First few weeks in Korea

A lot has happened since my last blog. Our arrival in Korea was smooth. We spent a night in Seoul and then flew to Busan (the orientation location) the next afternoon. Finding the EPIK people at the airport was easy. There were 5 of us on the flight from Seoul and we were told by the co-ordinator that we needed to wait for another 20 people to fill the bus before we could leave for the orientation location. An hour and a half later, after no one else had arrived, they eventually gave up and bussed the 5 of us to Pukyong National University. We left in the middle of peak hour and what should have been a 40 minute drive took more like 1 hour and 30 minutes.

Orientation was fun, but very busy. Everyday we had classes about teaching from 9am till 5:30pm and then Korean Language class in the evening, we didn't even get a weekend!, It was great to meet some people who are living in our area and other parts of Korea. Last Friday we were all loaded on to busses, good bye Brenton! And driven to our new home town, Daegu. In Daegu we were all quickly collected by representatives from our schools and shown our schools and apartments. Luckly finding Brenton and I's meeting spot that night was easy and we both arrived at the same time!

It was a public holiday Tuesday so we had a four day weekend, which we used to shop for our apartment and explore Daegu. Wednesday was my first real day of work. I had no idea if I had to teach or not, luckly I didn't! Wednesday I spent sitting at my emptry desk (my computer didn't arrive until I was going home), going to school assemblies and staff meetings, all in Korean, and meeting lots of people. I also found out my schedual. I will be teaching every grade 6 class (there are 7) twice a week and every grade 3 class (5) once a week. I will also be teaching 3 of the grade 2 classes once a week in first semester and 2 grade one classes once a week in second semester. Both of my co-teachers (I have one for grade 6 and one for grade 3, grade 2 I am alone!) are very nice and are both brand new to the school and I think teaching!

Yesterday classes started. I had 1 grade 6 class in the morning. We were locked out of the room for the first 10 minutes! The kids understood a lot less English than I had expected and most didn't know how to write their name in English. The class flew by and we only covered about half of what we had planned, helped by the fact we were locked out! Overall I think it went pretty well, but we have lots of room for improvement!