We just finished our third week in Korea. I started teaching this week. I really love my kindergarten class - they are so cute and it's so much fun to teach them. We had cooking day on Thursday where we made canapes and Friday was Colour Day and my class was the purple class. We mostly just sang songs and made crafts all day. I taught my kids the Hokey Pokey and Hello, Goodbye and they are too adorable when they sing them. They can't really say 'hokey pokey' so they just call it 'Ali-Teacher Song'. Every day before they go home they say, 'We sing Ali-Teacher Song??'. So cute.
This week was a bit lousy though because I was really sick all week with a really bad cold and cough and I have a pretty terrible schedule right now. I work from about 9am to 8pm most days because I am waiting for another teacher, Jake, to leave so I can take over his kindergarten classes. Once he goes, I can get rid of some of my elementary classes and hopefully leave a lot earlier than 8. I definitely prefer kindergarten to elementary. The elementary classes are fine for the most part but their english is, surprisingly, way worse than my kindergarteners. Most of my classes are just teaching phonics so, in an hour, I will teach the letter 'J' or something so it can be really boring. And the kids are much older so they have way more attitude and are a lot harder to control. I have one class that are about 10 years old and it's 11 boys and 3 girls and they are horrible. Even my boss said in his 3 years here, he's never seen a worse class. They talk Korean non-stop, text on their cell phones, punch each other, never do their homework, bang things on their desk, yell, run around, yell at me in Korean, don't know any english... it's the worst. I hate having that class and am very hopeful they are one of the ones I get to get rid of when Jake leaves.
Other than that, this week has been good. I've been learning a lot about how everything works. I had to write report cards this week for students I only taught once, so that was interesting. I basically didn't know anyone I wrote report cards for. I really like the other foreign teachers and my boss is really nice and said I'm doing a good job so far, so I'm happy!
Jesse's week went well too. I think it's a mark of status for a public school to have a foreign english teacher so they like to show Jesse off to the parents. They make him come early so he can stand outside the gate to greet students as they come in and they gave him these little 'Good Job' cards to hand out to students who have a conversation in English with him. This basically resulted in him being totally swarmed by hundreds of kids wanting 'Good Job' cards.
This weekend we didn't really do much because I was still sick and exhausted. Last night, though, Jesse's co-teacher got him tickets for this performance at the Uijeongbu Arts Centre and we went but I don't think anyone else from his school showed up. It was pretty funny because it was all these random acts with varying skill levels performing. We saw 20 women with acoustic guitars perform Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da, little kids sing and dance to 'We Go Together' from Grease but translated into Korean, 6 old men sing 'Oh Happy Day' (not very well), and many more. It was pretty interesting and we found out Mamma Mia! is coming to the Arts Centre in June with Korean actors and I'm sure this promises to be interesting. We're definitely getting tickets.
Anyway, that's all for my first week of teaching! Miss you all!
Ali
Here is a video of the Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da performance. Might be the most boring rendition of the song I've ever heard but if you're interested, check it out.
Jess outside the Uijeongbu Arts Centre
