Boryeong Mud Fest July 12 and 13, 2008

This weekend Korea has a huge festival on the beach with mud. We booked the trip through Adventure Korea which is a travel club for foreigners. At 8am we got on a bus to start on a 3 hour trip to the beach. It was raining hard in Seoul but once we arrived at the beach it was beautiful. The bus dropped us off at our Korean hostel which had no beds but blankets and pillows. We actually were not expecting the pillows so that was a good surprise. We changed right away and went down to get muddy right away. The festival had mud massages, mud games. We took our cameras with us for a little bit to get a few pictures then we took them back to the hostel so we wouldn't ruin them. It was great hanging out in the mud because I didn't have to worry about getting sunburned. In the evening there was concerts and a huge fireworks display out in the ocean. It was beautiful. This one was on the best weekends in Korea yet. Here is a link to the pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/gregory.kindel

Today I had to say good bye to one of my very good friends, Oliver. He is leaving to go back to school in NYC majoring in Toy Design. I have had so much practice saying goodbye to people that I would think it would get much easier but doesn't. I wish him the best of luck.

End of the semster

Ok, I guess I will write in this from time to time.

Today was the end of my first semester teaching. It was a great three months. I got so attached to these kids. I am sad I won't be teaching them next week. Here are a couple of pictures I took the last day of class. The last picture was a class that I only taught one time a week. I hated those kids in the beginning. The class was much bigger in the beginning. They were very hard to control. For some reason the girls went to other classes about a month into the semester leaving just those five boys. As the semester progressed I learned better ways of controlling my classes. My worst class became my best class and the most fun class.

Looking forward to the new semester starting on monday. I will have a wider range of classes from the very basic to more advanced. I can't wait to have a wider range of students. In one of the classes this semester we will be reading The Jungle Book so I can't wait for that.


from left to right: Angela, Jenny, Kelly, Me, Won seok, Eric, Ryan, Emily


This was one of my favorite classes. They were very talkative and responded well to my questions. Sometimes they even debated on what an answer was before I told them the correct answer. Top row: Shana, Me, Dami. Bottom row: Christine, Ryan, Chris, Ruby, John.


Top (left to right): Me, Ronaldo, Johnny, Scott. Bottom: Jason, Chris
The bottom two guys are very serious when it comes to their school work. Always finishing homework in class. The other three love to goof off then cheat off of Jason and Chris. Of course I wouldn't let them, haha. I finally let them play hangman the last day of class.

Here is a video from the class in the last picture. At first I didn't know Ronaldo was taking a video. In the video you here a boy and me say "kimchi." Kimchi is what they say in Korea just before a picture is taken like the way we say "cheese" in the USA. Kimchi is a traditional Korean fermented dish made of cabage with spicy seasonings eaten at most meals. As the video stops I ask "what are you doing?" I was referring to why he had his finger in front of the lens. Why that was so funny to the kids I am not sure. Maybe they were laughing because they were playing with my head. I don't know but I love the kid's reactions as the video stops.

I had 6 other classes besides these 3 but I didn't get pictures of them. I had a lot of fun teaching my kids this semester. A few I will teach again next semester but most I will not. I will miss all of them and hopefully I made some sort of difference in their lives.

Happy

Everyday I wake up and I still can't believe I am working and living in South Korea. I love it here. I am having the time of my life. I even like my kids. I had one kid today make me pinky swear that I will move up to teach the next highest class next semester so I can be his teacher again. It was so cute. My boss says they will try to keep us with the same kids. I maybe I will be able to teach him again. The new semester starts the first week of June. Each semester lasts for three months. I have discovered that I love reading for fun, haha. Right now I am reading The Kite Runner.

I don't like writing in this so currently I am switching to a different web sight that is easier to upload pictures and videos. I will write more descriptive captions instead of keeping this blog.

Real life is setting in

It is weird only having one day a week (Saturday) to hang out with my friends, well here is would be 'friend'. For those who don't know my college buddy Josh is also working here but in a different school. I love having my monday through friday job but I feel like I am lacking a little bit socially. That is ok though, Facebook keeps that in check for now, haha.

I got paid finally!! As soon as my paper work is finalize I will go out and get a cell phone and transfer money back home. I can't wait to start paying off my student loans. No my paper work is still not finalized. Koreans are not organized at all. I hate it. But I still love my job and everything here.

Saturday we are all going to go to a baseball game and then pizza hut to celebrate a coworkers birthday.

It is friday evening, I am tired and I am just sitting here at my desk at work waiting for work to be done.

Speeches

Today the kids had to do speeches in class. I alway hated that as a student. I am finally on the good side of this, haha. The younger kids were very nervous and I had to talk to them a lot to get them to do it. All they had to do was memorize a part of their reading unit which I know is hard for them. The older kids had to do an outline of their units. They were also more at ease in front of the class.

We went to the mountains on Sunday. It was a company outing so they paid for everything. We even got to ride in the school's buses. http://picasaweb.google.com/gregory.kindel Here is a link to the pictures with captions.

this week

This week was a lot of fun. It is the fourth week of teaching and review week. The school left it up to each individual teach to decide on how to review. Some teachers gave open book tests, some just talked with the students and some like me played a game. I came up with a Jeopardy game. The kids loved it. It was fun to actually let loose with them and have some fun. It is weird how picky the parents are though. The school received some phone calls from the parents asking why there was no homework. The parents like to see the kids getting lots of homework so they know they are getting their moneys worth out of the school. Here is a video of one of my classes doing some class work. My first pay day is in less than 2 weeks now on April 10. I can't wait!

Amazing weekend.

Work is fun. We are still working out details to make the school more organized. We are going to come up with a plan to make the kids more ambitious. Some kids just don't want to do their work and we have had 50 drop outs. Avalon is a program with assigns a lot of work on top of what the kids already have. Most students are doing ok with it but come to school very tired it seems. I had one student fall asleep in class!

Anyways, I met up with my college Josh again this weekend for St. Patrick's day. It was a beautiful day. We went to this outside Celtic concert. After the Celtic band a Korean 80s American music band played. It was amazing. They had to call in security to control the crowd when they started playing. After that we found some Irish Pubs and just had fun the whole night. It was amazing.

As of Friday I had worked ever since I stepped off the plane 9 days in a row. This was my first weekend to really enjoy Seoul. All the teachers went out after work friday. It was fun to finally see and get to know everyone casually. Saturday I met up with my college friend who teaches about an hour south of Seoul. It was fun to see him again. Sunday I went out exploring Seoul by myself and found this huge shopping mall. I have never seen a mall so busy and everyone was spending. The malls in Lansing during the holidays are not even this busy. I also started looking at colleges to take a Korean class. Hopefully I can enroll for a class this summer. I just can't seem to stay out of the class room but I must say it is very weird being on the other side of the class room assigning homework and not getting it. I'm loving every second of this job.

First day of classes

Our normal work hours are 3 to 10pm. After working all weekend I decided I needed to go in by 10:30am to make sure everything is done by my first class at 4:20pm. It was a good thing I did. By the time the rest of the teachers arrived by 12:30 it was pandemonium! Getting tests prepared, clearing up any confusion, still training newly arrived teachers......and I loved every second of it!

The kids I teach are amazing. I was surprised at how well they spoke english. One student, who is 10ish years old, told me the books we are using are for kids. The statement took me back! There is to go a lot of pressure on these kids to grow up. The grades they get in their junior high school are the grades that decide their whole life. The grades decide what high school they go to, what college they go to and ultimately what job and pay scale they receive. They go to school 12 hours a day. First their public school and then they come to the english school where I teach. Many of them are really tired. I feel bad for them. It is funny though that kids are kids. Korean kids are not any different than american kids. I have the class clown, the know-it-all, the goof off, the nerds, the cool kids. Though I think they seem to be better behaved then in America but maybe because it was just the first day.

Tomorrow is a different set of classes. Each class meets everyother day so I will go in early again. Maybe not till noon though now that I have a grasp on everything.

I have never been able to say that I love my job. Here I love my job, my coworkers, my life. Everyone is very respectful and honest. The law on alcohol are relaxed. After work we all will walk home with a beer in hand and it is perfectly legal.

First day

As you all probably know it was the biggest head ache getting over here. Now that I am here I am pretty sure this will be the best experience of my life!

My plane flew in at 6am thursday morning from LA. The guy picking me up, another teacher and I went to breakfast. In Korea I have found out that all food is the same. Koreans do not have separate menus for breakfast, lunch and dinner. For breakfast we had this soup thing and kimbap which is this sushi looking thing. It wasn't too bad. There was 3 of us eating but there was enough food for 6. It only cost 16 US dollars total.

After "breakfast" we were taken to our apartment building. I live in a very nice area. I have been told it is a very well off area of Seoul. My studio apartment is 27 square feet and rents for 500 US dollars! I do not pay this because it is included above my salary. It has a full refrigerator, two burners, a kitchen sink, a washing machine, a twin bed and a tv. The bathroom is compact with the shower on the wall next to the toilet. I basically shower in front of the sink with the drain below the sink.

The school I work for charges 700 to 800 US dollars a month to send one child to. The school is called Avalon and is a new branch of the school opening up in this neighborhood. I am one of the first teachers to be teaching at this school. This school is so prestigious that the top three universities look for this school on the student's application. We were trained a little bit today on how to teach the students. I will be teaching 8 to 10 year olds. The classes are very structured with the daily syllabus telling me what I should be doing almost down to the minute. Each student with have their own book with me having the teacher's edition. There are a lot more details which i'm not going into now. We also randomly met the owner of the school today. We were headed out for lunch when she was walking in. She is very nice and laid back. She gave our head teacher Tim her credit card to pay for our lunch. She even had Tim practice signing her name! I have not slept in a bed since monday night so I am headed there now.