The Staff Meeting

Last night at 4:20 we had a staff meeting at our school. I sat for about 20 minutes not understanding a thing, until Sam, one of my co-teachers, leaned over and explained to me how the vice-principal was telling teachers that they must obey human rights, and to stop hitting their students. Incredible. I explained how we would go to jail in Canada for hitting students, and she thought that that rule should be in Korea as well.

Here is a picture of my school:

My classroom is the one above the swing set, with no curtains which sucks in the afternoon sun:

I've been fairly busy lately, lesson planning and teaching. It's easy, but it takes a lot of time. I taught 5 grade 6 classes yesterday, and another 5 grade 5 classes today. They're very cute, and actually understand about 80% of what I say, which is impressive, considering I understand about 0% of what they say.

I've been given my own classroom, which is fantastic... except for the traditional Korean painting teacher, who's class was cancelled so I could have her room. Somewhere in this school, a teacher is very upset with me, I'm sure.

I've started decorating my room, which is really fun. I have a day, date, month, season and weather board all set up for the kids to use. In the back, I'm going to create a bulletin board on Canada, one for new vocabulary words, and one on each holiday. I'll need everyone back home reading this to send me holiday classroom decorations and stickers. Anything you can find and stuff in a box and mail to me (for cheap) would be great. Halloween is coming up, and I could sure use some fake spiders and cobwebs, etc....

I found my first Western toilet in my school today - just as I was becoming accustomed to using a squat toilet (which I never thought I'd get used to). There is just no toilet paper in the washroom with the Western toilet, but that's okay, I'll bring my own from home.

It was about 32 degrees today in Korea. Incredibly hot, so the vice-principal made the call to turn on the air conditioning around 1 pm. Too bad it doesn't seem to work in the Teacher's room where I'm spending my afternoon.

Lunch today was interesting. Rice and kimchi, tempura soup (which I didn't try, based on the look of it), and some mushrooms with bok choy. What I did end up eating was delicious. Its always weird having to brush my teeth in the teacher's room after lunch with all the other teacher's watching and doing the same thing. Sometimes students come in and the teacher's have entire conversations with them, with a toothbrush sticking out of their mouth. At least we don't all have bad breath though!

Bob went out with his teacher's last night (hopefully he'll post about it, although he doesn't seem to have a good track record...), while I stayed home (alone) and went to bed at 8:30. I watched FOX for a while first, which airs old shows you could watch in Canada, like Monk (non stop) and some Law and Order. Normally I wouldn't watch these shows, but I was desperate.

If I finish my lesson planning today at school, I may go with Bob to Insadong tonight, which is a big open market where you can buy traditional Korean goods. I can't wait until pay day, which is the 24th of each month.

I'm looking forward to Chuseok this weekend, which is like Korean Thanksgiving. I get 5 days off in a row. I was trying to plan a trip to Busan, a resort beach town in the south of South Korea, but I hear the train has already been booked up. Maybe the following weekend when it is less busy.

- Maureen