Teaching and the Weekend!

So I officially started teaching Wednesday, August 31st!

My schedule for the day is...

10-12:30 is Kindergarten. I have five girls and one boy.
12:30-1:30 is lunch
1:30-2:20 is Kindergarten (but depending on the day they have different activities...Monday is a game, Tuesday is song and chant, Wednesday is art, Thursday is "science" (not really...) and Friday they have oral quizzes so pretty much just play time!)
2:30 to 3:50 is first grade

Kindergarten and first grade I have everyday, Monday through Friday. I took a picture of my first grade class but forgot the rest!

Then..

Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I teach 3 different classes in the afternoon.

From 4:00 to 4:45, I teach science. It's just a class of four boys.
From 4:50 to 5:35, I teach Social Studies which is one girl and 3 boys.
From 5:40 to 6:20 (my last class) I go back to my class of four boys and do grammar and writing.

Tuesday and Thursday, after kinder and first grade, I actually a free hour from 4:00 to 5:00 which is nice! Then I have class preparation time from 5:00 to 6:00 and then I teach Social Studies and Writing from 6:00 to 6:40 (it's a different social studies text than my class on MWF). This class has four boys and five girls, my biggest of all my classes!


The supervisors at the school gave us all of the materials that we need to teach and go through everyday but it was still pretty hard the first day! The kids are all PRETTY well behaved but still, there is a lot of, "Sit back down please"..."PLEASE". Especially by the end of the day! Korean children go to school wayyy longer than we do in the US. They go to their Korean school in the morning, and then come to our school to learn English. Then most of them have piano, dance, or tae kwon do, or pretty much some other actvity where they aren't done with everything until about 9pm, when they start their homework, go to bed and do it all over again the next day! I don't know how they do it.  There is really no punishment for not doing your homework at our school. The only threat or rewards are "stickers". So every class, you put the student's names on the board and then add stars to their name or erase them if they're being bad (or at least threaten to). Then at the end you just mark on a sheet how many stickers they got that class and once they fill up a sheet, they get an ACTUAL sticker. The stickers are traded in for "market day" for money which is only twice a year! Even though I don't really see the motivation to do anything just for some stickers, it somehow works!

Wednesday through Friday went pretty smoothly and actually went by reallyyy fast! I think my first grade is my least favorite... sadly. They seemed great the first day but they are just realllyyyy hyper and one girl just likes to get out of her chair and start doing whatever! It's frustrating but we'll see!

Friday night after class, almost all of the teachers went over to one girl's apartment for fried rice dinner and drinks. It was delicious! We just hung out the rest of the night since we had plans to go hiking Saturday morning.

Saturday, we left at 9:30, and it took about an hour and a half or so to get to the mountain we were hiking by bus and subway. It was a gorgeous day out! I'm SO glad we didn't go out the night before. There were 7 of us hiking and it was sooo hard. My body hasn't been that exhausted in a long time. It was just constant incline for about 3 hours?? Some parts had rockish stairs and other parts I was using my hands to get up, which was nice to give my legs a break! There were a ton of people on the mountain and they were way more prepared! Everyone had legit hiking boots, long legging pants, long sleeve shirts, walking poles and huge visors. They also packed food and you'd see groups resting and eating a full lunch. I didn't think the outfits were necessary but I would have liked a pole once in a while in some spots! Despite the difficulty, it was definitely worth it! The view was absolutely gorgeous (I took a lot of pictures!). We ate lunch at the bottom of the mountain, and finally got back into Suji about 9:00. It was a very long day but a wonderful one. After a much needed shower, we all met up to celebrate one girl's move to a new apartment and went out in Suji. It was a lot of fun with everyone, and the bartender was nice enough to play Justin Bieber for me, not once, but twice at the bar... I may have annoyed everyone else, but I was in a good state not to care.... anyways :)

Sunday, I took it easy and just hung out in my apartment and FINALLY went grocery shopping. It took probably ten times longer to buy ten times less stuff than it would at home! I just kept wandering the aisles not knowing what a lot of stuff was! But at least I can start making some food at home and not spend it on going out to eat! Sunday, one of the other teachers at a different taught a couple of us how to read Korean. It will help but if I don't know what the word means once I sound it out, I'll still be lost! I looked up some free Korean classes and I'm going to try to go to one Saturday though! At least to know how to order food, which is the most important in my opinion!

Monday was just another day at work! The kids were better behaved, they must have just been excited it was Friday which is understandable! And maybe they realize how mean I am now.. haha just kidding, well hopefully. Then after work, one of the teachers, Chad, decided to start "Movie Mondays" at his apartment. So we went over after work, got some pizza, and watched "Oldboy", a Korean movie. It was disturbing and sad but really good. Very similar style as Kill Bill, so if you think of Quentin Tarantino, and put it in Korean, that's what it was like!

Tuesday (today) is my slow day with the break and class prep so it went pretty well! I got home and made my first meal in my apartment...spaghetti, ha. And cleaned and organized some more of my stuff. I finally have internet but I'm STILL waiting on a wardrobe so I'm living out of my suitcase still! They measured my apartment today to make sure it'll fit so I'm hoping this week. When it's all finished I'll finally put up pictures! I have one of the smaller apartments but I guess it'll save on energy costs like heating and cooling, so its ok!

Here are some of my pictures so far... Since I don't know how to add pictures on my blog (all the instructions are in Korean and I can't remember how I did it in France)  I thought it'd be better anyway to just make a flickr account. That way I can put way more pictures up anyway! Hopefully this works?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/meghanfaricy/

Almost forgot, on a very exciting note, I'm going to the Philippines for Christmas break! We really only get two weeks vacation out of the whole year, and Christmas break is one of them. I think 7 or 8 of the teachers are going and I'm also lucky because Danny will be coming with me! I think it'll be a good way to be distracted from not being home in MN during Christmas with everyone if I'm on a beach and swimming and hiking in the Philippines instead! So...something to look forward to!

Have a good week everyone!

Love, Meghan