The White Rabbit Meets the March Hare (And Chaos Promptly Ensues)

About two weeks ago, the fact I have a rabbit came up in one of my classes (because Sherlock chewed a hole in the answer sheet to one of the exams I was giving). Most of my students were delighted to hear this. One student seemed particularly happy. She came to me during break and was asking me questions about my rabbit. Then she said that she had a rabbit. And her mom wouldn’t let her keep it anymore. And her mom was telling her she had to find someone else to take her rabbit. And my student seemed fairly upset about the whole matter.

…

…

So after class, I told her if she absolutely COULD NOT find someone else to take her rabbit, I could take care of it, knowing full well she probably wouldn’t find someone else to take care of her rabbit and would just tell her mom that her English reading teacher was willing to take the little rodent off their hands.

Yesterday, my student came back to me and asked if I could take her rabbit today because her family wouldn’t be traveling at the end of the week. And I said I could. So today, she brought the rabbit to my classroom (in a shoe box) and I ran it back to my apartment (leaving her in the shoe box) and planned to officially introduce her to Sherlock after my classes.

When I came back, I called Quinn in case he wanted to relive his Snowball days and it’s a good thing I did because… things did not go well. It started off fine, they were sniffing each other and Sherlock seemed okay with having another rabbit around… and then the chaos ensued.

It seems the problem is, as the Dog Whisperer might say, that Sherlock is a ‘insecure aggressive’ type who clearly wanted to assert her dominance over her new bunny buddy invader!, who is now called Watson (that’s right, Sherlock and Watson – Watson has a monocle!). And I was anticipating some aggression but Sherlock was trying to bite poor Watson in the eyes… yeah… not a good thing.

Quinn and I tried holding them down, introducing them to each other in unfamiliar territory (that’s what all the websites said to do!) and generally keep Sherlock in particular in check. They’ve calmed down but… Sherlock is not quite okay with this.

And I’m not quite okay with Watson. She is not litter trained at all. And her bunny droppings are quite large in comparison to Sherlock’s.

Well, we’ll see if time is enough to get them to live happily together. Otherwise we have a problem and Watson is going to live with Quinn (whether Quinn knows this or not).

Poll #1: Vacation Days!

My up-coming schedule for the next three weeks has been altered because two teachers are finishing their year-long contract and another teacher is going on vacation. Which brings me to my two points (hmm, two points a post seems to be becoming theme here…).

Point #1: Because my year-long contract would end in December and thus prevent me from entering graduate school in 2010 (which had been my plan), right now I’m planning on extending my contract by seven months so I’d be ending in July instead. It turns out extending your contract is actually really easy to do because you can do it on a term-by-term basis instead of committing to a whole year, which would just put me back in the same situation I’m in now.

Point #2: Eventually I will have a week of vacation to take advantage of and I had wanted to go to Jeju island but I realized to late that the festival I wanted to see, the Fire Festival (들불축제), is during Lunar New Year (February 15) so it’s too late for me to go this year. But remember… I’ll probably be here next February to so I could go then.

A Day in My Life: Return of the Counselors

This blog entry will be duel purposed. Purpose 1: Discuss the Level-Up test. Purpose 2: Continue to log my interactions with the counselors.

This week (week 10 of the 13 week winter term) in my three listening classes, my students had to take their level up tests. That’s basically their final exam. Having finished proctoring my first three Level-Up tests, I’d like to break down how they seem to run.

15 minutes – Briefly explain test and pass out answer keys (Scantron for Reading and Listening; writing paper for Writing and Speaking)

• Have them fill in their information (name, address, home phone number, etc)
• Tell them 10 different times they need to put BOTH their KOREAN and their ENGLISH names on all sheets
• Tell them five different times they need to write in their home phone number and NOT  a cell phone number; if they don’t know their home number, leave it blank
• Tell at least three different students, if they don’t know something, leave it blank
• Explain to them the very important steps they MUST take to fill out the Scantron – pencil first, raise your hand so I can check it, then go back with their computer pens and fill in their answers

5 minutes – BREAK!

• They must leave my classroom and walk around because the test is long and they aren’t allowed to leave or go to the bathroom.

45 minutes – Writing Section (pass out test booklets)

• Tell them how to do the writing section, which runs as follows:

1. Read the short passage
2. Listen to lecture on CD
3. On the answer sheet, first SUMMARIZE THE READING then explain HOW THAT RELATES TO THE LECTURE

• Repeat writing section  instructions because inevitably they don’t get it, even though we do this in EVERY SINGLE LISTENING CLASS.
• Repeat writing section instructions again for one or two students specifically.
• Play the CD and continue to explain the section as the CD plays because, even though we do this in EVERY SINGLE LISTENING CLASS, they still don’t understand what to do.
• Tell at least three students I don’t care what they write in, pencil and pen are both fine.
• Tell at least one student not to go ahead in the test.
• Tell at least one student not to write in the space for the speaking section, because that’s for me to use
• Inevitably forget to give them their note-taking paper for the lecture but still pass it out just in time (because I have awesomely fast paper-passing-out-skills)

40 minutes – Reading Section

• Tell them again, WRITE IN PENCIL FIRST when answering the Scantron
• I grade the writing section while they work
• Tell at least five different students to stop using their computer pens and answer in pencil.
• Tell at least two of those same students to stop using their computer pens and answer in pencil
• Rub it (nicely) in their faces when all five of those student inevitably make a mistake filling in the Scantron because they’re not doing it in pencil but still give them the correction tape.
• Tell at least one kid he (it’s always a boy) filled the Scantron out incorrectly in pencil because he made huge X/check marks they go into the zone of the above/below answer (you know how Scantrons work…)
• Count down the remaining minutes on the white board but inevitably mess it up a little because I’m doing a bunch of other more important stuff

35 minutes – Listening Section

• Tell them again firmly that they MUST write in pencil first and too many people are making mistakes with the computer pen (at this point all but one of the students finally used the pencil first)
• Count down the remaining minutes on the white board
• Collected answer sheets and tell at least three more students AGAIN they need to have both their Korean and English names on it; collect the test booklets

5 minutes – BREAK!

45 minutes – Speaking Section

• Explain how the Speaking Section works, which is as follows:

1. Students go one my one to the room next door, where I will wait for them and give them the question they must answer. (We switch rooms so students going later can’t hear the answers from the ones who went before them and get ideas)
2. Students have 15 seconds to brainstorm (so they should bring note-taking paper and a pencil) and then 45 seconds to speak (although I’m flexible with that time)
3. Students MAY NOT talk during the Speaking Section while they’re still in my classroom. The other teacher from the room next door will be in my class and she’ll be watching them to make sure they don’t talk.

• Inevitably, students don’t like the order I put them in to do the Speaking Section, but they have to just deal with it because my classes are maxed out in terms of size and I don’t have time to argue with them and put them in the order they want.
• While they’re waiting, they can do the Word Search I gave them
• I go over to Bethany or Jaemi’s room and proctor their students as my students come over one by one.

5 minutes – Tell them about their homework

• And they play hangman with them (and I’m mean so I give them hard words, like vex and schizophrenia – Don’t think vex is a hard word to get in hangman? Oh, it is my friend. It is.)

Then I grade the Speaking Section and input the grades into the computer.

And that’s the Level-Up test. The basic information from that (schedule, no speaking rules, time left information, how to fill out the Scantrons) I have written up on the whiteboard for them. Which brings me to the next purpose.

One of the teachers, Alex (not the newbie Alex) decided to start his vacation today… which I don’t really get. Couldn’t he wait until not-today? Anyway, because our branch of Chung Dahm is split between the 3rd floor (where I am) and the 6th floor, they try to have all the teachers come down to the 3rd floor to do the Level-Up test. Which I also don’t get because 1. The students that are used to having their classes on the 6th floor and probably get confused by this and 2. Where are they getting these extra class rooms?!

Today, Kevin was proctoring Alex’s iBT class (a class dedicated entirely to studying for internet-based tests) but his classroom is on the 6th floor. He had been scheduled to teach the class in Alex’s room but of course that makes waaay too much sense. So for some reason, he was moved to my room. The iBT kids are coming into my class and since I wasn’t told about this I was sending them away to Alex’s room on the other side of the hall. Plus, I’m still working in my class room because I need to imput the grades and prepare for my Monday classes. Well, eventually a counselor comes in and sets up the computer for Kevin… without telling me what’s going on. Then Kevin comes in and explains what’s going on and that he was apparently JUST told about the classroom change (and doesn’t know why it was changed). Also, in case it’s not clear, all the testing logistics, like room changes, are handled by the counselors.

And I am left to hunt down a free computer to finish working on while wondering if I’m even going to vote for a counselor when at the end of the term we have to choose who the best teacher and best counselor is. However, I will say the CDI counselors are better than the April counselors, from what I’ve heard, but that might be for another post.

PS If you think, from looking at the bolded words, I get annoyed at my classes, I don’t (…usually…) but it does get bothersome having to repeat yourself after you literally just said what you’re repeating.

Culture Shock?! (Gasp! Fwaaah?! O.M.G.!)

That’s right: cultural shock. If I were teaching one of my classes the breakdown of this post might read as follows:

T(opic): Culture Shock

(Implied) M(ain) I(dea): People visiting foreign countries experience culture shock in some form or another, however some cases of culture shock are less extreme than others.

S(upporting) D(etails):

1. …

Okay, so more seriously, before coming to South Korea, I actually kind of geared myself up for culture shock. I didn’t know what to expect but I knew I could expect something. When I first arrived in Suwon one of the other teachers (who is shockingly jaded, on a side note) told me I should expect a lot of culture shock here because Koreans are, as he put it, ‘weird’. But honestly, I really haven’t experienced any culture shock, emphasis on the word shock. I’ve noticed cultural differences but all in all they haven’t been all that shocking, surprising, startling, etc.

HOWEVER (contrast transition!), there is one thing I’ve noticed that I would call a culture confusion. In Korea, they do not use paper towels. Oh, they SELL paper towels, if you look hard enough. And they certainly do things that either require paper towels or would be simplified through the use of paper towels, ie cleaning up spills or eating cake in breakrooms (not super fun eating off of a sticky, flimsy piece of plastic Saran wrap). But as far as I can tell, paper towels are not  one of the gadgets found in the handy-dandy Korean tool belt.

Today I was in HomePlus picking up some groceries (after lugging my personal paper towels to work so I could clean my white board using something more substantial than toilet paper) and while walking past the juice aisle, I noticed two employees mopping up a sizable orange juice spill. With toilet paper. A great, big roll of toilet paper that easily comes apart under saturation of that magnitude. And only three rows down, maybe four, they sold paper towels. Plush, absorbent, made-especially-for-situations-like-this paper towels. I did not understand this scenario.  It was not what one might call culture shock, but it was rather confusing.

Kakae juseyo!

The past couple of weeks I’ve had to squeeze in studying Rosetta Stone between teaching. I’ve been trying to get in the habit of doing a lesson or two before going to work since after work there’s almost no point. I don’t get back to the apartment until 10:30pm at the earliest and by then I can’t focus enough to feel like I’m actually learning.

But it seems like I am learning! Last week I overheard my students telling one of the counselors saying that the classroom we were using that day (we couldn’t use my normal one that day) was too hot. I was going to (and should have) turn around and say in Korean that the room is too cold.

And today when I was riding the bus, I noticed I could read all of the station signs very easily and could find Suwon Station (수 원 역) and the Yeongtong Bus Terminal without needing the English. I’ve known Suwon Station for a while but being able to recognize the Bus Terminal and other stops just by looking at the signs and not necessarily needing to sort out all the letters is definitely nice.

But the funniest thing I’ve learn has been from Karen and her friend Annah when they came to visit us in Suwon. Karen and Annah have just started taking Korean classes in Seoul and they were telling us about their first class, which sounded pretty interesting. Rather than teach them hangul or something basic, the teacher taught them how to say ‘Kakae juseyo!’ (I think -가 개 주세 요), which apparently means ‘Give me a discount!’. And the teacher kept saying that you need to say it whinnier. A very useful phrase, but I haven’t yet had a chance to use it.

A Day in My Life: My Classes

This probably should have been my first “A Day in My Life” post. I don’t suppose I’ve actually talked about the levels and such at Chung Dahm. But I figured I should go over those really quick before I talk about the classes I teach.

First of all, there’s April Institute and there’s CDI, which are both Chung Dahm schools. April Institute is the lowest level, for kids just starting to learn English. Their levels are Seedbed, Seedling, Sprout and Sapling and those levels have a couple of 1,2,3 levels within them. And that’s about all I know about April, because I don’t teach there.

Which brings me to CDI. There are three basic levels, E-Chip, Memory English and Interactive English, and then those have more levels with in them. Here’s the basic break down:

1. E-chip

2. Memory English (named after megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte)

• Mega
• Giga
• Tera

3. Bridge (a no-man’s land between Memory and Interactive English!)

4. Interactive English (named mostly after golf terms, oh yeah)

• Par
• Birdie
• Eagle
• Albatross
• Albatross+

5. Masters (I don’t know what the deal with this level is)

I’ve been trained in Interactive English, although in all likelihood I’ll end up teaching the other levels at some point too. In all the levels (… or at least all the Interactive English levels…) there’s a reading/writing class and a listening/speaking class. With that said! Here is my schedule (for the next 3 weeks, at which point this term will end):

Monday 4pm Bridge Reading (elementary schoolers); 7pm Bridge Reading (middle schoolers)

Tuesday 4pm Birdie Reading (elementary schoolers); 7pm Birdie Reading (middle schoolers)

Wednesday 4pm Par Reading (elementary schoolers)

Thursday 4pm Bridge Listening (elementary schoolers); 7pm Bridge Listening (middle schoolers)

Friday 4pm Bridge Listening (elementary schoolers)

Generally speaking, I like teaching the listening classes better because there’s significantly more discussion and significantly less skill theory teaching (which is pretty boring, at least for me). Also, generally speaking, the elementary school kids are easier/ more fun to teach because they are more eager to participate and strangely enough they’re more fluent, even when the middle schoolers are on the same level. I imagine this might be different if I taught E-chip or Memory English but I don’t teach that (yet) so I can’t say for sure.

But the fun part of all the classes is that they end with a Critical Thinking Project, where the kids break up into group and design a discussion/talk show/skit/whatever around the theme of that lesson, which they then present. And sometimes, if we have enough time and if my classes are small enough, I let them draw a picture on my board to go with their presentations. And then I take pictures of the pictures, because they’re adorable. Here is such a picture (from my 7pm Birdie class when they had to design a CTP about saving an endangered animal):

Aren't they adorable! Especially the pink dolphin one (... not that I pick favorites...)

An Intense Day of Seoul-Searching (Lengthy: Be Warned)

Wow. I’m still exhausted from yesterday, even after gulping down a large coke that came with the pizza I had for dinner. Hopefully I can detail my Saturday adventures in Itaewon in a coherent manner, but I have a feeling I’ll end up forgetting most of the information. Well, here goes:

Quinn and I were meeting some of the gang from training in Itaewon, Seoul’s district of foreigners, at 1:30pm on Saturday. We decided to leave early and it’s a good thing we did because it actually takes a long time to get to Itaewon from Suwon. The bus ride to Suwon station is 30 minutes with traffic (which there always is once people start waking up) and then the subway ride is another hour or two, depending on exactly where in Seoul we’re going and how many transfers we have to make. There were two transfers to Itaewon, which is on an somewhat inconvenient line, what with us living on Line 1 (which itself is inconvenient, but I’ll get to that later).

We got there may an hour before the others were there, which was nice because I was able to do a small amount of shopping, thinking correctly that once people started arriving we’d be so busy doing stuff that I wouldn’t have a chance to shop again. I wanted to get a good Korean-English dictionary and maybe some postcards. I did not manage to find a good Korea-English dictionary anywhere in Itaewon but I did FINALLY find some postcards. Some of the others got postcards too because for some reason you can’t find them anywhere in Korea. Lots of stationary and cards. No postcards.

After everyone arrived we wandered around Itaewon for a while, slowly making our way to the international market and the nearby English book store. The international market was a little smaller than I anticipated but it was definitely very international. Food from all over the world. Spices. Chocolate. Parmesan cheese. Worchestershire sauce. A lot of Indian and Middle Eastern food I can no longer remember. It was tempting to buy somethings but I resisted, since I didn’t want to carry it around for the rest of the day.

After that, we move on to the bookstore, which definitely had a nice selection of fiction books but sadly I was not in the market for fiction. I was in the market for a Korean-English dictionary. And their translation dictionary section was severely lacking. It was really shocking for an international area. There were basically two Korea-English dictionaries, a couple Korean-French ones, and then I think a Korean-Russian and a Korean-Arabic one and the rest of the reference books were encyclopedias. One of the Korean-English dictionary had the words written in hangul instead of romanized Korean (which is basically how most of the Korean-English dictionaries I found are organized and that’s not a good thing) could have worked but I didn’t want to shell out the₩10,000 (about $10) for it when it didn’t completely meet my needs. I think we might be planning a trip to Gangnam (the district in Seoul where we stayed for training) soon since a co-worker in April said it has a huge bookstore and an only slightly less huge English language section.

After the shopping, we met up another one of our training buddies in Myong-dong to take a trolley up to Seoul Tower and watch the sunset from the top (or as high up as you can go). It was pretty awesome but unfortunately I don’t think my camera captured the sunset very well. The only downside of the adventure is that we all realized Seoul is VERY smoggy. Here are some selected pictures!

That trolley is shockingly fast.

This pavilion, like all similar Korean architecture, is so detailed and beautiful.

After coming down from the Tower, we had some delicious beef and pork barbecue and eventually ended up at a noraebang (노래방), or karaoke bar, called Rookies. And indeed most of us were rookies. But we still rocked the mic, earning probably an average of 95/100 for most of the songs we did. The highest score was 99/100 for Lady Gaga’s Poker Face, a song that we pretty much all knew the words to. Okay, for my own amusement I’m going to see how many songs I can remember from the two hours we spent there:

1. Bon Jovi - Livin’ on a Prayer
2. Lady Gaga – Poker Face
3. Six Pence – Kiss Me
4. Metallica – Master of Puppets (HILARIOUSLY sung by two of the guys)
5. Michael Jackson – Thriller (Sadly, we did not dance to this.)
6. Aqua – Barbie Girl
7. The Killers – Somebody Told Me
8. Lady Gaga – Paparazzi
9. Mc Hammer – U Can’t Touch This (And indeed we couldn’t touch this – this song won us probably our lowest score: 85/100)
10. Lou Bega – Mambo No. 5
11. Journey – Don’t Stop Believing (Another song that everyone knew basically all the words to)
12. The Foundations – Build Me Up, Buttercup (Also, very popular)
13. Backstreet Boys – Everybody (We had to.)
14. Cher – Believe
15. Grease – Summer Nights
16. Katy Perry - I Kissed a Girl
17. Lady Gaga – Just Dance (Okay, this was our final Lady Gaga song).
18. There were a lot more but they’re not coming to me off the top of my head right now… I’ll go back and flesh this out later. Like I said, tired.

After almost two hours of noraebanging, Quinn and I had to bolt because it was 11pm and the subway stops running around 12pm. Which makes NO SENSE in Seoul, because that city basically doesn’t sleep. So we bolted back to the subway and when we got there a train was pulling up. A voice announced this was the “last train of the night” so we hopped on and HOPED it would take us to Suwon.

That last sentence needs some explination. So here’s the deal with Line 1. Line 1 has three branches and they end in Incheon Airport, Sinchang and Soroyan. The three branches separate at a stop called Guro, with the Soroyan branch heading east, the Incheon branch heading West and the Sinchang branch heading south. Suwon is the on the branch ending with Sinchang. When we want to visit Seoul, we head towards Soroyan and there’s absolutely no trouble because (to the best of my knowledge) no train goes from Sinchang directly to Incheon. Unfortunately, it seems the normal train also doesn’t run from Soroyan directly to Sinchang, which has caused some problems for me and Quinn (and I’m curious to know if it’s also caused problems for our friends living in Anyang, which is also on the Sinchang branch).

Last weekend, when we were coming back from Yongsan, Quinn and I hopped on what we thought was the train that would take us to Suwon. Neither of us was paying attention when it breezed past Guro and DID NOT go to the next station south but instead went to the station to the west. Luckily there was another American on the train that said we were on the express train to Incheon Airport. Oh no.

So we got off at Bucheon, which coincidently is where one of our training buddies, Karen, now lives. We got another train back to Guro, then got off and made sure this time we were on the correct train to Sinchang. And we vowed to never make that mistake again. Except we did.

When we heard that the bus yesterday was the “last of the night” (note the quotes) we just got on it, realizing it could very well be a Line 1 train that goes to Incheon and NOT Sinchang. We basically prayed it was going the way we needed it to and then started making plans for if it didn’t. We decided to call up Karen to see if we could stay with her in Bucheon for the night and then catch an early subway back to Suwon Sunday morning (I had to be back to 1. Feed Sherlock and 2. Prepare for next weeks classes). And wouldn’t you know it, after we passed Guro we found ourselves going to Incheon. We were very sad.

We had to call up one of the others we left back at the Norebang to get Karen’s number. Which is when they told us they had just caught Line 1 back to their home… WHA?! As it turns out, the train we got on WAS NOT THE LAST ONE OF THE NIGHT, even though it totally said it was in a friendly and official voice. Stupid lying train… So we called up Karen and she happily let us stay with her for the night.

Okay, before I finish up the story, let me just make a quick note about how I think Line 1 works. I’m thinking that it works in one of two ways. In the first way, the trains run in pairs, with the first Line 1 train coming through heading along the Incheon branch and the second of the pair heading towards the Sinchang branch and it’s just a matter of waiting for the right one (We didn’t realize it until AFTER this debacle but the train we were on said Incheon on the side so theoretically the second train would read Sinchang). The second way is more annoying and unfortunately this is probably the right way. Basically the only train the runs directly from the end of one branch to the end of the other is the one from Incheon to Soroyan and to get on a train that branches off towards Sinchang we’d have to always get off at Guro, cross the platform to the side that’s specifically for the Sinchang trains and get on one of those. But in any case, in the future, we should not get on the train that says Incheon on the side if we’re trying to get back to Bucheon.

The other thing we need to figure out is the express trains. One of the reasons our travel to Itaewon took so long was that there are so many extra stops between Suwon and Guro. LUCKILY there are two express trains that run along the Soroyan branch and end at or around Suwon (with both stopping there) and they 1. DO NOT got towards Incheon and 2. Skip the majority of the stops on Line 1. We need to find these trains.

And now back to adventures with Karen and Quinn. And boy was this an adventure. Karen gave us directions for how to get to her apartment once we get off the train and they basically ran like this. Leave the station and cross the street, staying on the right. There should be a castle to the left. Walk for about 5 minutes until you reach the bus stop and get on bus 70, 70-2 or any bus with two 6’s in the number and it’ll take us to her apartment.

Well. We were wandering around for an hour, if not an hour and a half, in the weirdest little neighborhood ever (It seriously looked like a movie or musical set), calling Karen every five minutes trying to figure out where we were and only getting more confused because the landmarks she was giving us were not ones we were passing. We almost got a taxi back when Quinn suggested maybe we went out the wrong exit of the subway station. And as it turns out we did. Karen doesn’t often use Bucheon station so I guess she didn’t realize there were two exits and neither did we.

As soon as we exited the correct way, we CLEARLY saw the castle – it’s a giant European-style castle (I think it’s a bowling alley) and you cannot miss it even if you tried. And from there we found the bus stop pretty quickly. Unfortunately the buses had stopped running (It was only 12pm!) and we had to get a taxi anyway.

Once at Karen’s, we watched the Golden Globes until we feel asleep. Then, she accompanied us back to Bucheon station so she could see for herself the exit we used, and we hopped a train back to Guro and then transfered on one to Suwon. I ended up getting back around 9:30am, filled up Sherlock’s water then fell into a pleasant sleep until she decided to start walking on my face.

Tomorrow promises another adventure, but hopefully this one will go easier. Monday through Wednesday I have to completely change how I teach the classes because the students are taking practice final exams. I’m pretty sure the reading portion of the classes are prepared correctly but I’m not sure about the listening portion. Looks like I get to go to work early to see if I’m missing some information.

Sad News from Suwon

This morning I woke up, started my laundry and took a shower. I noticed the bunnies were not running around in their cage like they normally do. Because I don’t let them out when I’m showering, they were in there for maybe a half an hour before I checked on them. And to my sadness, I found that Snowball-Irene-Gerund-Watson had died during the night.

Sherlock is still doing fine, but Snowball is gone. Quinn and I aren’t sure what happened. Last night she was eating and drinking fine. She was friendly (I was even able to get her to come when I called her!). There was nothing out of the ordinary. But I think the problem was she wasn’t gaining enough weight. It seems like Quinn chose the runt of the litter and maybe she would have died anyway.

In honor of the late Snowball, here are some pictures of her:

She liked to lay on the heated floors.

And she loved to eat.

And she loved following Sherlock around.

RIP little bunny.

A Day in My Life: Working with the Counselors

I was planning on writing a post about my classes today. I think I’ll put that on hold for a little bit and instead talk about another aspect on my work. Thus, here is the first installment of the A Day in My Life series, tales about my work as an English teacher.

So in addition to native-speaking English teachers, Chung Dahm also has counselors. The April Institute has native- Korean teachers, but CDI does not. For all eight of my classes, I have two different counselors. After working with them for three or four weeks (I had a different counselor when I was subbing my first week), I can’t say that I’ve developed a super awesome rapport with them. Or at least the guys at April and some of the other teachers at CDI seem to have better rapports with their counselors. But at least today the counselors called me by my name, which I don’t believe they’ve done before.

I have two major issues with my counselors. Issue One: we teachers (for both April and CDI) have to complete daily reports for all of our classes that basically explains whether the class went well or poorly and why. Then we present them to the counselors so they know what’s going on. The other teachers seem to discuss the classes a little with their counselors and the counselors ask them questions about the students etc. Mine… do not… I don’t really know if I’m not writing the correct information or what, but only once did they ask me about a student and they actually referred me to another counselor to talk about him. In recent days, this has gotten a little better because they’d told me “insider” information, if you will, about problem students and gave me suggestions for how to handle them. But there is still room for improvement. Today I wrote a message about one of my students doing very well and how she’s improved so much from when she started and I really expected my counselor to say something about that or ask me how she’s improved. She did not… Today’s Daily Report for the Counselors: my rapport with them is getting better, but it is room for improvement.

Issue Two: This one’s kind of a big one. The counselors come in and talk to the students during break, which isn’t a problem (although they do leave my door open so the class looses all it’s heat – my classroom is obscenely cold sometimes). However, they sometimes go over my head about the heating of the class. Basically, I have the crappiest heater in the building and 7 windows, which equals one of the coldest classrooms. The teacher before me would wear his jacket through the entire class because of the cold. About a week ago, I tried to turn up the heat… and the heater broke… I think one of the students told the counselor about how cold the class was and the counselor came in to check the heater. Then she told the students to move to another teacher’s classroom because that one was empty and had heat. She did not tell me this. So one minute I’m putting grades into the computer and then I look up and all my students are leaving. Uh… not cool. And the timing was awful because I had notes on the board that we needed to finish the rest of class, so basically the rest of the lesson for the day was screwed up because I had to change classrooms. In the future, they brought a space heater to my classroom so I could stay in the room (which is what they should have done the first time around).

The reason I decided to write this post was because issue two happened again today. There was construction outside my room today and I went to ask if anyone knew when they would stop, because it was really loud and would definitely be distracting to my students. When I got back, the room smelled a little smoky and I figured it was from the construction. But it wasn’t a bad small. My students start coming in and the counselor brings me the homework check sheet (oh! issue three – they sometimes don’t bring me the homework check sheet so I can’t check all the students’ homework… uh, okay… not good). She must have noticed the smell because she came back in with the other counselor and they started looking around my room and being a little strange. And then they turned off my heater. Without asking me if they can or telling me that they would.

I’m getting ready to start class when they come in with the space heater and Mr. Park. They tell me my heater was making my room smell and Mr. Park needs to work on it. I would have to move to my neighbor’s classroom because she doesn’t have class now. I tell them I can’t do that because she does have a 7 o’clock class and so do I. So they tell me to go to another classroom, and figuring that certainly this teacher doesn’t have any classes today, I grab all my things and go over there. Luckily this time I had enough time to get all my things together instead of just bolting after my class that it didn’t really screw me up.

UNFORTUNATELY, that room is used for tutoring at 7 o’clock so I had to scramble to get back to my other classroom – which now smells REALLY STRONGLY of some kind of floral thing (the students thought it was perfume – maybe if someone dumped an entire bottle of perfume in the class…). The smell was way worse than the little smoky smell the heater was letting off. We had to leave the windows open for 3o minutes to get rid of it… Not cool. But it was cold…

First of all, I need to start building a rapport with the counselors. Second of all, they need to start giving me the things they need to give me so I can check homework. Third of all, this heater stuff needs to get sorted out. Now.

And that is a Day in My Life: Working with the Counselors.

Hwaseong Fortress: Winter Trip!

I think I’ll procrastinate on prepping my Tuesday classes by posting about today’s adventures (complete with pictures!). Alex, Quinn and I were visited by some of our fellow newbie teachers from training. They live in Seoul (Pyoncheon, Jamsil and Bucheon) and Pyongtaek, and live maybe 30 minutes to and hour away via subway.

We met them at Suwon station and decided to visit Hwaseong Fortress. We were told we could take Bus 13, but not told which stop to get off at… so we breezed past the fortress and went up Mt. Gwangyo. We thought bus 13 was going to let us off at the South gate (Paldalmun -팔 달 문) but bus 13 actually lets off near the North Gate (Janganmun – 장 안 문).

So we drove up Mt. Gwangyo and low and behold – we found some of the Suwon toilets! Quinn and I have been trying to visit one of this toilets for a while and were dismayed to hear they no longer had a tour for them. But via bus 13 we drove past the Firefly toilet and ended up stopping (and using) the Hermit Toilet (apparently officially known as the Daeseulgi Toilet – 다 슬기 화 장 실)

And then we road back to Hwaseong Fortress. I’ll let pictures tell the rest of the story.

These snail thingies sure do make me want to use their mountain john.

Upon arrival, of course we had to take a group picture. Two people are missing (because we were taking pictures).

So beautiful!

Here's one of the beautiful turrets (and eventually I'll get its name) which Richard and John are exploring. Note the sign: I did not take off my shoes. Because although I teach English, I apparently cannot read it.

It's shaped like a dragon! We managed to get the last trolley of the day and I'm glad we did because it covered way more ground than we could on foot.

I'll have to go back when the weather gets warmer!