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[Sep. 4th, 2009|08:38 pm] |
It's hard to believe that I've been here for over 6 months.
Teaching is a lot different than I expected. It's humbling, in a way. All the leadership training and public speaking in the world can't prepare you for a class of 40 bored 17 year old girls who speak a different language. The good classes make it worth it, the ones who laugh and smile and respond when you ask a question. The bad classes bring me down and make me question why I'm still here. It's hard, in those classes, because I can see that there are a lot of really great girls who want to learn, but they're being drowned out.
I teach 800 students a week. I see each of them once a week, for 50 minutes. It's an uphill battle.
The girls at my school attend classes from 7.50am to 10pm, every day, and then for 5 hours on Saturdays. When they're not at school, they're taking intensive classes in math, Korean, English, chemistry. The 'lucky' ones (i.e. the ones with rich parents) get to take music or art lessons on Sundays after church.
It overwhelms me sometimes, in a bad way. I get frustrated when my coteachers force the girls to wake up when they fall asleep at the back of my class. I don't care if they sleep. I want them to sleep. These girls get 4 hours of sleep a night and my class is the fun conversation class. If they want to have a nap for 20 minutes, let them have a nap! There are 39 other students in the class! Maybe 10 of whom actually care about learning English!
I've hit that expat wall where the cultural differences aren't entertaining and quirky anymore, and now they're annoying, offensive, painful.
I make it sound so terrible. It's not terrible. I'm still having an amazing time. I'm homesick but the issue is just job satisfaction, not Korea as a whole.
There are good students though. Amazing students. Most of them are amazing. These girls study more than I did in university, and they still greet me with a smile on their face, still ask me for advice, still write me notes. I dislike the system, not the students. I have friends who teach at technical/mechanical highschools, which are the low level, low motivation schools. There are a lot of things that I could say about that system too, but for the sake of the conversation, I'll just say that their discipline problems are much harder to deal with - violence, poverty, disabilities. My biggest problem is that my classes are full of rich 17 year old girls who talk too much and text message in class. Wah wah wah.
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Seoul is everything that you'd expect, in a good way. Amazing public transportation, amazing accessibility, amazing resources, amazing everything. I am in love with everything about it, every neighbourhood, every subway stop. My dermatologist is in a swanky area of the city with shops that I will never be able to afford (it's called the Beverly Hills of Asia for a reason) but it's so.. refined. I roam around sometimes just for the sake of roaming, taking it all in, watching people. Seoul is different too because they're used to foreigners there. In my province it's much more rural, so we're still an attraction, people stare at us constantly. In Seoul, no one cares. It's refreshing. 10 million little bees buzzing around on their own schedule.
Plus, the food here is incredible.
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I'll be back in Canada in February, in New Orleans in March, and hopefully moved into my apartment in Toronto in April. Let's hang out. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 10th, 2009|02:47 pm] |
I never wear shoes or socks in my classroom anymore - I'm sure some of the other teachers think that I'm being unprofessional, but my girls like me more than them, so I win.
I bumped into someone that met me my first weekend here and he didn't even recognize me because I look so different. He gave me that 'wow' with the eyebrow raise that I've been waiting for for the last ten years.
Life is good. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 5th, 2009|08:04 pm] |
I think that my flickr favourites are a perfect summary of my entire existence.
I hope you're all having an amazing May. |
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| lip chap and land mines |
[Apr. 29th, 2009|06:18 pm] |
It's a strange feeling when you meet someone and start to sense that you might at some point love this person. I haven't really, actually, blood and guts loved someone in over 5 years, long enough that I don't really remember what it was like. I remember this feeling though,the butterflies and the nervous nausea. I also remember the complete and utter trust and lack of insecurity, and it's a nice but terrifying experience.
The situation is complicated, of course. However, that doesn't change the fact that I still have that sense that I might, at some point, love.
Eeep. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 24th, 2009|09:33 am] |
I know the city now. I see my students downtown and get introduced to boyfriends of girls whose names I'll never learn. They seem to like me though, these girls, and the classes are going well. Frustrating at times, of course, but I wasn't a peach to deal with in highschool either, especially not in second-language classes. I felt strongly at the beginning of the semester that we got along so well because we had so much in common - highschool wasn't that long ago, I remember being a teenage girl, I understand what it was like. Then I looked at a class roster and realized that they were all born in 1993.
How are people who were born in the 90s even able to walk yet? It blows my mind how long ago everything was, when I really think about it.
The other expats in my city are some of the most amazing and normal and quirky and fun people that I've ever had the pleasure of knowing. There's a core group of us, mostly people who've been here for a year or so, and we tend to do everything together, especially on weekends. Weeknights are reserved for decompression and occasional dinners out.
I only miss Canada on bad days, which I suppose is to be expected.
I've been taking a Korean class on Thursday nights - a good mix of people, some like me who only know the alphabet and basic phrases, and some who are good enough to have entire phone conversations without using english. I don't teach on Fridays until 11.20 so the obvious result is Thursday night ridiculousness, with a special nod to last night's drinking and bowling.
In summary, things are going very well. |
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