What's Going On
It seems like not much is happening these days, but when I sat down and thought about it, there actually are a few things that you might be interested to hear about.
First, our school is moving to a new building this weekend. We'll have our own classrooms (currently Joel and I share a room) and the elementary school program will start in earnest on July 24th or so, when the summer intensive session begins. The session will last for 4 weeks, and we'll have some classes in the mornings as well as in the afternoon. We don't have our schedules yet, though, and probably won't get them until the day before the session starts. The fact that this doesn't bother me attests to how used to Korean methods of (non)planning I've become.
This weekend we went to Seoul to do some shopping, and it was a total bust. We tried to go to a huge market called Damdaemun, and we did find it, but there just wasn't the amazing array of goods we were expecting. I think we missed part of it, although we wandered for a good two hours and called a couple of friends to figure out where all the cool stuff was. It was too hot to make much more of an effort, though. Then we went to Hongdae and then headed home. A long, hot day for few results.
It's the rainy season now, so it's cooling off a bit. It's still humid, but bearable. It hasn't even rained much during the day, mostly just at night. I'll take cloudy days over heat any time.
This is the last week of corporate classes for us. The early morning classes ended a couple of weeks ago when the contract was up, and we've continued the afternoon classes while they looked for a new teacher to take over. They wanted to change the time instead and keep us as teachers, but our director said she didn't feel inclined to work with them because they aren't diligent students. (It's true that only half the students show up on a good day.) That totally demonstrates our director's attitude toward learning English!
Neither Korea nor the U.S. made it to the next round of the World Cup. Now the Koreans are cheering for Australia because the coach used to coach the Korean team.
Finally, they say that Korean kids go to taekwondo to learn respect for their elders (among other things), but that never seems to be the case at our school. There are two kids in our 10 p.m. class, and one of them is a royal pain. He never does what he's supposed to and they just let him goof off the entire time. But tonight, one of the 3rd-degree black belts started calling him "Baby Pig" in English (he's just a tiny bit chubby, but I think it's more for the attitude), and that made my night. I'm afraid he'll forever be Baby Pig in my mind (especially since I never knew his name to begin with).
First, our school is moving to a new building this weekend. We'll have our own classrooms (currently Joel and I share a room) and the elementary school program will start in earnest on July 24th or so, when the summer intensive session begins. The session will last for 4 weeks, and we'll have some classes in the mornings as well as in the afternoon. We don't have our schedules yet, though, and probably won't get them until the day before the session starts. The fact that this doesn't bother me attests to how used to Korean methods of (non)planning I've become.
This weekend we went to Seoul to do some shopping, and it was a total bust. We tried to go to a huge market called Damdaemun, and we did find it, but there just wasn't the amazing array of goods we were expecting. I think we missed part of it, although we wandered for a good two hours and called a couple of friends to figure out where all the cool stuff was. It was too hot to make much more of an effort, though. Then we went to Hongdae and then headed home. A long, hot day for few results.
It's the rainy season now, so it's cooling off a bit. It's still humid, but bearable. It hasn't even rained much during the day, mostly just at night. I'll take cloudy days over heat any time.
This is the last week of corporate classes for us. The early morning classes ended a couple of weeks ago when the contract was up, and we've continued the afternoon classes while they looked for a new teacher to take over. They wanted to change the time instead and keep us as teachers, but our director said she didn't feel inclined to work with them because they aren't diligent students. (It's true that only half the students show up on a good day.) That totally demonstrates our director's attitude toward learning English!
Neither Korea nor the U.S. made it to the next round of the World Cup. Now the Koreans are cheering for Australia because the coach used to coach the Korean team.
Finally, they say that Korean kids go to taekwondo to learn respect for their elders (among other things), but that never seems to be the case at our school. There are two kids in our 10 p.m. class, and one of them is a royal pain. He never does what he's supposed to and they just let him goof off the entire time. But tonight, one of the 3rd-degree black belts started calling him "Baby Pig" in English (he's just a tiny bit chubby, but I think it's more for the attitude), and that made my night. I'm afraid he'll forever be Baby Pig in my mind (especially since I never knew his name to begin with).
posted by AJ at 7:41 AM
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