Update on Korea

Well, we signed our official contracts for Korea and faxed them back a little over a week ago!  I talked to my principal last Friday and let him know that I was moving, gave my letter of resignation on Monday, and my job was posted on Tuesday!!  They are not wasting any time replacing me!! :)  That's okay though, someone else is VERY welcome to take over my job teaching 1st grade.  Every time I see/hear this years' kindergarten group in the hallways, I am increasingly thankful that I will not be there to have them in class next year.  I know that sounds horrible, but seriously, it is a very rambunctious group, to put it mildly.  

We have a few new updates on our trip to Korea.  First, it turns out that we are not going to be expected to arrive there until June 4th, which means we will have about more days than we thought we would before leaving.  That makes things a *tiny* bit less stressful!  We will have a week of training and then are supposed to start teaching on the 11th or 12th.  When we signed our contracts, they were both for elementary school positions, so we would be at the same school and have the same schedule (working from 3-10 pm--the kids go to traditional Korean school during the day and then go to English school in the evenings).  However, I got an email from our recruiter yesterday saying that the school's Nokjiwon campus has an opening and wants to hire me for that position if I will take it instead.  It will be just down the street from Michael's school and if I take it I will be teaching 13-16 year olds in an "elite" program which is basically preparing them to take the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) and pass it so that they can get accepted to a good university.  They like to hire people who have actual teaching experience to teach at those campuses, although I think Michael would be well suited to it as well.  It's kind of funny, I was reading the handbook about it and it said something to the effect of, "this course is to teach the test."  What an polar opposite from here in the US where there is such controversy of "teaching to the test," and as a professional teacher, we are taught that it is taboo to do so!!  If I take that position, my work schedule will be from 4-11 pm, and I will spend less hours actually in the classroom and more hours in the office grading work and doing paperwork.  It seems to be a very intense program, something completely different than I have ever done, so I am giving it a few days to think about it before I decide to accept it.  All of the foreign teachers teach speaking and writing, so that should be interesting.  I was hoping I'd get to teach reading!  :)

We also found out that we are going to be living and working in an area called Suji, or Suji-gu, which is a district of the city of Yongin.  Here is the wiki site about Yongin.  This is about 45 minutes south of Seoul, and pretty close to another large city called Suwon, which is actually the capital of the province, and the only remaining completely walled city in South Korea.  Cool!  Okay, here is how it works (I've been reading on wikipedia to figure it out!).  South Korea is divided into 8 provinces, and provinces are divided into cities & counties, and then districts.  We will be in the province called Gyeonggi-do (the same province that Seoul is located in), the city of Yongin-si, and the district of Suji-gu.  I'm not sure which county.  If the name has "do" after it, it is a province, "si" is a city, and "gu" is a district.  Not that any of you care about this, but some of you do know my fascination with maps so I am just sitting here loving it!!  Oh, also, Yongin is home to a theme park called Everland (operated by Samsung), which is ranked sixth in the world for amusement park attendance!  If you come visit, we might go!!

Alright, I'm sure there is something I am leaving out but I will think of it later.  I need to go review my lesson for teaching the 4th/5th grade class at church tomorrow morning.  And since I have decided that blogs are more fun to read when there are photos involved, I will post a couple of photos from a Korean meal that Michael and I made a few weeks ago.  He had the great idea to start finding Korean recipes online and making Korean meals on Saturday nights.  We've done it twice now, and we have also found a good Korean restaurant in Cabot, of all places!  It is called Kopan, and I found this online review of the restaurant.  I think they've ironed out their mistakes, though, because we went 2 nights in a row and were very pleased!

Okay, so here are a couple photos from when we made bulgogi--that means "fire meat."  We got the recipe from this website.  It was excellent, and we made it into lettuce-wraps with sticky jasmine rice.  YUM!!  I can't wait for Korean food!!  Oh, and notice the authentic Korean coasters on the table?  My school counselor, Kay, who is originally from Seoul, gave them to me last year for Christmas when she was my secret sister!  How cool is that?  Also, Kay is going to be in SK this summer for a month visiting her family, so we are excited to get to meet up with her over there also!

Okay, goodnight!!

~Leslie