Teacher-ific

I have one day left in this work week and so far I am loving teaching. It's such a challenging and ever changing job. Everyone I work with loves to offer up advise and are great with helping me and god knows I need it! :)


SO here's my schedule:
3:30pm Magic Time (8 year-olds) They know no English so we're starting from the ground up!

4:30 pm English Time (11 year-olds) They are awesome! They have a great foundation to work with and take learning English as fun and exciting! They constantly surprise me with what they already know!

5:30 World Link 2A (adults) These people are pre-intermediate. They have a great base, but need to work on a lot of pronunciation skills and vocabulary, tenses ect.

6:30 World Link Intro A (adults) I only have 5 people in this class so you would think it would be easier... but they have very little English skills and it's rough for me.

7:40 - 9:40pm Free Talking @ the dorms - These are college kids (most of them older than me) It's at the dorms so it's a little more relaxed but they are super advanced. What I am working on with them is speeding everything up and working on pronunciation and expanding vocabulary. Lucky me... I get to edit there papers once a week also :)ha!

So even though I start at 3:30pm, it's still a pretty crazy full day! Not to mention I usually go in about an hour or so early to do a little bit of prep work. And editing those essays...oh man.

My two favorite classes are Free Talking and English Time! Free Talking because they are easy for me to communicate with and I like being able to teach them, not to mention there are cute boys in the class who have offered to teach me Korean ;)

Since I forgot to pack my Chi hair straightener, I was forced to buy a pretty nice, but inexpensive hair straightener here. The straightener just isn't like the Chi, so I wear my hair curly then straight and back and forth and then I put it in a bun or pony tail. So one day I walk into my English Time class and say Hello! to which all my kids say Hello! and then Kayla, this cute girl with a raspy voice says, "Erica! Your hair is very random!" ... Thank Kayla... got it.

I didn't think that a sudden change in hairstyle was that big of a deal but then I realize... it's a pretty big deal! On Monday, I wore my hair straight to class and on Tuesday I wore it curly. When I walked into my Free Talking class, all of my students went "OooooOOOh!" and a couple of claps (funny boys). One of the girls asked me how much it cost to perm my hair... I said, oh no... this is just what it's like! Rough times for my hair!

I have been exploring more and more food here in addition to everything else that's new. Tonight I had Sushi, which is not new to me but the octopus was! MMM! It was a piece of octopus tentacle on top of a rice ball with a little wasabi and I actually liked it! I have had Korean food, Chinese food, Italian food and of course McDonald's. I was just feeling it yesterday... I don't know what the deal was. They have bulgogi burgers here though... so no worries, it's still Korean through and through!

I miss being able to go get food alone. I can't go to a restaurant here alone because I can't read the menu and even if I knew what I wanted and that they had it, chances are I wouldn't remember well enough to ask for it and then I wouldn't know how much to pay and then the lack communication would just make us all angry! But I do a little grocery shopping for when I can't find a lunch or dinner date.

Today I had my physical and the hospital here was really, really efficient. We saw the nurse, got all the usuals out of the way, went down the hall, had our blood drawn and urine samples taken and then went upstairs and got our MRI's. It was amazingly fast. Getting all of that done in one day back at the states would have been at the very minimum a 3-4 hour ordeal. We just walked to the correct counter with all the paper work and they took us back! No big deal! It was however, my first encounter with a squat toilet! And of all time when I'm trying to give a urine sample... STUPID!

Just in case you were wondering who the "we" is in my previous paragraph, We = me and Robert. Robert has taught in South Korea before so this is his second venture. He graduated from Duke with an Accounting degree. He's super bright and talented and is the only one who forces me to practice my Korean!

Time for a few things I find odd and different:
- The girls all brush their teeth at school on breaks
- All the girls dress super duper cute all the times, leggins are a hit here!
- Everything and I mean EVERYTHING is fish flavored.
- People will break their necks staring at you because you are foreign
- Seafood restaurants keep the fish in tanks in front of the restaurant...I guess that's supposed to be appealing?

Anyway, I hope you all are well. Let me know if you have any questions or topic you think would be interesting!