I'm sitting here with 12 minutes left on my break between classes and thought I would write a little diddy!
Right now it is January and that means the students get a month off from school, otherwise known as Winter Break. They get one in the summer too, during July and that is their Summer Break. You may be thinking, 'Wow, I cannot believe the kids get a break. After hearing everything Kelly and Ian told me, I thought they would never get a chance to be kids!' Well, you are still right. The kids do not have their normal elementary or middle school, but they still have their academies to attend. You'd better believe there is no break from us! Whatever academy the children go to, there is an opportunity for them to take extra classes for the month they have off to improve whatever subject they are taking.
So, for example, at our school we have two tiers. One is simply called 'intensives' and they attended the academy 3 days a week for intense studying and learning. Ian is teaching that at another branch of our school, in Chang-dong. Our school administrators told him his students were going to be about 10-12 years old, and they definitely are not. He has to teach them for two hours a day and they don't know much English at all because they are super little, and the youngest class level our school offers.
The second tier is called "SPARTA." I teach this. This is an even MORE intense program and the students attend the academy 5 days a week and get mountains of homework and tests. I also teach it at the Chang-dong branch. I teach Beginner writers, intermediate writers and advanced writers. The books we have to get through (and finish!) are extremely dense and simply too long for the amount of times we see each class, so things can get a little stressful. It is also extremely bothersome to me when the kids don't do their work, or sit at their desks and stare instead of doing their work. I usually would pity them, because, growing up in Canada we didn't have such a system. However, their parents work so hard for them to be able to attend these extra, super-expensive Academy classes, just so their child has the chance to level-up. And that isn't even guaranteed!
Anyway, it is mid-January, so thankfully for everyone, we are almost through with SPARTA and intensives!!! I mean, the extra pay will be awesome, but thank goodness it is only a month! ;)
Friday, January 18, 2008
Sunday, January 6, 2008
We're so popular!
I was just writing an email to a man I simply call 'Gramps' and I mentioned how great our group of friends here in Korea is. I'm going to expand on it a little bit, and I'll only mention select names because I don't want to leave anybody off.
Our school has 3 different branches, with a total of 15 foreign teachers. Of these, we hang out regularly with 12 of them. The other 2 are an older couple who are big gamers, and the last one just left to be replaced by a friend of a coworker. So it will grow to 13 soon I suppose.
Our branch in Junggye-Dong is us, Andy & Leah (were here before us, we hang with them several times/week), Jenn & Jeremy (arrived in July, see them maybe once/week outside school), and Melissa (who Kelly knew from university, and Kelly sees her maybe twice a week).
The branch in Chang-Dong is Iowans Dylan & Naomi, here since July and we often see on the weekends.
Gireum is the 3rd branch and it has Jess & Mark (Jess is Leah's cousin, we see them most weekends), Beth (from the northeast, here since July, see her most weekends), and soon to be Sam (another friend of Leah). These 12 all live close together, only 7 subway stops seperates everybody so it's easy to get people together without much planning.
We also have many university friends, with the newly arrived Poly, Flem, Grace, and Justin a ways away from us. Adam Taylor also arrived recently, but lives in a different city a few hours away. There are a few high schools friends here as well, all of whom give us a terrific social core.
Of course, this doesn't include other people we've met here in Korea.
I'll give you an example of how lucky we've been to have cool people around. We met a dude named Ian on our snowboarding trip in December and his birthday party was Saturday. In the afternoon before the party, Kelly, Mark, Jess, and I made plans to go see the Van Gogh exhibit that's visiting Seoul. We got there too late, so the line was too long to be able to get in and see everything, so we called Andy & Leah who we knew to be in the area also. They were a 5 minute cab ride down the road, about to explore a lights show Seoul puts up every year. We met them, toured the lights for about 1.5 hours, then Kelly and I had to go to a different part of Seoul to meet Beth, Naomi, and Melissa before Ian's birthday. The 5 of us went to a great Greek place we know in a cool university district, then went to Ian's birthday and met all his friends. I'm sure we'll run into some of these people again, that tends to happen when there are limited foreigner-friendly areas in the city. Now that people have been here for a while, oriented themselves for a bit, become familiar with the subway, it really isn't socially different from Toronto for us.
We aren't limited to a select few friends, or even a few groups at this point. It's fantastically lucky that we've been able to get to know so many cool people, and they are a huge part of what makes the experience so worthwhile.
Our school has 3 different branches, with a total of 15 foreign teachers. Of these, we hang out regularly with 12 of them. The other 2 are an older couple who are big gamers, and the last one just left to be replaced by a friend of a coworker. So it will grow to 13 soon I suppose.
Our branch in Junggye-Dong is us, Andy & Leah (were here before us, we hang with them several times/week), Jenn & Jeremy (arrived in July, see them maybe once/week outside school), and Melissa (who Kelly knew from university, and Kelly sees her maybe twice a week).
The branch in Chang-Dong is Iowans Dylan & Naomi, here since July and we often see on the weekends.
Gireum is the 3rd branch and it has Jess & Mark (Jess is Leah's cousin, we see them most weekends), Beth (from the northeast, here since July, see her most weekends), and soon to be Sam (another friend of Leah). These 12 all live close together, only 7 subway stops seperates everybody so it's easy to get people together without much planning.
We also have many university friends, with the newly arrived Poly, Flem, Grace, and Justin a ways away from us. Adam Taylor also arrived recently, but lives in a different city a few hours away. There are a few high schools friends here as well, all of whom give us a terrific social core.
Of course, this doesn't include other people we've met here in Korea.
I'll give you an example of how lucky we've been to have cool people around. We met a dude named Ian on our snowboarding trip in December and his birthday party was Saturday. In the afternoon before the party, Kelly, Mark, Jess, and I made plans to go see the Van Gogh exhibit that's visiting Seoul. We got there too late, so the line was too long to be able to get in and see everything, so we called Andy & Leah who we knew to be in the area also. They were a 5 minute cab ride down the road, about to explore a lights show Seoul puts up every year. We met them, toured the lights for about 1.5 hours, then Kelly and I had to go to a different part of Seoul to meet Beth, Naomi, and Melissa before Ian's birthday. The 5 of us went to a great Greek place we know in a cool university district, then went to Ian's birthday and met all his friends. I'm sure we'll run into some of these people again, that tends to happen when there are limited foreigner-friendly areas in the city. Now that people have been here for a while, oriented themselves for a bit, become familiar with the subway, it really isn't socially different from Toronto for us.
We aren't limited to a select few friends, or even a few groups at this point. It's fantastically lucky that we've been able to get to know so many cool people, and they are a huge part of what makes the experience so worthwhile.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
