Week 2

I suppose that each week from now on will be a blur. Working 7am-9pm four days in a row will do that to you. I cannot remember many details from the past week, but I can list the highlights.

Can you tell how happy I am to have semi-Western food?!

We teachers went out to VIPs on Friday for lunch. It is a restaurant known for its Korean version of Western food. There were Italian, Mexican, Korean, and American options. Everything was very different, but good. I ate at least four plates of food from the buffet! :) I had lots of fruit and different kinds of salad, kidney-bean burritos, spicy spaghetti, and crunchy, honey-glazed fries, among other things.

A Korean teacher and I agreed to an exchange: Spanish lessons for Korean lessons. So this week I started learning Hangul. I've memorized 16 characters and their matching sounds so far. Only . . . 24 more to go. Everyone says that if I can just read Hangul, it will be easier for me to get around.

I've started forming relationships with my students. I REALLY enjoy teaching adults and am considering getting my master's degree in either English or ESL/EFL so that I can continue doing so in the future. Actually, I will have an opportunity here in the coming months to get certified for TEFL/TESL. If time and energy allow, I'm going to take advantage of it.

My religion class is possibly my favorite of them all. We can practice English and talk about God at the same time. :) I have four Christians in my class and one Buddhist. That makes for some very interesting conversations, to say the least. We get along well and have a good time.

Most of the children I teach are very sweet, but some are simply not motivated to learn English. In an effort to encourage them, I started working with some other teacher friends in the States to create a video correspondence program, kind of like virtual pen-paling. I finished putting my videos together this week and am waiting to hear back from the other teachers.

                                    

And that, my friends, is the short run-down of the past week or so. A couple more blogs are forthcoming about places that I've visited recently.