Back to School

Well, I haven't updated in awhile because, well, nothing interesting has been happening.

Today is the first day of the fall semester, so in essence we are halfway done now. Teaching in korea has been quite a journey, with both ups and downs, so don't think it's all fun and games.

During the summer, the 3 weeks after Bali, I had summer camp. At first I was really into planning lessons and games, but near the end, the last week, I was like blah and just let them watch Spongebob and Tom and Jerry streaming from the Internet. The very last day I showed a
movie, Flushed Away, which was actually pretty good. One of the reasons I got less into it is because less people would come to class, like only a few per class, so I was like why bother with lessons I planned when I can just use it in the normal classes in the semester. After all, my coteacher isn't even there most of the time, so it's not like she can complain about it. (Although she did a little bit the very last day since it was one of the 3 days she was there). Other
than that, summer school was a bit annoying in the fact that I only taught until noon, but I had to stay until 4:40 all 3 weeks, which was very annoying. Aaron could go home at his lunch time, but I never get to.

We'll see what this semester holds I suppose.

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Play day

Yesterday, May 1, was Playday at my school.

It seemed to be a pretty big deal, it was like a big festival type thing almost, where all grades (and some teachers and parents too) compete in different events like tug of war, different types of racing (from relay racing to normal racing), games with balloons, giant balls, etc. It was a pretty interesting day.














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Jacki's class pictures

So my coteacher took some pictures last Thursday and finally today she got them for me.

This is my advanced class so it's smaller than my regular classes.















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teaching without a coteacher and adventures in miscommunication

So far this week has been quite interesting.

So on Monday my coteacher left on a fieldtrip with the 6th graders to Gyeongju, and won't be back until Wednesday, so on Monday and Tuesday I had class all by myself, and it was a bit scary, because I didn't have my translator around and sometimes they didn't understand me. Mostly it went okay at least, because usually someone in there understood. I liked some of the classes better than other classes because they would volunteer more, rather than this one class where I'd say any volunteers and they just sit there blankly.

On Wednesday, wow, that was a whole day in confusion and miscommunication. I was supposed to go on a fieldtrip with the 3-5 graders to some science museum. So I got to school, andI went to my room because no one told me where to meet or go. And before you know it, everyone left and I'm still sitting here. So I was like hmmm. And then there was no lunch service so I scavaged for some cereal and cookies from the teachers room. In the end, they said they didn't even notice I was there since I just sit there all day and apparently I was supposed to meet up with them outside, but of course no one said anything. And then when I was sitting in my office alone yesterday, there was only a few handful of people who didn't speak English well, so I couldn't talk about my problems to them. Anyway, so I ended up sitting on my desk doing random stuff and making lesson plans all day. Click here to read more

Our Schedules

Jacki's Schedule

Aaron's schedule

I finally updated my class schedule as well as wrote down Aaron's schedule as well. Mine didn't change too much, except I added another advanced class, so now I have it three times a week.

For Aaron's schedule, since he is teaching a much larger (twice the size as mine) school, he only teaches every class once. The first number in his schedule is the level (1 = 7th grade, 2 = 8th grade, 3 = 9th grade), and the other number is just which class he is teaching.
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Coldness, advanced classes, and readers

The weather here has been pretty unpredictable these days. Last weekend it was quite nice, maybe 60s, and it was nice enough that I was wearing a sweatshirt and tshirt when we went to the dog shelter, and I didn't feel cold at all. And then yesterday the temperature dropped and this morning it was freezing. I think it might be sprinkled some snow but most of it melted, but yet, it was still biting cold with chilly winds. It's almost April! I hope it warms up soon!

I think my advanced class has been doing a lot better these days. I had them on Monday and on Tuesday, and I made lesson plans about face and body parts. I gave them some worksheets, such as label the body/face, unscramble words, and word searches, as well as playing some games, such as simon says and draw a monster (of which I dictated what the monster has, such as two noses, one eye, long neck, big shoulders, etc), and that was quite fun and hilarious. I think I am having a bit easier time with them, but I did have to plan the lessons on the weekend, because I'm still not very good at it. For the warmup I've been showing them optical illusion type images, such as "how many xxx can you find in this picture" and "what do you see?" when the image can have multiple meanings. I hope these entertain them somewhat. I have one more advanced class this week tomorrow.

Today is Wednesday, which means I've been 25 for one week so far! It will almost be the end of our very first month in Korea. 11 more to go!


Oh, and I am curious, who actually reads our blog? The counter reads 800+ but we've only gotten one comment occasionally. So if you do, leave a comment below.
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Jacki's Birthday

So today was my birthday, I'm quarter of a century years old now!

Today right after school my coteacher and other coworkers threw me a surprise birthday mini-party, which was really nice of them. They bought a little Asian styled cake and ordered pizza. It was Korean pizza so one had shrimp, imitation crab, and sweet potato on it, but it was actually pretty good. Of course the cake was delish as well, and they made me wear a silly hat while blowing out the candles.

me and my co-teacher

When I went back home Aaron had bought me some yummy chocolate foodies (brownies, dark chocolate chewies, chocolate sticks, and some other random snacks), so that made me, a chocoholic, quite content.



Then we went to eat at a very small local restaurant in our little town. I had some kind of seafood rice and he got jjajangmyeon, which was his favorite dish. We only spent 12,000 won, which was a little less than $8.50, for this entire meal. Living in the rural boonies does have its benefits!





All in all, a pretty good birthday, although I did have to work today.

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In other news, yesterday I taught my advanced class, and so the first half I had some slides and a short animated video on St Patricks Day, but I think it was pretty boring, so the second half we played charades again, but with harder phrases than the day before, so I think they did seem to enjoy that. Click here to read more

Expats and "Advanced" Classes

Tomorrow is my (Jacki's) birthday, and I'll be spending it in a foreign country!

Anyway, yesterday we went out with some other expats in Anseong downtown for some samgyeopsal (yes, the Korean "bacon"). It was different to be able to speak fluently with other people, and not have to use broken English to converse. We just hung out a bit and talked (and uh, complained) about our schools and lesson plans and teaching in general.

Yesteday was my advanced class, and it's tough, because it's pretty much like two classes in one. It's two times the normal class length, and I don't have any textbooks or CDroms or anything to follow. I had to do it from scratch. Anyway, yesterday I tried to do some things like writing three facts about yourself and drawing a picture of your family to present, but they just weren't too interested and it felt like pulling teeth to get them to present. Most of my normal classes are more active and excited and answer more questions than this class, which is ironic.

I have another one of those this afternoon, and I planned a St Patricks Day class, so we'll see how that goes. Click here to read more

random happenings at Jacki's School

On Monday after school all the teachers and other school employees and I all went out to dinner. Apparently this was a pretty common thing, as Koreans love to socialize and drink over dinner. Aaron had his on last Wednesday, so this was by turn. We had Samgyeopsal, which is sort of like "Korean bacon." They are slices of pork belly that you grill yourself, and cut it into bite sized pieces with scissors. Then you eat with a paste of hot pepper paste and soybean (kinda like miso) paste. Like most Korean dishes, it came with a million side dishes, including rice, scrambled egg type thing, kimchi, seaweed, noodles, little pancakes, etc. So I was sitting with my coteacher and then the principal was like sit next to me, and then of course Korean (men) love to drink so we drank just a little bit of soju just to appease him. But overall, it was a pretty good meal.

Yesterday, Tuesday, in the morning my coteacher and I took the bus and journeyed to another Elementary school. There, we observed another english teacher teach his class, which was helpful to us since we were both new at this. And then the vice principal invited us to lunch at his school, which had pretty good food, and also, it let us pick as much as we wanted. Our school lunches are served to us by lunch ladies and often it is not enough food for me.

Also on Tuesday, after my classes, my coteacher and I had to give the tests for the advanced class. We gave the oral exams, of which two children at a time will come into our classroom and we would ask them questions like "How old are you" and "What's your favorite color" and then rate their answers from 0 to 5. After an hour of this, we added up the scores but I still don't know who will be in which class yet.

Today (Wednesday), I will finally go get my ARC (Alien Residency Card), of which then I can finally get a phone and a bank account. Click here to read more

Hospital Visit, Korean Snacks, and E-Mart Adventures

First of all, I am finally using the internet on my OWN COMPUTER! The past few updates were either from my school computer or the brick of a computer that came with the apartment. So yay for that!

So on Thursday I finally went back to the hospital for my checkup. Apparently it cost like 44k won (which is about 30 dollars), so we get to add that to our visa process cost list. The process itself was pretty simple - height and weight, color blindness, eyesight, hearing. And then we had to do a chest x-ray, urine test, and blood test. Koreans use pretty big needles! Ouchie. But at least it went by pretty fast.

Friday I taught my three 6 grade classes, which was actually pretty interesting. We played Simon Says with the kids and gave out my american candy to the winners. Then we would do the CD Rom videos with dialogues and make the kids repeat. After that, we would do this powerpoint of which they guessed random sports celebrities (that I had no clue about but apparently Korean people love) and where they are from, since we were learning about nationalities. So I did that 3 times in a row on Friday.

Today, Saturday, we headed towards the downtown market area of Anseong. We tried a few different snack foods, which each cost about 1000 won aka 65 cents. We got this corn dog type thing and this brownie thing that was very lightly sweet, not overpowering sweet like most US brownies.



Then we went to a local kimbap (aka "Korean sushi") fast food type place and got a little lunch. We bought a roll of beef kimbap (sogogi kimbap) and the rice dish in the stone pot (dolsot bibimbap). It gave with this very light soup (I think maybe with fish base?), kimchi, and picked yellow radish (dan moo ji). All this for only 5,500 won or $3.50.




After snacks and lunch, we headed to E-Mart, which is almost like a Korean walmart, to pick up some more supplies and food. It was pretty big, although not as big as super Walmarts in the states, of course. We wandered around for a while, and bought some random things, such as some floor mats, a drying rack (since there aren't any clothing dryers here), and some food. We are living on rice and noodles, and so we bought some things to supplement our meals, such as canned ham, canned vegetables, eggs, little sausages, tomatoes. We also bought some snacks (I found a snack that was blueberry flavored, cheese flavored pringles, and a dukbokki - rice cake in red pepper sauce - flavored snack as well), some juice, tiny yogurt drinks, imitation crab. Just an array of random assortments. It was pretty interesting carrying all of our stuff on the bus back, as well, since Aaron had his backpack, and then we had three large bags, as well as the dryer rack. So that was quite an adventure.

I also cleaned up the apartment a little bit today as well. Their vacuum cleaner is small and so light and easy to use, I likei t better than the US ones already. Click here to read more

Korean red tape and cute kids

So, in order for us to get our ARC (Alien Residency Card), which allows us to do stuff like open bank accounts and stuff, it seems to be a lot of hassle and work in order to get it. Anyway, first we would need to get some photos taken. Pretty simple. And then we also have to go the hospital to get some tests (blood, urine, and xray scan I think?). Now, I hate HATE being jabbed with a needle, so I am not looking forward to this. Since it was in the downtown area, coteacher and I journeyed after class for 35-40min to the hospital, where they said I would need a passport. Of course I didn't bring one, since the information and website told my coteacher that I wouldn't need it, so I journeyed my half and hour back. An hour of the bus for nothing, yay. Hopefully we'll try again today after school, because I actually did remember my passport. Apparently Aaron went to the hospital as well and they let him do the tests without a passport. We think it was the persuasive nature of his more experienced coteacher than my new coteacher. Anyway, after the medical test, we can go to another city half an hour or so from here to actually get the ARC card, which supposedly takes a week to receive. More red tape, I tell you!

As for teaching itself, it's not bad. Yesterday morning I had three 6th grade and introduced myself with my powerpoint. They especially liked my pictures of my family and animals. They asked me lots of questions as well. Some of the students spoke English quite well, and some didn't say anything, which could mean they don't know much or that they're shy. But they are quite cute and they all say "Hi, Miss J---" [my last name] all the time.
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Teaching

So I just had my first two classes, and it wasn't too bad, but then again, it wasn't a "real" class day. Today was just intro day. So first ten to fifteen minutes my coteacher put them in their assigned seats and introduced herself. And then I introduced myself with my powerpoint with lots of pictures, and they asked me questions. Of course, they didn't all use English so my coteacher had to translate some questions for me to answer. And then she'll pick up parts of what I said and repeat that so that the kids can repeat it. Out of my two classes, I liked my second one better. First one was rowdier and took a long time getting them to settle down, and second class actually tried to use English more when being asked. So far it wasn't too bad but we didn't really do any lessons yet. The kids are cute but also pretty loud and hyper.
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Jacki's Class Video

I made a video of my classroom as well!

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Snow

It's my second day at school and it's SNOWING!

So I got my teaching schedule and today I have to teach two fifth grade classes. Of course, this week is okay because it's only introductions, because I haven't made too many lesson plans yet, but there's lots of resources so that's okay. Here is my weekly schedule:

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As you can see, 3rd and 4th grade meets only once, but 5th and 6th grade classes meets twice a week.
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First Few Days of Korea

It's Monday afternoon now, and I'm sitting my empty classroom. Today there was only an opening ceremony at my school, so no teaching today, but since I do have internet here at my desk, I can talk about the last few days' adventures.

 

THE FLIGHT

 

So, we left Texas on Thursday morning, and had a 14 and a half hours of flight. It was pretty long, but at least it did leave on time, which was good. We had way too much luggage, but my dad helped us and we were able to get everything to the aiport with little problem. When we settled in the plane, it was a packed flight so there was a guy sitting next to us. I think he was going to Vietnam. There was the little screen in front of our seats but Aaron's was broken so he couldn't use his, and used mine sometimes. There was a few dinky games on it like minigolf and yatze. I watched a few TV shows on my screen, such as a cruise show with Samantha Brown, a show about San Francisco, "faking it" show, and some other shows. I also watched a movie, Boy in the Striped Pajamas, which was about the innocence of children. It is how a son of the commander of a concentration camp makes friends with a jewish prisoner boy. It was pretty sad at the end, without giving away too much, but I felt like it didn't really conclude much. The food was pretty dinky in size, so we were pretty hungry most of the flight.

 

We finally landed on Friday, around 3pm, Korean time. Going through immigration was relatively easy, just had to fill a bunch of forms and go through a few people, but in the end we got our bags (although one of mine took forever to get out) and met our ride, a taxi driver, outside. The ride took about 2 hours, but when we got there, we kept no getting lost, because apparently our apartment is pretty hard to find. But eventually we found it when it was almost dark, and lugged our luggage into the room.

 

 

 

FRIDAY NIGHT

 

The apartment is actually pretty decently sized, other than the small kitchen and bathroom. The living room was relatively spacious, as is the bedroom. The only problem is the lack of furniture or drawers or closets or anywhere to actually put stuff in. So we met some teachers from our school at the apartment, and they took us out to a restaurant for dinner. It was okay food - some jajangmyeon, some chicken dish, and some shrimp dish. We were pretty tired though, so right after we went to our apartment and slept. It was pretty cold when it got dark.

 

 

SATURDAY

 

On Saturday we woke up at like 4:30 because our bodies weren't used to the time shift yet. Today we went out with Aaron's coteacher for some groceries and visiting his school. His school is an all girls' middle school, and his English classroom was brand spankin new. We walked around a little bit and then we went grocery shopping in downtown Anseong. An Korean supermarket is interesting - it's very crowded and of course everything is in Korean so it was hard to find stuff. Also, rice is expensive (but yummy). So is fruit. We did buy some noodles, rice, and some random things like cereal and milk to eat for a little bit. We also went to an Korean restaurant for lunch, which we had bulgogi soup. It was very tender and delicious. We sat on the floor to eat, and there was lots of yummy side dishes as well. After that, she drove us back to our apartment and we rested the rest of the day. It was interesting because it shows subtitled English movies on the TV so we watched some movies, such as Juno, Harry Potter movies, Terminator, Xmen 3, etc. We also figured out the shower and explored the area a little bit.

 

SUNDAY

 

On Sunday we got up around 6-7ish. Not as early at 4:30, that's for sure! Today this morning we didn't do too much, just explored our tiny little town of Samjuk, which was pretty much one street. Then we went to the local grocery, which was pretty small and a lot of things didn't even have prices printed on it, so there was lots of mystery costs. We did find pasta, so we bought some of that, as well as some soymilk and some snacks and random things. The food here are pretty good, though expensive. Later in the day we went out with two teachers from my school back to downtown Anseong. One is a new teacher who is going to be my co teacher, and one was the coteacher from last year. We also met up with the native teacher at my school from last year, Courtney, and her friend as well. We went to a coffeehouse with some drinks and cake, and then we all went out to eat galbi along with some of Courtney's western friends. It was the first time we've met up with other expats, so it was pretty cool. I think there were in total, other than Aaron and I, about five other expats. The food was good as well, and good conversation. It's nice to speak fluently, not with broken English, for once.

 

 

MONDAY

 

So it's Monday today and here I am in my classroom. This morning we woke up and I walked to the bus stop around 8:20. The bus stop seems far but it's actually not bad, about a 5 min walk or so. I went with my coteacher to the school, which was in a green building. The school isn't too big, about two stories, but there are two buildings that are connected by a side. This morning we got into my classroom and I just explored the room a little bit. There are about 36 chairs in my room, not too huge. There are also a ton of books and materials, games and signs and things like that. It is pretty interesting. Our textbook seems pretty simple, we also have cds of video sample conversation that goes along with the textbook. Each grade has its own textbook. After that we went to th gym, where there was some sort of opening ceremony for the school, where I saw all the kids and had to stand with the teachers. There was a point where I had to go on stage with my coteacher and some other teachers and stand there and be introduced, and I saw a million little faces staring at me. It was a little nervewrecking, especially since I didn't understand most of the whole ceremony. After that, we went to the teachers room, where we were introduced to the teachers, and I had to stand up there and say something, so I said something like "I hope I can teach English well here" or something. After that, all the schools' employees went out for lunch - we went to a local restaurant and got kimchi jigae, which is kimchi stew. It was hot but actually pretty good. After lunch coteacher and I went to the principal's office where he talked to us. Or rather, he talked to her in Korean and she translated some of it. And so I had to sit there and smile when I don't understand a word he's talking about. Which was most of today, of which people would talk and I would be like sitting there smiling like a weirdo, lol. And thus, that was my day, thus far.

 

 

I will be sure to upload some pictures of our apartment, my classroom, and other general Korea scenes soon.

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