First day of school+Korean grocery store+other random thoughts

Today was the first day of school!

But first, the Korean grocery store, Lotte Mart. It's like Wal-Mart on steroids. There are four floors and it has EVERYTHING you could ever want! Do you need cucumbers? First floor! How about socks? Second floor! How about a 1/4 size violin? Also second floor! Need a piano to accompany that violin? No problem! Clothes, shoes, air conditioners, appliances, school supplies, EVERYTHING! And I didn't even go to the fourth floor! Instead of escalators, they have flat moving ramps (like airports) but they go down or up so you can take your cart with you to different floors. And there are people everywhere. Koreans don't take well to waiting. So they push you out of the way or squeeze themselves in instead. If you don't bring a reusable bag to the store, you have three options: buy a new one, get charged 40 cents per bag, or use a box for free. So we picked up what I needed and boxed up my groceries. Jillian, my co-teacher, took me home and I put away all of my groceries. I was able to find peanut butter, bread, and butter-YAY! I didn't know if I'd be able to find those things or not. I was also surprised to find Special K-one of my favorite. Jillian talked about going to CostCo sometime soon, so I'm hoping to find Cheerios there :-)

The rest of the day was spent sleeping. That's right, I slept from 2 pm until 1 am. I was TIRED!

I woke up at 1 am this morning and immediately started going through my curriculum that Jillian gave me. I stared at it and stared at it and realized that I had no idea what to do. I looked through lesson plans and their corresponding chapters in the book from the previous teacher and managed to piece together lesson plans for each grade. It turns out that I didn't have nearly as much planned as I needed to. More on that in a bit.

My walk to school takes 10 minutes. Today it took a little bit longer because not even half a mile from my apartment, it started POURING. Just what I needed. Of course my hair poufed up, my bag was soaking wet, and my bum was soaking wet. Grrr. I wasn't 100% positive on where I was going, but fortunately some students were walking to school at the same time :-) So I followed them! I was greeted at the gate by a male teacher (still not sure who though) and then greeted by the English classroom by Jillian. She took me inside, showed me my space, and then told me it was time to speak to the whole faculty-YIKES. We went into the next building, she gave a short little speech in Korean, I gave a short little speech in English, she translated, and off we went! The Japanese teacher (who also speaks English) took me back to our office and the connecting classroom to show me how to get things set up. The technology here is wonderful. In our main classroom, we have a 5 ft long projector screen that's connected into a computer, document camera, speakers, and anything else you could need. There are 8 different stations set up around the classroom and each station has a 20 inch wide computer screen that we can put the power point on as well. So even your students that have a hard time seeing are able to see without any problems! They also have keyboards connected to them, but they decided to rip off all of the keys. Why? Who knows!

The students here are MUCH more rambunctious than American students. They have 10 minute passing periods and you would not believe some of the things that go on. They scream, they jump on each other, and when I walk by, every single one of them says "Hello! Nice to meet you!" Every. Single. One. Some of the girls have been standing in the doorway of our office making a little heart sign at me :-) All of the students were required to write a letter to me, asking me questions or telling me about Korea. Some of them are so funny! A lot of them asked how old I was, if I was married, if I had a boyfriend, what my favorite singer was, etc. One of them hoped for a male teacher but said a female teacher would be all right as well. A few of them drew things for me; when I get home I'll try to take a picture of them. They're...interesting.

Today I only had four classes! Tomorrow: four classes! Wednesday? You guessed it: four classes! Each class is 45 minutes long and the students have a 10 minute passing period in between. Today, I had 1 7th grade class (they call it 2nd grade since it's the second grade in middle school) and 3 8th grade classes (3rd grade.) Like I said earlier, I discovered quickly that I didn't have enough material. So, Facebook saved the day! I showed them pictures of my family, of my house, of my car, of my cat, of my students, of everything! They were very curious. They ooohed and aaaahed at my car and my house-they were very impressed! They also LOVED my niece!! But who wouldn't love my niece?! They liked seeing the pictures of the trash can band, they laughed at pictures of some of my students, and my 7th grade class learned that my brother's nickname is "Big Bad Monkey." They were very amused by that!

Fortunately after my first two classes, I had TWO WHOLE HOURS to fine tune my lesson plans! I'm going to be so spoiled over here! A quick lunch of a peanut butter sandwich, banana, and a delicious Korean melon given to me by one of my co-teachers, and it was time for 5th hour. This class was much rowdier than the first two classes. Fortunately I remembered one thing from my methods classes: proximity. So I wandered around the classroom which helped a lot. The fine tuning of the lesson plans also helped! I only had three minutes left at the end of each class, which was just enough time for a few questions. They were the same questions in pretty much every class. My last class did ask me if I knew any Korean, so I repeated the little bit that I knew, which they loved! They're so funny :-)

I asked Jillian earlier if we'd be going straight through the book, and I was surprised to hear her answer. I knew the students had big tests at the end of this month, but I didn't know that they would most likely cancel English class next week as well! Woo hoo!! Two weeks without me teaching! However, I still have to be here. So I guess it will be a good time to brush up on my Korean, get lesson plans done, and talk to all of you. I love teaching, but it will be nice to have a bit of break to help me get used to things. Jillian said that if I wanted to, we could do half of the lesson this week and half next week so that each week would be easy. On Wednesday, we're going to begin the process of getting my Alien Registration Card. Yes, I am an alien. But not from Mars. From Kansas.