School Times are Fun Stuffs

Alright, here it is, the report from our first week of school! I realize that now I am running about a week behind on blogging - I'm sorry! Life is already going full speed but we are catching up to the routines of life in Korea.  Is it weird that we've almost been gone for a month already? I think we have the basic in and outs of daily life down pat, and now we just need to fine tune our comfort ability with the mundane activities like going to the store, etc.

Our school is a Hagwon, which is a private school that teaches both kindergarten and after school English programs for elementary students.  We have two classes each day, though the afternoon classes rotate depending on the of day of the week, so essentially we have 3-4 classes total.  Most of the day is spent with our kindergarteners though, and they are a hoot! Taggart lucked out with these two cuties, Jay and Yeriel, who are both so cute and smart:

Jay is a total ham, and says the funniest stuff in this monotone way that cracks you up.  Yeriel is sweet and quiet, but also says funny things from time to time.  They love Taggart Teacher!

It is the running joke with us Western teachers that my class is kind of the struggle bus class.  Not in smarts, by any means - they are all really, REALLY smart for their age and most of them can actually almost read completey on their own - they are just supremely unruly.  I actually am losing my voice this week because my entire day with my class is, "sit down, don't bite, pay attention, 1,2,3, eyes on me!, SIT DOWN, your workbook is not origami, don't stab each other with pencils".... You get the idea.  It is totally exhausting but so awesome.  The kids are sweet and though I sometimes hate that I have 7 of them in a class with 3 very hyper and unruly boys, but I already love all of them individually and have been able to watch their improvement from day to day.

Here's Justin almost licking the teacher's stool, and Alice drawing me as a princess.

My afternoon classes have 3 students each, 3 girls in the first class, and 2 girls and 1 boy in the to second.  They are Korean age 8, which is U.S. 7, and they are seriously so flipping smart it's insane.  The vocabulary on a couple of my students is staggering, though, as expected, they have the attention spans of 7-year-olds, so we still have to discuss staying in your chair and paying attention.  One of the the big problems in these after school programs is how tired these kids are after having already attended a full day of school before coming to our school.  They get really burnt out, so it's our job to make sure they still get their work done but also get to blow off some steam.  I make sure we always have multiple break times in the afternoons so that everyone takes their sanity home with them at the end of the day (teacher included!).

Here's some of my afternoon class (Kate and Jihyun) playing with my photo booth, and a combination of both mine and Taggart's kindergarten students and their kitty masks.  The green ones are Ninja Turtle cats, just in case you were wondering.  They all thought this picture of them was hilarious.

Our school is so nice, and from what we've heard, we get taken really good care of for a private Hagwon.  We get fed lunch every day and the Korean teachers have been awesome at making sure we have everything we need.  They made sure we got our immigration taken care of, they double and triple checked to make sure our apartment was ok, they paid us cash for our first check because we can't get bank accounts until our alien cards come through, and they even took us to dinner this week for this AWESOME korean BBQ that you eat wrapped up in lettuce and mint leaves.  Overall, the work is rewarding but tiring, and we walk everywhere, so we are definitely sleeping well at night cause we are beat! I'll post more about our activities soon - tomorrow we have a birthday party in my class, and then we have a three day weekend for Korean Independence Day.  Woot!