Monday, September 8, 2008

2 months!!!

I was so good at getting my weekly posts out, but seem to have dropped the ball last week. Ooopsies! But here I am, back again to update you on Seoul living.

Sunday marked the 2nd month of my Korean adventure. If my first month went by quickly, this second one FLEW right by! It's crazy how fast time is going! But again, as I've mentioned before, I'm torn between feeling like I've just arrived and having been here for ages. It's a very strange. *nods knowingly*

Slowly settling into my new routine as a pre-school teacher. Turns out that working mornings isn't as painful as I thought, although I'm still having a hard time getting to bed before midnight. Stupid night-owl tendencies!!! I do enjoy the walk to work in the morning though, as this helps to wake me up.

My first day of pre-school, which was last Monday, was stressful. All of the pre-school classes have fruit names, so I teach Apple, who are first-year 6 year-olds, and Kiwi, first-year 7-year olds. Both classes were uber hyper on that first day and hard to control, which wasn't very encouraging. I was exhausted by the time 12:30pm came around! Thankfully they've been better behaved since then, so I think they were just excited to have a new teacher who was obviously a wee bit out of her element. I was warned prior to my first day that Kiwi are the worst 7-year olds in the school and that everyone hates teaching them, so I was obviously worried. It's true that they're a bit unfocused and have a bad habit of fighting amongst each other, but they're actually great kids. I'm learning new ways of getting them to focus and have made it very clear that only good, nice behaviour will be tolerated. This, in the most part, has worked so far and I think that it'll only get better the more I get to know them. My Apple kids are totally adorable, although some are like saran wrap and enjoy clinging to me as much as humanly possible. I love being loved by them, but try teaching when you have 10 kids wanting constant attention all at the same time! My #1 rule with both my classes is that if you want my attention, quietly raise your hand. If all I hear is you yelling and whinning "JANIQUE TEACHER! TEACHEEEER!!!!", I'm going to pretend that I don't see, nor hear you, and will only pay attention to those who quietly have their hands raised. This rule has been harder to instill than I originally thought, but they're slowly getting the hang of it. My head is certainly grateful for this, because there's nothing more irritating than 10 high-pitched voices yelling "JANIIIIIQUE TEACHEEEEER!!!" over and over and over again. >__<

My new afternoon classes aren't that bad, although I'm still not happy at having to learn almost 70 new names. YEEEESH!!! Strangely enough, even though my Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays are longer work days, I enjoy them much more than my Tuesdays and Thursdays. I even teach less classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but for some reason those classes stress me out more. I think it's because they're all low-level classes and I was comfortable teaching the higher-level kids. My last class on Tuesdays and Thursdays is especially painful, since in a class of 10, there's 8 prepubescent boys. That many boys of that age, together in one class, might lead to a potential breakdown. I feel horrible for the 2 girls in that class, cause they look terrified 99.9% of the time. There's 3 Kevin's in that class, and 2 Harry's, so that in itself is confusing. But they just DON'T LISTEN!!! They were fine on Tuesdays, but I nearly bolted out of the classroom when the bell rang on Thursday. They put me in the worst mood! They were all over the place and would not settle down. Their English is very basic and you can tell they don't want to be there, so I understand their behaviour, but come on!!! I shouldn't complain too much, since all of my other classes are pretty awesome, but this class kills me! I'm hoping that Thursday was just an especially hyper day and they'll be better tomorrow, but I'm not holding my breath. I had been warned about them before I started teaching, so I know it's not me, but them. Sigh.

So I survived Week #1 of pre-school relatively unscathed and am enjoying it quite bit. I especially love being off work by 7pm everyday. My work day is just as long, if not longer, than it was before, but it seems easier somehow.

One of the girls, Michelle, headed back to Canada on Saturday morning, so we all got together on Friday so that she'd have one last night out in Seoul. She comanded that it be a theme night (YAAAY!!!) and so the theme was: Cougar/Hound Dog. Not the animals but refering to older women and men who dress WAY younger and chase after men and women who are MANY years their junior. Not many of us actually pulled off the cougar/hound dog look (I was totally 80s...), but it was pretty hilarious nonetheless. Although we did fail our mission: To have a Korean ask us what the hell we're wearing. People dress in the most random of fashions in Seoul, so we hoped to dress so insanely that we'd have someone question it. No one did. I don't even think any of us received a second glance. Either way, it was a great night and it's ridiculously sad not having Michelle around anymore. *tear*

On Saturday, I visited the Amsa-Dong Prehistoric Settlement Site. This represents the largest neolithic settlement site in Korea and is the first known in south Korea. It's presumed to have been inhabited in 3,000 or 4,000 B.C. Pretty cool! Amsa-Dong is a good hour subway ride from my place, but it was well-worth the visit. There's a fair-sized exhibit with artifacts that were uncovered and information on what life would have been like back then, plus reconstructed pit-houses that give a very good idea of what the living conditions were during that time. The area itself is gorgeous, as it has paths leading around the grounds which are heavily surrounded by trees and rocks to sit on. If you ignore the sounds of the traffic coming from the nearby highway, it's easy to imagine yourself in a secluded forest, with only the birds and locust to keep you company. I could have easily wandered around all day and was sad to return to the concrete world that is Seoul. I'm always so happy to find these delightful patches of nature within this massive city!

Saturday night I stayed in and was lazy, since I had woken up early to go to Amsa, but had gone to bed VERY late for Michelle's going-away night. I happily slept in on Sunday, did laundry and read. Yay relaxing! Last night I went to the movies and saw Mama Mia with Tara and Amanda. It was cheesy, as is a definite must with musicals, but not surprisingly... I LOVED IT!!! I've had ABBA songs in my head all day (Mainly Mama Mia and Dancing Queen) and am currently in the process of downloading the soundtrack. If only life could be a musical so that I could constantly induldge in my desire to spontaneously burst out into song! Hahaha!!!

I'm DEFINITELY looking forward the weekend, since it's yet another long one: 4 days off! On Sunday, it's Chusok, the Korean Thanksgiving. Everyone gets the day before and after Chusok off, but since it falls on a Sunday this year, the school's giving us Tuesday off since we don't work on Saturday. Thank you SLP!!! Another reason why Chusok rocks: We receive a $300 bonus! WOOHOOOO!!!! Us girls originally tried to plan a trip out of Seoul, but everything was too expensive for such a short trip. A few are still taking 1-2 day trips, but I've decided to stick around Seoul and do the touristy things that I never got around to doing during my summer vacation. Plus it'll be nice not to spend my bonus right away. A trip to the zoo is in the works, as is a day at Everland, Seoul's oh-so famous amusement park. I'm ridiculously excited for that, since I haven't been to an amusement park since high school and can't wait to make myself dizzy on rollercoasters!!! I'm thinking that Tuesday will be spent sleeping though, because what's the point of a holiday if you can't spend at least one of those days being lazy!

I'm determined to be in bed my 11 tonight and seeing that it's already 10:20, I'm forcing myself to get offline now. Good timing though, because I do believe I've written enough thoughts for one day!

Jan ^__^

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Brave, brave woman. I couldn't do it, there would be some sort of international incident. xD;