Wow, has it really almost been 4 weeks since I last posted? I guess I'll try to catch you up on what I can remember.
June 7th, I went to an English language weekend camp that one of the other schools in the area was hosting. My co-teacher and I were assigned the task of storytelling, which meant I would read a short story, and my co-teacher would ask a few questions to the kids to check for comprehension and understanding. Overall fun time. It was also my first time meeting some of the other foreign English teachers in my area (I'd gone about 5 weeks without meeting anyone American), since I live in the country with my family. This means after school gets done at 4:30, I go directly to the bus stop, to the train station, to home.
Later on that same week, I went to a training orientation for all of the new English teachers in our area that are employed through the GEPIK program (Gyeong-Gi-Do English Program In Korea). On the bus, I ended up sitting next to Keith, who reminded me an awful lot of a quiet, glasses-wearing Greg. Through our conversation on the hour-long bus ride, I found I had a lot in common with him. We were both fans of Shane Claiborne and Rob Bell, and he was a piano major from a Christian College in the Midwest, so we chatted up music also. I honestly believe God heard my prayers of anxiety and uncertainty, and reminded me before I even got to the training site that this was an opportunity for me to meet some really cool people and develop friendships that will help me through this time away from home. To make a really long story short, I ended up meeting some incredible people. While I imagine everyone believes that they were in the best group, I honestly believe that the group I was put in was no accident. It was full of warm, intelligent, funny and crazy people who made my time spent there infinitely better than if I had not met them. So I have to take this time to give a shoutout to my A-3 crew!
After that, things swung back to the day-to-day grind at school. I've started to take more of an active role in co-teaching the middle school classes, as well as the conversation class that I teach at the end of the day with all 3 grades. I've also starting working more closely with my main co-teacher at the elementary school. We finished making the lesson plans for the summer camp every English teacher is required to complete. Speaking of summer English camp, I told my principals that I would only be able to teach 7 weekdays of the English camp out of the required 10. Normally, that would be a problem. But my principals have both been really cool about the situation, and they understand, so they're letting the other 3 days slide. Praise God!
It's getting really hot here. I mean, REALLY HOT. I know all of you in Florida are probably rolling your eyes at me, but I am not kidding when I tell you that this kind of hot is something with the potential to drive people insane. And the icing on the cake: the problem isn't that there's no air conditioning. It's almost everywhere. But almost no one uses it! This is infuriating. I wish it was back in May again, when the weather was a mid70s high and a mid50s low, all day, everyday. There's nothing better than that. When it was in the 50s at night and in the morning, I could sleep for 5 hours and wake up completely refreshed and ready to start the day. Now, when the temperature at night and the morning is around the high70s, even if I get 9 or 10 hours of sleep the night before, I'm groggy and irritable when I "wake up" the next morning.
Well, there's been so much spinning around in my head, but I don't have the time to write them all down here, so I'll post again a little later (hopefully). Take care, everyone. And thank you so much for your love and prayers.
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2 comments:
is the 1st grade elementary class getting any better? i know amy & denzel can be a handful, more than the bigger classes, ironically..
Actually, the past few weeks have been pretty good with the two of them. I try to use as much Korean as I can with them, and Denzel still gets frustrated from time to time, but I think he's starting to see that he's just as smart as Amy, and doesn't always need to drag his feet behind her. They even told me that they enjoy the class, so that was a huge relief for me. I know our job isn't to "coddle" the kids, but if the material isn't made at least somewhat interesting, they simply won't learn anything. So that was a big plus for my day.
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