Chili Pepper Bridge

Chili Pepper Bridge

Monday, September 5, 2011

Has it really been a month?

   So officially one month ago today I arrived in Korea.  Wow, that went by fast!  Although now that I'm getting into the swing of country life, things will slow down a bit...probably not though.   So I had my first day of teaching last Thursday which went fairly well.  My lesson plans fell apart for some classes, to hard for my 2nd graders, to easy for my 6th graders.  Plus most of the kids were a little shy at first and I really had to prod them to get them to participate in class.  I noticed several of them were "playing dumb" and acting like they didn't know what I was saying when they actually did.  However, its amazing what just a few days can do.
   Today was definitely a great day for me.  All my lessons when great!  The kids were participating, my lessons actually took up the allotted amount of time, lol, and I really felt that the kids were able to pull something out of it.  It was a very good feeling.  I am starting to get the hang of lesson planning for my different classes and it is not taking nearly as long as it used to, although making interesting PowerPoints to use in class are what takes up most of my time.  However, lately I've found several good websites for ESL teachers that have a lot of resources already made, so that should save me a lot of time.  Also, all of the TaLK scholars have been sharing information with each other and that has been very useful (although today I actually found myself giving tips to several other people).
                                      
                                                 My school: Jangpyeong Elementary

                                     
                  My 3rd/4th grade combination class.  That's right, only 5 kids! (well two were absent today)


    Well, now that I've caught you up a bit on my school live I'll talk for about about settling in.  So far its been great.  I've met about 4 other foreign teachers besides my roommate who live in the area and they are all really nice.  Also, many other people in the TaLK program live in bigger cities not to far away.  This past Saturday a group of about 12 of us met up in Gangneung for a beach day trip.  It was great!  Not only was the beach awesome, but it only takes me 40 minutes by bus to get there.  So we all spent the day together, swapped stories about our respective schools and towns and just relaxed.  I was really surprised at how warm the water was.  I jumped in expecting it to be freezing and was pleasantly surprised to find it to be about 70 degrees.  After hanging out in the surf all day we grabbed some really good seafood noodle dish, I forget what it was called, that had shrimp, clams and squid in it.  After that we grabbed some coffee at a cafe and chatted a bit more before we all headed back home.  It was good to reunite with some of the other people, even if we had only been apart for a week.
                                                                      Beach in Gangneung

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