Josh:
Finally! The magical card is now in my possession and now we will be able to get all the modern day conveniences such as the internet, cell phone and the crazy thing called money. Upon returning from Suwon I immediately went to the bank, created an account and came back to my school. If I am lucky I will get paid today, if not, tomorrow. Either way it will be nice to have some cash. Of course when I went to create an account none of the tellers spoke English. Imagine the joys of trying to create a bank account without speaking the language nor having any kind of translator or phrase book. It's sort of frustrating but also fun in a really strange way. Trying to communicate with someone solely by gesturing or using really small English words is an adventure. How do you gesture bank account? Only I know. Only I.
A few things I forgot to add about the past couple of days:
We found a really awesome PC room where they give you free soda and they frequently have a puppy that they let people play with. Needless to say Audrey and I solely go to that place when we need the internet.
We also found a Citibank near our house and we learned we can pull out money from our American account there with no fee (except for my bank's fee of course). One might call it a "pretty sweet deal", right? However, when we first tried to use it we accidentally tried to pull out $700 (Oops). The machine was kind of confusing in our defense (but only kind of so it's not much of a defense).
On Wednesday (4/14/10 I believe) it was an easy day because all of my students went on a field trip; all my classes were canceled but I still had to show up to the office (which was fine because the school has internet). One of the other English co-teachers asked me if I could teach two of her classes for her so I said, "Sure!" I was able to teach 3rd graders for the first time and it was pretty fun. The classes are literally twice the size of my classes so the students were a little bit harder to control but it still went smoothly because most of them seemed to like me. The first class I stumbled a little because I didn't really properly prepare a lesson plan because I figured it would mostly be a Q&A session (turns out it wasn't). After ad-libbing the first class I knew what I needed to do for the second and I think that they all had fun. It turns out that my 1rst graders are willing to say more because they are used to me making every student speak while the 3rd graders were shy and didn't want to speak individually (I told my 1rst graders that and they were quite happy with themselves). After teaching both classes the other teacher came up to me and said that they like me better than her and that they wanted to take more classes with me. It was very flattering and I'm glad that both the co-teacher and students had fun.
Another thing I learned today was that my school is doing something brand new this year. They are going to send 30 kids somewhere (for free I believe) based on their mid term test scores and my recommendation. According to Ms. Kim they are going to select 20 1rst graders and 10 2nd and 3rd graders and send them somewhere (most likely Philippines) based on grades and an interview with me. It's a bit of pressure on me because I would love to send all my kids on an adventure but I have to choose just twenty. If they actually do go through with this idea it would be a wonderful opportunity for the students to be able to leave the country for free just because they did well in school. Imagine if a high school in America did something like that. It's kind of crazy but I'm really excited for my students to be able to take a mini vacation.
On Thursday (4/15/10) we met up with Zack and Mike again and had Pizza Hut (yes indeed) with them. Pizza Hut is right across from Pyeongtaek station and only about ten minutes walking distance from our house. Something very interesting about the pizza places here is that they all seem to be sit down restaurants. I'm talking the full shebang with a waitress taking our orders, her bringing us drinks and everyone getting their food at the same time. I know you technically can "sit down" in a Pizza Hut in America but it is nothing like what it is in Korea. They even have a salad bar if you want! We must have stayed in that booth for 2-4 hours just talking. We all had a fantastic conversation about anything and everything. It's really exciting that Audrey and I are making some good friends over in Korea within the first few weeks. It makes it a little easier to not have to worry too much about rebuilding a social circle.
With some luck my social circle will be coming to me (excellent). By the way, everyone we know and love should come teach English in Korea. If you talk to me (especially after I get a few drinks in me) I will chat your ear off for about an hour and try to convince you to come. Yes, it really is that good of deal.
Since I am sort of on the subject of coming to Korea I want to share my schedule right now for everyone to see. According to the GEPIK contract (GEPIK is the government organization for which we work - basically the public school system in Gyeonggi-do) I am only allowed to work 22-24 hours of teaching in one week. The rest of that time is office hours. Now hopefully I won't jinx myself by talking about how great my schedule is (because I want it to stay this way so knock wood) but my schedule is amazing. I only teach my eight classes of first graders twice a week. Each class lasts about 50 minutes so I teach slightly less than 16 hours a week with my students. There is a little more added because I have two hours of meeting with English co-teachers and also one hour of teaching English to other teachers in the school. My total week consists of (roughly) 19 hours of teaching while the rest is just me sitting in my office planning lesson plans, blogging or surfing the web. My hours are from 9AM until 5PM with an hour lunch at 12PM-1PM. Think about an American school and their teaching hours. Usually teachers only get one period to "prep" and then they also have a half hour to an hour lunch. They also go from about 6AM (sometimes) to 3PM and sometimes go further in either direction. So that is roughly seven hours of teaching a day which totals to 35 hours a week. Compared to my low 19 that is a lot, right? Of course, Audrey (and some other teachers) teach a few more hours than I do (but not terribly so). I happen to have gotten incredibly lucky and I am super thankful that I was placed into such a position. The reason why I post that online is because I want those who read this blog to look at that and maybe consider teaching English in Korea. It's fun and all you technically have to teach is something you have been practicing your entire life. All you need is a four year college degree. If you have any questions about the process or what to start getting ready if you actually are interested, shoot me a message and I will happily fill you in.
My next two days will be very long considering we did a lot Friday through Sunday so I will post those on a new day.
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