Observations

In Korea making a good first impression is very important. Your appearance is a big part of how you are perceived by the people around you. Liz had told us that the dress code was casual but we still wanted to look good on our first day.

After spending too much time figuring out what to wear we both settled on business casual. Collared shirts and nice bottoms, Sean wore slacks and I wore a business skirt that was secretly shorts =]

The day was hot as usual and apparently central air is not something any of the buildings have including our school. We walked to work with Liz about ten minutes before we needed to be at school. I was of course anxious that we were running late even though she informed me numerous times that it would take less than ten minutes to get there. And what do you know? She was right.

The name of my school is the Oedae English Language School. It is located on the second and third floor of a large building relatively close to our apartment building. It is not the most appealing looking school but I barely noticed as we came up the stairs and into the main room.

The floor is a shiny tile and there is a large counter directly in front of you as you come up the stairs. Behind that counter sits a woman named Mrs. Park (a sister in law of our boss’s family). The kids refer to her as “Counter Teacher”. Not that I knew it at the time but she is who you are suppose to threaten the children with if they misbehave. We met her and although she does not speak English very well, she was very kind and exuded a put together and in control woman.

Next we walked back and saw Liz’s classroom. This is when we realized that we would be getting our very own classrooms! We would not have to share with anybody. Liz’s classroom is across the hall from where our boss, Mr. Kim, teaches, and from where we found out Sean would be teaching. My classroom is located down a different hallway on the other side of our small academy. At first I think I was disappointed to not be near the other English speaking teachers. It did not take me long to realize that it would not matter in the slightest where I was to be teaching.

Again the air conditioning in this building comes from units not from central air. There is a big unit in the main room and a little unit in each of the rooms. It did not take either of us long to realize that the A/C was absolutely useless. Liz had secured a fan for herself in her classroom and it was a good thing she did or else it would have been gross! As she was showing us her room and books our boss, Mr. Kim, came in and we met face to face for the first time.

 Little A/C

He is a skinny man with a wide smile. He does a lot of nodding and speaks English decently. Unfortunately he had bad news to tell us right off of the bat. We had been warned previously that Koreans do not like confrontation or giving bad news. They tend to mumble and look at their feet, maybe not say anything and sheepishly offer a weak smile. This is exactly what he did.

Something I failed to mention in my earlier blogs was that Sean and I were suppose to have a big apartment for two people to share. It is one of the many reasons we took this job. Unfortunately the night before we were to go over to Korea we were called and told that this would not be the case. The housing arrangement had fallen through and it would take some time to find a new apartment. This was at first devastating. I was already so anxious about leaving home and not knowing what to expect that upon hearing this I did do a bit of falling apart.

Anyways I got myself together and came over to Korea only to find that the situation would not be remedied. In fact they had only had one plan and when that went out the window they did not have another. This is what we were told by our boss the first time we met him. Needless to say I wasn’t his biggest fan.

We would be observing Liz’s classes today an throughout the course of the afternoon and evening, I managed to come to my senses and willed myself to make the best of things. Sean and I would be able to share the bigger of the two single apartments we would be living in and use the other to store things or for whatever. I configured a way in my head to set up the apartment that would make us both happy and in general felt better about the whole situation.

Now besides getting told the bad news our boss personally showed us each to our rooms and showed us our textbooks we would be using for each of our classes. There were a lot! Thankfully my predecessor had done me a huge favor of writing out notes about each class and leaving them in each of the sets of books. She also wrote down exactly what pages each class was on and how many pages to do a day.

At the time I did not realize that this would be the only guidance I really received about where I was in the books and how much was “normal” to cover in each class. Mr. Kim pointed and waved a bit when I asked about how fast each class should be moving. He said “The kids would know.” Great. I am going to ask a bunch of punk 8 year olds what page they were on and they are going to tell me the truth? Sure…

The day is split up into 50-minute periods between 3:00pm to 9:50pm with a ten minute gap for everyone at 4:40pm to 4:50pm. The strange thing is that the classes begin and end at the same time. So my first class goes until 3:50 and the second one starts at 3:50. This was going to be different.

We learned that we need to be at school at 2:30pm to set up for the day. We are suppose to turn on all the lights, the A/C, and our fans (yes, thank goodness, we do have fans!). We also need to find a broom and dustpan and sweep everything up off of the floor from our classes beforehand.

  <--- The fan that is suppose to save you

Again I will stop my story to include a tidbit of information I find highly intriguing. In all of Korea I do not believe there to be one full sized broom. I sincerely mean it. We have been to a number of stores and have not seen one yet. They have brooms… Just with half a handle on them, never a full handle. This is exactly why older women are hunched and humpback. They do not have carpets or rugs; they prefer tile or hardwood. Because of this they must sweep everyday or every other day. They don’t like long handled broomsticks so they must hunch and everyone develops some sort of back problem. -___- That’s just not going to work out for me.

Getting back to the day, we sat in the back of Liz’s class once the day began and watched how things were done. It appeared that most of the classes used a set of four different colored books. Two of the books required you to use a C.D. and play audio clips off of the computer. The other two books the students generally could complete on their own, maybe you had them read certain things aloud but it was self-explanatory.

I found myself lost in thought quickly about the similarities between this teaching setup and the FCAT. The students were trained to go from book to book and repeat upon command. Freethinking was restricted and the teacher’s ability to vary the lesson seemed limited. It was both a relief and a let down. It appeared we really couldn’t mess things up but it looked like it was going to get boring fast.

Our “lunch” break was at 7:20pm but Liz did not have class for whatever reasons the block right before it. We went to the break room and Liz showed us where we could eat dinner if we would like. The room was relatively plain but thankfully cool after sitting in the back of Liz’s classroom for a couple hours. There was a small pot on a heater sitting on the floor and a rice cooker on a little table up against a wall.

Watching the pot on the floor, with the lid propped open by the ladle inside, I couldn’t help but wonder if they have bug problems in Korea or just ignore them. I have yet to see a roach but that does not mean they do not exist here. (There are most definitely mosquitos and gnats; I can confirm that from firsthand experience.)

There was a little basket of bowls and a little box with chopsticks and spoons. The chopsticks are flat and the spoons have ridiculously long handles used for sharing. Nonetheless they are useable, just foreign. (Or rather I am the foreign one) The soup that night was very similar to the soup we had the night before and it was enjoyable. In the fridge there was also Tupperware containers with little side dishes for everyone to eat. I did not care for the choice of sides that night and so skipped them.

After we had dinner we had plenty of time to kill and so we left the school to adventure to a nearby coffee shop. I learned a new word for the day, “Hong Cha”. This means Black Tea. I had a Hong Cha Latte, which was phenomenal. It was a sugary frothy black tea latte that really hit the spot. It was a little pricey so I won’t be having it often but it was good.

We returned to the school and finished up our observing with Liz’s last classes of the day. Before we left for the night, Mrs. Park had scheduled a 10:30pm appointment to have our internet fixed that night which was a relief. It was not so much not having internet but not having another way to communicate with home.

On the way home we stopped by a little office supply store where I bought some colored paper and markers. I was very excited for the next day and to begin teaching! As a final note I would like to share how good of a sport Sean was about moving the furniture around for three hours after work. I wanted to move everything around so that we could begin to unpack and settle in properly instead of feeling like we were living in someone else’s room. We moved couches and beds, bookshelves and chairs. We were shifting things down the hallway to the other apartment if we didn’t want them. But it worked out perfectly after a bit of effort.

Pictures of the final layout will be up once we have managed to clean the room =D