String Bar
Kate and I at San Antonio's in Suncheon
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Norebong and Bars
A few nights ago, Kate and I went out to String, just like every other Friday night here. We got there around 11:30 and stayed until at least 2:30. From there, we went with a bunch of our friends to a norebong. What is norebong, might you ask? Well it's very much like karaoke back in the states, but instead of singing in front of a bunch of strangers in a bar, you rent a room with your friends and sing with them. There are tons of songs to choose from and it plays a video of Koreans singing it with the English lyrics below. They serve you snacks and drinks and there is a bathroom and fun party lights all in your room. It's a blast. I even sang a few songs!! We went home and slept then went out to Suncheon Saturday night. They have a foreigner bar there too called San Antonio's. They have a huge drink selection and I did not try it but I've heard that the food there is delicious and the closest to real Mexican food you'll get in Korea. I put a lot more picture up on Facebook and some video's from the night, so check those out if you want to!
Kate and I at San Antonio's in Suncheon
Kate and I at San Antonio's in Suncheon
Thursday, August 12, 2010
My Students
So I've been teaching for a few weeks and I keep forgetting to take the kids picture! I remembered before a couple of my "classes" which I say because they are so small!
In the after school program, the classes start at Basic Stater, then Basic 1, Basic 2, Basic 4, Intermediate 1, Spark 2 and Highest 1. They are placed in a class based on ability, not age and that's why there are so many levels.
This picture is from the Basic 2 class. From left to right it goes, Jacob, Starlyn, Patrick. Jacob says he's 7 years old, but since Korea starts counting at 1 instead of 0, and then adds another year after the first New Year, he is really 5. I'm not sure how old Starlyn is, but I'm guessing 6 or 7. She is adorable :) Then there is Patrick who says he's 11, so 9. I have a lot of fun with them.
For those of you who know about Alex, one of my Kindergartner's from Student Teaching, I have a feeling Jacob will be his replacement. Back home, Alex always got in trouble for being rough with other kids and saying "no" a lot but he was really smart and I loved that kid! Jacob is just like that, so I hope he starts behaving better for me.. He did say "Teacher Ashley pretty" the other day, so I think we might be on the right track! haha
In the after school program, the classes start at Basic Stater, then Basic 1, Basic 2, Basic 4, Intermediate 1, Spark 2 and Highest 1. They are placed in a class based on ability, not age and that's why there are so many levels.
This picture is from the Basic 2 class. From left to right it goes, Jacob, Starlyn, Patrick. Jacob says he's 7 years old, but since Korea starts counting at 1 instead of 0, and then adds another year after the first New Year, he is really 5. I'm not sure how old Starlyn is, but I'm guessing 6 or 7. She is adorable :) Then there is Patrick who says he's 11, so 9. I have a lot of fun with them.
For those of you who know about Alex, one of my Kindergartner's from Student Teaching, I have a feeling Jacob will be his replacement. Back home, Alex always got in trouble for being rough with other kids and saying "no" a lot but he was really smart and I loved that kid! Jacob is just like that, so I hope he starts behaving better for me.. He did say "Teacher Ashley pretty" the other day, so I think we might be on the right track! haha
In this picture, you will notice there is only one child. Well, that is because he is the only student I have in my Spark 2/My Writing class. His name is Mike and he is really smart. I think he is Korean 11, so 9. He is still pretty shy with me, which is understandable since it's just us, but he's getting a lot better!
When I'm with him, basically just tutoring, I have him read out loud and write a lot. I even made him stand in front of the class to introduce me to the empty room! :)
We start teaching Kindergarten on Monday. There aren't many kids then either, so we split up the subjects. I'll let you know how that goes!
Monday, August 9, 2010
Namhae Beach
So Kate and I went to Namhae Beach this past weekend. We were communicating with people through a Facebook message, since we still don't have a cell phone. Many of the people in the message thread were people we had not met yet, including Rob, who was sort of facilitating directions, Ian, our driver, and Lizzie, his girlfriend. Rob told us to meet at String Bar at noon on Saturday and Ian ad Lizzie would take us to Home Plus and then to the beach. We got there right around 12:00, at least a few minutes early and we sat on the curb and waited and waited....
The ride to the beach was an adventure in itself because Lizzie and Ian had their rescue dog, Walter (read it with an English accent, Walta). Plus, we experienced our first non Korean driver in Korea. Ian is from Australia but he's been all over and he, I assume, has his licence here and a car. Their traffic rules still confound me with stopping at red lights being optional and having no real stop signs. However, we arrived to our destination safely, read: in one piece, and in a very timely manner- at least twenty minutes earlier than we should have.
Finally, after a light rain shower and thinking we got stood up, we recognize some people from their Facebook pictures. Relieved, we meet them and after about another 20 minutes, we head to Home Plus to buy food and alcohol.
The ride to the beach was an adventure in itself because Lizzie and Ian had their rescue dog, Walter (read it with an English accent, Walta). Plus, we experienced our first non Korean driver in Korea. Ian is from Australia but he's been all over and he, I assume, has his licence here and a car. Their traffic rules still confound me with stopping at red lights being optional and having no real stop signs. However, we arrived to our destination safely, read: in one piece, and in a very timely manner- at least twenty minutes earlier than we should have.
Once In Namhae, we had to park before actually walking to the beach. There were Korean men charging people to park and Ian just blew past the guy like he didn't know what he was supposed to do. Ian has been here 2 years, speaks decent Korean and parking was less than $5, so he definitely knew what was going on. He ended up having to drop us off, leave the parking area, go back around, pay and then park.
When we finally walked onto the beach, into the gorgeous sand, I was immediately taken aback by the beauty of the land. You can see for yourself. We met up with the rest of our group, about 25 other people, and began to relax. Someone in our group brought a giant 8 person circular raft that stuck out like a sore thumb and people were on it drinking and goofing off. They went out too far and came back with jellyfish stings all over them. I wish I would have taken a picture of the jellyfish because they were so tiny and completely clear- very easy to miss. There were easily hundreds washed up on the beach.
There was a lot of drinking that night including a cooler full of what Ian called Jungle Juice, but not the American college version. This Jungle Juice consisted of a lot of wine, Sangria and fresh fr
uit, not a random mix of vodka and juices. They also had a lot of Soju which they called Korean beer, but it tastes like Vodka and Soju translates to "burned liquor" so I'm not really sure what it is.
uit, not a random mix of vodka and juices. They also had a lot of Soju which they called Korean beer, but it tastes like Vodka and Soju translates to "burned liquor" so I'm not really sure what it is. We stayed in something called a Mimbok, or something like that.. I tried to find it on Google and it took me to some Russian thing.. Anyway it's just a small room where you lay on a blanket and small pillow. It was really uncomfortable but luckily ours had A/C so it wasn't completely unbearable, and it was ridiculously cheap.
Well I think that's all for now. I'm sitting here at work on Tuesday morning and this is all I have to show for it :)
I'll try to start taking more pictures, with myself and people I've met!! Some people are leaving really soon!!
Monday, August 2, 2010
Finally Started to Teach!!
So yesterday Kate and I finally began teaching. We each had three classes of kids in an after school program. As I think I mentioned, this school is brand new, so for the after school program there is a total of about 18 kids. These kids range from about a 1st grade English level to 4th grade. Kate has the lowest level with one student. Then I have the next two levels (Basic 1 and 2). Kate teaches Basic 4 and I teach Spark 2, which is more of a writing intensive class.
My Basic 1 class is supposed to have 3 students, but one wasn't there. So I had two students. When they learn English, they are given or get to pick an English name. Neither of these students had an English name yet so I got to name them both. I named the boy Jacob and the boy Amy. They were both pretty shy but they did understand at least a lot of the vocabulary I was throwing at them and they were able to repeat it all with pretty good pronunciation.
In my Basic 2 class there were three students, all at about a 3rd of 4th grade level. All three of them had English names already- Jacob, Patrick, and Starlyn. The Jacob in this class was very different from the first Jacob I had. He was a trouble maker.. broke the pencil he had so he couldn't do his work, spoke in Korean when he knew he was supposed to speak only English, etc. The thing is, he is really smart and I think he thinks this stuff is too easy for him. Every time I asked a question, he answered in a full, detailed sentence, so we'll see how that goes. He reminds me of one of the Kindergartners I taught this year and he ended up being my favorite.. not that I have those.. Haha
Today (Tuesday), is a "planning" day so Kate and I do not teach again until tomorrow. Hopefully Jacob and I do better tomorrow.
My Basic 1 class is supposed to have 3 students, but one wasn't there. So I had two students. When they learn English, they are given or get to pick an English name. Neither of these students had an English name yet so I got to name them both. I named the boy Jacob and the boy Amy. They were both pretty shy but they did understand at least a lot of the vocabulary I was throwing at them and they were able to repeat it all with pretty good pronunciation.
In my Basic 2 class there were three students, all at about a 3rd of 4th grade level. All three of them had English names already- Jacob, Patrick, and Starlyn. The Jacob in this class was very different from the first Jacob I had. He was a trouble maker.. broke the pencil he had so he couldn't do his work, spoke in Korean when he knew he was supposed to speak only English, etc. The thing is, he is really smart and I think he thinks this stuff is too easy for him. Every time I asked a question, he answered in a full, detailed sentence, so we'll see how that goes. He reminds me of one of the Kindergartners I taught this year and he ended up being my favorite.. not that I have those.. Haha
Today (Tuesday), is a "planning" day so Kate and I do not teach again until tomorrow. Hopefully Jacob and I do better tomorrow.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
String Bar
So I've completely failed on taking anymore pictures so far... but I figured I should say something about the weekend. Friday night, Kate and I had plans with teachers from the town over to go to a bar for foreigners called String Bar. We were supposed to get there around 1o:30, but being the first week of work, and still not on a normal sleep schedule, we both fell asleep until about 11:30. Oops! :)
We ended up going to the bar a little after midnight. That was an adventure in itself. You see, Kate is night blind, so she can't see much except for brighter lights when it's dark out, so we walked arm in arm down the street, looking for a cab. Once we got to a busier road, we hopped in a cab and gave the driver a scrap of paper that said in Korean where we wanted to go (courtesy of our boss, Jasmine). He laughed at us and drove us there. He even gave us a discount, probably for being foreign and naive haha
Once we got to the bar, Kate, the girl we were meeting, bought us each a beer and the fun began... we ended up staying until about 4am and getting a cab ride with another scrap of paper to get us home. While at String, we met a lot of really cool people, some teachers, like Kate, Will, Kerry, Nikki, Pete and John (from Canada, England, Canada, Canada, England, and Canada respectively), and others like Mario, who's from Germany working at the steel factory here. Everyone was very friendly and nice. They were all amazed that it was our first week. Apparently most of them hadn't met other people foreign teachers for their first 3 months or so.
All in all, a good night.
On Saturday, we were invited by Kerry, Nikki, and Pete to go to a soccer game at the stadium on the island. Both teams were Posco teams, Posco being the big steel company, and at the end of the game, they gave away a Sonata, so there were 13.5K people in attendance, almost double what they are used to seeing. It was fun listening to the announcers and doing their little cheers- very high energy. However, the most entertaining thing to me was the 5 boys who would not leave Kerry alone. They were just being friendly but it was hilarious to see them talk to him in English and Korean. I just hadn't seen kids do that yet. It's getting me excited for Monday, where I'll teach 3 after school classes from about 1st-4th grade. I'll let you know how that goes. :)
We ended up going to the bar a little after midnight. That was an adventure in itself. You see, Kate is night blind, so she can't see much except for brighter lights when it's dark out, so we walked arm in arm down the street, looking for a cab. Once we got to a busier road, we hopped in a cab and gave the driver a scrap of paper that said in Korean where we wanted to go (courtesy of our boss, Jasmine). He laughed at us and drove us there. He even gave us a discount, probably for being foreign and naive haha
Once we got to the bar, Kate, the girl we were meeting, bought us each a beer and the fun began... we ended up staying until about 4am and getting a cab ride with another scrap of paper to get us home. While at String, we met a lot of really cool people, some teachers, like Kate, Will, Kerry, Nikki, Pete and John (from Canada, England, Canada, Canada, England, and Canada respectively), and others like Mario, who's from Germany working at the steel factory here. Everyone was very friendly and nice. They were all amazed that it was our first week. Apparently most of them hadn't met other people foreign teachers for their first 3 months or so.
All in all, a good night.
On Saturday, we were invited by Kerry, Nikki, and Pete to go to a soccer game at the stadium on the island. Both teams were Posco teams, Posco being the big steel company, and at the end of the game, they gave away a Sonata, so there were 13.5K people in attendance, almost double what they are used to seeing. It was fun listening to the announcers and doing their little cheers- very high energy. However, the most entertaining thing to me was the 5 boys who would not leave Kerry alone. They were just being friendly but it was hilarious to see them talk to him in English and Korean. I just hadn't seen kids do that yet. It's getting me excited for Monday, where I'll teach 3 after school classes from about 1st-4th grade. I'll let you know how that goes. :)
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
i-Sponge English School
So I work at a school called i-Sponge. It's not like i-pod. In Korean, "i" is another word for child so i-sponge means the child "sponges" or soaks up English. Yesterday at work (Tuesday) Kate and I took some pictures and a video of the school. You can see some of the pictures below. Side note: In Korea, image is an even bigger deal to people so they are all about competing for the best brands and names of everything. You will notice some of the names posted above classrooms are the same as big name schools and artists. That's just how it is over here. Things have to look nice. I hope you enjoy these pictures!
Cooking Room
Gym
Teacher's Room/Lounge
Kindergarten class~Disney, Picasso and Andersen are the other two
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| Pretty flowers |
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| Tiny toilet made just for kids! |
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| Kids tiny sink! |
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| My classroom, Harvard :) |
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| Kate's classroom, MIT |
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