Monday, Nov. 7:
Arrived at 6:30 p.m. local time. Spent the next 40 minutes walking through the airport, waiting in customs lines and getting our bags. Met the director of our institute, Pastor Lee (Lee, Kim and Park are three of the main Korean last names), walked a long way to the institute van, packed in our bags, and settled down for the two-hour ride to our institute in the city of Cheonan (about an hour south of Seoul). Got to our new apartment around 9:30 p.m. (and found out we had an elevator to get us and all our stuff to the 13th floor. Phew!) Pastor Lee left us after assuring us that the girls who were in the process of moving out of the apartment would be home soon and would tell us more about what was expected of us the next day and in the months to come. We waited up for them, but when they still hadn't showed up after 11 p.m. we hauled our bags into the smallest and emptiest of the three bedrooms, squished onto a twin-sized bed and fell asleep. Woke up at 3 a.m. and realized the two girls still hadn't gotten back yet. Started to get worried about them. Jonathan called Pastor Lee to let him know, but there was no answer. We fell back into a fitful sleep.
Tuesday, Nov. 8:
Woke up around 5 a.m. and watched the sky lighten. Got a call back from Pastor Lee and told him that the girls never came back to the apartment. He called them and then called us back. Apparently they had planned to stay at a friends place so we could have the apartment to ourselves from our first night on. Nice of them to think of us, but funny the Pastor had no idea what was going on. Pastor Lee came to pick us up at 6:30 a.m. and drove us to the institute, about a three or four minute drive. He showed us around the institute, which is on the third and fourth floors of a building just across a large road and around the corner from our apartment complex. Pastor Lee showed us the Foreign Staff Room, which is where we are almost all the time when we're not teaching. Met Fabrice, a teacher and the new coordinator for our institute, and the two female teachers who had moved out of our apartment and were both leaving later that day, Joann and Thula. As soon as we saw Joann, both Jonathan and I recognized her from Southern. She had even been in a couple classes with me. We introduced ourselves, got a few instructions, had worship and then were off to our first class. I shadowed Thula (pronounced 'Tula') and Jonathan shadowed Joann. Halfway through the class, Thula had me come up front and take over teaching the class, while she was standing beside me for support and to answer any questions I might have. It went pretty well. If you follow the textbook it's not too hard to teach the adult English classes. After that first class we met back in the Foreign Staff Room, did a bit of debriefing on the class and learned a bit about how to teach our religion classes. Then all five of us - Fabrice, Joann, Thula, Jonathan and I - went to a small cafe, Paris Baguette, near our apartment complex for breakfast. It was such a great place with a lot of pastries and breads. We ate and talked and Jonathan and I learned a lot about Korean culture. Then we came back to our apartment, and helped Thula move her last boxes out and into the institute van. She was transferring to another institute. We said goodbye to her and Joann (who was flying back to the US later in the day) and then headed back up the elevator to our apartment. Spent the next five hours rearranging lots of furniture and cleaning as much as we could. Later in the afternoon we headed back to the institute to meet with Fabrice and go over what to do for the junior (the kids) classes. Thankfully we didn't have to teach them that afternoon so we just went over what to do. Finally at 8 p.m. we entered our classrooms for our first try at teaching an adult English class alone. We managed to pull through and then went straight back to the apartment and fell in bed totally exhausted.
Wednesday, Nov. 9:
Woke up at 6 a.m. with aching sore throats. Made ourselves get up, hurriedly got ready for the day and managed to get to the institute by 6:45. Had a quick worship together with Fabrice and were off to teach our 7 a.m. adult English classes. In Tuesday morning's class Thula had announced a Pronunciation Test so I had to give one, but she had told me what to do and it wasn't hard. In the end, I think the students were more nervous about it than I was. After class Fabrice gave us a quick orientation of religion class and we picked out materials to teach and got them ready for our religion classes. I taught religion class for the first time at 10 a.m. (Fabrice has religion class at 9 and Jonathan at 11). No one was registered until about 10 minutes before my class started and then I only had one person in my class. Me and my student, Neo (he took his English name from the hero in the Matrix movies), talked the whole class time and he had some very deep questions for me that I wasn't sure how best to explain. We never even got into the material I had ready for class time. After my religion class ended, one of Fabrice's students took me and Fabrice to the KEB (Korean Exchange Bank) where I opened a Korean bank account. The student, who was a bank employee, was extremely helpful in convincing the teller to let me open a bank without having my Korean Foreigner ID card yet. As soon as we got back to the institute, one of the secretaries, Isaak, whisked Jonathan and me off to a photographer's studio where we quickly got our pictures taken for the Korean ID cards. Once back at the institute we got ready for our first day of teaching the junior classes (more about those classes in future post...). It was exhausting to pop in and out of seven junior classes during the next four hours, but somehow we made it through. Then we had an hour to relax before our evening adult English class. Again we went right home at 9 p.m. and went straight to bed.
Thursday, Nov. 10:
Same routine as the day before, except for no bank-run. Instead, during our three-hour lunch break, Fabrice took us to a nice Korean restaurant where we guessed by the pictures and few English words on the menu if our dishes would have meat in them or not. We managed to make good choices and all of us enjoyed vegetarian lunches. With our food we were served a bowl of sweet pickles and kimchi (the dish Koreans can't live without - basically super hot fermented cabbage). Jonathan tried both, I steered clear. I had been feeling pretty lightheaded on the walk to the restaurant, but felt much better after eating lunch for the walk back to the institute. We survived the junior classes again. It's not that the kids are bad or anything, just that it's very confusing to pop in to so many classes for only 15 minutes and then leave and go to the next one which is usually a different level with a different teacher who has a different schedule and is using a different textbook. I'm sure we'll eventually get used to it, but last week trying to keep up with juniors was a little nightmare-ish. Evening adult class went fine. By the third evening of teaching I had most of the teaching methods from the adult textbook down-pat, although I still use the manual we were given from time to time when there is a new English drill in the lesson I'm teaching. Again it was early to bed.
Friday, Nov. 11:
Pepero Day! Starting on Thursday afternoon, I was given presents by some of my students. Two little girls in my first junior class gave me treats and one man in my evening English class did, too. The man, David, explained that in Korea November 11 is Pepero Day. He translated it as Cracker Day. He said students give their teacher crackers or treats and coworkers usually exchange treats as well. Usually the treats are long and straight like the number 1 (which is why Pepero Day falls on 11/11). They taste sort of like hard cookies covered with chocolate. What a nice surprise! In my Friday morning English class I was also given one more box of treats. It was a nice end to our first week teaching! Fabrice and Jonathan also got some treats and Fabrice even got an asian pear so after our 7 a.m. English classes the three of us visited and shared our treats and the pear together. We had a nice time before we split up for our religion classes. Fridays are half-days at the institute so once our morning classes were done, we were finished for the day. Jonathan and I stayed at the institute for about an hour and a half to use the internet and then went with one of the secretaries, Jasmine, to a nearby hospital for physical exams that were required by the head office. Apparently it was a busy day for physicals so what should have taken us 40 minutes took more than an hour and a half. We had to run around to different offices and clinics all around the hospital to get everything on our forms filled out. (You can read more about our hospital visit here.) Finally we were finished and we went home to relax and read for a bit. Later in the afternoon we called Fabrice and asked if he wanted to go out to eat. He had said earlier to call him when we were ready and we'd go out to eat and then he would show us a large store where we could buy groceries. We had a nice time together eating pizza at a really nice place called Mr. Pizza that was overlooking a busy street. There was lots of great people-watching to do and the pizza was great. We ordered one that had corn, onions and potato wedges on it and that one was so good! (Like the pizzas from Lupi's with corn on them, for all you Southern people out there :) Once we were done eating we noticed the sky had darkened a bit so we skipped the store and went straight back to our apartments to get ready for vespers. Since we'd passed the store on the way to Mr. Pizza Jonathan and I knew how to get back the next time we needed groceries. We arrived at the institute just before 7 p.m. for Friday Night Fellowship, which is what they call vespers to encourage students to come. No students actually showed up this week so Jonathan worked on shortening his Children's Story for church the next day and Fabrice and I sat in the room where FNF usually is held and just talked. He is from South Africa, but born and raised in Burundi, so we had a lot of Africa stories to exchange. Once the Korean church members ended their own vespers program, the institute director, Pastor Lee, introduced us to his wife and two small sons and we talked for a bit and then headed back to our apartment to sleep.
Saturday, Nov. 12:
For the first time that week we were able to sleep in past 6 a.m.! It was so nice to have a more relaxing morning. We arrived at the institute just before 10 a.m. and got ready for the Saturday Clubs (which is really Sabbath School). Only two Korean students came, but that was two more than Friday night so it was nice to have even those two. We had a nice discussion that Fabrice lead. Then we went to the small chapel in the building for church. We met a few church members and a couple international members who are married to Korean women. One man, Peter, is from South Africa and another man, Gabe, is from America, although I'm not sure where in the U.S. he's from. The church service was in Korean, although the Children's Story is always told in English by one of the foreign teachers and translated into Korean by one of the Korean junior teachers. For the sermon we were given small headsets and we could listen to the sermon translated into English by the pastor's wife. After church there was a potluck with rice, seaweed, tofu, potatoes, greens, and oranges. Everything, except for the rice, seaweed and oranges, was spicy so I enjoyed the non-spicy items. We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing and resting back at our apartment. I had almost completely lost my voice by Saturday morning so I tried to talk as little as possible to rest my voice for the coming week.
Sunday, Nov. 13:
We tried to sleep in on Sunday, but our bodies seem to be wired to get up early now so we usually wake up before 7 a.m. even on the weekend. We mostly stayed at home and relaxed, although we did walk to E-Mart, the store we had tried to go to on Friday afternoon, to get some groceries. It was like a huge Wal-Mart, two floors packed full of merchandise - and of people. As soon as we walked in we realized that maybe Sunday wasn't the best day to shop. That is usually the only day people have off of work or school so it's the day that everyone goes shopping (and brings their whole family along). In the future we'll try to go shopping during our weekday lunch breaks. After our shopping trip we spent the rest of the day at our apartment doing a bit more cleaning that we hadn't got to in our frantic Tuesday cleaning session. Although we stayed up a bit later than during the weekdays, we went to bed pretty early to get ready for the new week of classes.
Wow, so much has happened since we got here! So that is our first week and hopefully now we'll be more settled in and this coming week will go smoother. And now that we have internet we should be able to keep you all updated more often and write more (and shorter) blog posts. Yay!
Wednesday, Nov. 9:
Woke up at 6 a.m. with aching sore throats. Made ourselves get up, hurriedly got ready for the day and managed to get to the institute by 6:45. Had a quick worship together with Fabrice and were off to teach our 7 a.m. adult English classes. In Tuesday morning's class Thula had announced a Pronunciation Test so I had to give one, but she had told me what to do and it wasn't hard. In the end, I think the students were more nervous about it than I was. After class Fabrice gave us a quick orientation of religion class and we picked out materials to teach and got them ready for our religion classes. I taught religion class for the first time at 10 a.m. (Fabrice has religion class at 9 and Jonathan at 11). No one was registered until about 10 minutes before my class started and then I only had one person in my class. Me and my student, Neo (he took his English name from the hero in the Matrix movies), talked the whole class time and he had some very deep questions for me that I wasn't sure how best to explain. We never even got into the material I had ready for class time. After my religion class ended, one of Fabrice's students took me and Fabrice to the KEB (Korean Exchange Bank) where I opened a Korean bank account. The student, who was a bank employee, was extremely helpful in convincing the teller to let me open a bank without having my Korean Foreigner ID card yet. As soon as we got back to the institute, one of the secretaries, Isaak, whisked Jonathan and me off to a photographer's studio where we quickly got our pictures taken for the Korean ID cards. Once back at the institute we got ready for our first day of teaching the junior classes (more about those classes in future post...). It was exhausting to pop in and out of seven junior classes during the next four hours, but somehow we made it through. Then we had an hour to relax before our evening adult English class. Again we went right home at 9 p.m. and went straight to bed.
Thursday, Nov. 10:
Same routine as the day before, except for no bank-run. Instead, during our three-hour lunch break, Fabrice took us to a nice Korean restaurant where we guessed by the pictures and few English words on the menu if our dishes would have meat in them or not. We managed to make good choices and all of us enjoyed vegetarian lunches. With our food we were served a bowl of sweet pickles and kimchi (the dish Koreans can't live without - basically super hot fermented cabbage). Jonathan tried both, I steered clear. I had been feeling pretty lightheaded on the walk to the restaurant, but felt much better after eating lunch for the walk back to the institute. We survived the junior classes again. It's not that the kids are bad or anything, just that it's very confusing to pop in to so many classes for only 15 minutes and then leave and go to the next one which is usually a different level with a different teacher who has a different schedule and is using a different textbook. I'm sure we'll eventually get used to it, but last week trying to keep up with juniors was a little nightmare-ish. Evening adult class went fine. By the third evening of teaching I had most of the teaching methods from the adult textbook down-pat, although I still use the manual we were given from time to time when there is a new English drill in the lesson I'm teaching. Again it was early to bed.
Friday, Nov. 11:
Pepero Day! Starting on Thursday afternoon, I was given presents by some of my students. Two little girls in my first junior class gave me treats and one man in my evening English class did, too. The man, David, explained that in Korea November 11 is Pepero Day. He translated it as Cracker Day. He said students give their teacher crackers or treats and coworkers usually exchange treats as well. Usually the treats are long and straight like the number 1 (which is why Pepero Day falls on 11/11). They taste sort of like hard cookies covered with chocolate. What a nice surprise! In my Friday morning English class I was also given one more box of treats. It was a nice end to our first week teaching! Fabrice and Jonathan also got some treats and Fabrice even got an asian pear so after our 7 a.m. English classes the three of us visited and shared our treats and the pear together. We had a nice time before we split up for our religion classes. Fridays are half-days at the institute so once our morning classes were done, we were finished for the day. Jonathan and I stayed at the institute for about an hour and a half to use the internet and then went with one of the secretaries, Jasmine, to a nearby hospital for physical exams that were required by the head office. Apparently it was a busy day for physicals so what should have taken us 40 minutes took more than an hour and a half. We had to run around to different offices and clinics all around the hospital to get everything on our forms filled out. (You can read more about our hospital visit here.) Finally we were finished and we went home to relax and read for a bit. Later in the afternoon we called Fabrice and asked if he wanted to go out to eat. He had said earlier to call him when we were ready and we'd go out to eat and then he would show us a large store where we could buy groceries. We had a nice time together eating pizza at a really nice place called Mr. Pizza that was overlooking a busy street. There was lots of great people-watching to do and the pizza was great. We ordered one that had corn, onions and potato wedges on it and that one was so good! (Like the pizzas from Lupi's with corn on them, for all you Southern people out there :) Once we were done eating we noticed the sky had darkened a bit so we skipped the store and went straight back to our apartments to get ready for vespers. Since we'd passed the store on the way to Mr. Pizza Jonathan and I knew how to get back the next time we needed groceries. We arrived at the institute just before 7 p.m. for Friday Night Fellowship, which is what they call vespers to encourage students to come. No students actually showed up this week so Jonathan worked on shortening his Children's Story for church the next day and Fabrice and I sat in the room where FNF usually is held and just talked. He is from South Africa, but born and raised in Burundi, so we had a lot of Africa stories to exchange. Once the Korean church members ended their own vespers program, the institute director, Pastor Lee, introduced us to his wife and two small sons and we talked for a bit and then headed back to our apartment to sleep.
Saturday, Nov. 12:
For the first time that week we were able to sleep in past 6 a.m.! It was so nice to have a more relaxing morning. We arrived at the institute just before 10 a.m. and got ready for the Saturday Clubs (which is really Sabbath School). Only two Korean students came, but that was two more than Friday night so it was nice to have even those two. We had a nice discussion that Fabrice lead. Then we went to the small chapel in the building for church. We met a few church members and a couple international members who are married to Korean women. One man, Peter, is from South Africa and another man, Gabe, is from America, although I'm not sure where in the U.S. he's from. The church service was in Korean, although the Children's Story is always told in English by one of the foreign teachers and translated into Korean by one of the Korean junior teachers. For the sermon we were given small headsets and we could listen to the sermon translated into English by the pastor's wife. After church there was a potluck with rice, seaweed, tofu, potatoes, greens, and oranges. Everything, except for the rice, seaweed and oranges, was spicy so I enjoyed the non-spicy items. We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing and resting back at our apartment. I had almost completely lost my voice by Saturday morning so I tried to talk as little as possible to rest my voice for the coming week.
Sunday, Nov. 13:
We tried to sleep in on Sunday, but our bodies seem to be wired to get up early now so we usually wake up before 7 a.m. even on the weekend. We mostly stayed at home and relaxed, although we did walk to E-Mart, the store we had tried to go to on Friday afternoon, to get some groceries. It was like a huge Wal-Mart, two floors packed full of merchandise - and of people. As soon as we walked in we realized that maybe Sunday wasn't the best day to shop. That is usually the only day people have off of work or school so it's the day that everyone goes shopping (and brings their whole family along). In the future we'll try to go shopping during our weekday lunch breaks. After our shopping trip we spent the rest of the day at our apartment doing a bit more cleaning that we hadn't got to in our frantic Tuesday cleaning session. Although we stayed up a bit later than during the weekdays, we went to bed pretty early to get ready for the new week of classes.
Wow, so much has happened since we got here! So that is our first week and hopefully now we'll be more settled in and this coming week will go smoother. And now that we have internet we should be able to keep you all updated more often and write more (and shorter) blog posts. Yay!
Wow! Sounds like quite the adventure. It'd be hard NOT to get sick under those conditions. I always need a day to recuperate from long air travel and major time changes.
ReplyDeleteSo how did you teach right off the bat? Do you basically read from the textbook?