A Wedding and the Trick Art Museum

Back in January, during the school's winter break, my coteacher got married. I was invited to the wedding (last minute of course). Weddings in Korea are a lot less about the private celebration and seem more commercialized. Her wedding was at the Novotel in downtown Korea. The wedding started right on time and within 15 minutes, she was out of the wedding hall and a new wedding was about to start... kind of like a rotating door of weddings. We then proceeded upstairs where we ate lunch at a buffet with guest from many different weddings. Meanwhile, my coteacher was off to a traditional Korean wedding ceremony that just involved the direct families of the couple. The whole thing seemed a lot less intimate than many of the Western weddings we are accustomed to, but it was beautiful nonetheless.

My coteacher!

Buffet/ "Reception"

After the wedding, Shaun and I went off to see the traveling Trick Art Show. Imagine: a museum created specifically to take pictures in. There were directions on how to take pictures in order to accurately deceive the eye. It was incredibly crowded and hard to take pictures with so many people around, but it was still a ton of fun! Check out some of our pictures....

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Winter Vacation Part 2: The Philippines

Remember when I used to be good at posting semi-regularly on this blog? Yeah, neither do I... ㅠㅠ (Korean emoticon. Yes, I went there. More on those later!)

For the second half of my vacation days I went to the Philippines. Lucky for me, we got 3 days off for Lunar New Year at the start of February. So, I chose to go on vacation during that time so that I could have an extended (more relaxing) holiday. That meant a 12 day vacation for me... 10 of which I spent in the Philippines and 2 of which I spent in Seoul.

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Happy April Fool's Day!

Today started off like any normal day... Most Koreans don't think twice about today, but I know better. It is April 1st. I had already discussed my plans to mess with my kids' heads with my coteacher (the one who had lived in Canada, and had experienced the day in a Western country first hand). There are 4 other teachers in my office. My coteacher (John), the old man, and I are usually the first ones in. Next, comes the Math teacher. As she walked into the office, John told her that she needed to go to the principal ASAP because he needed to talk to her. With a confused look on her face, she headed toward the door. My coteacher then yelled, "Happy April Fool's Day!" and she let out a huge sigh of relief.

Then, I entered my first class..... 

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Pursuit of Life

"Find life experiences and swallow them whole. Travel. Meet many people. Go down some dead ends and explore dark alleys. Try everything. Exhaust yourself in the glorious pursuit of life" - Lawrence K. Fish

I found this great quote very true to my own life right now.

Go out and try something new...

Travel to new places...

Meet new people...

Open your eyes to novel experiences...

I wholeheartedly believe that your life will become richer by doing so.

P.S. I also KNOW I need to make some more time for my blogging. I promise (for the billionth time) more updates are on their way. I have just been busy with getting used to my schedule for the new school year. I told you all at the beginning that I am bad at this blogging thing :)

2011 School Year: Week One

Thursday and Friday were my first few days of classes this year. I've been basically just doing name tags with them and playing some games. I figured I would start off my first full week of teaching (this week) with rules and all of that boring stuff!

A few observations, thoughts, and rants:
- I sometimes forget how incredibly creative, funny, and intelligent my students are... even the lower level English students. Given the opportunity, kids will shine :)
- I was a little nervous to be teaching after over 2 months out of the classroom. It was almost as if I was teaching again for the first time. Seeing those cute, familiar faces looking back at me made all of that go away. (And they still yell out "SANTA BAR-BA-RAAAA" and "CAL-I-FORNEYA" every chance they get, from my first introduction back in October)

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How to Handle your New Native English Teacher

Happy first day of school! And welcome to the new spring Native English Teacher bunch.
I found this little article on waygook.org and found it pretty amusing if you are an English teacher like myself.
If you are not, each native English teacher is given a Korean co-teacher to help them with any needs inside and outside of school. It is done to help the native teacher adjust to their surroundings and understand what is going on at school.... basically, I can't speak Korean and have no idea how Korea works so I need a Korean's help. Also, it helps to have someone at school who you (hopefully) trust and can talk to about anything going on.
Enjoy :)

Foreign Teacher Operating Instructions

These are my fantasy instructions for dealing with native English teachers like myself.  Tact is very important in Korea, so while I tried to bring these things up gently when necessary, I couldn't hand out a booklet of operating instructions.  It was so tempting though, that I'm posting them here for your enjoyment instead.  This is meant to be funny, and not an indictment of Korean teachers: most of the teachers I worked with were very accommodating.  For the few that need all of this advice, though:

Congratulations!  You are now the lucky handler of a genuine Native English Teacher, specially imported from one of the Six Major English Speaking Nations.  Please follow these instructions carefully in order to assure optimum performance.

   1. Remember that your foreign teacher is a human being, and not actually an English practice robot.  Generally, when you speak to her, she will assume that you are attempting to have a conversation, and as such, upon being asked for the fifteenth time whether she knows what kimchi is, will assume that you think she is stupid, and possibly give you a public telling-off.  If you feel you need practice with the phrase "Have you tried kimchi?," please attend her free conversation class.

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Winter Vacation Part 1: Thailand

As a public school English teacher, I am allotted 18 days of vacation: 10 days during winter and 8 during summer. These days have to be within a certain time slot (when the kids are not in school and we aren't teaching any winter/summer camps) and have to be approved by the big guys (aka my principal and vice principal).
I took my first 4 days from Dec. 28-31, meaning i had Dec 28-Jan 2 because of the weekend. Unfortunately, I couldn't have that Monday off since the kids were still in school. Shelley and I shipped off to Thailand on December 28 and arrived at the Bangkok airport around midnight.

Goodbye snow!!!

DAY 1: Bangkok
We arrived at our cute little hostel, where the front desk staff was patiently awaiting our arrival. Oddly enough, our roommates ended up being English teachers from Korea and one of them went to school at UCSB... small world.

The front of our hostel was a cafe,
equipped with a delicious breakfast and
a friendly staff with plenty of travel tips

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