Ok, my friends - I have updates since I haven't really posted a lot and a lot has been happening.
Back in Korea, a different city this time called Bucheon which is a close suburb of Seoul. I work at a private Kindergarten and afterschool for grades 1, 2 and 3 in the afternoons. The new job has been extremely challenging for me since I am not used to teaching kindergarten kids... like at all. And I have always had the most respect for the people that teach the youngest grades since those involve the most attention AT ALL TIMES. You cannot just tell the kids to write an essay and sit at your desk or put on a movie and expect them to just sit and watch it. You have to be at full alert all the time. This is course is a big change from my last school. At times I do miss the ease of my old school and the fact the kids had more life experience and aptitude to be left on their own for more than two minutes.. And also, I have to help my kids zip up their jackets and put on their shoes.... This is new to me. But my new school has some MAJOR differences in the other way and that is the Korean staff that works there. Let me go back a week to St Paddy's day.
I got in touch with my friends from my old city so meet in Seoul for a St Paddy's festival and shenanigans to follow. I meet my Irish friends Grainne, Finbar, and Patrice and it was so good talking about the good old days in Ansan and all the great people that have come to teach and have since left, and met a bunch more. Then we headed to my friend Miranda's apartment and had several more hours of fun and meeting new people and playing guitar and other games. It is truly amazing to know so many wonderful people. The next day I wasn't feeling so well so I just took it easy and rested in my apartment and tried preppy for my classes. Then my birthday came and I was absolutely ill. Just the normal cold/flu crap most everyone gets when they travel and/or work with small children. But it was even worse since it was only my third week in and I felt like I was just overloaded with work I didn't understand what the staff wanted from me and I kept getting conflicting answers to prefer methods on doing something. I also could tell in my first couple weeks working here that I was getting short tempered a lot here because I felt like the staff and fellow teachers were talking down to me and saying things like "I told you that on your first day, don't you remember?" and I wanted to scream "You told me a hundred things my first day!! Give me a break!?!" But I recently realized the hazard of teaching small children, especially when you work with a large staff that doesn't speak English that well in a lot of cases; you speak to EVERYONE like they are children.
I digress. This last birthday pretty much took the cake for worst birthday I have ever had, after 11 hours at the school I trudged the 15 minute walk to my apartment but first got some udong soup to go from the local shop across from my building and ate it while feeling so exhausted it hurt and watched The Office on my laptop. Bummer right? And Tuesday started out the same way. But then one of the Korean staff saw I was sick and took me to the hospital (which is really just the doctor, no one freak out.... *mom*) and not only were we in and out and back in school within 25 minutes the whole thing only cost $7 and that is after the prescription meds. I went home not feeling like the pills had worked their voodoo yet, but I got on facebook and saw all the birthday comments and messages from all my friends and it really did make me feel a lot better. It was in a really strange way that is hard to describe, because every time someone wished me happy bday, all of the good memories with that person rushed back to me and made me feel so lucky to have done what I have done, gone to the places I have, and to have met all those wonderful people.
The next day (yesterday) I was feeling a thousand times better. I really should have just called in sick but felt like that would appear bad being so new and all. So mad props to my Korean staffer who took me to the hospital (though the doctor spoke perfect English and no translating was needed, he still knew where to take me). But wait, the goodness doesn't end there. We had planned for the March birthdays party (another new teacher's bday was the 12th) to be celebrated today. I didn't expect much but when they called us into the cafeteria there was an awesome spread of pizza, chicken wings, and fresh fried potato chips sitting on the tables. There were about 12-15 staff members there including the directors and the school and we all had a great time just talking about our kids and telling funny stories. It was so nice to be able to communicate with all of them and not having the typical odd "all white people sit over here and speak English and all Koreans over on this side" segregation.
In sum, this new job is going to be a challenge for me, but you all know that I can use a challenge like this to keep me from being so lazy. Nine months of bouncing around Washington, Oregon, Canada, Alaska, Costa Rica, Panama, Mexico, and Hawaii, have made me ready to put some real effort into something. Thank you friends and family for being there to support me, no matter how many thousands of miles away you may be.
