First day of school and typhoon

Hello all, Carrie here.  We survived two big events this week: our first day at school and one of the largest typhoons in Korea in several years! 

As for our first day of school, it was fun but very busy and tiring!  We have about 30 classes a week, with different students everyday. We each teach the same grade levels at the same time, but in seperate classes. Our first week is pretty easy in regard to lesson plans, as we can use the same lesson in each class.  We both decided to introduce ourselves and play fun ice breaker games for the first week of class, and will be starting with text books next week.  We each teach grades 1-6, and we basically go from classroom to classroom each period, and have one period off. 

We were both very impressed with the amount of English that the students understood, even the 1st graders.  While there are some classes where the students aren't as confident speaking English, you can see that they understand a great deal.  Some of my students said they started learning English at age 4.

All of the students have both a Korean name and an English name that they have chosen for themselves.  Most of them are basic, Sally, John, etc. but I did have a student who called himself "7 star hotel chef" and another who goes by "So Beast."  This made it pretty easy to determine who the class clowns were going to be!  Most students were well behaved and, while talkative, would quiet down when asked.  Only my last class had more of a talking issue, and we had to stop playing games and start journaling instead!

After our first day of class, one of the Korean English teachers, Young-Me, took Bradley and I to the local hospital to get a full health screening, as required to work as a foreign language teacher in Korea. We got sight and hearing tests, blood drawn, chest x-rays, and other tests all within 30-40 minutes, very efficient.

Lastly, we had heard a few days ago that there would be a typhoon headed our way Monday night.  Young-Me called us that evening and let us know that all public schools had been cancelled in Korea due to the potential heavy rains and strong winds.  Here in our city, there appears to be no flooding, though we have stayed inside all day.  It was definitely windy and rainy out, and some trees outside our apartment lost their branches.  However, Bradley and I were snug inside and had a movie marathon.  No power outages and nothing except a quiet day off for us.

Tomorrow we head back to school to meet some more students.  So far so good, but I forgot how tiring that teaching can be.  Hopefully after a few weeks I will have adjusted a bit more to our busy schedule!

xoxoxo Carrie