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.