One Month Deep

Today marks one month in Korea for myself.  How the time flies!  When I stop and think, it all seems like a blur.  I love it here, but I really do miss home.  Every once in a while, I catch myself whistling "God Bless America" at work... usually while I'm daydreaming about sweet sugar-frosted honey-coated deep-fat-fried cheese sticks... oh my sweet, sweet America... how I miss thee...

Ok, seriously though, there are many things I miss about Minnesota.  Most of which is my fiancee, family and my motorcycle.  The other big ones are:

Communicating with sales people in English.
Cheese.
Reading street signs.
Definitely cheese.
Good beer.
Good coffee.
The ability to buy clothes.
Open spaces.
Driving.
Cheese.
and many more things I can't think of right now...

I do miss cheese though.  Its not that I can't get it here, its just that it's really expensive and none of the Korean dishes have any cheese in them.  Its just one of those things I think longingly of...  I'll live.

The coffee here is straight rubbish.  You can get a nice watered down coffee at Starbucks for $5 if you must.  Other than that, "coffee" here is mostly instant packages of sugar and cream with a hint of coffee flavor.  Not a fan. Again, I'll live.

Beer.  Just like coffee and cheese... you can get it, but it ain't cheap!  The most popular Korean brands, Hite and Cass, taste like your typical crappy beer in the States.

Clothes for Bradley?  Nope.  Not a chance.  Most times when I'm just mildly browsing through a selection of textile goods, someone will approach me and say something to the effect of: "you size no."



The best part about my time here has been the new relationships that I've made.  There are four other teachers at the school with me, and it's been a blast to get to know them over the course of the past month.  I've finally started to figure out some of the things that I want to do while I'm here as well.  I plan to join an ultimate frisbee team, take a cooking class, take up amateur origami, and learn rock climbing.

During the week days, it really doesn't feel like I'm on a different continent.  I spend so much time at the school, and my neighborhood has become so familiar to me that it doesn't feel foreign.  The school is great, but just like any job, it has its problems.  Thats another thing I've realized... there is no perfect job.  There's always going to be things I don't necessarily like, or things that I would change, but really the only thing I can do is change my attitude.

The first week of teaching was really stressful because kids are loud and messy and just rowdy in general.  Most of these kids get to school at 9 and dont leave until 5, when they go to some other place where they learn to play violin, or tae kwon do, or go to soccer school, or a number of other things I can only imagine...  These are kindergarteners, mind you.  We don't really have any time at school for them to just be kids.  Unfortunately, a lot of what I do is help them get through workbooks, because thats measurable progress for the parents.  If they get through a book, they must have learned something, right?  That's not always the case, and I wish I could spend more time just speaking English with them, but no such luck.

My kiddos

So, the first week, I spent so much energy trying to turn them into these perfect little angels and then I realized that its going to be a lot easier if I just let them be kids.  Once I started to think like a kid, it made being around kids all day less draining.

After spending 2 weeks with these kids, its getting a lot easier to teach them.  My class for this year was put together from two different classes last year, so the kids are used to different teachers and different classmates.  Its hard to explain why this makes it difficult, so I'll just give you examples.  Half of my kids had an Australian teacher, so they only know garbage as "rubbish".   Another example: in the first week, I would ask the kids, "Are you done?" and they would just ignore me... it took a few days to realize that they didn't know what "done" was because their past teacher had always asked them "are you finished?".  Its simple things like that which make it a tough transition for both me and the kids.

The kids themselves are actually great, but their greatness is tainted when you need them to work and all they want to do is speak in Korean and play with toy dinosaurs.  They are each at very different levels, so keeping them all together is difficult.  One of them can't get over saying "me like ____",  while another student is able to articulate everything he did over the weekend in near perfect grammar.

Rocket Salad

Tom!

Eileen

All in all, I love my job.  Its getting easier and more fruitful by the day.  My mantra has been patience over this first month, and I'm finally hitting my stride.  Life is good.  I hope the same is true for you.

I'll leave you with one of my favorites from Korea... drinks in a bag!  

...to white russians!

Anything from apple juice...