Dujeong Elementary School

First written September 2012:

Dujeong Elementary School is the school that I teach at. I have my own classroom. It is located on the 5th floor of the 5 story school building. There is an elevator but I am not allowed to use it. It is only for the disabled and old people. If you are able, you use the stairs. (I better have fantastic legs soon). I teach 5th and 6th graders. There are 5 5th grade classes and 6 6th grade classes. So I see each class twice a week. Each class has 25 to 30 students in them. So I have around 300 students. Most teachers including Zack have at least 600 or more students because they see 22 classes once a week and some classes have more than 30 students each. So I am learning  my students faces and names quicker than most native teachers.

On Wednesday's after school the teachers play volleyball in the gym. It is a lot of fun. I get to see the teachers that I see everyday but in a less professional manor. They are more carefree. Even though I can't understand much of what anyone is saying I do understand context and can usually guess at what is going on. I have played two times so far. The first time I didn't know what to expect. I changed into sportswear and sneakers and went to the gym. There are about 8 men teachers (including the principle and vice principle) that play volleyball and the rest are women. The women play a little bit but don't move around the floor very much but the men try to play most of the floor. My head teacher grabbed a ball and we started to warm up. I practiced serving the ball under and over handed. All of the women "ooo'd and aah'd at my ability to hit the ball "powerfully". I am not very good at volleyball but I find it fun and I try to be ready if the ball is headed in my direction. Which translates into me being "awesome" at volleyball. The men are very good and the women mainly stay in the back and hope the ball doesn't come to them and serve on their turn. They say I am "very passionate". We play best 3 out of 5 games wins. Also, they have rules that Americans don't have. Or better yet, they have lack of rules.  For you volleyball players out there, they carry all of the time, they kind of push the ball over sometimes and worst of all they kick the ball and its legal. The first time someone kicked the ball I quit playing defensively because I thought the volley was over but it kept going. I turned around to my head teacher and said "Did that count?" She shook her head yes. "Whatever! It so does not!" I thought to myself.  But I just went with it. Our team lost that day. We won 2 of 5 games. Afterwards, my head teacher says, "wait, we have a gift." I was like, "for what?" She said, "for volleyball." She walked away and I just waited. She returned with a bar of soap for both of us. "It's our gift for losing. The winners got toothpaste." Oh ok, sure. I said thank you and took my soap. Last week my team won. We got first pick out of a bunch of boxes of cookies. The losers got second choice. I wonder what we will get next week?

I have settled into my school and I am starting to get to know my co-teachers names and remember which classes they teach. Korean school cafeteria food is good most days and they is always rice in case I don't like something (and a can of Pringles in my desk for dire situations).

My first few days were pretty rough though. I mixture of things were going on that caused lots of stress. Let me take you through what is now kind of humorous but at the time was no where close to funny.

My first day was a Friday. For all of my classes that day I introduced myself. I made a powerpoint with pictures of my family and some things they might want to know about me. It went well. However, the way my schedule of classes is, I see a couple classes on Friday and Monday. So even though I haven't met all my classes yet I have to start teaching a couple lessons to a couple classes on Monday. I have a teachers guide (there is a lot of Korean is this book and a little bit of English), a kids classroom book and a CD rom. All I know is to teacher "these 2 pages for 30 minutes." That means nothing to me. I take my books and CD home for the weekend to see if I can figure something out. I have no idea how long it takes to teach these pages and how much of my own materials are needed and I don't know what the CD does. On Sunday afternoon I am scouring the internet and looking for ideas for teaching. They hours go by faster and faster and I am getting no where. I put the CD in my computer and it doesn't work in my MAC. At this point I am so tired and I know I have an hour and a half at school before I have my first class that I decide I will try and figure something out at school. I am already not going to get a full nights sleep as it is and I go to bed. As soon as we get to bed an alarm goes off (it's about 2 am). It's the kind of alarm that goes off for 20 seconds and then is silent for 10 seconds over and over and over and over again. Apparently we weren't thinking about the meaning of the alarm. We were just annoyed and couldn't sleep. We finally were so tired and fell asleep for about 4 hours. They alarm woke us back up around 6 am on Monday morning (the first full week of school and I get 4 hours of sleep). (Also, you should know that September is the middle of the school year. They graduate and change grade in February so this is the second semester not the first week of school). So we get ready and head to school. So I'm exhausted, I don't know what I'm going to teach exactly and I am missing home and I want American food. I get to school, go to my room, turn my computer on, open all the windows because it's like a furnace in my room and put my CD in. I should also tell you that my head teach told me on Friday that I would be getting a new computer in my room over the weekend. So I have a new computer and it's a LOT better than the one I had on Friday but all of the things you need to do to a new computer like downloading Adobe hadn't been done. My CD needs Adobe. So I go to download Adobe but Adobe is all in KOREAN. I finally figure out how to download it and I get a pop up error message in KOREAN. I decide to try and use my CD and it opens up and I have 4 options in KOREAN! I don't know what to do so I immediately start crying (naturally). But this isn't any crying. It's not just a few tears falling on my face. It's flat out sobbing. And I CAN'T MAKE IT STOP! My poor head teacher (who I have spent 1 day with) came in after a while (I have no idea how long I sat there crying) and she was trying to figure out what my problem was. :) "Why you crying? You have to tell me if something is wrong. I can't help if you don't tell me. What happened?" I'm still sobbing and can't speak and I'm embarrassed. She looks at the computer screen and it clicks. "You can't read Korean." Yeah, that's right lady. I can't read Korean. I don't know what I'm going to teach. I want to sleep. But I nod my head yes. I am still crying. I try to stop but I just keep wiping tears away. "You are a sensitive person, yes?" Yep, that's me. I guess she will know that from the get go. Anyways, I finally dry it up after I let out a few more good sobs (like an hour after I started). The day ended much better than it started. For the rest of the week I thought I was going to get sick on the way to school everyday. My second week was 100 times better than my first.

 I am loving school and teaching now. I am getting to know more and more about Korea and Korean culture. We have gotten settled into our apartment (even though we will be moving to a new one in January). We are becoming more familiar with our city and have even ventured out into other parts of Korea which we will do more and more as time goes on. There is a Starbucks about a 12 minute walk from my school that I go to a lot while I'm waiting on Zack to get out of school. (I will right a whole other post on coffee later). I am starting to make my classroom my own little by little every day. I am getting more and more used to Korean food and find myself craving it from time to time. I don't dread going to lunch everyday. There is usually something I am going to like each time (at least that's how it's been so far and it's been over 3 weeks). So much has happened in the past 2 months we have been here. I need to write 1000 more posts to cover it all. Hopefully, I will get some more writing done this week.

Thanks for reading!

Love you all!