First Couple Days of Teaching

The past two evenings I've observed Tayla while she was teaching.  I got to meet all my students and I'm excited to get to know them better.  Some of them I can already tell will probably drive me crazy, but there are some that I already adore.  There are a few girls who totally cracked me up with some of the questions they were asking me ("Were you born with yellow hair?"  "How did you get gold hair?"  "Do you know any Korean?"  "Did you go to a school like the one in High School Musical?").  On Monday, one of the main administrators, Sumi, gave me a bouquet of flowers to welcome me.  They also put a fake wreath on my door with two ribbons that said "Welcome Haley Teacher!"  The students hear call all their teachers "Teacher."  I don't really like it, so I'm going to try to get them to call me Ms. Haley instead.  We'll see how that goes.  Tonight I start my first night of teaching.  Thank goodness Tayla will be there to help.  The format for each class seems pretty simple and straightforward so once I've done it a couple times I'm sure I'll be fine.  I think there is a lot of room for improvement for the students and I'm also really excited to expand upon what they're already doing.  Most of the class periods revolve around reading the books, reading comprehension, and vocab and chapter quizzes.  I want to add in some more creative projects for them to do and I want to find some fun books for them to read (right now they are reading the abridged versions of a lot of the classics like Mary, Queen of Scots, Alice in Wonderland, and The Elephant Man).  Tayla's last day is on Friday, so starting next week I'll be totally on my own.  I have five classes and each one is 40 minutes long.  I teach from 5:20-7 p.m., then I get an hour long dinner break, and then my last two classes are from 8-9:20 p.m.  As much as I don't like working at night, it is kind of nice to have my mornings free.  I usually wake up around 7:30 (thanks to the bright sun that creeps into my room due to the complete lack of blinds throughout my apartment) and go on a run.  Then I shower, eat breakfast, and go to a coffee shop to grade papers, work on my TEFL (teaching English as a foreign language) online class, skype, or update my blog.  It's not as lonely when I'm able to be out around the town and atleast see other people, even if I can't really talk with them.

The weather is definitely chilly.  Fall is here and it will only get colder as winter approaches.  Next weekend I'm going on a sunrise hike at one of the national parks with a friend of mine who's out here teaching.  We'll get on a bus around midnight, hit the trails around 3 a.m., get to the peak at about 7 a.m. (I think), and then climb back down around mid-day.  I can't wait to see more of Korea and to hike my first Korean mountain!  I'm heading to Bundang with Tayla tonight after I'm done teaching to meet some of her friends who will be here for the year.  Finally I'll know more than 2 people here!!  I'm excited to make some friends be social again.

I finally took some pictures so I'll upload them a.s.a.p.  Lots of love!!!