Halloween parade

Since October 31st is approaching our school thought it was a good idea to teach the students a little about Halloween. So on Thursday and Friday we had a Halloween Party with all the students which was really fun and quite entertaining. The school trasformed one of the classrooms into a 'haunted room', we dressed up in what costumes were available, we organized some games to play, and of course we gave the kids an incredible amount of candy. However the best event was the Halloween Parade on Friday where all of our students dressed in their costumes marched to the local pavillion to trick or treat. I say marched when it was really more like very hyperactive sheep-herding. Of course the children all looked adorable in their costumes and we had a good time, but it took a lot of work to keep them all together. Most of the students are given English names to make it easier of the teachers but most of the time you have to say it four or five times to get their attention. There are two particular boys, Jacob and Donny who listen the least and cause the most problems, but the rest are generally obidient when not distracted by the tiniest curiosity. You can see me in one of the pictures wearing a purple clown wig that the students found hilarious. I tried to get them all to look at the camera but it wasn't meant to be. Oh well. I hope you get the idea though. Right now my favourite student is Minsu. He's the one in the pirate costume giving the peace sign. He can be quite a handful but he's also very sensitive. Every student has a phonics workbook to help them with spelling and pronounciation, but Minsu likes to rip out his pages and make paper hats or airplane. However when we're making a craft and he slightly tears his construction paper he comes crying to me terribly upset and wanting me to fix it. So he's my buddy. Jacob is another unique student (he's the one in the stripped shirt not wearing a costume. Erin (another foreign teacher) has taken a liking to him and got him a little toy ball on an elastic string for his birthday. She gave him his present in the morning while he was in detention writing lines, and once lunch time came around he had traded it away with another student. I hope these stories shed some light on what our days are like. I'll share more every once in a while.

My apartment

It's about time I talk about where I'll be living for the year. My employer has placed me in an apartment about a fifteen minute walk to the school (five minutes by bus). It's an older apartment building but still rather nice compared to the apartment I used to have in Winnipeg. I'm on the fifth floor of the building and since there is no elevator I have to take the stairs everyday. From the pictures I've posted you can see what my front door looks like. I have the convenience of an electronic key-pad which removes the need to carry a key with me, definitely a selling factor for me. As you can see there is a kitchen, living room, my roommate Michael, my bedroom, and the laundry area. What I find particularly different though is the bathroom. You may notice that there isn't a separate shower area in the room. This is because the WHOLE ROOM is the shower. A sloped drain located in the center of the floor captures the water, so all I have to do is use the shower wand to wash myself as well as clean the room. I think the Korean's are on to something here. Basically my apartment is where I chill after work from Monday to Friday since there isn't time to go into Seoul and to be honest I'm pretty tired after spending the whole day on my feet. Michael and I usually just watch TV (what few English channels we have), eat, talk, and do our own internet stuff. It's a pretty good set-up I think and it should work for the rest of the year. So that's a little information about my living conditions which I hope you enjoyed.

My first week

My busy week of teaching is finally over, which now gives me a chance to write about it. I began working at Gimpo SLP Language School on Monday October 15. Michael (my roommate/co-worker) and I grabbed some Korean-style breakfast and then showed up for work at 11:30am. The school is about a twenty minute walk from our apartment, but we take the bus sometimes. When I arrived at the school I met my employers and my other co-workers, three foreign teachers and four Korean teachers. The other teachers were relieved to have me there as they had been filling in for my classes since the beginning of October. I was immediately thrust into the kindergarden class, teaching one period before lunch and one after. My duties also include feeding these students their hot lunch, which the school provides. When I first heard that I was going to teach this age-group I wasn't all that worried, but after spending a week with these wild children I'm starting to wonder. It's not uncommon for them to hit me or each other, rip pages out of thier workbooks to make airplanes, steal each others toys, and generally run around the room screaming. It takes two teachers just to control twelve students, let alone try to teach them anything. There are really only three boys who cause the most trouble, but they're so disruptive the whole class suffers. So I spent my first week of kindergarden doing all I could to get these munchkins to listen to me and my voice is hoarse as a result.
The afternoon classes are much better though. These classes are smaller and the students are older, ranging from six to fourteen years old. My schedule is divided into Monday/Wednesday/Friday classes and Tuesday/Thursday classes. I teach six, forty minute classes from 3:00pm - 7:30pm. All the students follow the SLP program, so as teachers all we have to do is use the books provided to teach each lesson. There are of course other tasks I need to do, but generally the lesson planning is all done for me which is sweet. The biggest stress for me this week was orienting myself to each class. With twelve different classes/levels to keep track of it has been difficult for me to figure out how much material the students have covered for half the month. But I now feel caught up and once November rolls around I'll be almost fully prepared. Basically this week has been a blur of activity and I'm so glad it's the weekend. There is of course a lot more I could talk about, but I'll pace myself and keep it to one subject at a time for now. More to follow. I am also trying to figure out how to properly post some pictures, but I've been tinkering for about an hour and I'm gettng nowhere. I promise that pictures will be available soon.

One thing left to do

After a week of waiting around for my visa I finally have it. This has been quite a frustration and at times very stressful considering I've had to pack, book a flight and order Korean currency all without the one thing I've needed all along: my passport. I'll give you a taste of what my last two days were like. Yesterday morning I received a phone call from my employer Mr. Brian Lee, saying that my visa has been issued in Toronto. Not understanding that I live an hour away (and that Canada's transit system is not like Korea's) he asked me to go right away and pick it up. I told him that I had already paid for ExpressPost and that I should receive it in the mail sometime today. This is where the stress began to build for me. First, while checking my tracking number online my heart sank as the screen said: Unconfirmed Status, Tracking Number Not in System. At first I assumed that the Korean Consulate failed to actually mail out my visa. So I phoned them only to be told they had sent it out in the mail, and that both myself and Mr. Lee had phoned them quite enough. As a side note, it's quite something to have the staff at the Korean Consulate-General know my name and situation without me having to repeat it over again (a testimony to the amount of communication between us). But getting back to my visa that now seemed to be lost in the mail. I contacted Canada Post to figure out why my tracking number was not working, but my only answer was that the system was not updated. I also got other unpleasant news: that even if my passport was in the mail I shouldn't expect to see it until Friday at the earliest. This was news to me as I assumed that I had paid for next-day service. So I continued to check the internet every half hour hoping for verification of my tracking number. Around three o'clock my stress was at it's peak. I had no idea where my passport was and I had only one business day left to find it and book my flight. I decided to at least try the post office at three thirty, since that was when the mail usually comes. Amazingly my Express Envelope was there. I'm a little confused how Canada Post claims you can track your shipments online, but their little system certainly came close to putting me over the edge. Now that I have my visa all that is left to do is book my flight, which will be departing sometime Saturday or Sunday (I hope). Before I know it I'll be in South Korea, and then my blog can truly begin.

Waiting to leave...

At the moment I am stuck in Ontario awaiting my Korean work visa to be processed. Over a week ago (Sept. 22) I had my visa application couriered with UPS to the Korean Consulate in Toronto, but I have run into some issues over the last week. As I was in the process of moving from Winnipeg back to Ontario I decided to courier my visa application ahead of my arrival in Ontario. I was unaware that the Korean Consulate does not accept packages sent via UPS (or any other courier besides Canada Post) so my application and passport were re-routed back to Winnipeg late last week. Fortunately I was able to have those important documents shipped from Winnipeg to Ontario, which I received today. However since the visa offices at the consulate are only open from 8-12 on weekdays I was unable to make it in time for processing the same day. Added to the delay is a Korean holiday on Wednesday October 3 which will close the consulate for the entire day. This means I have to wait until Thursday October 4 to visit the visa offices in Toronto, the very day I was planning on leaving the country. This has been a frustrating ordeal but I am optimistic that now everything will fall into place rather quickly. With a little luck I'll be leaving sometime this weekend or at the latest next week. The standard time to have a visa processed is five business days, but my employer has written a letter to the Korean Consulate asking for an acception to speed up the process. Hopefully this will be enough to get me to Korea only a few days behind schedule. This has been a frustrating week but it is also allowing me to spend a few more days with family and friends before I leave for a year (or longer). Stay tuned for later updates.