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Yes, it’s been rather busy around here with the start of the new semester. In addition to the usual paperwork, lesson planning and getting used to the new schedule, I was assigned a new office in another building. At first, I kind of resented being asked to move, but the administration had a whole floor in the Natural Sciences building remodeled to support the new nighttime Vision English course. All the classrooms there and my office, which I share with three colleagues, are basically brand new, and we also have new computers, a new copy machine and a new printer to work with. Pretty nice, and since I got all my files and what-not moved over, I’ve started to feel quite comfortable there. Beginning next week, all of my classes will be in that one building. I’m not complaining.
We’ve been getting some pretty decent weather lately, so I’ve also been spending a lot more time jogging and being outdoors. The weekend forecast is calling for highs in the 60s F., so my bicycle will probably want to take me for a ride. I’ll try to get some photos up and I’ll get back to posting more often, now that the semester seems to be rolling along smoothly. More later.
Whew, the previous seven-week session finally finished yesterday and none too soon, what with all the kids’ and other classes. Lots of overtime, so I’m not griping too much. Still, most of us foreign teachers have a very welcome eleven day break until the spring semester begins.
Usually, the spring semester begins on March 1st, but that date is also a holiday in Korea, Independence Movement Day, when Korea announced, in 1919, its independence from the imperial Japanese occupation of the peninsula. So, classes begin on March 2nd this year.
My scheduled classes, along with the other teachers’ classes, have been cut drastically. No more large amounts of overtime, unfortunately. Although I might gripe about how much work I have to do, when overtime payment rolls around (later this week), I’m pretty satisfied. Anyway, the Language Center has hired three new teachers, two ladies from the U.S. and one guy from Ireland. We usually have 6 instructors; now, we have nine. Fewer hours for everyone. One of the new teachers, by the way, was a graduate student at the University of Montana. She got her Master’s degree in Forestry there, and she and I have been emailing each other quite a bit, so I look forward to meeting her in person. Small world, eh?
The reason for the new teachers is that an older program has been revamped. We had some special classes for English students the last couple of years, the classes in which we took field trips, about which you can read in this post. The classes used to be held at 8 and 9 a.m., Monday through Thursday, and students had to attend them for both the spring and fall semesters. So, what could the students possibly have against such a wonderful schedule? The early hours, of course; some of them dropped out. So the Powers-That-Be decided to change the time and reduce the attendance requirement. Now, classes will be held from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m., Monday through Thursday, but students only have to attend for one semester. More hours per week will be taught, so there is the need for more teachers.
I was chosen to be one of the teachers, so I’ll be working those 3 hours per day, Monday through Thursday, and I’ll be teaching regular freshman English classes 3 days a week on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. That’s a pretty nice schedule, 21 contact hours per week, but, as I said, fewer hours than I’m used to and less overtime. However, I’ll be getting a bit extra pay per month, since my boss asked me to be the coordinator of the special classes. And, we’ll still get the field trips, which I really like.
Anyway, here’s to my first day of vacation. More (days) later.
Well, I survived the kids’ classes, which finished last Friday, and now, just in time, we’re getting a nice 5-day holiday in celebration of the Chinese New Year, called Seollal (pronounced suh-lahl) in Korea. The holiday itself is only three days, but this year it happens to fall on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday; thus, we get a really long weekend, so to speak. The New Year (based on the lunisolar calendar) is celebrated in China, of course, but is also a major holiday in Korea, Vietnam and a few other countries.
Also just in time is some much nicer weather, with temperatures sneaking into the 40s F. today and creeping up to 50 by the beginning of next week. Finally, I can go jogging outside, which I did in bright sunshine today. I hadn’t jogged in quite a while, due mainly to teaching most of the day, but also due to the cold, windy weather we had been experiencing for most of January. Hopefully (but doubtfully), it’ll stay this way until spring gets here. More later.
This is the final week of the Kids’ Camp for this session. No more kids until Summer Camp. Yippee! Ok, let me say that I don’t hate kids. They’re usually cute and adorable. But, put 15 of them, between the ages of 8 and 11, in a classroom and chaos ensues. They know that a foreign teacher is going to go easy on them, as far as discipline goes (by nature, I’m certainly NOT a disciplinarian), so they’ll get away with whatever they can. A couple of the boys were fighting as I walked into one of the classes last week, so I got between them and hauled them both down to the main office. It’s best to let the Korean admin people take care of something like that. They’ve been very well behaved since then. Here’s a few shots from a couple of my three classes.
The first one is from the youngest class. Wow, look how diligently they’re working. What could possibly hold their attention like that?
Let’s look at their work, shall we?
Ahh, budding Picassos. They’re supposed to be working on English activities, but I give them some free time near the end of class. It keeps them busy and out of trouble.
Here’s a girl from one of the other classes showing off the latest gizmo, which doubles as a ball point pen.
Hey, what are the boys up to? Looking up words in their electronic English dictionaries? Hahahahahah. Very funny. They’re playing games on their cell phones with the five or so minutes of free time I gave them.
We actually do get some English work done, believe it or not, and they’re pretty cool kids for the most part. Anyway, Friday is the final day of fun and games. I just hope that light ain’t a train. More later. (If I survive.)
What with all the teaching hours I’ve been doing, I don’t really have time to go to my dorm apartment and eat lunch. I’m off from noon until 2 p.m., but I use most of that time to do lesson plans. Still, because I eat only a small breakfast every day, I’m pretty hungry by lunch time. Luckily, one of the school cafeterias is just a short walk from my office, so I go there for a quick bite.
Like many institution eateries, the food isn’t all that great. It is, however, cheap (3,000 Korean won) and it’s pretty healthy. These 4 weeks of kids’ classes is about the only time I eat Korean food regularly. I’m glad it’s healthy, ‘cuz I’m not getting much exercise, except for on the weekends. Here’s a typical lunch.
From the top left, it’s tofu (or a variation thereof), the ubiquitous National Dish, kimchi (which is usually spicy fermented cabbage), a pasta of some kind, also spicy (I think it’s a rice-based pasta and very chewy), soup or broth, and rice. Not deliciously inviting, but, really, not all that bad, either. And, like I mentioned, healthy. Hasn’t stopped the weight from going up, though. Gotta get some regular exercise. One more week of kids’ classes to go, then back to the treadmill or outdoors, if the weather isn’t too cold or windy.
I mentioned in a previous post that my work schedule would be a killer in the month of January, and it’s turned out to be that way, consuming most of my time (hence the paucity of posts, so far this year). I’m in my office around 8 or 8:30 each morning to do a bit of prep work, and I don’t get home until 7:45 at night. I’ve got a few hours off here and there during the day, but not enough time to go to my apartment to relax or have lunch. The few hours that I do have free I spend preparing lessons or, if it’s not too cold and windy, taking a short walk in the sun. Ah well, one week down and three to go.
Here’s wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy, Healthy New Year. Yesterday was the first day that has really felt like this time of the year, with below freezing temperatures and a vicious wind contributing to very chilly weather. At least the sun is shining and there’s been no snow, yet. (Fingers crossed)
The first two weeks of my vacation have flown by and I assume the final week will go just as fast. I wish that working days would go by so quickly because the first 4 weeks back are going to be killers. I told my boss to give me as many hours as she could, if she needed someone to fill in some extra slots, and she obliged me. I’ve got 7 classroom hours a day, 5 days a week, from Jan. 3rd to the 28th! That’s a heckuva schedule when you figure in lesson planning time. I’ll be teaching 4 regular Language Center classes, the usual number for this time of the year, but I’ll also be teaching (babysitting, actually) a children’s English Camp another 3 hours a day. My first class starts at 9 a.m. and the final one finishes at 7:30 p.m. The few hours that I don’t have classes will probably be spent doing the next day’s lesson plans. I figure I’ll be pretty burned out by the end of those 4 weeks, but at least I’ll be making a lot of overtime pay, if I survive to collect it. 
Again, Happy Holidays to everyone, everywhere. More later.
It looks like we’re going to survive through the S. Korean-American war games without our northern neighbors going ballistic on everyone. I’m sure my students will be happy about that, because the next few weeks is final exam time.
So, I’ll be busy with oral interview assessments of and classroom presentations by the students, not to mention all the paperwork I’ll have to do. But, that’s only until December 10, when we have a three-week vacation.
Unfortunately, my financial situation right now dictates that I not travel abroad like I normally would do. So, I’ll stay in Yeosu, take some photos, and whatnot, depending on the weather.
I’ll probably go up to Seoul to do a little shopping for some books and hard-to-find spices, and perhaps to Andong. Anyway, I’m really going to miss getting out of the cold Korean winter weather for a few weeks. I’ll just have to keep summer on my mind.
Our special English class is off on a field trip today with the same itinerary that we had on our previous one last year. You can read about that one and see some photos I took of it here, here and here.
It should be a fun, but tiring, day as the weather is supposed to be marvelous. After last year’s trip I was pooped. We do a lot of walking, so I won’t be jogging before we leave this morning. More later. (Especially photos of the hike and the nighttime shots of Yeosu that I promised.)
There hasn’t been too much going on around here lately, thus the relatively long time between posts. The weather has finally turned nice, with the gray, rainy skies and humidity of the past few months giving way to cool mornings and crisp, sunny days along with lower, but still high, humidity. Very nice and just in time for Korean Thanksgiving, Chuseok, of which there is a nice writeup here.
This year, the holiday falls on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of the upcoming week. It makes for a short week of teaching, but, unfortunately, we do have classes on Monday and Friday. Most of the students are whining about this, of course, since they want to leave early for their hometowns and don’t want to come back until next weekend. I don’t blame them a bit. If it were me, I’d take off and not worry about being counted absent for the one or two days I’d miss. I told them that and said that if this were the U.S., almost all the students would turn this into a 9-day vacation and wouldn’t worry a bit about being counted absent.
I told my students that one or two absences are not going to affect their grades all that much, especially if most of them are absent. The grades are based on a curve system here and they are only graded within each individual class, not with all the other classes combined. But some of the kids are so overly worried about missing even one class that they probably have trouble sleeping at night thinking about that particular stain on their otherwise spotless record. Darned overachievers anyway. Sheesh, take a break, go home and enjoy the extended holiday, lighten up.
Oh, well, whatever the case, I have to be in class on Monday and Friday, though I expect there will probably be a pretty light turnout, especially on Friday. If most of the students are in class on Monday, maybe I’ll give them homework to do over the period, so that if they want to be absent on Friday, they can get some extra credit for doing the homework. Something like that, anyway.
Also over the last few weeks, the teachers’ apartments have been without cable TV. We had the admin people check into it, and we were told that the cable is no longer available. We’d always had it, and I assumed it was part of the annual maintenance fee that we pay every year. Apparently not. It was hardly worth it anyway, with only 15 channels available and of those, 3 were English channels — CNN, a sports channel and Animal Planet, which never came in good. The rest were Korean, Chinese or Japanese broadcasts, and whenever a lightning storm or heavy rain hit, the reception was knocked out for several days.
But, today we’re going to have a new cable package installed, one that brings with it close to a 100 channels, including quite a few more English stations. We have to pay a one-time installation fee of 30,000 Korean won (about $25) and a monthly subscriber fee of 14,000 won (about $12), but it’s worth the price. Now, in my two years at the Yankee baseball academy in the Dominican Republic, I never had a television, so I could do without, but it’s nice to have anyway.
P.S. TS Malou never did amount to much; it eventually passed quite a ways to the south of us, so we got only a few inches of rain and a small amount of wind.
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