How was your first day of class?

It's over.



...I suppose you might want to know a little more. I had 6 different classes today. Each class is a different age level and English level. I had 3 classes, a 40 minute break, and then 3 more classes. I got there this morning at 11:30 am to prep for classes; I got home around 9ish tonight. Tuesdays and Thursdays I have 6 classes as well, 5 of them are different from my MWF classes. So, that's 11 different classes total. Ten, actually. Twelve classes but ten different sets of lesson plans and books and everything. It's... intense.

I had some great students and some students who were bored or wanted to push the limits. I had students who jumped right into the material and others who I wasn't sure knew what was going on (which is understandable in a foreign language class). I had a pretty good day overall. It was just... long. And tiring. And some things worked and some things didn't. So, I know that I need to tweak some lessons for some classes or have more structure, etc. It's such a huge learning process.

It's challenging and intersting and exciting and exhausting and everything all rolled into one. I can't tell you how I feel; I can only think, ok, day one done, on to day two. The day feels like it was a blur and I have to get up and do a different kind of similar thing tomorrow.

Day two, here I come!!

Part 2 of this entry, in which I connect a tv show to my life:

The season finale of Bones (yes I like that show) has all the characters going their seperate ways for a year. "It's just a year," says Brennan. "Nothing will change." Their roles switched for a moment, Booth counters with an explanation that things will change, that nothing stays the same because people evolve. It was an interesting episode for me because it hit on a lot of issues I've been thinking about.

A year is a long time. Things happen in a year and when I go back things will be different. Tonight makes it two weeks that I've been here. In the two weeks I was gone, Side Street shut down and MG got engaged (congrats, MG!). I'm glad to be here but I'm also facing uncertainty. Such is life, I suppose.

I don't want reassurances that nothing will change, because they will. They already are. I guess the biggest thing is that change is scary. And being in a foreign country so far from home is somehow not as scary as wondering how I will change and how things will have changed when I go home.

On that note, I'm off to make some spicy spaghetti again. I'd like to get my hands on a Korean cookbook. An easy-to-read cookbook. Maybe one for children. With pictures and EASY instructions. Basic ones. For dummies. For example "Boil water." Me: You mean, in a pot?

Ok, maybe I'm exaggerating. Just a little. But yikes! (Haha, I taught one class interjections today! Wow! It was fun!).

Fears and tears (isn't that a song?) and garlic chicken

Tomorrow is my first day of teaching. As I just barely finished my lesson plans on Friday night and am not allowed to bring work home, I'm a little apprehensive. I don't have photocopies or activities mapped out or anything yet. I'm reading Harry Wong, though, to prepare my day and my classes.

As I've lived at home for the past few years, tonight it's hit the hardest. Usually the day before I start work or school or something new, I'm nervous. I've been like that my entire life; I think it's pretty normal. The night before the first day of school, you're always nervous and excited. Well, I usually have my dad to talk to about that and he laughs at me because I worry but he always reassures me as well.

So now I don't have that and I miss that most.

Oh, I'm getting sentimental in my old age. You know, in Korea I'm 29! How awful! I thought I was losing a day was bad, but I lost 2 years! Which would mean I'd turn 30 this year! No offense to 30 year olds or soon-to-be's, but yuck!!

And I reheated garlic chicken in a pot and now I reek of garlic and so does my apartment and that's just gross. Especially because I have to talk to and be around people, and yes, of course, I'm going to shower and brush my teeth, but I think sometimes the smell lingers. Ew.

I'm rambling now. I'm off to shower and get ready for bed.
Good night, y'all!

Dr. Fish

Today I was supposed to go to the Seoul Tower, but the teacher who's leaving,
Boo-ryan (it's actually Brian, but he claims Koreans have a hard time with his name), was going to show his friend around Seoul and did I want to come? Yes, I did.

Don't ask me where we went, I'm not entirely sure. After transfering lines three times, I lost track of names of stations and direction. However, we did go into the heart of Seoul. South of the Han River, anyway.

It was phenomenal. Amazing. Being underground in the subway and suddenly coming above-ground to see water and buildings and bridges... it was great!

We went to a pretty touristy (I guess) part of town. I am going to go ahead and admit this now, I get really excited when I see other foreigners. I want to go up to them and talk to them "Oh, are you here teaching English too?" but I haven't because it's not the thing to do.

I don't really notice I'm surrounded by Koreans 24-7. Which probably isn't such a good thing. That aspect of living here is not especially overwhelming, until it's rush-hour on the subway and there's a flood of people trying to fit in the same subway car. And I don't notice if people stare at me because I'm a starer and I look at everyone and everything, which also probably isn't such a good thing either. Oh, well.


Back to my adventure. After meeting up with Brian's friend, Juanita, we headed over to a sort of different part of town where we looked for a restaurant. Juanita is Korean-Brazillian-American who's a photographer and just content with traveling the world right now.

The places were a lot more expensive than what we're used to in Eunpyeong-gu. In our neighborhood, 5,000 won for a meal is about average. We got fried chicken (which is a big thing here), which was about 15,000 won per plate (but one plate pretty much fed 3 people). FYI, though the exchange rate is plummeting, 1,000 won is/was about equivalent to US$1.

After eating and talking we headed over to what is the biggest bookstore in Korea. It was great and the section in English was pretty substantial. I took this awesome picture as we were leaving (as seen above).

Walking through the area there were so many different American and European shops, such as Baskin'Robins, Krispie Kreme, The Body Shop, Lush (I saw it in Canada first but they had it in England too), etc. It was out of this world!

*This message is for 141/Reading folk: They had an Accessorize!!

Onto the highlight of the day! I'd heard about this and now, I have finally gotten to experience it first-hand: Dr Fish!!!

What this place is, is a cafe where you can have the experience of having fish nibble at your feet. In fact, they nibble dead skin off your feet. If your name is Carrie, or if you have ever seen Ugly Betty, maybe you know what I'm talking about. It SOUNDS kinda interesting/kinda creepy.



The fish.

After you enjoy your coffee (that you have to buy in order to participate in the Dr. Fish experience, you go to a part of the cafe where you sit and put your feet into these pools of water.



My feet.



The fish nibbling at Brian's feet.



It tickled.

In fact, we couldn't stop laughing for about 5 minutes. Or that was just me. But the fish really liked me. Or rather, my feet. Which actually isn't such a great thing, if you think about it. So let's not think about it. After awhile, when I stopped laughing it stopped being quite so ticklish, until they nibbled the tops of your feet, then I had to just pull my feet out for a few minutes. Being tickled boardered on being painful.

This was simultaneously hilarious and bizarre. But such a fun experience.

Other pictures from the day:

Art sculpture thing that I thought was really neat.



And... Seoul.



This is where I leave you. We had a wine and cheese party tonight for Brian because he is going back to the States on Monday. Cheese is quite an exciting thing because it's pretty much non-existant here. The only cheese I have been able to find is processed cheese and even that is pretty expensive. I brought a cheap KW3,700 bottle of sparkling wine, which the other teachers laughed at and called juice. Upon a closer look, we can't be certain if the bottle is .6% alcohol or ALC. <-- (alcohol abbreviated) 6%. Ok, now this is where I really leave you.

Good night (although it's actually tomorrow, the 30th) from Korea.

Lesson Planning (*Gulp)

Only in Korea would you have spicy spaghetti sauce. For a spice-weenie, I'm amazed that I picked Korea; what was I thinking? But I like spice. Who cares if it burns? That's part of the eating adventure; can you handle the heat?

Last night I tried my hand at making a meal. Think about it. Cooking-wary Susan tries cooking in a foreign country where familiar groceries aren't always readily available. I'm going to try to make this sound world-class and international and tell you that it was fusion food. And, in a way, it was. I made spaghetti with Korean noodles and spicy Korean spaghetti sauce. I ate it with white (actually called "cream and white" sliced bread with grapeseed oil mixed with HEB spices brought from home. To wash it all down, I concocted a mix of soju and mango juice.

I had a great time making it. I love to eat; I should learn to cook. I really want to learn how to cook. Wouldn't it be fantastic to learn to cook Korean food? Answer: yes. And after getting the initial surprise that the plainest tomato sauce in the store was still spicy, the whole meal was pretty good.

Yesterday was lesson planning. Which is a lot harder and takes a lot longer than you would think. As of right now (they've changed the schedule around 3 times so far), I have 6 classes on MWF and 6 classes on TTH. One class meets every day and I teach the same level on two different days. I think this cuts down on lesson planning. But we'll see. Today and tomorrow are dedicated to lesson planning. We aren't allowed to bring books or materials home; otherwise I'd be doing this non-stop.

I know that this is going to be a lot of work (one day, I have 5 classes in a row, a 40 minute break, and then another class), but I'm still really excited about everything (clearly I'm insane).

Also, yesterday, we went to apply for our Alien Registration Cards. Jennifer had no problem getting hers, but the lady had to call and was on the phone for what seemed forever, talking about my medical exam. I had no idea what she was saying, which makes it all worse. WHAT is wrong with me? They said I passed and they processed my application, but clearly something is not quite right. I'm not sure I want to know what.

And now, I've got to jet! Off to work for a fun-filled day of lesson planning.

Demo Lesson

Today was day 4 of training. It feels like it's been a LOT longer than that, but nope, I counted, it hasn't. I've been here a little over a week total. I got here late last Monday night. It's Tueday evening.

Anywho, today was our demo lesson, which meant: nerves, tension, and butterflies galore. I thought I had things mapped out but when I got up there I wasn't sure that everything flowed as well as I'd planned. Gah. All in all, I was rather bummed with my lesson and felt that the other teachers' lessons had gone much better. But my feedback was pretty good. She said that I should remember to speak more slowly but that having a warm-up that directly went into the lesson was good. So, that was nice to hear! Hanna is really funny and gives feedback in a really constructive way. I'm really glad she's in charge of afternoon teachers because she's pretty positive and full of good ideas.

The next few days are going to involve a lot of lesson planning, so (like a nerd) I'm quite excited about that. I'm going to be reading more about the SLP curriculum as well as some Harry Wong and Tribes (thank you, Chris!).

Picture of the day:



For Buddha's birthday, colorful lanterns lined the street I take to work. I used them as my guide. Lanterns, check; this is my street. Not such a great idea because they were temporary decorations. It was very pretty, especially at night. I took this picture last night, in the rain, and I'm lucky I did, because they were all down today.

Pop Bubble Punch!

Last night Jennifer and I braved the subway to go see our fellow new teacher, Soo, perform at the Chungmu Art Hall. She is in a TESOL program to teach English through theatre and music. Part of her assignment is to put on performances for the public. Her group is called Pop Bubble Punch! and included several songs from The Sound of Music, Gypsy, The King and I, Mamma Mia, and one number from The Lion King.

It was a lot of fun to see someone we knew (or are starting to get to know) in a performance. "Oh! Do you see her?" we whispered to each other. We did. She had a major role in The Lion King song "I Just Can't Wait to be King" where she played the part of Zazu. She was great! Very enthusiastic and colorful in her costume.

The entire performance was a smaller production, most of the cast sang and acted and danced. It was a very unique cultural experience to hear songs sung by Koreans in English. Overall, it was a terrific experience, probably the highlight of my weekend. We got to explore the art hall and see what other shows will be coming out and we got to see a very lively, enthusiastic, performers singing songs that we know and love.

And now, drumroll, please.... Pictures! (Although we didn't get to see Soo after the performance; I think she was going to be busy with her family.)



This is me standing in front of a sculpture display in front of the art hall (You might say, a work of art next to a work of art... I'm just kidding. My ego isn't quite that big. Close. But not quite.)



Another display outside of the art hall. Colorful tubs. I liked them.



Here is a picture of one of many places to eat at the art hall. I especially liked this one because it had turf instead of grass.



This is a display of Japanese food. It look delicious!



This is what soda/juice/water/beverage machines look like here. Kinda nifty, eh?



This is a view from the art hall.

I'm giving into my "touristy" side more, so more pictures will follow, I promise.

Pizza and pickles

After doing pretty much nothing yesterday, except rot away in front of my computer and feel like a terrible person for not doing more (I did go out exploring a bit, got frustrated and came back home), today was much more productive. And it ain't over yet!

I still don't know my own phone number, my tv doesn't work, and apparently I have mold in the corner of my room that my landlord is going to clean/fix while I'm out on Sunday. And then today as I tried to take a shower, I noticed that my hot water isn't working. Michelle (the director) called to ask if my gas was working and it wasn't. Apparently someone else's gas and hot water is out, but Jennifer's was working and she invited me to take a shower at her place, which was nice because I was disgusting. After that, I declared us bffs because hot shower=awesome.

The only thing I'm concerned about is my phone number because it would be nice to have the rents call me. I miss them bunches.

Anyway, after my delicious shower and watching the season finale of Grey's Anatomy (sorry, I got sucked in), I met Don and Natalie and Jennifer for lunch. Unfortunately, the place they wanted to go was closed so we walked to the area where we'd had drinks the other night. That restaurant was closed as well, so we (in fact, they) decided that we'd go to another area that has lots of shopping. So we did.

We had pizza for lunch, which, not surprisingly tastes exactly like American pizza. Although, I've been told that Koreans like to put pickles or relish on their pizza.

We passed a lot of clothing/shoe stores on the way to this high-rise building that is complete with a department store, a grocery store (it kind of reminded me of HEB or Whole Foods), and a movie theatre on the 11-14 floors. The grocery store had lots of bright, shiny packaging and made me want to buy everything! They also had samples (and I'm a sucker for samples) but I restrained myself because I don't have "Thank you" down yet and no one else (in our group) was getting samples.

We checked out the movie theatre on the 11th floor. We had to wait for a very long time for elevators because there are not just 16 floors of the building but there are 6 levels of the basement. And once an elevator is full it won't even stop on your floor, it just keeps going to where it's going. So you move from elevator door to elevator door, trying to figure out which one will make it to your floor first without filling up. It's a very exciting game.

We finally made it up and Don and Natalie explained that when you buy your seats you buy which seat you'll be in, like at a concert. Also, movies in English will be in English with Korean subtitles. Sometimes movies come out before they do at home, or sometimes after. I guess it just depends.

Ok, on to the excitement. We rode the subway home! My first time in the subway here. To be quite honest I was a little bit nervous about figuring out the subway system but it was fairly easy (possibly because we had two pros with us). And it was cheap, which is good, because I'm running low on funds. That is, currency. I have to go to the bank on Monday and exchange some money.

On the walk home from the subway, I was talking to Don as we passed this restaurant with fish tanks in the front. I kept trailing off because I kept looking at the squid or fish or eels or whatever caught my eye in the tanks. It's kind of funny because it's not an uncommon thing to see and yet it's totally strange for me. But cool.

And tonight we are going to a part of the city near the US Army base where it's a little more touristy/foreign. I'm excited because there's an English bookstore. And I'm excited because I get to see a different part of Seoul, which was why our venture out today was nice. I got to see 2 other places (or subway stops) around where I live(about a twenty to thirty minute walk). And tomorrow, more central Seoul!