Orientation

Ok, so first and foremost I want to apologize because I have defiantly been slacking on the blogging tip. Sadly my life has been rather uneventful these days lol. Just living for the weekends mostly, but over all, all is good. So after teaching here for four months I was sent to teachers orientation, which seemed a little backwards to me since I have already been working for a while, but hey it was 4 days away from school lol.

I must admit it was really strange seeing 270 foreigners all in the same space but it was comforting also. On my way while riding the subway I met some really cool people from South Africa that were headed to the training also. We ended up being in the same group for the training. One really cool aspect of training was they broke us up into groups based on our location, so everyone in your group live near each other.

My freshman year "My 1st dorm" feelings were returned because we had assigned rooms with assigned roommates that we did not know. All I kept saying was I hope she does not smell bad, and I hope she is not a thief. I really did not want to bring the "Pittsburgher" to Korea but.... lol. I arrived to a bit early so I got to the room first, YAY first pickings of beds and such. I got to my room and picked out a bed and did a little bit of video chatting , placed my stuff on my bed and then went to the 1st session.

After the 1st session we had a bit of extra time so I went back to my room in hopes of meeting my roomie for 4 days. She was not in the room however her stuff was in the room, and not only in the room but on MY bed. YES, you read correctly, she moved my stuff from my bed to the other bed. Now the other bed was cool BUT less appealing, it was not by the window where you could get the cool night breeze if needed, lacked the great view of the tv AND was not near the bathroom, perfect for the middle of the night have to go moments. I was a little bit hot, I can not lie, she came to the room about 10 minutes later and apologized and offered me the bed back. She ended up being a really sweet girl and we got along great for the 4 days we were there.

Over all orientation was helpful the sessions were a bit too long at times but over all pretty good. It would have been even better if I had training when I 1st got here but hey what can you do? They had sessions about conflict resolution as far as your school in concerned, Korea survival class, lesson planning and a history Korean education lesson. I did get a lot of cool ideas for class and how to keep the attention of the students so that was defiantly helpful.
Still Seoul Searching...

I want to learn how to fry chicken :)

Sujin (my co teacher) asked me to make her some "American" food, I asked her what she wanted and she said "I want fried chicken". So we went to E mart and got the everything we needed for dinner. I made fried chicken, mashed sweet potatoes, and corn. Sujin said she really liked it and asked me to teach her how to cook fried chicken lol. Here are the pictures!

Jandang School Olympics

May 1st was a day that most elementary public schools here in South Korea held a sports day. This was a day at Jangdang Elementary school where the whole school is divided into 2 teams the white team and the blue team and they compete in a number of games and races all day. The 1st half of the day the children from kindergarten to 3rd grade competed, they were so cute and so serious! The parents are just as excited as the students! There was parent competition also, the parents split up into two teams, one team representing the white team the other team representing the blue team, and they ran races and played tug of war. The sports day got really real really fast lol. The parents were yelling at each other and all, it was too funny.

The second half of the day had the 4th grade to 6th grade students competing. I thought I was in store for another parent face off because I rather enjoyed the 1st one I saw but oh, I was in store for a rude awaking. It was time for the TEACHERS to face off! All the other teachers knew of this as they came dressed in there jogging suites and sweats ready to go, they were warming up well before I even knew what was going on. I had on jeans, sneakers, a scarf and a jacket, I was not dresses to be doing anything physical. Now, yes I did have on sneakers, but they were look cute not really running sneakers! We were divided into 2 teams with about 15 teachers per team , with the men on one side of the track and the women on the other side. We were running a 400 meter relay race, and my co workers were SO serious! So of course when it was time for me to run my leg of the race we where losing, when I finally got the baton my co worker was a good 8 seconds in front of me. I remember thinking "Lord please just don't let me get embarrassed out her in front of all my students" well the Lord was listening because my co worker was SUPER slow, I passed her. My students were so excited, one of my 5th grade kids said "Tasha! You are the fastest runner in the world" I was cracking up, like noooo I am not fast she was just really slow, but I cant lie I did feel special lol.
Still Seoul Searching...