Tuesday, 27 November 2012

Daejeon Daily

We apologise for the lack of posts recently... the internet at our flat was rudely and unexpectedly cut off two weeks ago! We now have it set up again, thanks to the lovely and helpful Director and Secretary at our institute. They are so quick to help us with any issue or request we have, even though they are extremely busy with meetings and all the changes that are happening in the school. They have even got us a TV - I say 'got' because it has been effectively stolen from another flat belonging to the school! Hopefully there is no one living there at the moment or they are going to get a nasty surprise when they get home.

In other news, all is going well so far in Daejeon. We took a little weekend trip to Seoul the weekend before last, but I will let Alex write about that or he will shout at me again for writing about all the 'interesting things'. The teaching is still good, although quite tiring. I feel bad for the kids because I know how hard they work and you can tell how tired they are, but I sometimes think that being the teacher and trying to get them to talk and be enthusiastic is just as exhausting! Then I remember that they start at 8am each morning, and I forgive them. They attend their schools until around 2 or 3 depending on their age, then they attend several different 'Hagwons' or private schools for different subjects, including Music, English, Maths - whatever their parents deem the most necessary ones for their child to excel at. We have just read in BBC news that South Korea has the second best education system in the world which is down to the '"culture" of education', and living here we can see that culture first hand. They really do work extremely hard, and have no qualms in their children working from 8am until 11pm, including time to do their homework. Considering their workload, most of the kids here are really sweet, kind and hardworking.

My biggest challenge at the moment is one class where I teach a 12 year old girl on her own. I have to choose the topic and plan the 50 minute lesson from scratch. I have another of these lessons with three 15 year old girls, and that one is great because I let them pick the topics, and their English is good enough that we can have fun and interesting discussions, and I feel like they are getting something out of the lesson. The younger girl, however, is not so good at English, and I really struggle to have a 'discussion' lesson with her twice a week for 50 minutes! I try really hard to make the lessons interesting and to provide her with enough vocabulary and phrases to help her converse with me, but she is very shy and her English is simply not good enough to 'chat'. I am just hoping that she is learning something; each lesson I make sure that she learns as least a couple of new words and a useful phrase so this is something.

A little farming area we discovered a 5 minute walk from our flat

Our school! We are on the third floor

The view from our flat - Songchon Middle School and the building site in the playground!

Beautiful walk to school




In the staffroom
We have a very useful friend in Alex's adult student, Erin. Her English is very good and she has been really lovely and helpful, inquiring about gyms for us then helping us join, and also taking us to a great restaurant for takalbi, a delicious mix of chicken, sweet potato, cabbage, red pepper sauce and several other things which you can add as extras, such as mushrooms, rice cakes or cheese. It is all cooked in the middle of your table, and when you have finished most of it, the waiter mixes in rice and cod roe, and you begin eating again! We have been desperate to try out more Korean food, but we find it impossible to simply walk into a restaurant and order something with our non-existent Korean language skills! So we must rely on friendly locals to take us out and order delicious things for us. This also gave us a chance to ask Erin some questions we had about Korean culture and life. Erin brought an unsuspecting friend with her - she didn't tell him that he would be eating out with foreigners because she had already been turned down by another friend who was too scared to speak English with us! He was extremely shy, and we felt even worse when he, as the oldest male, paid for the meal for us all (as is the custom here). But he seemed very nice and we had a really good evening.

Takalbi in the making

Cooked Takalbi