Horray For Internet!!

Oh my gosh I finally have internet! I never realized my addiction to the internet was so strong but I'm glad to be getting my fix. So here are a hodge podge of pictures I have taken over the last few days.

Stanford class. I teach them 4 times a week. They are a little rowdy but they are starting to listen to me a little bit better. This was the second time I taught them. They weren't listening.

Again Stanford. The boy looking at the camera is Daniel Cho. He is so little and cute. Today he put stickers all over his face.

What I see on my way to work.

There it is. YBM ECC.

This is in Uiejeongbu. We had to cross the river on these stones. Every step I was thinking it was like that show where the Japanese people walk across the "stones" and some sink and they fall in.

Uiejeongbu Market. I find this incredibly unsanitary.

Would you like some fish?

I went to this Korean restaurant on Monday. Everything was in Korean so I was like, "I have no idea what to order." So they picked for me. It was chicken fried steak with this brown gravy, rice, corn and a coleslaw type mixture. I forgot my camera. But I went back Tuesday and got Bi Bim Bap (which is pictured above). It's rice, carrots, onions, green onions, bean sprouts, this kind of spicy red sauce, topped off with a fried egg.

A gift that was left on my bed today, Spam, tuna and oil. Spam is a delicacy here in Korea. Luckily I grew up on the stuff. Tasty :)

No Internet Makes Me Sad

I still don't have internet at my apartment which means I'm secretly typing this during my "Free Talking" planning time. Not that I have much to update about. Class has been going fine. It's weird but I really feel like I'm starting to be a teacher. I had to pull a girl out of the class and talk to her. Crazy.

Today is Homoni's birthday. I need to call her.

Oh bell. Write more later.

So here is the deal

When I signed up for YBM I was told that I would be teaching English to mostly older "Academy" kids. I'm thinking okay grammer, sentence structure, conversational stuff. Little did I know that I was signing up to be a babysitter until 3 pm everyday. I teach 3 or 4 of these classes every day to 5 and 6 year olds:

Science (where I swear every Science experiment involves them blowing through a straw which leaves me covered in spit by the end of class and completely grossed out)
Arts and Crafts (glorified title for playing with crayons for 40 minutes)
Drama in Education (they read a play and have to memorize it)
Reading Master (bullshit)
P.E. (hell)

Sure I'm no scientist and my drawing skills are lacking but I can handle that. P.E., on the other hand, sucks hard. After about 20 minutes of trying to set up a game for them to play I was sweating like crazy. At one point I was amazed at how I would turn to tell one kid to stop doing something and then turn back around and two others would be climbing on something dangerous. Like they had popped out of no where. Anyway so I decided to sit down well aware that there are cameras in every room so people could see the crazyness that was happening.

Rachel, the head kinder teacher, comes up and goes "You know I can see you right?" and looked at her quite angrily and replied, "Yeah." She told me that I couldn't just sit there and watch them run around. They are 5. She asked me what the lesson plan for the day was and I told her. It was review of some games they had played in July but heaven forbid me think the necessary equipment I would need for these games would be in the playground room. They were not. She told me I should have asked her for them. Hmm, that would have been good to know before the class wouldn't it. These people just assume you know everything.

She told me I should have come up with a new game for them to play with the stuff I had available. I'm sorry I didn't get a degree in coming up with fun P.E. games for 5 year olds when they are perfectly happy running around in circles. So her brilliant game that she came up with was to have the kids pair up in twos and roll a ball back and forth to each other. Genious... I'm sure they would enjoy that for 40 minutes.

After about two minutes of that most of the kids stopped listening to her. Great control I thought. How do you expect me to control 11 kids in a room called "The Playground Room," when I don't even know there names. "Hey you there, stop hitting what's your name!" "Pink shirt quit climbing on that!" "Ugly kid quit throwing the ball at the runny nose kid." Yes very effective.

I do teach the older kids after 3 and they are alright. I have about 3 or 4 of these classes a day. Basically we just go through a book that has stuff like, "What's your favorite thing to do?" or "What do you need for a science experiement?" It's ridiculously boring and they go through it really fast.

Live and learn. If I ever decide to do this again I will ask specifically which classes I will be teaching.

The Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth

In a round about, very sneaky way, I was lied to. Explain later.

Let being an actual adult begin (thanks Rachael my spell checker)

Well, I am officially an adult. An adult with endless hours of planning for classes, duties to fulfill and young minds to mold. My very first day of teaching was actually yesterday. I was subbing for Ian teacher who left for a better paying job. He's also the one that made my apartment disgusting. Every class I walked into the kids would go "Huh? Where's Ian teacher?" But let's talk about the classes shall we.

The very first class that I taught was drama in education to 5 year olds. The class name was Dartmouth (every class at YBM is named after Ivy League schools. So there is Yale, Cornell, Princeton, Harvard, Oxford and so on). They were adorable. This one girl Elizabeth loved me the second I got in. Did I mention they all pick out American names that you have to call them during class? Anyway when I was helping everyone flip to the right page she grabbed my arm and just hugged me. It was so cute but I had to remain professional and continue helping the kids. It was only a 40 minute class but once it was over I was worn out.

After them I had a three hour break to prepare for my upper level classes. They are all very smart and know how to read, but not speak, English very well.

Today, my first official day as a teacher, was mediocre. I had one class of all boys that absolutely would not repeat after me. I don't think I've ever felt more frustrated. I would say "Okay everyone repeat after me, 'Mike are you sick?'" And they would just all stare at me or at their papers. I'm standing there thinking, you guys can't even repeat the words I'm saying?! You just spoke English to me before we started! We ended up playing some rock paper scissors game which they liked a lot.

Another class I taught named Stanford got yelled at by the Academic Director right before I had to teach them. When I asked them how they were they said "Bad." When I started my lesson they ended up having the wrong books which was fabulous. So I had improvise which I'm realizing is something I'm going to have to do a lot of here.

My last class for the day is one on one conversational English with the Manager of the school. I'm thinking, "Why me? I'm brand new here. Shouldn't someone with more experience do this?" He was really nice though and told me that in the class he is a student not the Manager. Ha, right.

Ah my first picture of "Korean Food." Oh, okay so it's not Korean but it is pizza from Korea. I didn't realize how much I missed cheese until that first delicious bite. I got pepperoni but they tasted like the pepperoni from a lunchables pizza. It's no Pizza Hut or Papa Murphy's or Papa John's (man I miss pizza) but it was pretty tasty.

Short Hair

I have a bowl cut. Oh well hair grows.

Pictures and such

This is the start of the pictures portion of the show. Me with the wooden Bobby Bearcat. Go Northwest.

I miss you long hair. Did I mention I cut off all of my hair. Me in my Hy-Vee outfit. Harry Potter woo!

The cute little girl I sat next to the whole way to Korea. After I took the picture she informed me that she didn't like flash but let me do it anyway.

Homoni! She is so thin now :(

Some mountain in Korea.

My room with my crap in it. You can't tell but the floor was nasty dirty.

The disgusting bathroom. Note the left side of the photo were it is gross and black. Yeah had to bleach the whole side and it still wasn't really clean.

Gross gross fridge. I scrubbed the hell out of that thing.

Another shot of the bathroom with the washer right there.

Seong Hwan Opa. Cousin.

Jun Gu

Emo! Note the peace signs in all the pictures.

My clothes hanging to dry. I miss you dryer!!