The Kids!

*Writer's note: I am still posting from my phone and the awesome (read: shitty) blogger app only allows me to post all the pictures in one clump at the bottom. I'll do my best to explain them in the post.

In case you couldn't tell from the very creative title of this post, it is about the kids! You know, those adorable always (read- occasionally) well behaved students I spend most of my days teaching. As I write this I am in the teacher's room at school listening to the sounds of kids practicing their graduation performance: a Romeo and Juliet musical. Although I question the appropriateness of having 6 year olds perform a play about teenagers who commit suicide, I have to admit that they sound darling (even if I'm currently  listening to them sing about their hatred for the Capulets).

Anyway, here is how it works here:
In the morning we have kinder kids and we've got elementary schoolers in the afternoon. We all have about 3 main classes of students that are "ours". We teach those kids a few times everyday, but we also rotate between other classes for a few periods as well.

The kinder classes are all named after US cities. My main class is Houston. I've got 10 students -5 girls and 5 boys. Because some families vacation in January, I've only had all 10 kids in class once since I've started. I usually have 8, but that should change in February. They are all 7 in Korea, which means they're actually 5 or 6 years old.

I love my Houston class. They are adorable. My favorite thing about them is that they are very well behaved, especially compared to the other classes at ILS. They love to hug my legs and play with my hair and tell me they love me -adorable but tiring (in a good way).

I have two main elementary classes -super 3 and super 2. Super means they are super smart -the highest level classes at ILS. It starts at level 3 and ends at level 1. They speak English very well.

I really like my super 3 class. I think they're 9 in Korea, so 7 or 8 in the US. I've got 5 students in that class, but I've only had 4 of them come so far. They are well behaved and also seem to like me. My favorite thing about them is that they bring me treats all the time!

My last main class is super 2. They're okay. It just 2 girls -both 10 (8 or 9). They are very smart. Maybe too smart because they finish their work in about 10 minutes and then sit around for the rest of class critiquing all the English teachers. I mean sure, by the time they're my age I'm sure they'll be doctors or mathematicians, but at this point they still have to ask my permission to use the bathroom. I'm working on them. My goal is to get them from academic robots to occasionally social academic robots. Okay, that sounded harsh. I do like my super 2 girls, but I think I've been spoiled by my awesome Houston and super 3 kids.

In addition to main classes, we also have a subject that we teach. Before I came here, I told them I'd be most interested in science and least interested in math. Welp guess what, you guys! I'm the ILS math teacher! Ugh. It's not that horrible, but they are definitely times when I have no effing clue how to explain things. It's official, Korean kindergarteners are better at math than me.

It doesn't help that we're currently working on measurements in half the classes and my school doesn't have rulers or scales. Since I work at one of the most expensive schools in the city, you'd think we'd have stuff like that. Nope! Instead we have tricked out purple school buses and movie projectors and birthday feasts. My camp experience in "fake it until you make it" came in handy on this. For my first 2 weeks I gave the kids my shoes and/or nalgene to measure with. This week got tired of waiting on my supervisor to buy rulers so I photo-copied one of the other teacher's rulers 20 times. Tah-dah! Homemades rulers for everyone. (Insert Oprah voice here) You get a ruler! You get a ruler! And you get a ruler!

Anyway, gotta go teach two 9 year olds who've probably (read- definitely) already finished their classwork anyway.

Picture Key!
(its nearly impossible to get a good picture of eight 5 year olds)
1-Houston during The Big Birthday Celebration
2-Houston on Jaden's bday
3-Some Houston Kids and me on today's field trip
4- Maddox and Sue playing a math game

Shit Korean Kids Say

Welcome to a little post I'm going to call 'Shit Korean Kids Say'. I'm hoping to make this a semi-regular thing. Basically, I'll just post funny crap that my kids say. Think Ghetto Hikes (which I recommend you immediately google if you've never read) except less ghetto and more politically incorrect. Here we go!

Me: "The vocab word is handsome. Who can use handsome in a sentence?"
Student: "Obama President has become very handsome!"

After I explained the act of stacking hammocks when talking about the vocab word hammock:
Me: "The next word is avoid. Who can use avoid in a sentence?"
Student: "When you are in the bottom hammock you must avoid the farts of the person above you!"

Many of you have already seen this gem on Facebook:

RIP My Computer, and Other Tidbits from My Week

Hello again! I had planned to start this post off talking about I finally have internet in my apartment, but I can't. 

After trying to communicate to my school director, supervisor, and landlord that all I needed was an Ethernet cord for a week (and they could stop sending over "engineers") I gave up and went out and found one. So, technically as of Tuesday I did have internet. And it was great -for about 3 days- until I broke my computer! While giving my sister an apartment tour via Skype, the damn Ethernet cord got caught on the bathroom door and I dropped my computer. She just HAD to see the mysterious Korean shower! #koreaprobs. Now I'm back to no internet, and updating this from a cafe on my cell phone, so sorry I'm not sorry if its not edited. I'm still in mourning, y'all.

Anyway. I'm gonna keep this short because the formatting on my cell phone app sucks.

Besides the computer incident, the week went well at school. We had a big birthday celebration (more on this in a later post) on Monday. And I met my two kindergarteners that had been vacationing last week.

On Friday I went to downtown Cheonan and checked out the Shinsegae (Cheonan's big shopping mall). I even found a burger and fries! It was decent except for some strange sauce that was on it, but it was my first semi-American find over here so that was a win.

After checking out the Shinsegae, we walked around. It was pretty cool. Lights, signs, and street vendors everywhere. I even tried some street food -a fried sweet potato thing. It was okay.

The best part of the evening was finding a shop that sold hilarious socks and stationary. Who wants to be pen-pals?!

Until I get my computer screen fixed I'm going to try to post short, more frequent updates. Byeeee!

My First Week

I have completed my first week in Korea. Well, technically I've been here six days because of my flight mishap, but whatevs. Same diff, right? Anyway, so far things have been great. Once I accepted that being confused 99% of the time is just a part of life now, things became easier. And who knows, maybe in a few months, I'll only be confused like 79% of the time. Just being optimistic, you guys.

My school is called ILS. It is a private kinder and elementary school. It is about a 10 minute walk from my apartment. The walk to work is very enjoyable. There is even a nice river walk for part of my journey. There are 7 foreign teachers at my school including me -3 from America and 4 from Canada. All of the other foreign teachers are very nice and helpful.

My school is at the top -the 8th floor.

My first day at school started on Tuesday, which was my first full day here in Korea. Although I didn't have to be at school until 9, I woke up around 3am and couldn't fall back asleep. Having fallen asleep around midnight the night before made for a very sleepy first day. That time change is a bitch. But what I could I expect, I do live in the future after all.

I mostly spent the day watching other foreign teachers. I felt a little sorry for them because many times my presence in the classroom was a distraction for the kids. Either they realised right away how fabulous I am, or just wanted to size up the new foreign teacher (probably the second one). After work I went with a few other teachers to eMart, which sort of reminded me a giant Sam's Club. I bought some breakfast supplies (aka milk and cereal).

My GIANT box of cereal

On my second day I started teaching. Not the whole day -just a class or two here and there. The class material has been pretty easy to teach so far. They pretty much give you a script. I think the harder part will just be class management. After my second day, some of the teachers at my school took me out for my first real Korea meal -Korean BBQ. It was so good!

Yummy!

Thursday and Friday were much like Wednesday- with me watching some classes and teaching a few as well. I went out for bibimbap on Thursday -which might be my favorite thing I've had since I've been here. And its only $4! Eating out here is so cheap -much more inexpensive than grocery shopping (my gallon of milk was $8). Friday, I stopped by 7 Eleven -there are two within 2 minutes of my apartment- and picked up some Korean Ramen to make at home.

Bibimbap 

Korean Ramen > American Ramen

Saturday we went on a field trip with the elementary kids. It was a very strange, but good experience. We all (teachers and students) met at a coffee shop in the morning, and then got onto buses to go to our destination. I have no clue what the place was called, but it was quite interesting. We herded the children into 2 lines (think Madeline) and gave everyone a wrist band. Then we boarded covered wagons and took a tour around a barren field while a Korean lady narrated. Everything was in Korean, but I can only assume she must have been saying something really interesting to balance out the incredibly boring field.

Lining up to get wristbands

Madeline lines. My heart melted every time I saw them all holding hands!

Two of my favorite elementary students, Sophia and Honey.

The rest of the day was spent herding the children from activity to activity. Highlights include cookie making, horseback riding, sledding, and feeding livestock. The most bizarre part of the day was a dog show -which was really just a man throwing frisbees at dogs, but the crowd seemed pretty impressed. My favorite part of the day was the free lunch! The teachers all got beef bulgogi and it was delicious!

Some of these kids were ridiculously artistic!

Lunch

As per Korean tradition, everyone took their shoes off in the restaurant. Getting 50 kids in and out of shoes is a pain. #koreaprobs

Weird dog show

Feeding sheep! The cutie in the green coat (Tony) is in one of my classes.

Last night I went out on my own for the first time. I ordered bibimbap at a restaurant and found a cafe that serves really good hot chocolate. Success! I'm really enjoying the daily challenges and successes of living in a foreign country. It makes you appreciate little things.

Awk selfie I took to document my first time successfully ordering food in Korea. My face is red because it was 25 degrees fahrenheit out!
*note the Kanuga sweatshirt

Today is my first day off. I've spent the day exploring my neighborhood, which is called Buldang-dong. I went to a coffee shop to use the internet (mine isn't working, but I've been assured they'll fix it tomorrow) in the morning and had some more hot chocolate (my favorite American comfort). Then I walked around for a bit before the cold forced me to duck into a fancy shopping mall across the street from my block. This ended up being a fantastic decision because I got to use a toilet with a heated seat! My tush was so comforted!

Why so cold, Korea?

Another awk selfie on the streets of Korea

All in all, it was a pretty successful day! Tomorrow is Monday and I begin my first week of full solo teaching days. I'm pretty excited to settle into the schedule. Until next time, y'all!

Back to the Future (aka Korea)!!

Greetings from Korea (the future)!

Hello everyone! As I write this it is around 1:20pm on Thursday in Korea, but 11:20pm EST (or 10:20 for you St. Louis readers) on Wednesday. Boy is that time change a pain. I have woken up ridiculously early every day and been exhausted by the end of the workday. It is getting better though. The first day I woke up at 3am but this morning I managed to sleep until 6am. Progress!

Anyway, as you can imagine, a lot has happened since I last updated. So this post will serve to catch everyone (aka my sister and maybe one of my cousins) up on everything that happened my first day in Korea. Tomorrow I'll try to post about my first few days here. After that we will continue with our regularly scheduled programming -aka themed posts about shit that goes down in Korea-town. Or that's what I'm hoping at least. I don't have it all figured out yet, and I'm too tired to think right now. Feel free to give me requests on things you'd like to hear about (food, my apartment, the kids etc.).

So, as I'm sure you've figured out by now, I did finally get on a flight to Korea! There was a lot of doubt when I woke up Sunday morning -I THINK it was Sunday but who the f knows with the time difference- because Chicago weather was simply awful. We'd gotten at least 10 inches of snow overnight and it was still coming down. But I did make it to the airport and let me tell you this -the international terminal at O'Hare is the titties! Literally the only nice thing I can say about O'Hare. It was fancy! Nice leather chairs, and cafes, and wide, non-crowded hallways! International is the way to go! Trust me, I wouldn't use all these exclamation points on just anything!

My plane. The photo quality isn't as ter as it appears -it was actually that white out!

Totes the best way! Berry fancy indeed!

Once I got on my flight, we had to sit there for about an hour while they de-iced the plane (suck it, Chicago weather). Luckily, I had some free slippers to occupy my time with. Oh, and a TV screen (see what I mean, fancy!) to examine.

De-icing the plane with this weird orange and green junk

Very stylish slippers

The flight wasn't too bad. I got a window seat and there was an empty seat between myself and the lady in the row with me. I watched three movies, but I couldn't sleep. This might have had something to do with the lady sitting behind me who had wedged her foot between the wall and my seat, on my armrest! Every now and then, she'd move her toes and they'd rest on my arm. Luckily for her, I have no clue how to translate GTFO in Korean. So I tried my best to ignore it by watching a movie about Chris Hemsworth's abs. At least I think that's what is was about because its the only time I paid any attention.

Oh, herro!!!! (Asian for hello, duh)

We had 2 meals on the plane -they were pretty good for plane food. I chose the western options both times because the beef sounded good and they octopus sounded scary. The most interesting thing about the flight was flying through time zones. The ride was about 14 hours and I saw the sunset and rise and then set again. Except we were supposed to keep the window covers  down, so every time I looked outside I got glared at my a dozen grumpy Koreans.

Sunset over northern Canada

Sunrise over somewhere in Asia (I think)

Once at the airport, I went through immigration and I'm pretty sure I met the quiet Asian girl from Pitch Perfect. She whispered everything!

After retrieving my baggage, I was picked up by Mr. Cho who had a sign with my name on it (I'm a pretty big deal). He showed me to my bus to Cheonan and I settled in for the two hour ride. I probably should have been looking out the window in wonderment, but I was so damn tired that I slept for the first time in 24 hours. I was met at the bus station by my school's director William who took me to my new apartment to drop my things. He then drove me to dinner (even after I said I wasn't hungry) at 10:30pm (8:30am my time). In case you're doing the math, I was going on 2 hours of sleep in over 26 hours at this point. He took me to a little place on the bottom floor of the building my school is in. I tiredly chose the first thing -which turned out to be an egg, cheese and lettuce sandwich. He then walked me home -the whole time pointing out landmarks so I could find my way back the next morning. I just remember being dead tired and having this little old Asian man point at things and say "memory!".

I finally crawled into bed just after midnight.

Well my laptop battery is dying and since I can't plug it into the asian sockets at my school that means I've gotta goooo! Until tomorrow (hopefully but no promises), you guys!

True Life: My New Life as a Chicagoan

You know what, you guys? I was being sarcastic earlier when I said it felt like I lived at O'Hare. But shit just got real. I missed my flight to Korea! "How can that be?" you might be asking yourself, "didn't you have a four hour layover?" YES, okay, yes I did. Get off my back, everyone! After I got off my plane from St. Louis, I was directed by a kindly older lady to United gate B17 for the flight to Seoul. "Neat-o!" I thought to myself, "that was easy". FALSE. I had been directed to the WRONG flight. And I figured out that I was supposed to be across the airport at a terminal only accessible by tram only ten minutes before take-off. Cool beans!

Anyway, after I missed my flight, I was directed to a line in front of United where I spent the next two hours with 50 angry travelers whose flights had been cancelled due to the storm. Fun times, you guys! The one bright spot was getting an adorable picture of an Asian baby dressed as sushi from my sister.

Abby's attempt to prevent a mental breakdown in the middle of the airport

My new flight is tomorrow at noon (basically the same flight but 24 hours later). So now, I'm at a hotel for the night (I couldn't stay in that damn airport another minute) hoping and praying that my flight doesn't get cancelled due to the storm.

Just watching some Big Bang Theory at the Holiday Inn and pretending my chances of getting to Korea aren't diminishing with every inch of snow falling outside my window!

Try again tomorrow?

Here I go!

Greetings from Chicago O'Hare!

It's beginning to feel like I live here. As you might have seen on Facebook, I was here about 40 hours ago trying to get to St. Louis to see my family. Well, I finally made it after 1 cancellation and countless delays. I got to St. Louis in time to have dinner with my sister on the 2nd and then a full day together on the 3rd before heading back to Lambert International for my 6:45am flight to Chicago. ((Shout out to my sister, Abby for driving me to the airport at 5am in 20 degree weather!))

Stuffing as much stuff in my bag as possible

All ready to head off to the airport at 5 AM

Even though it was too short, I had a great time in St. Louis with my family. I ate all my favorite foods, went to the Arch, and had a family dinner.

Eating at The Pasta House

Abby and I at the Arch

I'm at my gate now and I have two hours left in my four hour layover. Soon I'll board my 14 hour flight to Incheon. I should arrive around 5pm local time (3am EST) on the 5th. For those of you who've done the math, yes, I am about to TRAVEL INTO THE FUTURE! Korea is 14 hours ahead of us. Don't worry, I'll be sure to let you all know how the future is.

Anywho, I'm just sitting here people watching and wondering how early is too early to break out my ziplock of leftover Imo's pizza (thanks Colleen) and king size milky way (thanks Buk). I'm really excited, but the nerves have gone away (although I expect they'll return once I land).

Farewell for now! Talk to you from the other side of the world!