Tag Archives: Korea

Summer Camp – Week 1

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I am thrilled to say this…

It’s over!!! One week down, two to go.

Most elementary English teachers in Korea have to teach 3 weeks of summer camp after the regular semester ends. As I previously mentioned, during the first week I taught 1st & 2nd graders. In my school, the students don’t begin learning English until the 3rd grade so this was my first time to teach the little ones. It was a challenge! They are soooo full of energy and their attention span is so short. They were all really excited about camp though. They were always in a good mood and very enthusiastic.

They tried to try to talk to me in Korean quite a bit and I had no clue what the heck they were saying. They probably felt the same way when I was talking to them. I did have a pretty high level student in one of my classes that always listened very closely when I would talk and then he would say, “Ok, ok, ok!” and translate what I said to the rest of the class (even if they didn’t need it). It was pretty funny.

We learned about many different things this week:

Monday – Body parts, “Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes” song
Tuesday – Animals & colors, “Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see?” book/song
Wednesday – Bugs, “Itsy Bitsy Spider” song
Thursday – How are you?
Friday – Review & Veggies

I don’t have camp next week so I will be sitting at my desk all day Monday and Tuesday. I’ll probably prepare for lessons… or watch movies. I have Wed – Fri off so I’ll probably go to the beach if the weather is nice. I am also thinking about doing a temple stay (at a Buddhist temple about 2 hours away) with one of my friends.

Camp starts back up again on August 8th. I’ll be teaching 3rd & 4th graders. Wish me luck!

You can view the pictures below. Click on any photo to see a larger image.

Parents Class

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I am pretty sure that I mentioned before that I am teaching a parents class during summer camp. I change elementary students every week, but the parents class is the same parents all 3 weeks. They are really nice ladies and I am happy that the two women that I thought might drop out of the class are still coming.

There are 2 teachers for the parents class, JuHye and myself. JuHye’s class is supposed to run from 2:00 – 2:40 and my class is from 2:50 – 3:30. The vice principal was worried that the parents wouldn’t feel comfortable in a classroom with just me (because of the language barrier) so she suggested that JuHye and I teach together. We did that for the first few days, but if we do it consistently then it will put me over my teaching hours so it won’t really work out. Plus, JuHye and I would rather teach separately.

Today was the first day that I taught completely solo and it went extremely well. The first few days they kept saying “English stress!” at the end of class and today one of the women said, “No stress. Enjoy.” That made me feel good.

Babies!

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So my co-teacher is pregnant. Yesterday she asked me if it’s common for people in America to find out the sex of the baby.  When I said yes, she said, “Really??” and then explained that in Korea it’s illegal for the doctor to say the sex of the baby. To get around this he will say things like, “I think your baby will like dolls.” or “I think your baby will like sports.”

My co-teacher went for her sonogram yesterday and was hopeful to find out the sex of her baby. She said that her mother-in-law was going to come along with her and she was nervous because her mother-in-law was hoping for the baby to be a boy.

This morning I found out the results. Seems like the baby will “resemble its mother.”

Flooding

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Some of you might have heard that there’s been flooding and mud slides in South Korea. This was going on near Seoul, which is on the north end of South Korea. I live in Busan, which is in the south.  It did rain quite a bit here today, but it wasn’t nearly as severe. Some of my friends’ camps were cancelled and others had a lot of absent students due to the weather.

One of my friends did post the picture below on Facebook today. She took it just outside of her school in Busan. I cropped her face out since I just stole it from her Facebook without asking. I thought it was the least I could do.

Nothing like this happened in the part of Busan that I live in.

I’m safe and sound. Just thought you all might want to know.

If you haven’t heard about the flooding, you can find out more here.

Summer Camp

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7 posts in 7 days. Can you believe it?? What’s gotten into me?

Today was the first day of summer camp and I think it went pretty well. I am teaching 1st and 2nd graders this week. I was originally told that I would be teaching alone, but as it turns out, my co-teacher is sitting in on my lessons (or supposed to be) to give me a hand if I need it.

I am also teaching a parents class during all 3 weeks of summer camp. I had no clue what to expect. There were 8 moms signed up for the class, but only 5 showed up today. I was surprised that 3 of the moms had a fairly high English level… two of them even had English names (Cindy and Julia). I suspect that 1-2 of the moms might stop showing up after discovering that the other moms are much better at English than they are. Time will tell.

Last week I had a conversation with some 5th graders about summer camp:

Meagan Teacher: Are you coming to my English summer camp?
Student: No. I don’t have time.
Meagan Teacher: What are you doing this summer?
Student: I go to academy.
Meagan Teacher: What do you study?
Students: English, math, science, Korean
Meagan Teacher: Oh. my. god.
Student: Yes.

Korean students are very hardworking and study quite a lot. Many of them spend so much time studying that they don’t have time for much else. Even though it’s summer, many students will be coming to school for various camps or studying at an academy. I sometimes wonder when they have time to have fun and be kids.

Korean Health Care

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I am constantly amazed by Korean health care.

Let me start by saying that a month before I came to Korea I sustained an ear injury. I was cleaning my ears and tried to give my 4 year old nephew a hug, but he resisted and ended up kicking the Q-tip into my ear. Ouch! Yeah, it was stupid, but it happened and now I have a giant hole in my eardrum. The hole is about half the size of the eardrum.

I saw the doctor right after it happened and he asked me to come back before I left so he could check on it. It hadn’t healed so he recommended that I get the hole patched. I would have had to have gone to an Ear Nose Throat specialist and the doctor thought that it would cost no less than $600-700. I told him that wasn’t going to happen and that I would get it checked out in Korea. He said that should be fine because it was a pretty simple surgery.

A few weeks ago I finally sought out an ENT  here to see about getting my ear all patched up. It just so happens that there is an ENT very close to my school and apartment (about a 5-10 minute walk). And the best part is that he speaks PERFECT English! His nurses are adorable. They get super nervous when trying to talk to me so they have put one nurse in charge of me. She knows just enough English words so that I pretty much know what she’s talking about. When I walk off I usually hear the other nurses clapping for her or giggling. It’s so funny.

In the doctor’s office I was able to see the hole in my eardrum. The tool that the doctor uses to look in the ear is connected to a TV on the wall. The hole is shockingly large. The ENT confirmed that I would need a patch, but he only performs surgery on Wednesdays and he was all booked up until September. That worked for me because I have several days off in September for Korean thanksgiving (Chuseok) so I booked my surgery for September 14th. AND the best part is that the doctor said that the surgery will only cost me about $100. Nice. That visit cost about $10.

So this doctor is apparently very thorough because he scheduled me to come back in two weeks. He asked me to bring a copy of my health check that was performed at my EPIK orientation. My follow-up visit was this past Wednesday. He advised me that I would need to have some tests done before my surgery. During my visit I had blood drawn and gave them a urine sample. I was also advised that I would need to go to the hospital across the street to get an EKG. I thought all of this seemed a bit overkill for a simple outpatient ear surgery, but whatever he says! That visit only cost about $12 (including the tests). My next appointment is in two weeks so we can go over the results of my tests.

I got off work around noon on Friday because it was the last day of school. This was perfect because I was worried about when I would have time to go get my EKG done. I went to the hospital right after school. Be prepared to be impressed. I swear to you that I went to the hospital as a walk-in trying to get an EKG. I was in and out in about 10 minutes. The part that took the longest was when I went to the wrong counter and the two nurses were too shy to speak English to me so one of them escorted me to where I needed to go (even though I heard one of them mumble “go straight and turn left” after I walked away). The EKG only cost me $5.

Korea, your health care system is remarkable. Thank you for providing waygookens (foreigners) like me such wonderful health insurance!

Instant message from my co-teacher

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Things like this make everything worth it…

“i’m lucky teacher because i met you!”

Awww Moment

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I teach grades 3-6 in an elementary school. Up until a month or so ago, I taught 6th grade twice a week. It was cut back to once a week so that the 6th graders could prepare for their national exam that they had last Tuesday.

Last Friday was my last class with the 6th grade students until September. My co-teacher knew they had been very stressed out over the exam so she wanted me to have fun with them. We played a “Name That Tune” game using Korean pop (K-pop) songs. They were able to listen a clip of the song that used English and they had to write down the name of the song and the name of the band. They also had to list the English words that they heard. Apparently they loved it because my co-teacher told me that yesterday they were begging to play again.

She also told me that she gave them a sheet of paper and asked them to write down things they thought the class was missing. 20-30 students said me. Awww!

Listening Test

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Today I played a trick on my 5th grade  students. I told them we were going to have a listening test. It’s the end of the semester and the kids are sooo over tests. We’re all out of material to teach them so I was able to come up with my own fun lesson.

We did have a listening test, but it wasn’t your usual test. The students had to listen to my directions and draw what I told them to… with their notebooks on top of their heads.

Here they are hard at work…

The students loved it! They moaned and groaned the whole time, but they laughed so hard when they saw their drawings. I enjoyed it a lot, too.

I asked my last class if it was easy or hard and their response was, “Teacher! Hard! But fun!”

Listening Test

1. In the center of the paper, draw a lake.

2. On the left side of the lake, draw a house.

3. The house has 4 windows.

4. Draw a big door on the house.

5. Draw a fish in the lake.

6. Draw a car on the right side of the house.

7. Draw grass in front of the house.

8. Draw a child on the grass.

9. Draw a dress on the child.

10. Draw a necklace on the child.

End of the semester

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I love my 3rd graders. They are all so sweet and very eager to learn. It’s their first year learning English and are just now starting to learn phonics and the alphabet. We had so much fun today. This is the last week of the semester so I won’t see many of them again until September. I’m going to miss them.