First Two Weeks

We arrived in Seoul on the night of February 24th and were greeted at the airport by a driver "Johnny", arranged by the school. He drove us directly to our apartments in Ilsan, which we were grateful for after the long plane ride and virtually no sleep for more than 24 hours. For those of you who don't know, I am here with my brother Jay and we are both teaching kindergarten at a private school named Maplebear. I was pleased to find a clean, furnished, well-equipped apartment, with a full-sized bed! (I was told we were getting twin-sized or smaller beds). Jay, on the other hand, was not quite as lucky and ended up with a completely empty studio. He slept on the floor for five days until some of the teachers from last year finished their contracts and moved out. He was then able to move to a different apartment on my floor. We are on the sixth floor of a rather drab-looking high-rise apartment building. I am slowly adjusting to city life. As most of you know, I am a small-town gal. To me, a concrete slab building with bright neon signs as the view out my window is quite foreign. Well, most everything is foreign to me in these parts...luckily it is not hard to get by with speaking little or no Korean. There are actually many foreigners living in our complex, including four other teachers who work at our school.

On Thursday, Kathryn (the head teacher) walked us to Maplebear and we met the Korean staff. We each have a Korean TP (Teaching Partner) who communicate with the parents and help with lunch, beginning and end of the school day routines, and other duties. My TPs are Mina (morning TP) and Jinny (afternnon TP)--most Korean staff and students at our school have taken English names. I was under the impression that we would be sharing the classroom management and instruction with our TPs but so far that is not really the case. Nonetheless, it is helpful to have the TPs (the job would be even more challenging without them).

Our school day goes from 9am-6pm. It is about a 25-30 minute walk from the apartment to school, so I generally leave at 8:00am and return home by 7:00pm. Though it is a long day, it is certainly shorter than most days during my year at the high school, so for that, I am grateful. My kids are KG 7 (7 year-old Korean age, 5-6 year-old North American age), 2nd year kindergarteners. Jay has KG 6, 2nd year kindergarteners. Morning kindergarten is from 9:30-1:40. We eat lunch in our classrooms with our kids, which is not a lunch break at all but rather a very loud, crazy ordeal. I am adjusting to the whole lunch routine, and at least I get to eat yummy Korean food that is provided by the school :-)

After morning kindergarten, we have a "break" of varying lengths depending on the day, and then we teach elementary classes of various levels in the afternoon. So far all new teachers are in agreement that our kindergarten classes are enjoyable, but we are not as fond of our afternoon elementary classes. It is a lot of planning and prep work for three different classes and we are very much lacking in supplies and materials. I know that this can be true regardless of your school or location, so I am really trying not to get frustrated and just enjoy my time here with my kids as much as possible. Afterall, much of the reason why I quit my teaching job at the high school was to have something less stressful!

And when I don't get too caught up in the politics, it is very easy to just fall in love with my adorable little Korean students. I don't have any pictures of them yet, but I hope to post some soon. For now, I have included photos of the buildings in our district, the school and my classroom, the snow that fell a few days ago, and some other sites around the city of Ilsan.