Korean Music

For the most part, I'm not really feeling Korean music or "K-pop", but there are a few songs that I really like. For instance....

*Brown Eyed Girls: "Abracadbra." They tend to play this song a lot at clubs and bars here...Good song to dance to (=


*2NE1: "I don't care." My favorite Korean band is probably 2NE1, they are really popular here. A lot of my students like them (even the boys lol). If you like this song, then also check out "Fire" and "Lollipop."


*Super Junior: "Sorry, sorry." The dancing in this video is super lame. But the song is not too bad. Enjoy...

A typical weekday in Korea

What a typical work day is like for me.......

I work Monday-Friday from about 8:30-4:30pm. I wake up around 630am so that I can catch the bus around 8am ish. It takes about 10-20 minutes to get to work (depending on traffic and which school I'm going to).

I arrive at school before 8:30 and have coffee with some of the staff in the teachers lounge or administration office. Around 8:40 ish I head on over to my English classroom to get ready for my first class. I teach (usually) 22 classes a week. Mainly 4 forty minute classes a day. I teach mainly 5th and 6th graders but I have one 4th grade class on Monday and Tuesday. I also teach English to some staff on Thursdays (they call it English tea time). On Wednesdays, I have an extra class with some students who would like to learn more English. These students are usually above average in English compared to their classmates.

Wednesday is usually the busiest day out of the week for me. I teach 4 classes until noon, have lunch at 12:10, and then I have the tutoring session from 1:10-2pm. At 3pm, I play volleyball with the staff. Then we have snacks and drinks after volleyball. Most of the staff can't really speak English, but they are all very friendly and at least attempt to talk to me in English. Or "Konglish" (a mixture of Korean and English lol).

As I mentioned earlier, we have English tea time on Thursdays at 3. This is a chance for the staff to meet with me and practice their English. I've only had one tea time so far, often they have staff meetings at that time. I'm trying to think of different topics to talk about. The first tea time was just a chance for me to introduce myself, so I showed the powerpoint that I showed to my students!! But next time, I'll ask them to tell me about themselves and their family's...etc....

So that is pretty much a typical work week for me. It tends to vary every week, depending on whats going on at school. The next post will be about a typical weekEND in Korea!!! Stay tuned.

My Apartment!!

Check out a video of the place I will call home for the next year!! Enjoy ^_^

First two days of teaching...

First two days are over!! Pheww....They went surprisingly very well! So much fun, but tiring!! My students have way too much energy. But thats kids in general... And this one boy kept choking other boy students. It looked more like some type of wrestling move....like a chokehold or something.. But once I or my co-teacher said something, he stopped. He did it again a couple minutes later...but we just have to be persistent!!

So I teach about 20 classes a week. At my main school I only teach fifth and sixth grade. Both grades have two English classes a week. For the first two days, I did an "Introduction" presentation for all my classes. Which had pictures of me, my family, friends, and things that I like. My students seemed to really enjoy this. They were so surprised that I like Full House (Korean TV show) and Rain/ Bi (Korean Celebrity)! I also had them do a drawing activity, that had me learn about them, by having them draw their name and things that they like. They were very talkative, but when it came to sharing their picture to the class, pretty much no one wanted to do it!! But we got a couple brave volunteers in each class.

Since we had some extra time... I decided to show them a clip of high school musical, since I had a picture of it in my powerpoint. I thought Hannah Montana and High School Musical would be popular here (I thought it was popular EVERYWHERE), but only maybe 1 or 2 students in each class have actually seen HSM and NONE of my students have heard of Hannah Montana). For some reason, my sixth graders thought the video was funny, but they definitely liked it!! When I showed it to my fifth graders, they didn't seem to enjoy as much...

According to my contract, I have to be in school from 8:30-4:30. But i only teach 4 forty minute classes a day! Which means, Im done by 12:10!! I have lunch for one hour (delish by the way!!), and the rest of the day is "lesson planning". Considering my English classes already follow a curriculum with a book and CDROM, theres not much planning I have to do. Maybe just add an activity or two to supplement whats in the book. So I'm going to see maybe if there are things I can do to be more productive, besides browsing the internet for hours. My co-teacher is "forcing" me to play volleyball on Wednesdays with the other staff and also host English tea parties on Thursdays! She also wanted me to take violin or flute lessons with the staff on Tuesdays, but I think i will pass on that! And plus the lessons are 50,000 won a month. Umm no thanks!!

So only 8 more introduction presentations left!! And 8 more times I have to watch High School Musical =/. But for now, I'll end it here, and I'll let you know how teaching at my other school goes!!