New Digs

Hello party people. It's been a while. 

My bad.

Part of the neglect was due to my sojourn home (not much point writing about the California when most of you live there), and the rest is due to the mass of changes in my Korea life.  A lot has changed since I last wrote, and as you probably know, change can be pretty time consuming.

I'm at a new school.  I was transferred (hopefully not for performance related issues) from a school with a student body of 2000 students to one just shy of 200.  I wasn't expecting the change, but I couldn't be happier about it.  I was mired by anonimty and torpor at my old school.  When you teach one lesson sixteen times over two weeks (with a smattering of others in between), it doesn't take more than a few hours to do all of your prep.  Coasting is a word I'd like to avoid using to describe my time there.  And in the last weeks I was still seeing new faces among the faculty.

My new school is very small, and the English department is HIGHLY funded.  I've got a brand new English zone to play around in (teach), check it out:

Reading corner, some couches, the office in the back there. That's my chair you can see through the door.

The front of the classroom.  Behind those middle whiteboards is a giant flatscreen t.v.  Check the fancy new desks and chairs.  Plus there's a stage so a look very tall and imposing.

Some props: Letters for phonics, games, food and a cash register.

The office, and Kyeong Man, my new co-teacher.

My desk.  Replete with the instruments of shaping young minds (i.e. messy).

My teaching situation is incredibly different.  Instead of the haphazard schedule I failed to describe in an earlier post, I teach everyone.  All the classes.  It's pretty awesome, but definitely a lot more work.  I think that's good though.  Productivity is an intertial force as much as stagnation.

Instead of the five (four maybe? I was never too sure) coteachers I taught with before, I'm down to two.  The one (not pictured) is only in school twice a week.  The largest class in the school is 26 students and the smallest is 15.  It's going to be a whole new dynamic.

As well as small classes, it's nice to have a small staff.  I met all of them on the first day.  Quite a departure from the school with a teaching staff 80 (maybe?) strong.  Last night, we had a welcome dinner at a very ncie restaurant.  Check out the dish:

Yes, it's moving.  Those are live abalone.  And they were good, too. That dish was a hodge-podge of two whole chickens, clams, oysters, mussles, whole crabs, ginseng, shrimp, some mushroom that is allegedly extremely expensive (Still tasted like musty dirt to me) and of course, the live abalone.  Don't worry, they didn't live for long once they were submerged in the boiling broth.  At least that's what I'm telling myself.  To wash it all down, we had beer, soju (traditional liquor, about 40 proof), beer mixed with soju, and liquor made from ginseng.  All on the teachers union.

After that, the upper administration left, and the rest of us went to a "nore-bang" (like a private karaoke room. Ubiquitous and wildly popular in Korea).  After an hour or so of singing, more beer flowing, and maybe a moving rendition of Wonderwall by yours truly, we went to another restaurant.  I guess the live abalone weren't enough.

In said restaurant, more soju, more beer (lest you forget, this is the staff at my school who's guzzling this effluveunt alcohol.  On a Wednesday.  Teachers.  Wednesday.  Booze.) then the food was brought.  Any guesses?  Offal. 

Yes, folks, the live abalone wasn't bizarre enough for the welcome dinner, we also dined on various parts of the intenstines, the stomach (I coudn't help wondering which of the four, and how profitable it must be to sell cow stomachs.  Four per cow!  Now that's a real... cash... cow?) the heart, and the aorta.  Yes, last night I ate cow aorta.  It wasn't bad, though.  Chewy, surely.  But with a little green onion and some incendiary chili sauce, it was really quite tasty.  Especially, the heart.

So my welcoming was nice, if a bit... interesting, but it helped me to make some connections at work and prove myself as the fearless foreigner.  That's my school situation, more updates to come.  I'm waiting on a couch to come for my new apartment, once it does I'll be all settled in and can tell you all about it.

And here's one of my new 6th grade classes sending you their love from the ROK.

(Those are supposed to be hearts.)