Teachers & Students & Lessons, Oh My!

If you asked me what my ideal classroom would be (before coming to Korea), I would have said "I want a manageable group of diverse learners with a myriad of interests", more or less. Oh boy, did I get a manageable class. For my middle school beginner class that I teach twice a week, I have a total of three students. Three! When I met them on Friday I actually only had two students since one was sick. Now, I have been in classrooms with anywhere from 13 to 20 students, but this will be my biggest challenge yet, especially since one barely speaks due to her shyness. Nevertheless, I will prevail.

During the actual lesson, I gave the students a brief introduction into my life. I told them about where I grew up and showed them pictures of my family. I also talked about my little weenies back home, which they quite enjoyed. They even ran to grab their phones and show me their own pets. One has two hamsters and the other has a little dog. The pictures of Mizzou I had shown them were a big hit (it definitely pays off to go to school with a pretty campus), and they enjoyed learning about my travel history. We then moved on to some easy ice breaker games. I learned one of my students, we'll call her Student A, enjoys playing piano and making things, and the other, Student B, does NOT like studying (don't worry, she'll love studying by the end of the semester) and loves chocolate. On Wednesday they take a test to determine final placement for their English classes (beginner, intermediate, or advanced), and Student A made it known that she does not want to move up classes; she wants to stay in my class. I'll take that as a major win after finishing my first ever English class!

The following day, Saturday, started off with four of us English teachers teaching a condensed class of our One Day Missions. These missions will be taught four times a day, four times a week for the entire semester. Yay for monotony! To be fair, the class I am teaching is super fun, so I'm happy to be locked in for the year, but I digress. I was last for the teaching lessons, which allowed me ample time to rehearse the lesson in my head. I will admit, it is a little nerve wrecking teaching a lesson in front of my peers, co-teachers, and supervisor, but I think it went very well. Of course I had a few missteps (as all teachers do), but I got some great feedback that I can easily incorporate going forward. The best feedback, by far, was that I have a cheery disposition that students will absolutely adore and that I was made to be a teacher.

Sunday marked the first official weekend I have had in 2 weeks...so the only logical thing to do would be to go exploring instead of taking a much needed rest day. I went to Haeundae Beach with two of my friends, Ashley and Dani, which was about a 40 minute subway ride from my apartment. We then met up with two other friends from orientation and made our way to the beach. The weather was absolutely perfect for a day a the beach; no rain and a temperature cool enough not to warrant sweating like a pig. While we did not go in the water (we were under the impression the beach was closed because technically it was!), we did take a beautiful boat cruise around the coast. The air felt so fresh compared to American beaches (none of the harsh salt spray) and the breeze was just the right touch of subtle and cooling. I am not technically a coastal girlie seeing as I never lived near the ocean, but I would have no hesitancies living on the Busan coast.

After spending some time on the water, all 5 of us met up with another group of teachers from orientation to eat some Korean BBQ. Growing up in Texas spoiled me for barbecue, but KBBQ is quite tasty. The restaurant we were at served only pork as their meat, but they had various side dishes, such as bibimbap and kimchi fried rice. The servers actually cooked our meat for us (and it was not just because there were 13 foreigners who had little idea what to do). My table of four had quite the order: 2 orders of ribs, 3 orders of pork belly, 2 orders of pork something (really could not tell you the area in which it came from, but it was incredible), bibimbap, 4 bowls of rice, egg fried rice, and 2 bottles of soju. We packed it down like nobody's business and left the restaurant with full bellies and smelling like barbecue. Great end to a great day.

Pork and bibimbap

Egg fried rice