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We have both finished our first weeks in school, and can now officially say that we are teachers in South Korea!
The culture here is so far from what we are used to. Travelling through Asia has helped us with adjusting, but it's not like any other country that we have been to yet.
Rules for living in Korea:
1. Bow. A lot. Most men only bow, there aren't many handshakes here, though after all we were taught about greetings and bowing a lot, and Sean was met by a high five handshake and booming greetings of 'NORRIS!'
2. There is always an exception to the rule in Korea.
3. You need to learn how to use chopsticks. And preferably before you get here, so you're not making a fool of yourself at work. There are no knives and very few forks, we have heard there are some somewhere in Korea, but that musst be somewhere else, because it isn't here...
4. You should eat burgers out of the wrapper, so that you don't touch it with your hands, because of the germ factor. Eating chips with your hands doesn't count though.
5. They don't really eat with any water or liquid, they believe it dilutes your digestive juices. Soup doesn't count, and is fine.
6. When you drink alcohol in a bar, you must drink with food, in complete opposition to rule number 5.
7. There are no public bins around, because rubbish is taxed here, and they don't want people skipping taxes, and using the public bins. Everyone is in apartments, so no one has their own bins, instead, you have to use certain bags, and the bags are taxed, so bin bags are really expensive!
8. Wine is not as cheap as it should be, and not as cheap as we would like it!
9. There is a Tescos! It's called Homeplus, but it has lots of Tesco goodies, including Tesco bolognese sauce, which is outrageously priced.
10. Korean is a mostly listener oriented language; so it is up to the listener to use their 'nun-chi' (or magical powers of discernment) to figure out what is going on, so you need to ask a lot of direct questions to get direct answers. - this means we rarely know what is going on.
11. The Korean culture is very bali bali - or hurry hurry. It's very last minute here, so you may not find out that your lessons are cancelled until ten minutes after they were supposed to have started.
12. Kids will fall asleep in your lessons, they are in school for 12 hours a day, and then playing computer games after that, so at some point, they will fall asleep.
I am in a boys middle school....and Sean is in a mixed elementary school.
This week was our first week actually in the classroom:
Lots of singing, fun and games. My kids are so sweet and such fun to teach. They always talk to me in the corridors, and in my room. A good way to practice my Korean i think. I know i shouldn't, but i have a few favourites already. Maybe i'll fix the weekly quiz some times. I am lucky because my school is small, so i see the classes three times a week, compared to most ppl's once a week. So i can learn their faces and names. My co-teacher is also really good, we have good communication and i think we work well.
My kids on the other hand, aren't quite as eager as Sean's. I teach all 3 middle school grades, 1st grade are around 12 years, and they are still cute and interested and want to talk to me. 2nd graders are mostly interested, but i think by the end of the year, they will be more like the 3rd graders who really don't care! I teach their speaking lessons, which they are not graded on, so some of them don't want to talk and don't want to be in the lessons.
I may have embarassed myself hugely in the first lesson of the 3rd graders, which didn't help in me getting them on side. When revising the English alphabet, I may have added an extra 'U' after Q...Repeat after me, Q.U.R, (writes on the board to emphasise the point...) S.T..... (oh s*** I've got that wrong)...Ahem,
In my school, I am slightly outnumbered, there are 600 boys, and of the 40 teachers, only 6 or 7 are women, the rest are men. The first couple of days were awkward lunches with some of the women, who talk amongst themselves mostly. But (after seeing my awful alphabet performance) one of my co-teachers told me i was teaching much better, and since then we are best mates. He's really sweet and he is so funny, I don't get a lot of the Korean humour (I think most of it is lost in translation) but he is really funny in a way that I can understand. He has a best mate at school, who isn't an English teacher, but really wants to learn English, so always wants to talk to me, and now the three of us each lunch together, and that's pretty cool. The other men have also started being friends with me after my popularity with them, and I have been challenged to a swimming race by someone who used to race a previous native teacher.
So the first weeek is done, and we haven't even discussed the food! We will save that for next time. Thinking of you all, keep us updated with what's going on for you, and we'll keep on blogging. x
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