Pictures to go with fifth post

Tate and I at Park Golf
Park Golf

Tate, Jillian and Mike (Tate's dad)
The hole really is huge!
Nicole, Whitnie, Daniel and Mahvish at Now Bar
Dinner in Seoul
Birthday dinner with Daniel, Troy, Joanne and Dave
My kids and their birthday cards for me!

March 12th-March 22nd

I have skipped a few days since my last post but only because there was not much going on during the week. All of our weeks are very similar in the sense that I wake up, eat breakfast and go to work. I usually leave my apartment around 8:45 and get home around 8-8:30 at night. They are long days but not too bad. The reason I get home so late is because Daniel, Jillian and myself all got gym memberships and we go to workout after work. The gym is awesome and it is very cheap. We purchased three months for 90,000 Korean Won which is about $70.00. It actually costs 60,000 for the three months but you can pay an extra 10,000 a month for a locker and clean workout clothes everyday. It is a great deal and will save us from doing laundry more often.

This week on March 12th was my birthday and it turned out to be a really good birthday. At work, one of the teachers that teaches ahead of me did art projects and had all the kids make me birthday cards and they were awesome. This class sometimes gives me grief and it made my day to walk in the class to see all of them hiding under their desks and pop out to say "happy birthday, we love you teacher Kevin." At first when they were under the desks, I thought to myself, "Here we go again, going to have to be mean." ha-ha but that was not the case and it was really cool. After work, Daniel and I went to the gym and then headed out to a restaurant/bar for dinner and some drinks with our co-worker Dave and our recruiters Joanne and Troy. The five of us had a blast and the restaurant gave some free drinks and some free food. Dave bought me dinner and some drinks while Joanne and Troy bought me a beer as well. We had a blast but it being a work night, we had to keep it low key and wait for the weekend. That wasn't tough seeing that the next day was Friday. On Friday, Daniel and I went up to a city near by named Yeongton and met up with three foreign teachers from another school at a bar called "Now Bar" and had a good night. Then on Saturday, Daniel, Jillian, Tate and I went up to Seoul for the day. Tate's parents and Grandma were in town as well and we all went out to dinner and just enjoyed the big city and walking around.

Before coming to Korea, I did some research on our city and it said there was a par 3 golf course but I had never seen where it was. Well on Sunday we found this "par 3 golf course" and it was in the Central Park we always go to but it is not real golf. It is called Park Golf or maybe it's Park Ball, I am not sure. But anyways, it was Tate, Jillian, Tate's dad, Daniel and I who played and it turned out to be pretty fun. There is only one club, a ball (which is about the size of a lacrosse ball) and the cup for the holes is about 4 times the size of regular golf cups. Hopefully you will be able to see what I am talking about in the pictures I post. The weekend has now ended and it’s back to the weekly routine or working and working out.

Since we are about 13-16 hours ahead of everyone in the states, the NCAA basketball tournament started on Friday for us and no joke, probably every thirty minutes I was checking out the scores or trying to watch the games online. I am not happy about missing this time of year but thank god all of the games are on the internet. I started a bracket challenge for us foreign co-workers and it cost 10,000 Korean Won and every single one of us chose a different national champion. So pretty much, it is going to come down to who wins the whole thing who wins our bracket. I chose North Carolina. On Friday night, Daniel and I took the bus to Seoul and met up with some other foreign teachers again for a night on the town. The partying here is very tough. It is an all night thing where you are out until 5 or 6 in the morning. I am out of commission all of Saturday because of these Fridays. But I am not complaining because it is always a good time! We found a foreigner’s bar called "Woodstock" and met other people, played some darts and enjoyed ourselves. Saturday night, after I regained my energy, Daniel and I met up with our recruiters Joanne and Troy for drinks at a local bar in Dongtan. We love hanging out with Joanne and Troy. They are always up for a good time and they are really good people. We try to get with them once a week at least for dinner or drinks. Then on Sunday, it was another relaxing day where Daniel and I went to play some Park Golf (I shot 2 under par) and went to the store that is near by called E-Mart because they always have free samples like Costco and they are so good. We needed a little snack after golf. They had duck as one of the samples and it was amazing. I think I had five samples. Then for dinner, Jillian made pasta and they used Tate's Grandma's homemade spaghetti sauce (she is full Italian and can cook!!) with salami in it. It was incredible. This is pretty much all that has been going on the past couple weeks. I sure hope my blog is not getting boring for anyone. Miss you all so much and hopefully there will be some exciting things going on in the next week or two to share with everyone.

Pictures to go with fourth post

At the club
On the main stage alone
Daniel and I "clubbin"
Club M2
Me, Daniel and Jillian in the subway in Hong Dae
On the bus to Seoul

Tate and I on the subway
Typical subway in Seoul

March 2nd-March 8th

Hello everyone! I am sorry it has taken nearly two weeks since I have last posted. As you all know (if you read my last post) I started real work with the new students on March 2nd. The days have been long but that's only because I don't know what a 9-5 job is. Now that we are two weeks through, I have begun to get my feet on the ground and a steady schedule that fits my needs with work. All I can say is there is not much going on during the week for me. Pretty much our first week of school was getting the kids situated in each class and then allowing them to get comfortable with foreigners as their teachers and us foreigners adjusting to not only the Korean kids but teaching them (I never thought once that I would be a teacher). For my schedule, I show up for work at 9 AM via bike (rain, snow, hail, monsoons, hills; both ways, you know the drill) and do not have my first class until 11:40 in the morning. I probably have the most downtime in the morning compared to my other employees but once I start at 11:40, I do not stop until about 4:45 in the afternoon. My first class is supposed to be the smartest of all the kids at the school. They are the 7 year olds and I have six of them in my class. Each class is different meaning we teach from different books depending on how advanced they are. I teach that class from 11:40-12:20 and then eat lunch with them from 12:20-1:00. Once lunch is over, I stay with that class to do a class that is called "Activity Class." Each day of the week we do something different. Monday is science day where we will build something. For instance, in the first week we showed the kids how electricity works. Some of the projects are fun and some are tedious. The kids need so much help doing them that sometimes I feel I am doing everyone's science projects. Then on Tuesday it is called DVD day and us teachers choose a DVD to watch (usually something that is helpful for learning) and then create a questionnaire for the kids to answer from. On Wednesday we have Art day, Thursday is this thing called ORDA and it’s pretty similar to art day. Then on Friday, the kids have P.E. and that is pretty much free time for us. After the activity class ends for me at 1:40 I have class with 6 year olds that I teach and they barely understand what I am saying the whole time. One thing I never thought about is that children do not have English names. It is rare if someone has an English name. So for my six year old class, it is all of their first time going to school and they only have their Korean names. It was my job to take all 16 of my students and rename them with English names. I thought and still think it is wild that we had to name them. Now that it has been 2 weeks of teaching them everyday, they have caught onto their names and we should begin work from their curriculum this week. We will see. That class ends at 2:40 and I go and teach a different group of 7 year olds (which is my worst class by far. The kids don't listen to anything that I say). That class ends at 3:20 where I then begin my next class at 3:30 which is elementary school and the kids are all very smart and we do much more advanced work. These kids go to a Korean school all day and then show up at 3:30 to 4:45 and learn English. These are really dedicated kids but mainly because their parents force them. From 3:30-4:45, this is two different classes but with the same kids. I actually only teach both of those classes Tuesday's and Thursday's. On Monday/Wednesday/Friday I only teach the second of the two where my Korean teaching partner teaches it. The schedule is not too bad actually but the days can become very long at times. I think that is normal for any real jobs and I am very optimistic that as the weeks keep going by, the weeks will all be good weeks.

I have always heard the phrase "TGIF" (thanks god it’s Friday) but never really cared to use the phrase because for one, I have never had a real job and for college, that time was too much fun to ever worry about what day of the week it was unless you had an exam. I now know the true meaning of TGIF and I think all of us were very thankful it was Friday. It was Friday and we also got our first paychecks (party time right!!?). Now that I had a little money and could have some fun, we thought it was time to go to Seoul on Friday night and wild out. Daniel, Jillian, Tate and I headed up to Seoul with the intention of having a good time. We planned on going to a club. One thing you need to understand is that in most countries other than the U.S., the clubs are open into the early morning. Most of the clubs in Korea are open until 6 AM and we wanted to try that. After work on Friday, we went home and napped until it was time to go. We took the bus from Dongtan to Seoul at 10:40 PM to arrive in Seoul at 11:20. We then walked to the subway and took the subway to a city within Seoul that was about 40 minutes away. It was called Hong Dae and known for clubs and a good time. We got to Hong Dae around 12:30 and went to a bar where we hung out and had some drinks before the club. The club was called M2 and we showed up around 2 AM and it was HUGE. There could have been anywhere from 700-1000 people. It was all techno music and the music never stopped. We danced the whole night away and probably had one of the best times I have ever had being at a club. Truthfully, I am not much of a clubber and prefer low key but I knew going into this, I needed to have a good time with it. There were times where I was on the stage all by myself with the DJ's just dancing in front of all the people. I cannot dance as you have all seen in the videos I posted and now just imagine me at a club in front of so many people. It was a great experience and can’t wait until the next time. The time flew the whole night and sooner than we knew it, the lights were coming on in the club. After we left the club around 6, the streets were flooded with people leaving the clubs and we decided to get some burger king before we headed home. We decided to just take a taxi cab home from Hong Dae and it was about an hour and a half cab ride that only cost 40,000 won. In the states, that is about only $34.00. We could not believe a cab ride that long and that far could be so cheap. We definitely all fell asleep in the taxi and the next thing I knew, I woke up and we were home. I think all of us ran up the stairs and jumped into bed. Saturday was pretty much a wasted day because none of us wanted to do much other than chill and sleep.

On Sunday, Jillian, Tate, Daniel, Dave and myself all took the subway to a city near by called Suwon and went to the mall and just walked around the city. It is a lot different than Dongtan. We saw the movie, "Watchmen" that is about all the comic book heroes and it was actually really good. And yes, it was in English! We stayed there all day and went to the batting cages and just enjoyed ourselves before we had to go back to work the next day. I have pictures from this whole week that I will post after this blog to hopefully give you a better feel for what we have been doing this past week. Again, I am sorry it has taken me so long to post and I will get better at this. I miss you all!!

Pictures to go with third post

Me, Dave, Jillian, Daniel, Tate and Min
Dinner cooking
Dinner feast
Principal singing karaoke
Korean Teachers singing karaoke
Canadian themed resort in South Korea?
Garden of Morning Calm
Dave, Tate and I
Good looking tree
Stack a rock without falling means all your dreams come true
Chipmunk
Macarena Dance (Sober Karaoke)

Post Three (Feb 27th-Mar 1st)

It is Friday morning and we have reached the end of the week which is always a great day. Last night while Tate, Jillian, Daniel and I were at dinner, we received a phone call from our boss, Jade. She is the vice principal at the school and told us that her Mother (The Principal) insisted that the foreign teachers join the Korean teachers for a one night workshop about two hours from Dongtan. Instantly, I thought it was a great option for us to get away and see other parts of Korea other than where we live. It will be the first time we have been out of town since we got here. There were five of us foreign teachers, about 15-20 Korean girl teachers, the principal, the vice principal and a couple other workers. We all took one of the Brown School of English school buses to get there. It was not too comfortable but we were able to meet some of the other Korean teachers who speak little English but enjoyed trying to learn from us. I don’t understand much when they talk in English though. When we got to our destination, it was Canadian themed and really nice (We were surprised to see a Canadian themed hotel in South Korea). We unpacked our luggage and met for dinner by the barbecue's set up and we grilled up pig belly (which look like long and thick pieces of bacon), ate some kim-chi, peppers, cucumber and different types of leaves that we wrapped the pig belly in. It was delicious.

After dinner we all met in the conference room and when we walked in, there was a karaoke machine set up and we quickly learned before the workshop began, we were going to have to do karaoke. For me, karaoke is a good time but I have a TERRIBLE voice and in the U.S., we think of karaoke machines being at bars with drunken people. This was not the case and I knew they were going to make us do some sober singing. It turned out to be contest. There were four teams against one another; the 5 year old teachers, 6 year old teachers, 7 year old teachers and the foreign teachers. The winner won 100,000 won and second place team got 50,000 won. We took second place and won the 50,000 won. I bet you are wondering how we won. There were various games we played throughout the night and we needed one person from our group to sing a song and score well and she did. Then, as a group, we had to choose one song and do a performance in front of everyone. We chose the Macarena (not sure if you spell it that way but check out the video, you will get a kick out of it) and did the dance moves to it. I would never have thought in my right mind I would do this sort of thing sober! Daniel and I also were called back up and had to dance in front of everyone (again, check out the video on this, it is really funny). This night turned out to be a lot of fun.

The next morning we woke up at 8 for breakfast and were served a rice soup, kim-chi and baby anchovies. I ate very little to say the least. We then left the hotel to head back home. About a half hour into the trip, we stopped at this place called "The Garden of Morning Calm" and it was indeed a big garden up in the mountains that had a lot of gorgeous views and some plants. I am sure in the spring, this would be an awesome place to visit. I still enjoyed the garden and will have some pictures up that I hope you not only enjoy, but can see how gorgeous it is. After spending a couple hours here, we headed back home where Jillian, Tate, Daniel and I all went out on the town and had a few drinks. All in all, our Friday and Saturday was great!

On Sunday, Tate, Daniel and I went to the Central Park and played three on three basketball against some Koreans. We won all three games and that pretty much wrapped up our Sunday. Daniel and I are now preparing for the new week to start because we will be teaching our own classes alone and with the new students. It should be interesting and I will be sure to let everyone know how it went within the next couple weeks. Wish us luck!

Pictures to go with second post

Max and Yuna after graduation
Me and June after graduation (He is my favorite kid!!)
Graduated
Singing the graduation song
View of Dongtan and all the construction going on
Dongtan
More of Dongtan
And some more of Dongtan
On the rooftop practicing the swing
Rooftop at work (golf cages)
The gym at school
All the teachers office with our desks
The bike that gets me everywhere

Post Two (February 16th-25th)

We have now begun our 9-5 jobs and this is the first time I have ever had one of those. It is going to take time to get used to but I don't think I will have any problems adjusting. We have not started teaching alone but have been observing the other English teachers to get the gist of things and see how they do things. We also observed the Korean teachers to get other ideas and they were both helpful. The schedule at school goes a little like this: 10-10:40 (class) 10:50-1130 (class) 11:40-12:20 (class) 12:20-1 (lunch) 1-1:40 (activity class) 2-2:40 (class) 2:40-3:20 (class) 4-4:40 (afternoon class). There is a reasonable amount of downtime with breaks and during lunch, it is the teacher’s jobs to serve the children. The days go by relatively fast and that's a great thing. Each day some of the classes are different. Some days we will teach math, science, art, watch movies and things like that. We also follow a routine from a book and it usually is showing the kids what certain things are in English and how they are spelt. Some kids are bad and always causing trouble. Just like any kids, there is always the one or two that try to be the class clown. We are only observing now but I will lay the law when I get my own class. Ha-ha

The school year at our English school is March-March so we are nearing graduation and this graduation is taking place on Wednesday (Feb. 25th). The kids have been preparing for this for a while now and work very hard. I could not imagine working that hard at that age. They needed to memorize stories, speeches, skits, performances and things like that and perform it for their parents at graduation. It is an accumulation of things they have done over the course of the year. To my surprise, I was nominated to be the MC for the whole event. I have never spoke in front of a large group of people with a microphone and they say it is people's biggest fears. I was definitely nervous because it was my job to come up with the opening and closing statements which to me were very important because of the children’s accomplishments. So during the next week on Monday and Tuesday, we were getting everything ready and preparing for the graduation.

Wednesday was finally here. Today the kids were graduating and all of their hard work was finally paying off. There was probably anywhere from 80-90 parents there to watch and I was actually really nervous. I did not think I was going to be able to do it. My opening was not good at all and I started to be so nervous for the whole ceremony. But as time went on, I settled in well and actually enjoyed myself. Maybe a lot of it was because I kept telling myself that most people in the crowd could not understand me or anything I was saying. A funny story that happened, the 6 year olds did a performance and after they finished, the parents clapped and the curtain shut. Once they were done clapping, I said "Wow, what a performance by the 6 year olds. Let’s please give them another round of applause". I began clapping by myself to give them a hint and the parents just stared at me like I was an idiot. Other than that, it went really well and the children did a great job and the parents were pleased to say the least. The ceremony lasted about 3 1/2 hours. I was given a lot of compliments and people told me they were surprised that it was my first time being an MC. It was good to hear that and hopefully I conquered a big fear of mine.

I was so relieved when we finished. For the rest of the day we cleaned everything up and the school took all of us out to dinner at The Outback. I had a fat steak and devoured it. We still have to work on Thursday and Friday but it will just be cleaning and preparing for the new kids who start school Monday, March 2nd. This is when I will start teaching by myself. Along with this post, I will post pictures with captions that go with this couple of weeks. I hope you all enjoy them. I will post again soon about the weekend ahead of us.