New country.. new challenges

So hello everyone. I finally made one, excited to blog my life away. I've been bursting at the seams to write about everything I've experienced, seen, and smelled and I'm so excited that I get to retell and digest all of that here, in one place, and organized so that when I'm 90 and frail I can look back and think, "That was pretty bomb.com."

Today was my 4th day of teaching and I'm kinda sorta getting used to my 3:30 to 10:30 schedule. My first class starts at 4:30 and it's with my boss's son who I'm tutoring in Bio and History before he leaves for Oklahoma again. After two hours of tutoring, I walk into my first real classroom where the students are eagerly waiting for me to go over vocabulary words that they have to memorize and integrate into their daily conversations.. words like mercurial and capitulate. Yep, pretty much words that we never use. I used one vocab word, improvise, and told them that I had been improvising the entire lesson. Of course, I don't do that now.. of course.. maybe...sometimes. Only with my junior highschool kids where all we do is stuff like.. "What color is this bag of chips?" And then I feed them chips if they get it right. They really like this method of teaching, they eat it up. Literally.

Another class I teach is with highschool/college kids where I prepare them in taking the TOEFL Writing test. This has been a bit challenging because not everyone is at the same level. Tailoring to everyone's learning curve is something that I've come to realize as exhausting and impractical. Now I understand why it's easy for a teacher to favor one kid over another and I've come to appreciate them more. This kid today came up to me and said, "Teacher, I'd like to change my name from Gary to Teddy because my friends call me Gay." Fair nuff.

This is a picture of my desk in the faculty room. Mine is right next to the door that leads into a hallway with 6 other classrooms so at any given time, a student can poke their head in and say, "Hi, Teacher", giggle, and run away. This makes for a very eventful day.

Here is a picture of the other teachers, Jason and Brian. No, they are not gay and no, we don't have pink uniforms. In fact, their wearing like colors is what prompted me to take this picture. The other day, Jason told Brian that his name didn't fit with his personality so I suggested Bob and Brad. Brian then said that Bob sounded too much like 'bap' which means rice and Brad sounded like 'bread'. Koreans' fixation on food here is really no joke.

Here they are working hard and oblivious to my mischief (another American by the name of Keith sits in between them) Aren't they cute? They didn't even know they were wearing the same color until I pointed it out. Shock immediately ensued and photobooth fun! See below.

The man in the middle is my boss. He's a goofy guy. And nice.

We played Hangman in our vocab class today and the middle kid was rocking it. It was intense but in a reserved Korean way.

He's one of my favorites already. Oops, I mean I don't have favorites.

I want to say that this was his reaction to Jason's pink shirt but really, it's what Koreans do when they don't want to be photographed: close their eyes and pretend that it's not happening.

Peek-a-boo!

A couple of my hard working students in my Teps Vocab class. I think I'm starting to love teaching..

And finally my last class after I fed them corn chips as a reward for forming grammatically correct sentences. Aren't they cute??

Although I'm enjoying teaching at night, I haven't quite figured out what to do with my time during the day. I already miss my family and friends and wish so often that I could share these experiences with them. For example, my sister and I would have totally had a field day with my discovery of in-home kaeroke on my TV, a lady's shirt that read, "Abercrombie, Peace, I love Cloting", and dduk-bokki carts (spicy rice cake appetizers). Sigh.

I'm going to take a field trip to E-mart tomorrow which bought out Wal-mart here. It's apparently in the world's largest department store/mall called Shinsege so I will try to capture this experience on my camera as much as I can.

I came across an international church at Busan National University online today and I'm excited to go this Sunday. I've asked Keith to go along with me so I hope he is looking forward to going as well! I can't wait to be around other expats.. to be around a family of believers and away from this money and fame hungry environment. it'll be one step closer to feeling like I'm home.