First Day of Teaching

To begin with we did not know Tuesday was going to be our first day.  This fact turned out to the theme of the day. 

We didn’t know.

Apparently the other staff (all Korean by the way) have been anxious for us to start working as we were delayed in the moving process.  We were told that nothing more than introduction was required for the first week.  Then our boss places before Meg and me a giant pile of books and notes apparently organized by a mad man.  We waded into the mess to figure out our schedule and what we were teaching to whom.  Our handler, Sean, seemed vaguely amused by our befuddlement.  He made up for it by buying us smoothies at the coffee shop down stairs.

After working with Korean children I have concluded that all children are fundamentally the same.  Some are hyper, some are quite, some are smart and some embarrass easily.  Our youngest students are 11 and the oldest are fifteen.  They think it is hilarious that we cannot pronounce their names.  Only one of the classes had American names and one of the students calls himself Iron Man.  You have never lived until you have shouted across the room “Iron Man, Stop Kicking Alex!”  Their names are difficult to pronounce which is compounded by the fact that they speak softly (almost whispering) when directly speaking to an adult.  If I didn’t know any better I would guess I was being punked.  At first I tried to write their names down but it confused me more.  I think next time I will have all of them fill out a piece of paper with their names in both English and Korean.  Maybe that will work… maybe.  They are fascinated by my height and have no reservation about showing their amazement.  Every class asked me how tall I was which presented yet another cultural barrier.  As a proud ‘Merican I use the Old English System of measure and my students (like everyone else in the world) use the rational Metric system.  I told them my height in inches and they just looked at me confused.

Dinner was served which was rice and kimchee.  I spent a solid ten minutes trying to figure out how to open the rice steamer  I didn’t know there was such an appliance. 

By the end of the night we were exhausted but we still had one challenge left…

THE BUS

Here are a list of our impediments

1)      We do not have cell phones

2)      We do not know the number for our handler Sean

3)      We do not know the address of the school

4)      We do not have the address for our apartment

5)      We do not speak any Korean

6)      It is dark out so we may not see our apartment building

7)      We do not know how much bus fare is

The bus driver, to his credit, was very concerned for us.  He kept asking us where we were going.  At least I assume that was what he was asking; he obviously only spoke Korean. Every time a young person got on the bus he asked, “yuhng uh?” which is Korean for English. Finally, a lovely young lady knew enough to ask us if we were headed for city hall.  We can see city hall from our window so we just said yes.  We got off at city hall and made the hike back to our apartment.

On my way up I bought two Korean hefe-weisse.  We earned them.

GUHN BEH!

-Dan