Prep

The last week or so has been great. We've settled into our new three-bedroom apartment (huge by Korean standards), have met our wonderful co-teachers, and have felt welcome in the ex-pat community thanks to Grace, another foreign teacher at our school. We've also been talking to some friends we met at orientation, but haven't gotten together yet... but there is lots of time for that.

As it turned out, we had nearly the whole week off. We were required to come in on Thursday morning for an intro at the staff meeting ("annyonghaseyo, Joanne imnida, cho'eum pepgetsumnida"), to start the immigration paperwork and to submit our new bank account info to the school. Other than that, we have had a week of getting to know our neighbours and neighbourhood. We went to a pub named Long Life (pronounced "Longa Lifuh") on Tuesday, out for
lunch with Grace and our co-teacher Mina on Thursday, to an acoustic guitar coffeehouse perfor- mance at Tom N Toms Thursday evening and to a fellow teacher's apartment on Saturday. Seeing Natalie's apartment was informative... we realized we must have one of the better teacher apartments in Yeosu. Her place is apparently one of the bigger/nicer places, and it was one open room with a bed, a closet, a hotplate, a bit of counter space, and a fridge. The bathroom was a toilet, a sink, and a shower head attached to the wall above the toilet. The drain in the middle of the bathroom floor allows the whole room to act as the bathtub. From what I hear, this is the norm - we're lucky to have our tub... even if there is no shower curtain and the water still sprays the whole bathroom.

Today we went out for dinner with "Korea Brandon" and his wife. Alden met Brandon through an internet philosophy community about a year and a half ago, and by chance we happened to move to the same city as them. We went out for a chicken bbq dinner, which was superb. Their company was also great - they've been here for about two years and speak Korean well (they had several 2/3 minute conversations with the server), and know the ins and outs of Yeosu. They also just got back from a three week trip to the Philippines, Borneo, Bali and Taipei... needless to say, it was great to meet them.

We came back home tonight to our pending lesson planning. It may be some of the only lesson planning we do all year - it turns out that at our particular English Town, we will be seeing a new group of students every morning and every afternoon. This basically means that we only need about 3 hours of material, which we will rinse and repeat 500 times over the course of this year. I'm sure I'll be able to recite the prescribed dialogues in my sleep by the end of September. The good news is that since the English Town will be a field trip for the kids, it should be fairly interesting for them. The school has all the separate areas set up - an airport ticket office, an information kiosk, a store, a family living room, a doctor's office, a dentist's office, a restaurant, a post office, etc. - for which we will be practicing dialogues in the classroom, and then bringing the kids into the English Town to "act out" the dialogues.

The job sounds pretty good - easy, but at least we'll have free time for other pursuits. Alden has already been to his first judo session (I'll let him write about the set-up he has there), and I'm planning to attend the school's yoga sessions and volleyball games. So many things to look forward to!