Wednesday, March 11, 2009

A New School Year!

March 1st started a brand new school year in Korea -- the same as September at home -- and that means a whole new batch of classes, and approximately one million new kiddies. I am no where close to beginning to know all of their names.





** As an interesting side note: One of the classes I inherited from another teacher is full of Disney Princesses -- Ariel, Jasmine, Belle ... **



Its been a lot easier to start fresh with a new batch of kids, knowing what I'm doing, compared with when I started in November, not really having a clue. I know so much more about teaching Korean children now than I did then. I know the mistakes they're likely to make, the shenanigans they're likely to get up to, what programs I'm teaching, acceptable discipline methods and best off all how to understand their English speaking through sometimes very thick Korean accents. When I got here first I found them so difficult to understand, even when they were using proper vocabulary and grammar. Of course, the goal of being a foreign teacher here is largely to reduce just that, but its a work in progress and being able to understand the kids in the mean time is very valuable.

Also, my hours have been condensed, which is great news! I'm teaching the same number of hours, but I am spending 1.5 hours less at the school three times a week than I was before, which I'm really happy about! I'm not soo keen on teaching in the evenings like I do, but I'm sure that I'll get used to it. I had really been hoping for a preschool schedule, but there are definitely perks to working only in the afternoons as well.

Aside from the new school year there's been much more of the same so far this month. Working, hanging out with friends... we've been playing a lot of games recently which is quite fun. Jenga, Apples to Apples, Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit... you'd never think I'd come all the way to Korea to spend my time playing board games with the people I work with, but its true!

Some of the the more notable games include this monster Jenga tower:


And this game of scrabble:







Also not to be forgotten from February of course are the kids, and some good friends!






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