Friday was a very hectic day. It started with me packing up all of my things from my temporary apartment early in the morning, and lugging them down the three stories to the road. Once I flagged down a taxi I attempted to tell him where to take me- Hang Gang Bill, Soobi. It seemed simple enough and Emma had written it down for me, assuring me that if I just repeated this to the taxi driver they would get me there. Not so much. After a half hour of driving in circles, and trying to communicate to the driver using my English to Korean phrasebook once again, I gave up and had him drop me off at my school, Kids Club, which he recognized the name of. I had to bring my extensive luggage collection to school with me, and then use what little time I had left before class started to quickly try to prepare for my first day of teaching.
This proved to be even harder and more exhausting than I could have imagined. The first half of my day was taken up by my kindergarteners. They are very bright and participate a lot in class, so it
easy to pass time. However this also means that while some are constantly shouting at the top of their lungs, others are silently staring off into the distance in the back, so it is hard to include all the students. However, I am continually impressed by how intelligent they are!
Much of the class times seems to be spent playing parent to the students, comforting the ones that are crying, making the ones who caused the crying apologize, comforting the students who are DEVASTED that they didn’t get to read the part they wanted in the book, etc. It is very interesting how big of a difference between American schools and this one there is for the amount of affection the teachers should show the students. In America it can be taboo to be too hands on with the children, and teachers must maintain a loving but professional roll. Here however it is encouraged to constantly be picking up the children, giving them hugs, telling them you love them, etc. I’m not sure if this is to show the children how much we care, or to create a bond that would cause the child to be devastated and protest immensely should their parent attempt to withdraw them the extremely expensive program…haha
The afternoon classes are the real struggle. The other English teachers told me to not even worry about preparing much since all I am doing is teaching out of the book. However I completely disagree! We will be told to use one thin book for a good 3 months or longer, so I have to be able to make two pages of material last 55 minutes- a very big struggle since many of these classes remain completely silent the entire time. It’s hard to read if the children have no idea what I am talking about, or they are just used to the typical Korean style of teaching which does not encourage much participation
from their end. I think it is some sort of mix of both.
After class my school gave me a bus to take all of my luggage to my apartment which was very helpful, and two of the foreign teachers in my school (both from South Africa, as was Emma and are the other two foreign teachers at Kids Club): Elisti, who lives next door to my apartment, and Sophia, who lives a few buildings away, came with me so there was no way to get lost this time. We lugged the baggage up four flights, only to realize that none of us had the key to my place! Emma either forgot to hand it off, or forgot to tell any of us where she placed it. We took my bags into Elisti’s apartment, I
quickly packed up a backpack for the weekend, and we hiked back to my school to see if they perhaps had my key- which they did not. Luckily I was already planning on leaving for the weekend and went directly to the bus station to go see Morgan in Jinju and Elisti was nice enough to keep my pile of bags in her apartment all weekend.
The bus trip to Jinju turned out to be quite the adventure. I made it there with only a little help from some pedestrians (I’ve found that the younger the person on the street you find to ask a question, the more likely it will be that they know enough English to communicate back). I had an hour to kill so went looking for food and after about 45 minutes of frantic searching was able to come up with some sort of odd crab sandwich. Finding edible food is still proving to be a little bit of a challenge. Morgan and I leaned the term “NO Ko-gi!” (no meat) this weekend, which seems to be a little help. I had been told that the bus ride was one hour, but once I boarded a Korean man who spoke English told me it was actually two. This was sort of a problem since neither Morgan or I have cell phones at this point and the plan was that she would be waiting an hour from my boarding time at the bus stop to meet me. It was complicated even further by the fact that there were TWO bus stops in jinju. Morgan was planning on assuming that I had gotten off at the wrong stop (since it is very hard to tell which is which not being able to understand the driver’s announcements) and going to the second stop if I was not there at
the arranged time. I was very anxious the entire trip but luckily when we pulled up Morgan was there still waiting; I have never been more grateful to see a friendly face!
Over the weekend I met many other foreign teachers as there are many living in Jinju. Morgan’s apartment is nice, and is in a great location, but she said when she moved in it was a MESS. Apparently the Koreans say it is good luck if your apartment is messy when you arrive; I think that
sounds like a good excuse for landlords to not have to clean them in advance.
Coming back to Geoje at the end of the weekend sort of felt like returning to Port Orchard
after a long and busy weekend in Seattle; a lot of fun but it is always nice to be back in the comfort of your home. Elisti now had the key to my room, so I was able to get all my bags unpacked. This place is actually very nice! It is bigger than my temporary apartment- only slightly, but hey, I’ll take any increase in size. It is also fairly new and has a great set of furniture which was put together by
Emma while she was living here. Also, since it was left to me by Emma, not a local, it was very clean when I moved in!
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| A real bed!! |
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| Kitchen |
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| Closet and Laundry Room |
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| A sink-shower this time |
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