Hi Korea, I'm Here!

I've been so busy since my last post! To start off, here are two pictures from the front door of my apartment. Today, 6th grade has midterms and I happen to only have 6 graders on Thursday so I'm finally free to post up pictures/write up entries.

One day my coteacher comes to me and says "So you said you have no friends here? There's a foreign teacher at the Guri middle school next to us." This got me excited b/c it was still only maybe the 2nd or 3rd week I was here and without internet and without any other fluent English speakers besides my coteacher, I pretty much had no one to speak in English to. I could already feel my English deteriorating like it did in Taiwan XD Anthea came over to my office after the work day ended and we talked :D I had originally thought it would be a teacher that has been here for a while but it turned out she was slightly newer than me haha. That was just as fun though b/c then we could go exploring together! My English is still deteriorating from having to use super short/easy sentences and speaking slow, but at least it's slowing down XD

Teaching has been going pretty good. I'm slowing finding ways to make my students speak and to keep up their interest in English. I dislike the book/curriculum provided so I only loosely follow it. One of my coteachers doesn't like the CD at all while the other one does every part of the CD. I'm trying to slowly do half/half so both are satisfied and I can still do whatever else I plan for the students.

I've been using a whiteboard game to supplement the "Let's Write" section and the "Let's read" or whatever. It forces them to write/read as fast as possible and forces them to help each other in their groups. If one person makes a mistake in their group before putting up all their boards and yelling finished, their group gets disqualified for that round. The first group with all boards up and correct gets a point. I've started giving the first 2 groups that get their boards up so that I can end up giving each group at least one point. The kids don't pay attention to other groups enough to know who was 2nd, so it encourages groups that otherwise wouldn't participate as much when they notice that, oh they have a point too and they could possibly win :D

We had an open class yesterday. We were kind of hoping not too many people would come so it wouldn't be so nerve racking (for my coteacher.. I'm new so they don't expect anything from me yet :p) but a ton of people came. The whole back of the classroom was super filled and the hallway was filled too with teachers looking in through the windows. It made the classroom really hot but the students for the class were awesome. My coteacher picked her favorite class but it was still iffy on whether they'd volunteer or not with so many people watching. Luckily they all responded loudly and did everything like incredibly well behaved children. Two groups ended up tying in a couple of short quick games we played so they received candy, but at the very end, my coteacher asked me to give candy to the rest of the students too since they were so good :D

The meeting was pretty long and completely in Korean (besides when I had to speak) so I don't really know what the other teachers thought. I'm planning on emailing them all and asking for feedback in English.

Besides that stuff and watching the kids while the play soccer after lunch, I'm pretty much just busy with making lesson plans. I finally received my ID card in the mail on Tuesday though. My coteacher and I will be going to the bank to open up an account at the end of the day. Hopefully.. HOPEFULLY I'll have internet and a cellphone soon!!I'll continue writing about life outside of school in my next post.

edit: Just wanted to comment on the playground. They usually have like 2 soccer games going on at once (but only 2 goals on the playground..) and then all the other students are running around on the playground as well at the same time. It's pretty interesting watching little kids run across the field fearlessly as balls are being kicked everywhere. I'd be too afraid to play on the playground :x