Birthdays and Blossoms

Hello everyone who's still reading this (likely only our parents),

I hope this blog post finds you all well! We're both doing great here. This week we had some interesting stuff happen.
Tuesday was my birthday and, I must say, it's the first time I've felt really homesick since I've been here but Jesse made it really nice for me. I worked until 8:30 that night but then Jesse took me out for dinner at our favourite restaurant here - VIPS - which is an American chain I'd never heard of but that has a buffet of pasta, pizza, caesar salad, fajitas, and a million more delicious things. Then he had bought me a bunch of clothes that I wanted and had them delivered here so it was a very nice birthday.
Speaking of birthdays, every 2 months at my school, they have a big birthday celebration for all the students that had birthdays in the past 2 months. It happened to be this Friday and was an interesting and hilarious experience. I had 4 students in my main class who had birthdays and they all came to school in their traditional Korean outfits (so cute). I took a video of my students at break time all running around like mad and some of them in their birthday costumes.

Julia, Cindy, Aaron, and Thomas in their traditional birthday costumes.


In this video, my kids are running around on their break and some of them are talking to me. Pretty cute.

The actual 'birthday party' seemed more like a glorified photo op for the parents than an actual party. All the kids who didn't have birthdays sat on the floor and then, one by one, the foreign teacher for each birthday student would take their hand and walk them down the aisle through all the kids while the students sang 'Happy Birthday' for every one of them. Once every student had been walked through and sung to, they sat on chairs behind this massive table spread with tons of delicious food: pizza, cake, cookies, doughnuts, kimbap (Korean sushi-ish thing), fruit, etc. Then, each one got to blow out a candle and have a picture taken. Then, each one held a wrapped gift and card and took several photos with their foreign teacher. And that was the whole birthday party. The food wasn't touched and no party was involved.
Speaking of photo ops, I found my school's website that has photos of all the foreign teachers, which you can check out if you want: http://eccybm.com/KGV7/homepage/pageview/pageview.asp?CateCode=INTRO20#

This weekend was pretty low key. Today we got up early and went in to Itaewon (the foreign district) and went to the Rocky Mountain Tavern (the Canadian bar) to watch the Phoenix-Detroit game. It was neat to watch the NHL game and eat nachos. For a while we forgot we were even in Korea because the bar was full of foreigners and all the wait staff spoke English.
After that, we went down to Yeouido Park to meet Jesse's friend from school (the guy who he had a drink with that night after he went to the noraebong - Lee Sung Ho) at the cherry blossom festival. We met him and he introduced us to a bunch of his friends. We sat on the lawn of the National Assembly Building (I assume this is something like our Parliament Hill) while they ate a picnic - we were too stuffed with nachos to eat. Two of Lee Sung Ho's friends were super nice. One lived in Calgary for a year going to school and snowboarding and one lived in London for a year and is now one of the people who puts Korean subtitles on all the English TV shows and movies here. We sat and chatted with them for a few hours and it was neat to finally be hanging out with Koreans here - we've been mostly hanging out with foreigners so far - and, finally, we had a bit of a nice day and it was beautiful in the sun.

Me on the lawn of the National Assembly Building.

We left them after awhile to check out the cherry blossom festival that was happening this weekend. Cherry blossoms are huge in Korea and they plant cherry blossom trees everywhere and they are absolutely beautiful when they bloom. The streets were packed with people taking pictures with the flowers and going for walks and the street was lined with trees. It was really nice.

Street lined with cherry blossoms

Cherry Blossom tree

Then we just came home and relaxed. And that brings us to now. So, not too much exciting news this week. My school's supposed to FINALLY get a new foreign teacher this week from England (if he can ever get here with all the flights being grounded there), which is good because we're losing two more teachers at the end of the month.

Anyway, that's it for this week. Miss you all!
Ali

First week teaching, etc.

Hi everyone!

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

Ali's first few days at school

Hey everyone!
I hope you’re all doing well. I don’t want to bore everyone with mundane life details but I know some people are interested in this kind of stuff – if it’s not you, please just skip to the pictures or whatever.
Anyway, this week I started in my school but just doing observation. It seems like it will be really fun. I’ve found out that I will be the main teacher for one kindergarten class called ‘Newton’ (each class at ECC – my school – has the name of a different famous person). Newton class has 8 kids – 5 boys and 3 girls. They are all 5 years old and are in their second year of studying English. In addition to that class, I’ll be the secondary teacher for two other classes, Einstein and Edison. Being the secondary teacher means you basically just focus on one thing, like phonics, for those kids for one class a day. I will also have a few elementary classes but likely not too many. Class starts at 9:40 every morning and kindergarten ends at 3:00. Elementary kids come to school from 2pm to 8pm. It’s crazy how much school Korean kids go to. Basically, an elementary student goes to public school all day, private English school until 8pm every night, and then studies piano and tae kwon do several times a week. Lots of parents also get private tutors for extra hours outside of that.
Observing the classes has been a bit boring because it’s like being in kindergarten all day. You can only listen to students repeat sentences like ‘What shape do you see?, I see a green triangle’ so many times before you get very bored.
The guy who owns my school, Mr. Lyu, is one of the richest men in Korea. He owns tons of buildings including 2 private schools. Despite being worth many millions of dollars, he's very very nice but I've heard his wife is a bit of a jerk. I haven't witnessed her wrath yet though.
The other foreign teachers in my school are super friendly and nice and so I think it will be a really fun working environment. Two other girls just started a week before me and one more guy is going to start soon so at least I’m not the only new person.
I start officially teaching by myself on Monday and am a little nervous but am excited to not have to observe any more. A typical class usually consists of doing the date, weather, and these ‘memory sentences’ they have, which are basically one sentence a day that the students had to memorize. Then you read a story and discuss it or have them do an activity in their textbooks. We also teach math, science, art, cooking, etc. but these classes are super basic and fun.
We got a pretty big snowstorm the other day (by Korean standards) but I’m hoping that’s winter’s last gasp and that spring in on the way.
We’ve been trying to go to a new restaurant every night (because eating out is actually cheaper than getting groceries) but so far have only found one that we really like and it’s a fancy expensive one so we can’t go there all the time.
This weekend we’re planning on going to Seoul to meet one of our old friends from Guelph and possibly my cousin Paul and my friend from Humber, Marijke. We’ll do some sightseeing and it should be good!
Anyway, that’s all for now. Hope you’re all doing well!

- Ali


This is a sample classroom at ECC. They're really small because classes are very rarely above 10 students.

This is my school from the outside. You can see the second and third floors have 'ECC' on the windows. My school is just 2 floors in this massive building.

This is a shot of the street the morning after a big snowstorm.

Jesse's First Day of School

So I started my first day at school today. It's a very nice school and is very large. It's also a public school which seems more prestigious than private, based on what I've seen - which would be the opposite of back home.

My day started at 8:40am and it's only a twenty minute walk to school. There's lots of beautiful scenery to look at on the walk including many mountains. Once at school, I went to a meeting with all the teachers. It's very interesting to be surrounded by people speaking a different language than you because you try really hard to listen and focus a lot on body language. There were about six new teachers at this school including me and so we each introduced ourselves. This was my time to shine as I used the Korean I'd practiced for weeks. I said annyonghaseyo, jeoneun jesse-imnida choeum beopgessumnida. People laughed and clapped so I think that may be a good sign.

I then went to the "broadcast room" where morning announcements are filmed. This is a very futuristic school. Two young kids operated the camera while the Principal and vice principals spoke to the camera and introduced the new teachers. I assume that it's broadcasted into each classroom.

There was then an assembly with all the grade 1 students and their parents. This was 10 in the morning and it seemed like every parent was there. Education is very important in Korea.

At noon, there was a lunch for all the new teachers. This was a bit scary since my co-teacher, who speaks English, was not going. Lucky for me, one of the new teachers is an English teacher and is very fluent in English. She served as the interpreter between the Principal and me. The restaurant was very cool and just like how I've seen it on TV. Shoes were removed at the door and we sat on the floor on some cushions. There was no menu to select food from as food was scattered all over the table and more kept coming out every few minutes. You just grab things with your chopsticks and eat them. I think they could tell I was inexperienced with the sticks as someone asked if I wanted a fork. I wish I could describe what we ate, but I didn't even know what it was. Everything was good though and a lot of it was spicy. There was this neat thing I'll describe. Everyone got a big hot cast-iron bowl of rice. You empty the rice into a smaller bowl and then pour boiling water into the iron bowl of rice. You eat the rice you scooped out and then after awhile all the rice that was sticking to the sides of the iron bowl have been loosened and you eat it as a kind of soup. Hot water and rice soup I guess is what you would call it. Koreans never waste any rice! The Principal asked me different questions about Canada as well as do I drink. I said 'some red wine', and then he asked me about Scotch and Vodka and how many I could drink. I think he found it funny that I didn't drink much.

The rest of the day was spent at another meeting and going to the hospital. I had to get a full body checkup in order to get my alien registration card. They ran me through the gauntlet: eye exam, reflexes, blood pressure, urine, blood. I think I'm okay.

My teacher dropped me off and that concluded my first day of being a teacher in Korea, which happened to include no actual teaching. I'll try to post pictures later, I just want to find out if it's okay to take them first.

In other news Ali found a grocery store that has many food items in English like spaghetti and tomato sauce. If you throw a stone around here you're bound to hit a restaurant or supermarket so we never have far to go. She also reorganized our smaller apartment to make it feel more spacious. She is to start teaching on Monday, March 8th.



Jesse