New Friends, New Ideas

Greetings!

First of all, I have had a number of inquiries from worried family members and friends regarding the N. Korean attack on the South Korean island of Yeongpyong. No worries--I am safe, alive, and nowhere near that island. In terms of safety, the advice I was given was just to observe the Koreans around me. If they aren't freaking out, I probably shouldn't either. Then again, how do they really know. But this sort of thing "happens all the time" so if the Koreans don't believe it's serious then there's no reason for me to get all worked up. The Koreans are going on with business as usual, so I will too. I registered with the U.S. Embassy here when I arrived, and I recently signed up for their e-mail/text message alert system so I will receive a text and an e-mail if there are travel warnings being issued for South Korea. Until then, I'm keeping my eyes and ears peeled and continuing to ask questions. I think that's all I can do right now.

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of the past week I was at teacher training/orientation for GEPIK middle school and high school teachers. GEPIK is the Gyeonggi (pronounced geeyong-gee) English Program in Korea. It is basically the organization that recruits Native English teachers for the public schools in the Gyeonggi province. My employer is my school, but my contract is a standard GEPIK contract that all GEPIK teachers have no matter where they work. Soo anyway, GEPIK held this orientation this week in Anseong, a small city about an hour south of Suwon. I got a chance to meet a bunch of other English teachers in my area and go to lectures giving me great teaching and classroom management tips specifically for my situation. It's often hard to get advice from people from home about teaching because there are so many things that factor into teaching English in Korea that make it difficult and different than teaching American students. All of the lectures were geared specifically towards teaching Korean middle school and high school students in large classes with co-teachers and language and culture barriers, so they were super helpful.

I really enjoyed mingling with other teachers too and swapping ideas about what has worked (and not worked) in our classrooms. Most of the teachers are about my age and the majority of them have been in Korea for less than 6 months so we're all in the boat. Besides finally being able to make some of my own friends, my favorite part of the week was probably the demo lesson presentations we had to do. The entire group of about 80 people were split into groups of 15 according to what area we worked and lived in. In my group, consisting of teachers teaching in Suwon and surrounding areas, we got put into pairs and assigned a lesson topic to teach. We had one night to make our lessons plans (only 15 minutes long) and the next morning we all "taught" each other. Now, since classrom management is one of the biggest challenges of our jobs, as the students we were instructed to act like our students! Challenging our "teachers" with off-topic (and incorrect) questions, creating distractions, and not listening to directions and therefore delaying the activities, we imitated our students' accents and often inappropriate questions and language. We were all sort of fooling around with it and it was fun! I also walked away from the demo lessons with 5 other lesson plan ideas (worksheets and activities included) to bring back to my class.

My partner Michael and I did a lesson on American Holidays. We split our "class" into three groups and gave each group an information card about one of the following holidays: Halloween, Fourth of July, and Thanksgiving. After Michael and I did an example with Choesok (Korean Harvest holiday), the students were instructed to learn the information on the card. Then they had to go around and ask the other students about the other holidays and write it down on the charts we handed out. For the activity, we posted signs for each holiday on opposite sides of the room and the students were instructed to run to the sign that matched the vocabulary word we gave them, for example "jack-o-lantern", "pumpkin pie", "fireworks", or "independence". I think it was a success!

Another fun part of the orientation was learning a traditional Korean mask dance called Tacheum. Thursday afternoon we got to choose an activity to do, choosing from tradition dancing, learning about K-Pop (Korean pop music), a craft activity, and Korean calligraphy. All of the activities sounded appealing but I knew I wanted to do one that would get me up and moving after a whole morning and afternoon of sitting in lectures and lessons. I of course enjoyed dancing it and learning about the history and story of the dance. The traditional Tacheum dance is actually a mix of drama and movement and the performances almost always followed the same story that ends in tradgedy. Our instructor described the dance as very "down to earth", meaning that it was really a people's dance. It was never performed for the King or anything. It was and remains very sacred to the Korean people.

Last weekend I went to the Seoul Lamp Festival with Val, his/our friend Peter (the Korean-American who's originally from the town over from Sarah in NJ) and his friend, which I think many of you saw pictures of on FB. Unfortunately, at the festival I dropped my camera and the retractable lense got jammed, so the camera is temporarily out of service. I think it will be an easy fix because we took the lense part apart and nothing's broken, the lense is just jammed and needs to be re-aligned. If I discover the price of repairing it is close to the price of a new camera, well, Happy Chanukah to me! I'll probably buy a new camera. So sorry about that, you'll have to wait for more pictures for a while.

This weekend, after I got home from the training, I met two of the girls from orientatin out for drinks and dancing. Michelle was my roommate at the training and she hails from Toronto. She's been in Korea for about 3 months. Blythe is from Sacramento and has only been here for 3 weeks! Michelle, Blythe, Val, and I met for drinks at a REALLY cool bar at Suwon station that looked like a Moroccan restaurant with colorful pillows on which we sit on the floor and a sheet of veil separating each table. The vibe was chill and the drinks were good. We stayed there for a while and then went out dancing. We had a great time shaking it and drinking our free drinks (you get a ticket for a free drink after paying the \10,000 cover (about 10 bucks). That's a little steep if you ask me but getting a free drink out of it, I can live with it. After dancing the night away, Val & I headed home around 3am. I already have plans in the making to meet some of the other GEPIK teachers in my area next weekend. YAY for finally havs ing friends.

The rest of the weekend was fairly uneventful because I caught a nasty cold that pretty much put me out of commission for Sat and Sun. I spent the days Skyping with family and relaxing with Val and watching TV which I finally got set up. There are a number of English channels including movie channels and National Geographic Wild. Pretty sweet! I also found 2 channels that air reruns of one of my favorite shows ever that is no longer on and I can not find anywhere online: ALIAS! 10 points for my Korean TV channels.

This week and next week I am not teaching regular classes due to my students preparing for and then taking their final exams. So I'll be sitting at my desk all day, every day so feel free to g-chat me anytime!

Love to you all. I hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving!

Love,
Mel