not going to tell them… instead there were pictures placed on the board, things like snake, hand, apple, nose, dog, alligator, and that these pictures were representitive of my name.  It took about 10-15 minutes for the kids to figure it out.  Then I had the kids sit in groups of 5 or 6 (there are 35ish per class), these groups then took turns asking me what I liked…for example they would say do you like apples?  If I did like apples they would get one point, if I didn’t they would get zero points.  The team with the most points won some candy.
This game was pretty fun actually and I got asked some pretty crazy things, like do you like staples, or roads, or locks, things that I really had no opinion about.  There was also a lot of stuff about food and animals…there was even this group of girls who asked if I like princes or princesses, they were very sweet. 
I was told later by my co-teacher that a lot of the kids were impressed that I liked scary things, like gorillas, alligators, and other “scary” animals.

On Thursday and Friday I taught grade 5s and they had a different opening exercize which went something like this:

I wrote on the board the phrases: who is ____? what is ____? and is ____ your favourite (sport, hobby, season, food).  I then wrote beside these phrases 27 words, names or numbers that related to me.  These were things like my parents and friends, movies, Canada’s Wonderland, ages, etc.  It was the kid’s job to use the phrases to find out what the words meant.  I would answer their questions with a little anetdote or fact and show a picture. When they asked a question they got a candy. 
The kids were particularly impressed with how young my parents looked, how handsome my brother is (though they think everyone that is white is beautiful), how cool the new roller coaster at Wonderland looks, and how cold it gets in the summer.
They were also simply excited to get some candy.
After we went through all the words on the board, I told them that I wanted to know something about them so I handed out a work sheet that asked them to tell me their name, siblings, favourite (colour, sport, and food), something that makes them special, and to draw a picture of themselves.
It was pretty cute, the kids drawings were quite impressive, for the most part.  They seemed to like to draw themselves doing things, like a sport, or a charicature of themselves, like the fat kid drew himself as a pig. 
There was one girl who blew me away and I remember what she wrote even a week later.  For something that makes me special she wrote: “When I grow up I want to be a diplomatic officer, so I study English very hard.  One day I hope English will make me special.”  This blew me away particularly because the majority of the kids had problems writing their own name.

The extra class that I teach on Thursday is a conversation class. I was asked on the Monday if I would teach it, in exchange for getting the entire holiday off.  Otherwise I would be expected to come to school and do nothing for 8 hours and I would only get my 2 weeks per holiday off.  When this ultimatum was presented I really had no choice but to accept.  The class is really simple…I basically just play games with the kids.  In the first class I had the class of 12 split themselves into two teams.  Each team was to create a restaurant with an English name and menu.  They then served the other team.

So you may be wondering about my holdays.  Well there are two, there is the winter holiday and the summer holiday.  The winter holiday starts on December 29 and lasts until February 12 (I think).  I then have class for 1.5 weeks before getting the rest of February off.  The new school year starts at the beginning of March.  The summer holiday lasts from the middle of July until my departure on the 19th of August.  This is during monsoon season so I am probably going to head out of the country, maybe, Japan, Mongolia, something like that….but we will see.  There are also 16 national holidays, as well as, several days where I will not have classes: standardized test days, sport days, etc.

Speaking of monsoons I should mention that it rained ALL week!!! It was ok the first couple of days, but it starts to get you down by the 5th 6th day in a row of rain…. luckily the rain stopped on Friday night

I should probably also mention that I have two co-teachers: Soo and Mi-rah.  Soo teaches 4 and 6 and Mi-rah 3 and 5.  So this week I was with Mi-rah for the most part.  This was fun, she is kind of a hard-core teacher, and really sticks to what needs to be taught, but this class she let me do my thing.  I was able to teach her a new word though: Rambunctious!  Soo on the other hand is more lax and will alter the excerises when she feels the need.  She also seems to interact more with the students on their level…Soo also has a slightly better grasp of English than Mi-rah.  Both of these teachers are quite young, I think early 30s, both married, Mi-rah has a child and Soo is trying.  Mi-rah is more girly, and doesn’t like physical exertion but loves movies…Soo is more of a tom-boy and loves sports and travelling.  Both are pretty great.

I talk to Mi-rah a lot about movies, well when she learned through the games that I loved movies she brought up the subject.  She asked me about my favourites, films and actors…I told her, and left most things in.  She thinks it is great and she also loves my favourite actors, though she has not seen Moulin or many Audrey films.  She seems to go to the theater a lot, and says that we should go sometime.  The Invasion is coming out on the 21st, so maybe we will see that.

Soo talks to me a lot about travelling and has recommended some places for me to see on my holiday….she highly recommends Cambodia and has shown me pictures that are amazing… I am so excited.

On Friday I was asked by the VP to go to a volleyball tournament the next day.  Our school’s female teacher’s team was competing, so I said that I would go.  But I will tell you about that next time.   

Oh wow am I tired….this whole teaching thing really takes up a lot of your time and energy….you have to be so energetic when dealing with kids….it makes me really feel for the ES teachers in Canada.

Anyhow….to catch-up, I did end up climbing the mountain…if you can even call it a mountain, its about 1500m, so really I guess it is more like a big hill…but they call it a mountain here, so a mountain it will be.  So I climbed the mountain for the first time on Thursday the 30th of August.  Now I mentioned that I was going to hike on the Wednesday, and that was the plan, only it rained, so the plan got pushed back until Thurday.   The hike was really nice, part of the hill is a road, and part (the majority) is trail.  The trail is half steps and half terrain and it takes about 45 minutes to climb to the top.  The only let down is that there is not a very nice view at the top, due to an abundance of really tall, really lush evergreens.  But no bother  it is still very serene.  At the top there is a a weather station and some benches.  On the benches I have taken to reading, which is very nice.

On the friday, I went to school.  Even though it was officially the first day of classes after summer holidays, I did not have to teach.  Instead they sat me at a computer and had me plan my first lesson.  The problem with that was that I had already planned my first lesson at home since I had feared that I would have to teach on the Friday.  So I basically cleaned up any loose ends for the first classes and I checked emails and facebook, etc.  There was a staff meeting where I was introduced.  It was kinda weird because my co-teacher had me write out a bunch of information about myself, which she translated for the principal, who read it at the meeting.  The weird part came afterwards when they asked me to say a few words.  The entire faculty is staring at me and I begin to speak, when I realise that they have no clue as to what I am saying…I could have called them all a bunch of goat smegma and their faces would remain blank.  Oh well, the meeting wasn’t all bad.  One of the teachers at my table asked my co-teacher if I was a teenager….and this is coming from an Asian….let me tell you how super I felt!  The vice-principal let me go home early - around 4 - though he made it very clear that this was an exception and that it would never happen again.   So I went home, changed and climbed the mountain again.

On saturday it was raining (the beginning of a mighty long stretch of rain I should add).  I also woke up with a terrible case of lonliness.  It was not that I was homesick per say.  It was more that I missed human contact.  It is weird being in a foreign country where you don’t speak the language.  There are 300 000 people in Mokpo, and the city is very compact, so there are people everywhere, bumping into you, looking at you, even shouting things at you, but you feel entirely alone.  You are an island….I had not been able to have a full conversation with anyone, and even the kids who said hello, were unable to answer any of my follow-up questions (like how old are you? what grade are you in?).  The other trouble was that I was unable to attend any of the way-gook (foreigner) events for a lack of cash.  Its not that I am short cash, I have funds I just can’t seem to get physical bills.  My credit cards that I was relying on don’t seem to work in the bank machines, they work in the few stores that accept them (like e-mart) but nowhere else. 
Anyway, I ended up spending most of Saturday in my apartment, sulking and watching movies.  Then I watched something, a bonus feature to one of the movies, and it said that true happiness can be discovered by going outside.  Feeling like it was speaking to me directly, I took the advice and I went outside.  There happened to be a break in the rain at this moment, and I decided to climb the mountain, yet again, and read.  Once I reached the top, my heart pounding, legs shaking, brow sweating, it hit me… I was happy, truly happy.  My lonliness had disapeared and everything was wonderful yet again. 
I stayed up on the hill slightly too long and it was getting dark by the time I decended.  Since the trail is through forest, there was a hint of Blair Witch to the whole ordeal.  Nevertheless I was content enough to not let that bother me.  When I reached the street it began to rain.  I put up my umbrella, turned on the ipod and walk towards my home, when I was approach by two females, waygooks also, who started asking me about the music, what I was doing, how long I was going to be in Mokpo, and whether or not I could speak Korean.  Since I was starved for a good conversation, and since I am not completely rude, I answered their questions.  It turned out that they were in fact mormons, out spreading the gospel….there really is no escape, but they were friendly and it was nice to just talk to someone.  On the way home I stopped at E-mart, and bought, along with some other items, the Audrey shirt.

Sunday was rainy….a heavy rain all day, so I stayed at home watching movies, doing laundry, and cleaning the house.  I have watched every movie I brought with me at least once and I am yearning for more.  My mom has promised to send some in my box, which should be here soon….I can’t wait.