Training Day (Not the movie)

Today was day one of training. We (the other new foreign teacher, Jennifer, a new Korean teacher, Soo, and I) have training this week and all of next week. This week is short; we have Friday off because it's Budda's birthday. Yay for Budda!!

Training is 8 hours a day, 1 hour for lunch; that's 9 hours total. It's good information though. There is a curriculum that we follow but we are allowed to do our own thing as long as objectives are met. I'm excited about that. One of the senior teachers told us that he pretty much follows the lesson plans given because they are good. They include games, a warm-up, activity, etc. I have a few ideas brewing, so I'll write them down, read some more Harry Wong, and continue training.

From watching a training video, in Korean, that the SLP schools are founded on the principles of the Sorgang University (a top uni in Korea).

I am going to be an afternoon teacher. That means I will have older children, grades 1-6. My shift will be from 1-9pm. One to three is lunch (30 minutes) and a planning period. Classes start at 3 and continue until 9pm. Each class is 40 minutes long, with a 5 minute break to get from class to class.

The Koreans at the school all have American, or Western, names. The person in charge of afternoon teachers and curriculum is Hannah. She is really funny and took us out to lunch at a Chinese restaurant. Food! Oh, so good. Lunch was fried rice with seafood and black bean sauce. We had a pork and vegetable appetizer. Our rice came out with the sauce in a seperate bowl. You mix everything together and eat with a spoon. Thank goodness. I chased a piece of carrot around for a few minutes while Soo and Hannah laughed at me. (But not in a mean way.) The black bean sauce was amazing! Delicious. There were 3 little bowls of food that were brought out for everyone. One was kimchi radish in hot sauce, another was onions, and the third was a bowl of pickled radish. The first was hot but still rather good, no onions for me, and the pickled radish looked like pineapple and was strangely sweet. We had jasmine tea.

Hannah explained that the Chinese eat anything and everything. (I asked about something on my plate. I thought it was mushroom but it turns out it could have been sea snail or sea cucumber.) She joked that the only thing with 4 legs the Chinese didn't eat was a desk. I'm sure they could make that taste good if they wanted to though. Add some black bean sauce; voila!

In case you were wondering, and I'm sure it has kept you awake at night, I have been out of my apartment to poke around the neighborhood a bit and to go shopping for food stuff. I live in an alleyway in an urban area. My school is about a 5 minute walk from my apartment. It's an urban area and I didn't realize until I was about 5 floors up, we're pretty close to a large hill/small mountain. I really like living in a city. And I really like all the colorful signs and shops along the streets even if I don't know what most of them say.

As for food stuff, I've been to a convenient store, a grocery store, a bread/pastry store, a fruit stand and a junk/dollar store. I bought bread and jam and a kind of ramen noodle package and cereal and milk and little oranges and "Job's Tears" tea (which I'm drinking right now and don't recommend), and I bought juice. I wasn't sure what kind it was and had to guess by the fruit on the package. It was peach. And I got shampoo; it was on sale! It's pretty expensive here. And I got what I hope is face wash. It says "Facial" and "Yogurt".

OH!!

But the best thing I got was toothpaste and the reason is this. The tag line for the toothpaste is: "Keep the 20 healthy teeth till 80 years old."