First Post from Donghae, South Korea

So, brief recap to catch us up: lesson went well enough at orientation.  In the afternoon, I found out my placement: Donghae Sahmyook Academy.

So, Donghae is where I've been since Tuesday.  It's a mid-sized town (I've seen varying reports on numbers, from 100,000-150,000 people), on the east coast.

At this point, I'm sort of regretting agreeing to a provincial placement.  I wanted a big city, but said I'd be flexible when my coordinator told me that all the metropolitan places were filled.

I was the second to last person picked up from the bus stop, and the gentleman who picked me up confirmed my suspicions (I'd Googled the school the day before): it's a religious, 7th Day Adventist private school.  Not that I have to teach religious classes or anything, but they did tell me the first day that I shouldn't drink, smoke, or wear accessories.  Which means I can do these things, I just have to lie.  Oh yeah, and the awesome drinking soju and eating with co-workers that's supposed to be part of Korean work culture is not happening here.  This would have been a deal breaker for me if I'd known it was an option when I was signing up.

I also don't have a co-teacher.  The head of the English department is our go-to guy who helps me out with some stuff, but basically they gave me a class schedule and expected me to teach from day 1.  Fortunately there's another American teacher at the school who is awesome. I teach 3 middle school classes (one from each level) 4 times a week and then 4 different high school classes once each every week.  So it averages out to about 3 middle school and one high school class per day, then I'll be having a couple others later.  So, so far, I kind of hate middle school kids.  They're crazy little mo-fo's. 

Well, I guess I should do a little lesson planning for the upcoming week...I was so unprepared for this.  I shall leave you with a few pictures and a video tour of my apartment:

My desk at work: Somebody put apples on all the teachers' desks.  I don't think it was actually a child though.

Downtown Donghae

WA Bar (a bar with a bunch of beers from all over the world). This picture is for my Dortmund friends!

Glorious, lovely E-mart.  I love these umbrella bag things-I don't know if I've seen any such nifty wet-umbrella-bagging-things in the USA

"The Sensitive Soap Dish"  -don't hurt it's feelings!  I <3 Konglish.

 

^ Video tour of my apartment!