Gangneung-si, Gangwon-do, South Korea

My friends...

ahhh...sitting here in a p'ishibang (pc room) in kangneung right now. Just finished my second day of solo teaching. Things are going well so far, but i can tell that i'm going to need a lot of tylenol. You know for the headaches. Kids are crazy!!!

I teach morning kindergarten from 10am to 2:30 with a one hour lunch break from 12:30 to 1:30. Usually I teach Verbal academics followed by Written Academics and then after lunch we have special activities. Some days it's science or gym or arts and crafts etc etc
We sing songs and colour and draw and other kid stuff. My morning kindergarten class is aged 5 to 6 and I have 10 students.

From 2:30 to 4:00 I teach preschool kids...they're about 3 or 4 years old.
And then from 4:00 to 5:30 I teach elementary school kids and they are about 6 years old.

It's not difficult, but there is a lot to keep straight in your head. I need to organize the lesson plans and make sure I can keep the kids busy for extended periods of time. I hope they are learning something. Then again it is only my second day of teaching by myself.

Another thing is that I get about four "crying" incidents a day! They are usually for little things like somebody got hit, or someones not sharing the crayons...Then I have these kids that can "cry on command" and use it to get special treatment. When they're bad we put a check with their name on the board, three checks and it's in the corner, six and they speak to the director. Anyways...this one kid named Will cries whenever he gets a check, but it's just for attention. He's always the sh*tstarter if you know what I mean though.

AND AS FOR KOREA itself....

well, after almost 27 hours of travelling I landed in Inchon airport in Seoul...and was picked up by the husband of my director. He took me to meet his wife at his restaurant in downtown Kangneung for korean BBQ. It was amazing. Spicy sauces, sesame oil and a little mini grill at your table where you cook all your own meets and then eat them off the grill. You can wrap them in sour leaves or eat them with "kimchi" (kind of a spicy pickled cabbage...also very tasty) or this special salty celery salad whicdh was great too.
We drank "soju" (korea's national drink...kind of tastes like vodka and sake mixed together) into the wee hours of the night. Good times...

ODD THINGS I'VE NOTICED...

-you buy garbage bags and pay for your garbage pickup together..there are different sizes, when the bag is full, you just put it on the side of the road, anywhere you want, in fact there are piles of garbage bags all over town and then one day they just disappear...very odd...

-people run red lights here or sit at greens, i don't think it matters, it's just what they feel like

-get this, imported alcohol is ridiculously expensive. you buy the entire bottle at once and then can get your drinks made as strong as you want and with any mix you want and the bartender keeps the bottle behind the bar until you're finished...
cuervo 1800 ~$320 /26oz
jack daniels ~$175 /micky
bombay sapphire ~$200/micky
johnny walker black ~$450/26oz
molson canadian bottle $8
yes, those are canadian dollars!!!! it's absolutely ridiculous, in fact even in the grocery stores where they sell liquor, most times the bottles are smaller than mickys because nobody wants to pay that much for some booze

compare that to:
2 bucks for a bottle of SOJU
$1.50 for a bottle of HITE (the korean beer...very tasty, it's like pilsener)

Soooooo.....other than that, i've been eating a lot of noodles and stuff, it's like 80 cents a meal...

Went downtown the other night and got sloshed, had korean bbq, and went to one of the bars called BAR BUMPIN'....it's wasn't bumping...heh heh, but that's because it was a tuesday night....they are having a big halloween party there on the 31st so i'm pretty excited...

and i've heard that there are only about 90 foreigners in this town at any one time, out of 300,000 people, so apparently I'll get to know everyone during my time here.

ummm...i don't know, my apartment is cool, i only have about 6 channels that are only english and they play movies...such cinematic jewels as "She's All That" and "Problem Child" and then there's Adventure1 which is really cool and has adventure documentaries and animal planet which I seem to watch all the time...lot's of shows on chimpanzees...

The weather is really nice...warm during the days and sunny, but getting colder at nights as the days go by....

|