Yesterday before school started I experienced Home Plus. Mrs. Kim took me there to get pictures taken, when we got there the photographer was on lunch so we left. The place was huge - they sell everything there from hgh heels to cereal, it was insane and super busy. We made plans to go back at 8:30pm when school was over.
Most of the other foreign teachers I have talked to who teach at other school are given a text book to follow - not me, this makes things pretty hard since I have never done this before. Yesterday I spent the first three hours of my day split between 6 different classes - I spent 25 minutes in each one sometimes the Korean teacher stays and other times she does not. This week pretty much all I have done is play games - I am supposed to be assessing the student's levels of English... ok sure - this is way easier said than done. The second half of my day was split into three different periods, I had three fifty minute classes - this felt sooo long compared to the 25 minutes I had gotten used to. Never in my life have I experienced so much awkward laughter, what happens is I try to explain something in English, the kids speak in Korean and ask me questions in Korean, I am sure I display a puzzled look and they laugh so then I laugh and they laugh harder, I say "OK" they reapeat "OK" and it starts again with me trying to explain the same thing differently. I am sure this will get easier with time... at least I hope it will...
After my last class I ran into Wendy, a student of ours who is 14 she spent a few months in Calgary studying English so she is very good to have around. She introduced me to her mother, who is very sweet and told me about how much she wants to go to Canada. Wendy lives close to the school so she offered to take me on a walk around the neighbourhood and show me around on Saturday.
Mrs. Kim and I went back to Home Plus, we took Wendy with us this time. The photographer again wasn't there he was gone to a birthday party. Mrs. Kim was not impressed but she bought me groceries instead... I was still worried about my fridge and had not yet plugged it in. We bought: milk, cereal, orange juice, pineapple juice, croissants (they really wanted me to get bread), pomegranate and kiwi yogurt, sushi, Korean rice cakes, and a six pack of heineken (Meghan: doesn't my fridge remind you of 86 1/2?). It's funny Korean people keep making me buy bread and bread products - Mr. Kim was the same way on the first day.
My American friend had told me that he was going to try to phone me in the evening, when I was at Home Plus I missed a call so when I got home I called the number back - it was not Kevin but some Korean child trying to speak English to me all I could make out was "I want to be your student but not this semester" I was really confused, I could not understand anything and I am sure this child could not either. I finally got off the phone and the same number called me back they asked me who I was, I tried to explain the situation but of course had no luck. It was another child on the line they asked me if I was alone, that's all I could make out. It was the weirdest thing... I wonder who it was and how they got my phone number. What an experience being in a place with such a different language!
3 comments:
Forget the bread and bread products Jessie, beer is all the carbs you need! lol
That's right Alex!
In India, for the first two months or so that we were there, we got prank calls that started out with a man just repeating 'hello?' every time we said it and moved on to whispering 'I love you'... we figured that someone could see into our flat because we only got the calls when I was home alone! But don't worry, I'm sure it's nothing... lmao :)
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