learning to teach

so yesterday i went to the kids club to do some orientation, training, and all that jazz. it went well. first of all the school, kids club, is only 2 blocks from my house which is great so its like a 5 - 10 minute walk. and its like a 5 story building which is really cool. i think i have a weird obsession with tall buildings. but really its kind of like wayside school where most schools are built flat, but wayside school was built up. does anyone know what im talking about? if you dont you should go find out. :)

my director mr. johan and yanni who is to be my teaching partner came to pick me up and take me to the school. and yes, i did leave the chocolates i had bought as a thank you for mr johan in his car, so now i have a box of chocolates in my freezer. great. haha, i think i lost the effect with that gift. oh well.

ok, sooo, really the whole school visit was very confusing. i met a lot of people and most of them seem very cool. yanni my teaching partner sat me down with a pile of books unbelievably high. she did her best to explain it all to me but it was hard because i was a bit tired, and i really had no idea what i was in for. but apparently i have been hired for my superb phonetic skills, or i guess yanni said my "perfect" pronunciation. oh dear! so from what i can tell i, yanni teaches the meaning of words and phrases and this month's topic is weather. and then i will do activities with them to work on the pronunciation. also it seems there are different sets of classes for the morning and the afternoon. like the morning classes are younger kids and the afternoon are elementary/primary students so we will work a bit harder. yeah i don't know. so i have a huge stack of books to look over before monday. also lesson plans and well all kinds of good things.
the best news for me is that i get to simply observe the first week. whoo hoo. and i did get to observe yesterday and the kids where great. i had a good time.

also yesterday i ventured out by myself where i bought yogurt from the grocery store and bought a pizza. haha, slowly but surely. i also found the post office. this place is beautiful though. seriously in everyt direction there are mountains in the distance. its gorgeous! and there is still some snow on the ground in various places. the weather is kind of tricky because it feels warm outside, but when the wind blows man is it cold.

anyways, my korean soapopera is pulling away my attention. until next time.

Love to Travel

I arrived at the airport about 4:30 am because my flight was supposed to leave at 6:00am but my flight was cancelled. So I was sent to chicago at 7:15am then to san fransisco and then to seoul. i walked the whole way from one end of o'hare to the other leaving me no time to sit and wait much less call people for a final goodbye. the same occurred in san fran but it all went smoothly and great. my flight for seoul left at 6am seoul time and then my plane landed at 7:30 pm. The flight was not bad at all. I think I got up once and watched 3 movies. (part of this might have been due to the upgrade to economy plus or perhaps it was the great service of united airlines?) I did decide to take a small nap around 4pm because i didn't want to be totally wrecked for whatever was going to happen once i landed.

once i landed again everything went very smoothly. the incheon airport was extremely clean and nice. i got through immigration and customs with no problem. then once you go through customs there is this automatic door that everyone goes through and as soon as you do there is a huge crowd of people waiting behind red tape. its pretty funny because you walk through the door and everyone is just staring at you and calling for other people, you kind of feel famous for a moment or two. :)

i easily found mr. kang who had a sign with my name on it. he quickly pushed my cart over to the bus stop outside. while doing this i talked to brant kim my ASK Now contact about my next few actions. mr. kang put me on a bus to Madeul Station and once he got me my ticket and got me a seat he found a woman to make sure i got off at the right station. though i could have done it because it is all in roman alphabet and also they tell you on the bus tv where they are stopping. but it was nice to have someone watching out for me. so after an hour on the bus my station came and i climbed out with my 2 human size suitcases and my rolling carry-on. It was at this point my luggage became a bit of a problem.

If i would have stayed put once i got off the bus i would have been fine, but brant wanted me to give him a call and luckily i had some coins on me. so i called him and he told me the headmaster was on his way to pick me up and he would be a little late because i was earlier than expected. confused as to what exactly was happening i told brant that i was at a subway station, which i was. there was a bus and subway station with 4 different exits and i didn't know if i was driving, riding the subway to my next stop so i thought i should meet my ride at the subway stop. so i wheel my luggage over to the subway stairs which have no elevator. i think a few times through this and look at the sheer amount of stairs and the fact that i really can't wheel all of my bags alone. so after waiting 10 minutes i call brant back. i told him there was no way i could get down to the subway station so i would stand by the "i love pizza" store and wait. the weather was fine and i didn't mind. within 5 minutes of me wheeling my suitcases over to the shop and enjoying the scene of everything that was going on around me Mr. Bae or Johan arrived with his daughter to pick me up.

After wrestling my luggage back over to his car at the bus station he drove me to my apartment. i am not in Seoul, i am in the "northeast sub city of Seoul" to quote a sign. but its still has tall buildings, lights and all kinds of good city stuff. hooray! first we went to my apartment which is right next to a police station. then we walked to the bakery and then to the grocery store. all the prices are readable, but i can't always or rarely can figure out what the products are. but we bought some muffins, milk, juice and strawberries! so far from what i can tell, prices look to be about the same as in the states. but i haven't gotten this all figured out yet.

then they asked me what i wanted to eat - korean, japanese...i said korean of course. haha, so we went to an authentic korean restaurant, sat on the floor and bbq our own meat. it was delicious! great! wonderful! we had to take our shoes off and wear slippers. it was great!

we finally finished around 11:30 and then i was left to get some sleep. so it was a great start. the director is great and his daughter who is also 22 was very nice and funny as well, though she says her english "is not skillful." i thought she did fine.

until next time

Dear Amber Teacher

So I head out at 3am....wow. i have been pretty scared lately, which i think is healthy and understandable. but yesterday i received an email from the headmaster of my soon to be place of employment with a great email and a picture of my class welcoming me. alot of my fears have been eased now, though not completely. did i pack enough? did i pack too much? did i call everyone i was supposed to? are my bags too heavy? (which they always are, by the way) do i have all my paperwork? how cold is it going to be there? am i going to recover from jetlag quick enough? but you know what, it will be ok. i mean you just do it, and thats how it goes. so i'm ready! i'm excited! tired of packing and repacking, but whatever! time for another global adventure.

so off i go to charlotte to d.c. to san fran and then to seoul. whoo hooo!

Getting to Korea

so this whole process has been about less than 2 months. i sent in my initial application then i did a voice message as the next step. within a few days i received my first bite and a school in seoul wanted to interview me.

the interview was very interesting! first of all it was at 11:00 at night due to the time difference. i think they just found someone who could speak some english because the person who interviewed me did not know really anything about me - which is interesting considering the fact that i mailed them a resume and application. but the interview felt impromptu and was very relaxed. she asked me how soon i could come, have i lived overseas for a year, have i taught english before, do i have four seasons where i live? and then she gave me the opportunity to ask questions and i attempted to ask how involved parents are in their children's education but after a few times the best answer i got was "no you don't have to worry about parents coming to the school only once or twice. no worries!" hahaha awesome. truthfully it didn't feel like an interview but rather more like them offering me the job right there. she even told me, you sound nice and i think you should come work here. i giggled to myself alot during the interview but i got a great vibe from the experience.

i did a second interview 2 nights later with a more "professional" school. they told me how they have several different schools around korea and they use a curriculum from new york and the man who interviewed me knew where buffalo was! haha! but he asked me very specific questions like what kind of work i have done before and why do i want this job. also asked me if i was a christian and if i had ever taken any drugs or was addicted to alcohol. this was soon followed by "but if you have tried marijuana its ok, we have many teachers who come from california and they tell us that they try it once or twice and that is ok." hahaha, well good to know. so that interview felt more like a real interview where he had very clear expectations of what the school expects from its teachers and what life would be like. again, the interview went great and he was very nice, but it just didn't work out with that school.

during the interviews i just made sure to speak slowly and clearly and answer the questions to the best of my ability. you know, simple enough, right? but both interview experiences were very nice and positive though different in professionalism. needless to say, that first interview is the school i decided to attend for the next year. :)

Visa Interview

so today i had to drive to atlanta for my visa interview, which in case you are wondering, is not able to be done over the phone. trust me, i asked. so dressed in my jeans and cardigan and drove toward my last big task in going to korea. after driving around the block a few times to locate the international tower we found it after wondering around in the rain and admiring all the buildings. if we had more time it would have been a cool place to hang out, but we were exactly on time.
so at the interview i filled out more of the exact same paperwork i had already mailed to them....oh yes. so i thought all i had to do was email my information to them - my information being my passport, visa confirmation number, E-2 visa application, $45 via money order, and a passport size picture. All of this was sent usps express mail and had a self addressed express envelope (this which cost about $30 for both envelopes plus money order - about $75 total). well i thought i could mail that it, it takes 2 days to process and then i would get my passport back...but when they received my papers last friday they called me to schedule an interview.

my advice to you - before you receive your visa confirmation number call the consulate and let them know you want a visa to teach in korea and if you need an interview. that would save you time, and possibly money...

the actual interview took like 10 minutes. the consulate asked me where i was from and if i drove from nc to ga, which i had. asked me where i went to school, why i want to teach english if i studied psychology, had i taught english before. then he asked me to tell him all i knew about korea in a minute, i said less then a minute and told him that i really know little about korea except through other people's blogs, but i heard that all the people there are very nice. in which he replied, well there are not nice people there and i am one of them. here is where fear set in and i thought all my chances of getting in were over. this was emphasized by the fact that he asked me what i knew i said little, then he asked me why i picked korea over like veitnam, thailand, etc and i said some friends told me about the program. i think i came off as some punk kid who was looking to make some money and get drunk all the time in another country. he continued to tell me more things about korea like the transportation is really modern and easy to use and that seoul is a very safe city where you can drink and walk around the streets at midnight and be safe. but this was followed by a rant about too many foriegners in seoul and they only speak their mother tongue and don't learn the language. hmmmm....

after some more awkward conversation he left me with, "well i can't see any reason not to give you the visa...you will have your passport by wednesday, i guarantee it..." and finally "there are some brochures up front in korean but they have colorful pictures on them that will help you to know what korea is about." stupid american....now to wait for the visa

One Week

In exactly one week from today I should be on a plane from Washington D.C. to San Francisco, CA. My last stop before I arrive in Seoul, South Korea where I will be living for one year as an English teacher. I will just state right now that I know nothing about South Korea, or any other Asian country for that matter and I don't know any of the language either. I am not an English teacher though I have volunteered in an English class for adult refugees.

I am currently in my freak out mode which I enter before I leave the country or anywhere for a long term. That is probably the biggest thing is that I love to travel and I have lived in Tanzania, Costa Rica and Australia - so I'm not too worried about that. I love new experiences and other cultures and having no idea what I am getting into, well that just adds to the excitement!