I know, I know.
I’ve been REALLY slacking lately. In my last two posts, I
talked about my schools move but then I never followed up on it showing where
they moved to or anything about the beginning of the new school year (which
starts in March over here). I’ll get into all of that first.
So, the new school year in Korea has officially been
underway for two full weeks now and that is the same amount of time I’ve been
teaching at my schools new building. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about,
read the rest of this paragraph. My school moved from their old building
because the owner of the first building wanted to have a program that taught
just Kindergarten there. That’s what Ivy said but that doesn’t make a lot of
sense; it probably has something to do with money.
So, without further ado, here are pictures of the new
school.
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| 6 year old classroom~ Daniel, Lisa, Shawn (L to R) |
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| 5 year old classroom, board to the right |
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| 7 year old classroom~ Joseph and Amanda |
As you can see, we still have three Kindergarten classrooms
(and now we actually use all three each day). We also have a play area and
cooking area, both much smaller than in the last building. There is a nice
sized room filled with textbooks, crayons, art supplies and other materials
that we use with the younger students too.
Although some areas are smaller and we now have no “teacher’s room” I
really like the Kindergarten setup on the first floor.
Right now we have three 7 year old students (Amanda, Michael
and Joseph- Alan left), three 6 year old students (Shawn, Lisa and Daniel) and
two 5 year old students (Anthony and Brett). That makes 8 Kindergarten students,
when we used to teach just two K classes totaling 9 students. The last five
kids I mentioned are new to i-Sponge Kindergarten, although I have taught
Anthony (Angelina’s son) for four months in an afterschool class, and Shawn, in
that same class for the last two months. Daniel doesn’t know nearly as much as
the other two 6 year olds which is frustrating for him and his teachers. Shawn
knows a lot of vocabulary but his writing skills are lacking and Lisa is pretty
great at everything. Anthony does very well in the 5 year old class, but he
gets bored and discouraged when he sees Brett, his only classmate, flailing
about on the floor or biting crayons. Brett is a very young 5 year old (I think
his actual age is 3) but he never speaks in Korean or English and he doesn’t do
any work ever, not even coloring.
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| The 6 year olds! Shawn, Lisa and Daniel |
As for the second floor, my only real complaint is that to
get to it, you have to go outside and in a different door. It’s especially going to be annoying come
rainy season. As you can see below, there are 5 classrooms, all about the same
size. They all have this push pin board covering the upper half of the room. I
LOVE this because my old classroom only had one bulletin board with this
material. This is great because it’s much easier to put up posters or displays
of the kids work on this material. I use a corner of the room to put up the
monthly lesson plans for each of my classes, sorted by the days they are taught.
I also have a few other important lists over there. There is a really fun
rounded gold tile wall in my room which the kids think is awesome too.
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| Ellie's classroom (She replaced Brian) |
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| Sarah's classroom/Kate's when she has bigger classes |
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| My new classroom! :) |
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| Kate's class, love this color! |
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| Ivy's classroom (she got all of the leftover desks haha) |
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| Computer room, a bit smaller than the last but at least we can print off of them now! |
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| My class with one of my higher classes |
I have a few new students in some of my after school
classes, but for the most part, these are the same. All of the classes are
great and they surprise me with how smart they are and how much they can
comprehend and then reiterate back to me.
Now let’s get onto what’s been going on outside of school.
As I’ve said, Dan’s leaving soon so he’s been trying to
spend time with everyone while he still can. Last weekend, we stayed out until
almost 8 am!!! It was a blast. We started the night alone at my place. Dan had
gotten in earlier and was snoozing (that morning marked the end of his two
weeks on night shift so he was naturally exhausted). After that, we met up with
some friends at String, stayed there for a while and then went to noraebong (karaoke
room) followed by the hajeongook (delicious pig spine soup) restaurant we love.
It was such a good night. We slept soundly for quite a while the next day. Then
that Saturday night, a lot of people were going out to Elvis bar in Suncheon so
we joined them but it was much earlier night. I think we got home around 3am.
Sunday was a lazy day of catching up on our shows and then we went out for
Korean BBQ with Pete and Kate. He didn’t have to leave until Monday so I spent
my break with him and then went to the bus terminal after work Monday night to
say goodbye.
Here's a little taste of last weekend:
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| Shots :) |
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| I love this boy so much |
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| Rob, Dan and Trey wrestling.. haha |
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| Haha This is hilarious b/c they jumped in the back of Pete's car thinking they were being nice and that we'd need more room... I had the row in front of them by myself haha |
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| At a noraebong, probably singing Little Mermaid's Under the Sea haha |
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| Trey passed out, so Dan was bugging him haha |
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| They think they're so cool ;) |
This weekend had even more fun plans. It was St. Patrick’s
Day and there was also a rugby tournament. Now if you’ve followed my blog from
the beginning, you know I’ve only been to one other rugby tournament. Because it was going to be an early morning,
most people stayed in on Friday night to take an early bus Rob arranged. The
bus picked up Suncheoners and then came to R & R, Rob’s hagwon (private
school) and to pick up the rest of us. It was a noraebus, which meant people
could, and did, do karaoke on it during the drive. Despite the early time, a
considerable amount of people were drinking. When we got to the field in Busan,
the guys started warming up and a huge group of us walked across the street to
the HomePlus to get drinks and snacks.
Our guys were up to play first and there were just three
teams total, so each team played two games. During the games, pretty much everyone
was drinking and enjoying the nice weather. It was a bit windy but considerably
warmer than it has been recently. Many people even got a bit of a sun burn.
After the games were done (Our guys won!) we got back on the bus and were taken
to the other side of Busan to Haeundae Beach. Once we were dropped off, we
parted ways. Most people hadn’t arranged accommodations ahead of time, but Dan’s
always good about that so we headed to our room while our friends found places
to stay. We were at the Sunset Hotel, which had a decent view of the ocean and
nightlife. Dan took some pictures but only from the inside of our room. We had
a small balcony area which we looked out on but didn’t take pictures from.
Between the bus ride up to Busan and all the time spent at
the field, Dan had been drinking quite a bit and took a much needed, nice long
nap (it was a sleep really). I tried to wake him up a few times to see if he wanted
to go eat, since he hadn’t really eaten anything substantial since 8am and that
was MiniStop chicken, but he wasn’t having it so I just watched TV for a while
and then dozed off. When he woke me up around midnight he was starving so we
went out in search of food and saw some of our friends who were at a bar called
Wolfhound Pub that was conveniently located about 15 steps to the left of the
hotel we were staying in. We hung out for a bit, and then left with a few of
them to get some Burger King. While out, we were told most of our friends were
already in for the night because they hadn’t napped at all and were just
exhausted, so after BK, we went back to our room.
The next morning (this morning) we met up at the same bar as
last night. In the daytime, they are a restaurant and they have all kinds of
delicious (albeit a bit expensive) western style food. Dan got some shepherd’s pie and I got fish and
chips. Ahhh, so delicious.. I’m hungry just thinking about it now! After
eating, reminiscing on the night and saying goodbyes to those going other ways,
I got on the bus back to Gwangyang.
A few pics from this weekend:
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| The Jeollanamdo Aliens~ aka the good guys lol |
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| Toni, Trey and Lizzie, beer, alcoholic cider and all sorts of mixed drinks |
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| Carolyn, Lizzie and me with the other team's supporters behind us |
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| Our room for the night |
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| Nice ocean view :) |
This coming week is sure to bring more fun times with my students.
It’s amazing how much faster the weeks seem to go by in this new building. This
week’s also sure to bring awesome stories. Dan’s going away party is being held
this coming weekend with some combination of a park, Dragon’s soccer game, String, and
who knows what else!
