All By Myself

07.13.10

I woke up again at 5:30am, got ready for the day, ate some oatmeal, and chatted with Phill over Skype. I walked to school alone and got there at 8:30am (ten minutes early).

Talked with Sang-hyun, the 5-2 Teacher. I learned that my co-English teacher took a holiday today because someone in his family is sick. Lucky me, the one day a week that I have full classes (five of them) and I’m stranded. They said I would have to teach alone. There are no lesson plans prepared. I haven’t even seen how the class is operated. Yesterday was a breeze, now today is the complete opposite. I find the teacher’s manuals and start to ‘wing it’. Then a woman from the front office comes in and tells me that all the classes have exams today, so don’t worry and prepare for tomorrow. I’ll do nothing then? So I surfed the web in frustration and looked at all the links that the co-teacher uses, yes, I’m snooping. I don’t have anything else to do, I have no idea where he keeps the lesson plans and I don’t see them. >.< He looks at all these at work: NY times, facebook, Google, and youtube; like a normal person! Everyday ay school I hear the fighter jets go by, at least six times a day, from the Osan Air Base, its so noisy. It’s an American base, go figure. From my classroom I can see the soccer field on the school grounds and the Middle school next door.

I had a good and balanced lunch. Beans/rice, chopped squid, cucumber kimchi, steamed zucchini, and spicy tofu seaweed soup.

Again, the children all wanted to say hello to me in both English and Korean. Many of them said “pleased to meet you” in Korean, which I understood, but could not repeat back. They always smile and giggle after I respond or look, no matter the age. After lunch, I prepared lesson plans for the 4th and 5th grade classes for tomorrow, just in case the co-teacher isn’t here again. I received the exams back from the 4th and 6th graders. One of them made me laugh, as the student drew hearts, stars, and dialogue for the animals on the page.

(The Tiger says "Boo". I can't read the others very well)
I’m not too sure how to grade them by the other teacher’s style. Even though I had no classes I had to stay on the school grounds until 4:40pm, officially my workday is over. At 3pm, I decided to take a walk around the grounds and check out what I’ve been missing staying cooped up in one room. I’m very happy to explore the area, I marveled at the small gardens around the perimeter of the school.





I didn’t realize I had an audience, the school groundskeeper (I’ll name him Willie, like the Simpsons). Willie was intrigued by my interest in his plants and trees. I chatted with him, he asked where I was from and didn’t recognize Minnesota, he asked “near LA”. I said “no, LA too hot and too far”, and then he picked two pieces of fruit from the trees and handed them to me.

I thanked him and went back inside to the air conditioning in the Teacher's lounge until 4:40pm.

I left school with Sang-hyun and we went to the LottoMart to purchase an electric fan, which I am now a proud owner!

(Yay, more help to relieve myself from the 100% humidity, truly there is 100% humidity)
Went home watched some TV and made some dinner.


(Proof for Mother, that I am eating outside of school!)
Today was less busy than expected, thankfully. Life is easy so far, as a teacher, mainly because I’m new, I feel, I hope…