Dear Mama.... Love from Korea (My ARC Card is Here!)

October 18, 2013

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I received my ARC card on Friday!!!!!
I got ahead of myself and tried to finish setting up accounts without my co-teacher. I went to the bank after school and set up my online/mobile phone banking. I think that went well even though there was the language barrier. But then….

I tried to set up phone service by getting a prepaid USIM card (the KT Olleh SIMple plan). The data(internet) and talk minutes were prepaid and would expire in 30 days. I did not particularly want something that would expire so soon because it would be tedious to keep reloading it but I figured it was a cheap solution and I could get it right away….or so I thought. After me and the rep had a long session of miming to each other and jotting down numbers, I finally decided which plan I wanted to purchase. Once he put the SIM card in my phone, the phone calls worked but not the internet. He basically said, "Sometimes that happens…It works for mostly every other phone but sometimes there is that one phone it doesn't work for and that's yours!" Whaaaat?! So, I ended up canceling everything and left with nothing after spending over an hour in there. The search is on to see what SIM will actually work for me.

Wednesday and Thursday I had so many classes. I taught the fourth graders for the first time and got to work with the other co-teacher for the first time. She seems like a very prepared person that has her own ideas about how she would like class to run so she changed things from class to class. It was a little confusing for me but I just went with it. I am starting to feel like my biggest role as a Guest English Teacher is to prepare games and Powerpoints for the lesson. Now I am appreciating the "shadow" teacher more and more because I can do whatever I want to do in his class and he doesn't change it. The fourth graders were not as bad as everyone was making them out to be…they just are more energetic than the sixth graders and some of the fifth graders. They are also waaaaayyy took competitive. If a team wins a game, the other students who lost gang up on them or shout bad words. I don't think they have learned "sportsmanlike conduct" yet! To be fair, my games are not that great. I don't realize how bad they are until I see them in action lol. Sometimes I think I have a game that will take 10 or 15 minutes and students finish it in 3 minutes. On the other hand, sometimes I have a game that I think will take 3 minutes and the students take 10 minutes. It's really hard to plan games.

On Wednesday, I also went to the eye doctor. It was the first time I ever had an eye doctor say, "I'm going to cut into your eye." Huh? That sounded like major surgery to me but I guess it wasn't. He cut a really small area to make sure the spot that was on my eye did not have something lodged in it. Luckily, it was just a surface reaction to whatever got in my eye from the fireworks.

The two fifth grade classes I had on Friday were soooo bad. They are even less mature than the fourth graders and they yell, scream, talk over the teacher, all sorts of rudeness. The co-teacher does not have too much control so I end up being the bad guy…I don't think those classes like me very much. They hurt themselves by not paying attention because they fall behind the other fifth grade classes (I teach with the main co-teacher). They make me want to pull out my hair lol and I don't really know what I should do to get them to behave. I changed some students seats because they were disturbing the other kids in their group and they haaaated it. Oh well….

I learned that the sixth graders are going on an overnight field trip next week so I do not have any classes Monday and Tuesday. The fourth graders also have a field trip so I do not have classes Wednesday. All I have are Thursday and Friday classes with the fifth graders…Yay!! That gives me time to set up my internet and phone service at home and try to get my after school program approved. I really want to set up a pen pal program but my co-teachers are not being much help when it comes to getting my after school program approved by the after school director and on its way. If I could speak Korean, everything I wanted and needed would have been done by last week! It's so hard to rely on others, especially when you are in another country.

On a side note, I did not realize how helpful strangers in Korea can be until Friday. I was trying to find the phone company and asked a woman passing out flyers if she knew where the address written on my paper was. Instead of just saying "No" she actually walked me to the office. SO NICE. Then, because of my frustration leaving the phone company, I left my school bag. The sales rep ran to catch up to me to give it to me and I had already walked pretty far way. I had a little happy me time Friday where I went to Caffe Bene and had a scrumdeliumptious strawberry dessert. I also went to see Kick Ass 2. I thought the Korean subtitles would be distracting but surprisingly I didn't even notice them by the end of the movie!