Technical Difficulties

My first day of school was not as action packed as I'd hoped, but fun nonetheless. My Avolon contact was nice enough to take a taxi with me to the school so I did not have to navigate the Metro by myself the first day (whew). She dropped me off with the secretary whom, from what I gathered didn't speak much english. This meant that when I met the director of the school I had no clue who it was I was meeting until it was too late. We sat down, he asked me about my flight, we talked about how cold it was and then we sat in awkward silence. Awesome. He thanked me for coming and I went to join the others in the teacher room. The Korean teachers were all very polite but did not talk to me much.

Once the group of foreign teachers arrived they swarmed on me and whisked me away to a seperate room to 'give me the scoop.'

There is five of us total. Ley is half Korean, half American and I was thrilled to discover that she hails from Philly. So naturally I brought up the Flyers and may have convinced her I actually knew what I was talking about. Maybe. Then I met Aaron who showed up in a sports jersey and a Canadian accent. Joel is crazy tall and frequently is pretty hilarious. Dom is from England and the kids love emulating his accent. They were all very frank about what it's like to work here and very giving with their advice which I really appreciated. It was a relief to be able to get some answers for the first time in days.

Because Ley didn't have to teach for a while and I didn't have to observe, she took me to a local place to eat that is really cheap that is literally right next door. We talked about living in Busan and working at the school. It was nice to be around someone else after being alone for a couple of days. When we returned to the office and the first thing I noticed was how so many of the middle school students wanted to be around the teachers. They would wander in and out in small groups and talk to the teachers in Korean and laugh. From what I remember of middle school, in between classes, unless you had to, you weren't talking to teachers.

During the observations it was clear that teaching here was going to be a challenge, not because the children are unruly, but most of the time they are flat-out exhausted. In Korea, the pressure to do well in school is so high that students attend almost 12 hours of school and then go home and study even more. For the most part, they spend their weekends studying. Ley told me about one of the girls who gets roughly four hours of sleep each night because she studies so much. She's thirteen. For the handful of students that do have energy, keeping them on task is a herculean endeavor. Many parents work very late and students do not get much interaction with them. Because of this, the adult validation and interaction falls heavily on the teachers.

From what I have observed, the best strategy is to laugh and have fun with the kids and entertain them. The classes where the teacher was animated, talked back and forth with the kids were the most entertaining and the most was accomplished. The style of learning is very different here too. No one raises hands or takes turns. Students call out and often interrupt the teacher. Not in a rude way, they are just eager sometimes to talk.

After passing out almost right away last night, I woke up at 4 am again (arrrggghhhh) and watched K-Pop groups on tv for about an hour before I decided to go find food. I tried some new food selections today including this triangular-shaped hunk of rice with spicy tuna in the middle that was wrapped in seaweed. Amazing. I took my breakfast down to the beach and enjoyed the sound of the waves and the peacefulness as the sun rose. I now know why they call Korea The Land of the Morning Calm. :)

The Metro wasn't half as scary and confusing as I thought it was going to be. The ticket kiosk is in English and the signs are not in Hangul. I am now at work an hour early because I overestimated my ability to get myself hopelessly lost. Maybe I'm not as directionally challenged as I had thought.

Lots of Love,
XoXo

P.S- The computer in my room has decided it serves a better function as a large, expensive paperweight. Trying to figure out why it's having this existential crisis, but everything is in Korean soo...

Seriously, you could eat off that floor