Week 3

Week 3

We are going on day 20 here in Seoul and we are finally finished our teachers training. We start teaching on Monday and we are looking forward to getting into the classrooms. We will learn much quicker on the job. We spent this week making lesson plans for the whole month of September and making teaching aids. As a result I am now addicted to laminating. It took us a while to get everything straight because of the crazy amount of books that we have for the various different classes. I am including a picture of just some of my books (Nat).

Some of Nat's books

The shuttle vans waiting for the kids

The Korean teacher that we have been training with (Jenny) has taken us to two Korean restaurants for lunch this week. At the first one we had a pork soup made with pig stomach and intestines, and little sausages made with much of the same. We were able to stomach it, I just ate the broth of the soup and the sausages were actually pretty decent. At the second place we had fish which was very good. Meals in Korean restaurants are very cheap, we usually eat for between 5,000 and 7,000 won (5-7 dollars). These meals always include numerous side dishes, like kimchi (usually made with radish or cabbage), picked radish (different than our radishes), rice, soup, red pepper paste, onions, garlic, and others. They differ a bit depending on the place.

Us with Jenny in the classroom that we did our training in

More pictures of the view from the floor that the school is on

We have also taken some pictures at the school to show you what it is like. It is on the fifth floor of a building that has a couple other schools, a departments store and a few other things. We have a nice view of the mountains from the window when you get off the elevator. All of the classrooms are named either after a historical figure, such as DaVinci, a positive attribute, like grace or honesty, or a planet, like Saturn. This makes it easier to remember where our classes are, and if we have two classes that are the same we can distinguish them but class name.

Entrance to the school

School layout

Kindergarten Uniforms

TV's where parents can watch their children in class.

Staff Room, every teacher has a desk, very cozy.

We moved into our apartment this Friday after being in a temporary one in a different building for a week. We had to move everything down four flights and up another four flights, well I say we but I should really say that Don did most of it; I helped with the lighter bags. We have been busy cleaning and unpacking. The director of our school arranged for a second bed to be brought up to our apartment and a bigger fridge (the one that was here was a bar fridge), which was really nice. She is coming by again tomorrow to bring us a few more things. Everyone is being really helpful and accommodating. A few teachers left this week so we were able to get some of the things that they were leaving behind. I got a hair dryer and a straightener, which was great! We were also happy to find a toaster oven here; we were toasting our bread on a frying pan last week. We are trying our best to make the place comfortable.

There are two grocery stores less than 25 meters away from our building. We have fun finding new things to try whenever to go shopping. We can stand at one spot in an isle for five minutes trying to figure out what we are looking at, we probably look pretty funny. It took us a while to figure out what was laundry detergent and what was fabric softener and to make sure we weren’t buying detergent with bleach in it. We have tried some different drinks here, some very similar to what we have at home and some very different. Cold coffee is very popular here and there are a lot of varieties. We haven’t really ventured into those yet, but maybe eventually. A lot of people here drink a type of instant coffee that is a lot better than what we have at home. They come in individual packets and you can get black or with cream and sugar. We were surprised that they were as good as they are and apparently the kind that we bought (Taster’s Choice) is considered poor quality.

We will make sure to get the apartment all in order so that we can take pictures and a video to add to the blog next week. Not that there is much to see, the apartments here can pretty much be photographed in one shot, hehehe.

Oh ya, we also have a landline in our apartment, if you want the number let us know and we will email it to you.