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  Busan, Korea Rep.
Friday, March 5, 2010

Alright, well I told everyone when asked "How are you going to teach Korean children English, when you dont know Korean?" that I wasnt too sure myself and that I would do a blog when I figured it out! So here it is...along with a recap of our first week at school! Ill start from where I left off...forewarning this could get a little lengthy, ill try to keep it shorter...

Wednesday: The first day of school
After making ourselves a nice breakfast of eggs and bacon, Bryan and I decided we should probably get to work a little early to try to begin to make sense of everything: the schedule itself, the curriculums, the AA (afternoon activities), etc. The setup or schedule goes like this: everyone has a kindergarten class of either 5,6 or 7 year olds in either their 1st, 2nd, or 3rd year of school/taking English that come in from 9:30-2:30. Then from 3-7:20 there are various afternoon classes of kids from grades 1-6 that come to our school after their public school days (we have learned that Koreans go to school ALL the time, including every other Saturday!) So on Monday, Wednesday, Friday we have about 4 after school classes and 2 on Tuesday and Thursday. Each foreign teacher has a Korean Co-teacher. So the Korean teacher will teach half of the class time and material and then the foreign teacher will teach the other half.

With that said...Wednesday started with an assembly of all the Kindergarteners and their very proud, camer happy parents..with all the teachers lined up in the front of the room being stared at. Here is what we saw from our point of view: a girl laughing hysterically everytime she looked at Bryan, a boy picking his nose and wiping is bugers on the back of the previously mentioned girl who had no idea because she was laughing too hard. A set of Korean 5 year old twins that resembled 40 yr old men (who we unsuccessfully tried to name Mario and Luigi)...a boy with the largest amount of snot known to man dripping to his lip while licking it...and a whole lot of other Korean kids who looked exactly alike. I got lucky that day because i have the 5 year olds coming to school for the first time and once the assembly was over we just had to show them and their mommies the classroom and then say Bye Bye! Bryan not so much....He got thrown straight into teaching. We didnt know this at the time but we soon found out that Bryans class had been transfered to our school a month ago when their school closed down and had not had a consistent teacher in months, which means they are constantly in "substitute teacher" mode. Which is just what a jetlagged, first day on the job teacher with no training or help from the school needs!

In Korea, instead of calling the teacher Mrs.Antee or Mr. Melhorn, they call you Dianna teacher or Bryan teacher. But Bryans nice class decided to come up with their own name and call him "Monkey Teacher" while jumping up and down, screaming out of control. They also called him King Kong, Tarzan, and a little girl not even in his class yelled to him that he looked like a gorilla. So you can imagine the expression on his face when he into the teahcers room after 80 mins trying to tame the class from hell! After we have our turn teaching the kindergarteners they have lunch (which i will have to dedicate an entire blog to later on) and then AA (Afternoon Activities). These are like American enrichment classes: Gym, Arts and Crafts, Science, Storytime, etc. We all have something different each day with a different class. Byan has a lot of science which he had to do the first day and loved!

Another Korean School tid bit. Obviously Korean names can not be spelled or said in English, so when they start English school they have to pick a Korean name. So my class of first years all needed names, which was when we tried to name the twins Mario and Luigi...they didnt bite. You see alot of traditional names:Brian, Thomas, Amy, Ashley, Andy, Tony, etc. Then you come across some more entertaining ones: A shorter, chubby girl named Elf, Tiger, a boy named Windy, Fish, Nemo. The list goes on...it is pretty entertaining needless to say. 

Anyways..that night we got brave and decided to go eat at a Korean Barbque that one of the other foreign teachers pointed out by ourselves. Except when we walked in the door, two of the Korean teachers were already there, so we lucked out and they told us what to order and it ordered it all for us. We ended up with breadless fried chicken which was really good, and a really really spicy chicken and noodle dish. We left full, which was a nice improvement from the lunch the day before. We were just happy to have survived the day. 

Im going to make a different entry for the next two days so they arent so long! But i dont want to fill up everybodys in boxes, so if you want to keep going, ill have the last two days in separate entries after this one! 

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