10 Things I Will Not Miss About Korea: Part 2

I often have trouble signing up for things in Korea because I have a foreign name and it's either too big to fit in the 'name' section of the website or it just simply won't except it. Sarah and I once tried to go to our local library that opened up last year. We went in, walked up the stairs, found an empty booth and sat ourselves down. About 2 minutes later someone walked over with a ticket in their hand pointing at the booth. Sarah talked to them and apparently you had to reserve the booth. We later discovered that you had to book tables and basically any little space in the library in advance too. 'OK, no problem. Let's get...

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Korean students are so sweet!

Today was the last day of a week-long winter camp at a different school. Their school doesn't have a native English teacher so I was asked to create some fun lessons for a week. After I handed out prizes and wrapped things up todays, I said goodbye to my students. Many of them were sad and told me that they wished they could have spent more time with me. As I was cleaning up desks and organizing papers, one of the boys came up to me, handed me a fairly expensive Caramel Chocolate Kitty, and thanked me for teaching him this week. I was so touched by his words and actions. :D I know it was only a week, but I'll miss them. This is a picture of...

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10 Things I Will Not Miss About Korea: Part 1

I love Korea, I love my school, I love my students, but not everything is perfect - it never is - and I know I could write a list at least double the size of this about things I have not missed about England. But with the good comes the bad, therefore I've felt like I had to write this to bring some reality into this blog.Actually, what has ended up happening is that I could only really think of nine things, so I've had to fill it out a bit with little gripes that have no real significance. But I've still had to split the article into two parts of five because some of my thoughts, although they are shared by a lot of native teachers here, I've...

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Union World and a bit of Spongebob

Winter camp is finally finished....for my school at least. Native teachers usually have to teach a one to two week camp course during both the summer and winter vacations. I got off lucky in the summer. I only had to have class for three days and only for an hour and a half. No prep needed, it was games the whole day. :D Work was a breeze. This time, I spent days and days wracking my brain and the internet and whatever other sites I could find looking for activities for the students. I have to say though that the past few stressful weeks truly paid off. I couldn't have asked for a better winter camp experience. My 24 students, all girls and 3...

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Adjushi: The orange thief

So it doesn't happen often in Korea, but there are occasionally days where really strange things happen. The first day of work at my school, I was given a set of keys, one for the office and one for my desk drawer. It turned out that the key to my desk drawer was the wrong key, and no one knew where the actual key had been placed. I was told that I was out of luck and not to put anything valuable in my desk. So all year I've had an unlocked drawer. This morning, I did the usual. I walked into the office, put my bag in the small cubby below my desk, and was about to place my ipod into my drawer when I realized it was locked. O_O No one had a key, and I hadn't locked it. My coteacher and I tried to use a bit of elbow grease and some muscle to get it open. Let's just say that didn't quite work....

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My Students' Collaborative Writing Game

First week of my school's winter camp is finished and I hope my students had fun. Yawning is a good sign, right?  The first day was a bit chaotic, the second graders didn't really listen to my instructions, left trash on the ground, among other disruptive things. I nipped this in the bud the next day by enlisting the help of one of my co-teachers who went in and told them something along the lines of 'Oh, I'm so disappointed in you. Lee is an amazing teacher. How can you do this to the golden jewel of the British Isles?' - he told them in Korean, but I'm pretty sure that is what he said. Once they decided to behave themselves, I realised that they were actually better at English than they let on... The shy, quiet girls were better than expected, anyway - I always knew the boys to be...

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