Category Archives: Teaching English in Korea

Night Out with the Teachers

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Thursday, March 17

Last night the English teachers from my school went out for a night of food and bowling. We ate at a shabu-shabu restaurant. This was, by far, the best food I’ve had in Korea. If any of you come visit, we must go eat at this place. They bring out a pot of seasoned broth and you boil the broth then cook very thinly sliced beef in it. You are also brought loads of veggies and rice paper. You wet the rice paper then fill it with veggies, meat and sauce and then wrap it. It’s so good! The girls said that it’s like Korean/Vietnamese fusion.

After dinner, we walked to the bowling alley, which is located about a subway stop away inside of Home Plus. Bowling was such a blast. There was tons of high fiving going on, even for gutter balls. The ladies I work with are super sweet. I was in second place the whole game, but I had a comeback on the last two frames and won.

Something I thought was really neat about the bowling alley was the way you rent shoes. The shoes are actually distributed through venting machines. The fee is 1,500 won (about $1.40). You insert your coins into the machine with your shoe size and the shoes drop out of the bottom. So cool.

After the game we walked around Home Plus to buy some snacks and supplies for the English teachers’ office. My two co-teachers shared a taxi back and JuHye and I took the subway. I only live two stops from where we were and I wanted to find out where the subway station was so I could come back on my own sometime.

I look forward to many more teachers nights in the future.

Open Class

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Wednesday, March 16

March is kind of a crazy month at my school. It seems like there’s always something going on, like first day ceremonies, student elections and placement tests. Today’s distraction was Open Class. Back in the states it’s called Open House and the parents come up to the school at night time. Here it’s a little different. All parents are invited to school during the day. There was a ceremony in the auditorium at 10:00am. I was required to attend because all of the new teachers were introduced. I sat while all of the full time teachers were announced, then the contracted teachers were introduced. My friend and co-worker, JuHye, cued me when it was time for me to stand. I bowed as the principal called my name and said a little bit about me. Afterwards, I asked JuHye what he told the parents about me and she said that he told them that I am the new native English teacher and I graduated from the University of Texas. Hmm… Close enough? I told her that he basically told them that I’m cooler than I really am. I thought it was funny.

On Wednesdays I usually teach 5 classes, but because of the Open Classes I only really taught one class today. I taught at 9am and then at 10am I had the Meet the New Teachers thing. My co-teacher taught that class alone, but I made it back in time to play the game with the class. Third and fourth period classes were cancelled because the students had to stay in homeroom for the Open Class. The parents are allowed to stay and watch the students while they are in class. I thought I was going to teach again at fourth period, but I just found out that it’s cancelled too. The students get to go home after lunch so I don’t teach fifth period either. I don’t have a computer in my new office so I don’t have anything to do. It’s going to be a long day!

Earlier I asked my main co-teacher if she was going to wear green tomorrow for St. Patrick’s Day and she had no clue what I was talking about. After I explained it to her she said I should teach the students about it tomorrow. So I get 15 minutes to explain St. Paddy’s Day to the 5th graders tomorrow. Should be fun!

Tonight I’m going bowling with some of the teachers from school. We planned it last week for this Monday, but we had to reschedule because my co-teachers forgot it was White Day. I Korea, Valentine’s Day is split into three parts:

  1. Valentines Day, February 14 – Women buy the guys chocolate
  2. White Day, March 14 – Men buy their ladies candy
  3. Black Day, April 14 – The single people eat some kind of noodles with black sauce

I think tonight will be fun. The teachers are all pretty nice. I’ll post all about it tomorrow night.

Shark Attack

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Life at my school is pretty good. We moved offices not that long ago. It was nice to be able to have my own desk, but I soon discovered that I’d be sharing an office with this…

One of my co-workers and I ended up carrying that darn shark all over school. Our new office is on the 3rd floor so we carried it down to the second floor science lab to see if they wanted it, but they didn’t. Next, we carried it down to the first floor to take it out to the trash. The man we took it to said he actually tried to throw it out before, but they didn’t want to. Oh well. It’s gone now.

Korean Lesson

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My co-teachers want to help me learn Korean. They taught me a few words today and they told me I had to remember them tomorrow. I thought I’d teach you, too. Keep in mind that I wrote the words phonetically, not properly.

eye – noon

ear – gwee

nose – co

mouth – ib (you can also say ib sternly when you want someone to be quiet)

“Teacher! Your face! ……….Beautiful.”

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I finally got to teach on Thursday and Friday (March 3rd & 4th). My co-teacher spent about 20 minutes introducing the class and the rules and I had the other 20 minutes to introduce myself and my country. It was so much fun! The kids’ reactions were amazing. I’ve noticed that gasping is pretty common in Korea and my presentation got quite a few gasps, like…

When I told them that Texas is so big that it takes me 4 hours to drive to my dad’s house.

When I showed them the picture of the World’s Largest Pecan in Seguin.

When they saw the picture of Dallas at night and again when I told them there’s a restaurant in Reunion Tower… And it turns around in a circle!

But the biggest gasp came when I showed them the picture of my family… And they counted all 20 of them.

The kids loved seeing pictures of my family members. I showed pictures of…

My dad

My mom

My brother & his girlfriend

My brother & his wife

My niece & nephew

Nana

They loved my dad’s grey hair, that I look like my mom and thought my brothers were handsome and their significant others were beautiful. They also really loved seeing my niece and nephew.

Here are some of my favorite comments…

From a boy: “Teacher! Your face! ……….Beautiful.”

From a girl: “You are….. very.” (I took it as a compliment)

Also, one student said the boy sitting next to him thought my niece was cute. The whole class giggled.

Overall, the first week was great and it made me feel a lot more confident about teaching.

Pictures of my School

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Here are some pictures of the elementary school I teach at in Busan, South Korea…

My main English classroom. We have a Smart Board!

The main entrance

The English hallway… and a student that really wanted to be in the picture

The back of the classroom

Curious students

English story books

Our school doesn’t have a cafeteria so each class eats together in homeroom. The food is kept in these lunch carts.

Together We Can Do It

Students are responsible for keeping the school clean

Entrance to the bathroom

Bathroom sinks

This is one of the toilets. You have to bring your own toilet paper.

The stairs… no outdoor shoes are allowed upstairs

More stairs (keep right)

The students leave their shoes here. The pink shoes are the girls’ indoor shoes/slippers and the blue ones are the boys’.

Character Building Room – I’m not sure what they do here, but this is the best named classroom at my school. First time I walked by this room there were students fighting. Talk about character building!

This is the view from one of the hallway windows

Another view from one of the hallway windows

English Teachers’ Office

English Teachers’ Office – This is where we sit and drink tea & coffee.

I finally have my own desk! But no computer yet. 😦

The view from my office. My apt isn’t far from the high rise apartments in the background.

Across the street from my school

Crosswalk

School Zone

The walk towards my apartment

My First Day of School

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I got sick the weekend before school started. I didn’t go to the doctor, but I had something that resembled a sinus infection. It wasn’t fun. I spent a few days in bed watching shows on Hulu and eating pieces of bread. On Monday I met up with my co-teacher to go to the immigration office to apply for my Alien Registration Card (ARC). I saw quite a few people there that I had met at orientation. When you walk in you have to take a number, then go fill out the application form. The place was packed, but the line was moving really quickly and we were in and out in about half an hour or so.

There was no school on Tuesday because it was Korean independence day. School officially started on Wednesday. The day was quite interesting. Let me start off by saying that I was a bit embarrassed on the first day. At school the first thing we do when we come in is change our shoes. We wear slippers or indoor shoes all day and then we change our shoes when we leave the school. I didn’t feel well on the days leading up to school starting so I never ventured out to buy slippers for school. The only shoes I had to wear were the two pairs of slippers that my co-teacher gave me to wear in my apartment. I decided to wear my shower slippers. I think the teachers got a good giggle out of that. I definitely brought different shoes for my second day on the job.

The first thing I did on Wednesday was go to the Broadcasting Room with all of the new teachers at the school. The principal announced us all, one by one, in Korean. I wasn’t really sure what to do so I just followed the lead of the other teachers. The tricky part was knowing when to bow. All of the other teachers could understand what was being said, but I just had to listen closely and try to find a cue word to tell me when would be an appropriate time to bow. I think I did okay. I ended up doing two bows. It was a little awkward, but I wasn’t the only teacher that did that so I don’t feel too bad about it.

Next, I had to help with the first day of school ceremony. Some students came out in matching outfits and sang and danced to some really cute songs, then the principal and vice principal said some words. All I really know is that I was in charge of handing out balloons to a class of 6th graders so they could pass the balloons to the incoming 1st graders. I was a little afraid that I was going to lose my grip and all of the balloons were going to fly through the air, but I only ended up losing one. It wasn’t really my fault… the string was really short and when what I assume was the Korean national anthem started playing, I wasn’t sure what I, being a foreigner, was supposed to do with my hands. Anyway, when it was finally time to hand out the balloons, I must have been going too slow because 4 other teachers rushed to my aid to hurry along the process. All in all, the ceremony was pretty neat. After the balloons were handed out, they were released into the air. The ceremony is supposed to welcome the 1st graders into the school. I am pretty sure the students were allowed to leave school after that. It was an easy day.

It was recommended to us at orientation to make PowerPoint presentations (PPTs) introducing ourselves and our country. A lot of my friends had prepared theirs before school started. I am so thankful that I didn’t because that was basically the only task I was given to do all day Wednesday. I couldn’t imagine what I would have done if I didn’t have that to work on. I was bored enough as it was!

Lunch time was a little confusing for me. My co-teacher told me it was time for lunch and then we started down the stairs. She acted like I was silly when I didn’t change out of my slippers. Honestly, I had no clue what was going on. I was a little confused, but I changed out of my slippers and then all of the teachers started leaving school. I was informed on the way that on the first day of school all of the teachers go out to eat. My co-teachers asked me if I had ever eaten tofu and they were excited when I said I had. They explained to me that we would be eating beef stew. I was a little nervous because I would be eating in front of all of my co-workers, including the principal and vice principal.

As soon as we walked in, the restaurant greeted us with a really pungent smell. I later found out it was some sort of fermented bean soup that is supposedly very good for you. I don’t doubt it, but I have noticed that people in Korea say lots of things are very good for you. We walked upstairs and had an entire room to ourselves to eat. We all took our shoes off and sat on the floor at long tables. Each table had a burner and was full of side dishes. The beef stew that my co-teachers told me about turned out to be seafood stew. It had all sorts of sea creatures in it, like shrimp and octopus (tentacles and all) and other things that I couldn’t identify. If you didn’t already know, I do not like seafood. I mostly ate rice and mixed a bit of the broth in to help the seafood stew go down a bit easier. I sat across the table from my principal. He was very interested in how I liked the food, as was everyone else. It wasn’t bad, but I’m sure I would have eaten more if  it wasn’t seafood stew. I did end up trying the bean stuff. It tasted a lot like it smelled so I only had a few spoons full.

At lunch I was asked by two different people if I am good at/like to play volleyball. The answer to both is no, but I agreed that I would play with everyone. I didn’t realize what I was getting myself into. I later found out from other people that have already worked in Korea for a year that the elementary school teachers take their volleyball pretty seriously. They have matches against other schools and they are super competitive. I just thought it was for fun. I am wondering if I can retract my offer to play. I am not the competitive sports kind of girl. My hand-eye coordination is pretty much nonexistent. I don’t want to seem antisocial, but having me on the team doesn’t seem like a very good idea.

I spent the rest of the day in the teacher’s lounge/office working on my PPT. I was having a difficult time figuring out how I was going to talk about myself for 20 minutes. Lots of my co-workers were interested in my PPT and wanted to see it. They were a bit disappointed because I had to finish the PPT at home. The pages about my family didn’t have any pictures on them yet because all of my family pictures were at home on my laptop.

I work Monday through Friday from 8:40am to 4:40pm. My school is just a 10 minute walk from my apartment, which is nice.

Mary, I know you’ve been asking about the food we were eating at orientation was, but the truth is, none of us really knew. They didn’t label any of the food so we really just had to get food and guess what it was. Most of the food was a bit cold and I really didn’t eat a whole lot at orientation.

Busy, busy, busy!

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I am loving Korea so much! I have been in my apartment just over a week now, and it is really nice. It is a studio style apartment, but I think it’s just enough room for me. I’ve been fortunate enough to inherit furniture, appliances and cleaning supplies from the previous EPIK teacher at my school. He also left me peanut butter, which made me quite happy (and I’m all out now, which makes me quite sad).

I have had some ups and downs since being here, but things have been getting better with time. I started teaching last week and things at school are going very well. I really like my co-workers and I think they like me too. I have made some really great friends here, including these 5 girls…

I have so much to say, but not enough time to write it all down. I just wanted to write a short post to let everyone know that life in Korea is good. I will post an update very soon.

Meeting my Co-teacher

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Friday, February 25, 2011

Friday I woke up regretting going out the previous night. I’m not sure why we thought it was a good idea to stay out so late the night before we were supposed to meet out co-teachers and move into our new apartments. I still hadn’t even packed yet! I hurriedly packed my things, but was starting to feel that same overwhelmed feeling I felt the night before I left for Korea. I decided to go get some breakfast with the girls and then come back and pack. I couldn’t eat. I went to the EPIK office to get a large sack to put my dirty clothes in. The only one they had was absolutely massive, which was fine because I had a lot of dirty clothes. I didn’t want to pack them so I thought the huge sack was a good idea. So now I had 2 large suitcases, a laptop bag, a backpack and a gift bag from EPIK.

At 9:00am we all headed over to the classroom to wait to meet our new co-teachers. Mine greeted me with an outstretched hand and a smile. We made small talk as we walked back to the dorm together. The dorm is about a 10 minute walk from where we had class. We went up the elevator to get my bags. On the way, I asked “Is school very far from here?” She said, “Yes, very far.” I was kind of disappointed and she said, “It’s about 15 minutes.” Then followed up with “By subway.” Wait… What??? We were told that our co-teachers were going to pick us up in their cars and then take us to school to meet the principal and vice principal. I didn’t even imagine being met by a teacher that didn’t have a car, especially with as much stuff as I had. When she saw all of my stuff she changed her mind about the subway. She said we would take a taxi, but we still had to get all of my things from the dorm room to the street, which was, again, about a 10 minute walk. It was such a struggle. That giant bag of dirty clothes (plus my pillow and jacket) weighed a ton. We were fortunate enough to find a taxi before we hit the street because it was graduation day at the university we were staying at and someone had just been dropped off. My things barely fit in the taxi. We had to put one of my suitcases between my co-teacher and I.

I know I was warned to take Dramamine before the car ride (thanks for looking out for me, Mary!), but I was just too busy to take it before I left for the classroom and didn’t anticipate being so rushed afterwards. On top of being prone to carsickness, I was already feeling pretty awful. The taxi ride to the school was torture. I was very close to getting sick, but fortunately I didn’t. What a first impression that would have made! I felt so much better after getting out of the car.

Meeting my principal was an interesting experience. I waited in the teacher’s lounge/secretary’s room and then I was escorted into the principal’s office with my head co-teacher and the former head co-teacher. My principal didn’t speak much English to me other than “Nice to meet you.” The co-teachers and principal spoke to one another about me in Korean and occasionally they would ask me questions about my age, family and what I learned at orientation. I was only in the principal’s office for about 5 minutes, then the co-teachers and I went outside. The former head co-teacher (of last year’s guest English teacher) had her husband come pick us up to take my things to my new apartment. Last year’s guest English teacher was still here when we got here. He was packing up his things and getting ready to head to the airport. He left the place in good enough condition. He left a lot of things here. Some I threw away, some I kept and some I gave away (like his giant collection of Magic The Gathering cards).

I left my things at the apartment and my co-teacher took me out to explore my neighborhood and to get supplies for the apartment. We walked from my apartment the closest subway station (which takes under 2 minutes), then to school (which takes 7-10 minutes), then we walked to the Dongnae Station, and then to a giant grocery store, which I would compare to Super Wal-Mart. She bought me bedding and these rice cake things and I bought some food. Then, we took the bus home because we had a lot to carry.

Once we got back to my apartment, the former guest English teacher was gone and my co-teacher helped me clean up. She also had me make a list of things I still needed for my apartment. I couldn’t think of much because my apartment was stocked pretty well. By this point it was almost 3:00pm and I still hadn’t really had anything to eat or drink all day so I was starting to feel awful. My co-teacher said she was hungry so she made us some ramen and we sat on my bed and ate. I didn’t really eat much ramen because it was too flavorful for me. I really just wanted a piece of bread or something. I ate enough to make it seem like I ate. Afterwards, my co-teacher left. I went down with her so she could show me how to sort my garbage and recycling. I had such a long day so I was looking forward to coming back up to an empty apartment. When I got back upstairs, the landlord was in the hall and he followed me into my apartment to set up my TV for me. I communicated to him that I would also like for him to setup my internet (my apartment has free internet!), and he happily started working on my computer. After about 30 minutes of trying, he asked me to follow him to his and his wife’s apartment so he could try plugging my computer into his ethernet port. After an hour at their apartment, it still wasn’t working. I told him that it’s okay and went back to my apartment with my computer. About a half hour later, he rang my doorbell and started speaking to me in Korean. I guess I should have mentioned that my landlords don’t speak English. Anyway, the only two words I could make out were computer and tomorrow. I figured it couldn’t hurt so I handed him my computer and off he went. I figured he’d bring it back tomorrow, but in about another 30 minutes he was back with my computer. This time, Google was pulled up so I knew that he had fixed it. I thanked him and then I finally had my apartment to myself.

Since I still didn’t feel well, I spent the rest of the night in bed watching Grey’s Anatomy and eating bread (finally). It was a good night. haha

I should also mention that my co-teacher came back around 8:00pm with a box of gifts from the school, and she had also personally gotten me a gift… a giant package of toilet paper. It was all very sweet. Below is a video of me opening my gifts I was given by the school…

EPIK Orientation Part 1

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Thursday, February 17, 2011

Lunch

Once I got settled into orientation, it was time for lunch. The food wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t amazing either. The same can be said for all of the meals here in the dorm. After lunch, a large group of us went to walk around and explore the city. Half of the group ended up wanting to go to the bars and half just wanted to explore so we ended up splitting up. We walked around for over two hours and had a lot of fun. We went to a local coffee shop called Angel in us Coffee and took loads of pictures. My roommate is from Chicago and she had a pizza craving the minute she got off the plane so we thought it was really funny when we ran across a pizza delivery scooter on the sidewalk. We also ran across an Outback Steakhouse.

Dinner

Friday, February 18, 2011

Friday was our first official day of orientation. It was also the day of our medical checks. We had to fast so we couldn’t eat or drink anything after 9pm Thursday. The medical checks were quite an experience. They made us go in by class number so I couldn’t go until 10:20am. I didn’t end up getting done until noon. We were STARVING! The auditorium where they were doing the medical checks was FREEZING! We had to wait over an hour just to begin.

I was a bit worried about the hearing test because about a month ago I ruptured my ear drum and my hearing out of that ear isn’t that great. Fortunately, they administered the easiest hearing test I’ve ever had. They also tested us for color blindness, measured our chests (no one really knows why), took our weight and height, gave us the most difficult eye exam I’ve ever had, took our blood (with no gloves!), and took a urine sample. They also had us do a chest xray, which involved the girls having to take our bras off and then we were all in line to get on this bus where the xray machine was. It was really, really odd.

Here’s a funny story about the urine tests… I overheard someone saying that the urine test was traumatizing and I turned to one of my friends and asked, “What was so traumatizing about the urine test…?” She said, “Well, don’t you think it was a little weird having to do it over the squatty toilet?” Apparently a lot of people didn’t realize that there were regular toilets in the bathroom too. I guess I would have been a little traumatized by that too!

After our chest xrays we were given orange juice and a small snack, then we all went back to the dorm for lunch. The pictures below are of my lunch… before and after I ate. Needless to say, I wasn’t in love with the cafeteria food.

After lunch we had the opening ceremony, which was great. The first picture below is a picture I took as everyone was walking from the dorm to the auditorium. We were asked to wear our new EPIK hoodie sweatshirts to the opening ceremony. I sat by Beth & Megan and we took our first pictures doing the very typical Korean picture pose.

We saw several different traditional Korean dances, and a really neat drum show.

Afterwards, we all went to dinner. It was very crowded.

The first picture is the plate of food that I got. Unfortunately, I didn’t eat more than a few bites. Everything was cold. I went back and got a new plate and ate all of it.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Saturday was our first day of lectures. They kept us EXTREMELY busy during orientation. We had lectures from 9:00am – 12:20pm, then lunch and then more lectures from 2:00pm – 5:20pm. We would then break for dinner and after dinner we had Korean lessons from 7:00pm – 8:10pm.

A very typical breakfast for me was toast with butter and strawberry jelly. Sometimes I would eat cereal also. The second picture above is lunch. I think on this day I really just ate oranges. Some of us went down to the convenience store on the first floor and got snacks. Here’s Megan and I with our snacks…

Dinner was much better…. 🙂

McDonald’s tastes the same in South Korea, in case you were wondering.

Above are pictures of some of the things we saw on the way back to campus.

After Korean lessons we ventured back out to a foreigner bar called HQ. It was full of people from orientation. We had a great time.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

On Sunday we did more of the same… toast for breakfast, lectures, lunch, lectures, dinner, Korean lessons… BUT….

We ventured out for lunch…

We were on a quest for pizza!

Success!

Pizza Hut in Korea

We were all VERY excited, but no one was more excited than Megan (aka Chicago). And look how how they wrap up your leftovers… cute!

That is it for Part 1. I will post about the rest of orientation very soon!

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