Monday, December 3rd,
2012 – Friday, December 7th, 2012
I was now on to my second week of teaching. I wasn’t as nervous for this week
because I had met most of the students at the schools by now and I had a better
idea of what to expect. This week
was a little bit easier with the kids too. A lot of them were studying for final exams so the classes
were smaller than usual, making it easier to manage. They were also starting to get used of me so they were a
little bit better behaved. I still
tried to be strict and discipline when necessary, which I find, for me, is the
hardest part of teaching.
Treat one of the kids gave to us teachers one day. I looks like two pancakes with a sweet red bean paste in the middle.
My first school, Mondays and Wednesdays, I had the same
classes in the same order. Most
of the kids have their own books they can write in, attendance is taken, and they
have a set page to continue working from.
Although I still do not have all of the books to follow along with
myself, there is at least some kind of organization and structure making things
easier.
At my school Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, all of my classes
were changed this week. Some of
the kids, who were studying the level 2 book last week, were studying the level
4 book this week. Most of the kids
have already finished the books they are learning from. They don’t own their own copy so they
can’t write in the book.
Everything seems unorganized and it makes it more difficult for me. Especially if they are re-learning
things so they are less likely to pay attention or be engaged. The Korean co-teachers might know
what is going on, but I am just left to fend for myself.
Although the classes at my second school are totally
unorganized, I still enjoy the social aspect of going to that workplace. They are also technically my main
school because they are the school that is sponsoring my visa. They wanted to organize a welcome to
Korea dinner for me. We went out
on Thursday night as a group. There
are five of us teachers in total and all but one came. I especially appreciated that the
manager of the school has a car so we didn’t have to take a bus or subway to
the restaurant. They knew I was
interested in the beach so we went to a restaurant that had a view of the beach
and bridge. It was called a
family restaurant but it was really nice and fancy inside. I was getting used of the $7 feasts at
all of the other restaurants I had been to so when I saw there was not much on
the menu less than $20 I was a little bit surprised. I also only had $45 to last me until I got paid the next
week. We were given one menu to
share and instead of each individually ordering an entrée, we ordered three
dishes for the entire table. There
were five of us there including Amy’s boyfriend. We shared one pasta dish, one salad and small pizza along
with beer for the table. In North
America, sharing three meals at a fancy restaurant would be extremely unusual. Especially when in North America,
people are more conscious of sharing germs and double dipping is considered
rude. In Korea, sharing a meal is
very ordinary and chopsticks are constantly being double dipped. We had some really good conversations
about Korea and Canada and they were more conscious about speaking English most
of the time and not going on too many tangents in Korean. Since we split the meals, the bill came
to $15 each for plenty of food and drinks each!
In the bathroom at this restaurant, they had a high-tech
toilet. It had a remote control on
the side with various buttons. The
instructions were all in Korean. I
tried pressing the buttons but none of them did anything. I felt rude leaving the toilet
un-flushed but I don’t know how to work Korean high-tech toilets. I asked what the buttons meant to Amy
back at the table and she explained they could heat the seats, can turn the
toilet into a baday for cleaning and so on. I am glad I didn’t accidently use the baday button wrong and
spray myself in the face!
The next morning, my co-teacher Amy, met me at the bus stop
so I could have my hospital examination.
This is something foreigners need to do as part of their immigration
process. It is the schools responsibility
to help the foreigner with this process.
I was the one who had to mention it to them though or else I am not sure
if they would have even remembered.
To get my Alien Registration Card (ARC card) this is one of the
steps. Without my ARC Card, I
cannot open a bank account or do other important things. We took a cab to the hospital and signed in. The school did not want to pay for a
drug test but the hospital was trying to explain I would need one and I would
have a problem at immigration if I didn’t get one. I was just observing the conversation in Korean and didn’t
have any say in the matter. First
I was asked a series of questions about my health. Then I had my blood taken, did a urine test and finally had
an upper body x-ray done. That was
the first time I have had an x-ray done and I have no idea what they need that
for.
While this was happening, Amy and I couldn’t help but
realized it was heavily snowing outside.
It rarely snows in Busan and Amy was really excited about it! It was very pretty!
Copy and paste the link:
http://kikinitinkorea.tumblr.com/post/35182525150/when-were-out-at-a-teachers-dinner-and-my-co-teachers
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