First week of teaching

So far teaching has been pretty stressful.  I don't really know what I'm doing or how to go about doing it, but somehow I have been getting through the day.  I know it will get easier once I teach for a while.  And the days have been flying by!  Here's what my schedule looks like:  In the mornings from 10-2:20 I have kindergarten, with a one hour lunch break in there.  My Kindergarten class is the youngest, so they are four years old and are crazy but really cute.  I'll take pictures soon:)  One of the boys is named Winston (coolest name ever!) and then there's Yule, Serry, Amy, Eileen, Sohee, and then Anthony is the one that really likes me.  A couple of days ago he sat by me and then asked Yule if he was jealous that he got to sit by Rachel Teacher.  He said it all in Korean of course, but there was a Korean teacher in the class at that time so she told me.  And Yule is a funny kid, every time I say it's time to clean up, he yells out "YAY!!"  It makes me laugh every time.  I hope he never stops doing that.  The kids are all getting used to me so that's good.  Oh back to my schedule--after kindergarten I have reading club from 2:30-3:50 every day, where I just go through a very simple book with a small group of older kindergartners and try to make it last the whole time.  Then in the afternoons I teach older kids(like 2nd or 3rd grade).  On MWF I teach storytown, have a prep hour, then teach grammar/writing until 6:20.  On TTh I teach science/writing, then storytown, and then I get to leave at like 5:45.

That's enough about work--last Saturday I climbed a mountain!  It was an actual mountain, and I definitely wasn't prepared for it.  It was in some park north of Seoul, and I guess it's quite a bit larger than the mountain we have in Suji.  The hike started off fine, and then halfway up it started to get crazy where we were climbing up big rocks using both hands.  Then at the very top it was just a flat slab of rock you had to scale, but luckily there were railings built in the rock to hold on to.  I noticed all the Koreans were wearing hard-core hiking boots, gloves, and most of them had fancy metal walking sticks...I know why they had those things now!  Even though the hike up was really hard, I'm glad I made it because the view was absolutely amazing.

 The mountain we climbed

Finally at the top!

After the hike we stopped at a restaurant and I got some iced noodles.  They were really good, I just had a hard time picking up the slippery noodles with chopsticks.  

Saturday observation:  It is common for couples to dress alike here, as in they like to both wear the same exact outfit.  There was a younger couple on the subway in matching tracksuits.  That is something I would never want to do, but to each their own, right?

Sunday observation:  People seem to be very helpful and nice towards strangers.  Two times at LotteMart the employees actually walked with me to a different level because I was failing at finding something.  And then on Sunday I was looking for a good cucumber in a small grocery store and this older woman came up and took the one I had in my hand and showed me that the skin was bad on it.  She then looked through all the cucumbers and found me a good one.  I had no idea what she was saying but I trust that she was helping me out:)  

On Monday as I was walking back from work I heard screams of "Rachel Teacher!!" and sure enough the LCI (that's my school) bus was at the stoplight.  The kids love to scream our names at all times if they see us outside of the classroom.  Even if we are just having a five minute break and they see us in the hallway they will get excited and yell our names.  It's so cute!  Monday night one of my coworkers started movie monday and we watched the Korean movie 'Oldboy' which was really messed up but really good.  And we had pizza...yum!  The cheese pizza automatically comes with corn on it, and it was pretty tasty.

Other than that I've been exploring Suji and I plan to do more exploring.  This weekend is the Chuseok holiday so we get Monday and Tuesday off of work.  A couple of my coworkers and I are planning on being tourists in Seoul this weekend so that should be fun.

Oh yeah and I booked my flight to the Phillipines for winter break!  I'll be spending Christmas on the beach! :)