All of a sudden I feel like I got really busy, so I haven't really been on this thing. Now I'm trying to update and the internet at Paris Baguette is less than stellar. The owner wants me to teach him English, though... so I'll keep coming here until it pays off (in free coffee of course)
:)
My second real-life payday happened last week and HOLY MOLEY is it nice to make $$$. I want people to understand something. If you're not pleased with your salary and/or schedule in the states, COME WORK HERE. Honestly we probably work 50% less than what is considered 'standard', and make double. Not to mention I will never have to make a 7:50 a.m. train again. Just saaaaaaaaaaaayyyyin.
Week 11 just passed and the end of my first term with Chungdahm is almost here. During week 10, all students had their level-up tests (just 3 straight hours of reading, listening, writing, speaking evaluations), and it seemed as though most of my students tried extremely hard to get to the next level of classes. What I thought was going to be stressful ended up being a piece of cake on the instructor side... honestly, teachers might say that they hate standardized testing procedures -- but that's some bs in my opinion. I can think back to the hours spent at Queen of the Universe (yeah, that's what my elementary school was called) taking state-wide tests while my teachers were just chiiiillllinnnn all day.
Another thing that I've become a part of here is our branch's student newspaper, the PTown Post. They needed a new editor-in-chief of sorts, so Vasuda (another newbie coworker) and I have been working every week to get it together. This term we had a lot of student input, and some of their articles are unreal. Our cover story was written by a Masters student (the highest level of courses at Chungdahm) and it discusses the ever-so-controversial and timely debate over the necessity of Hagwons, or academies. **Hagwons are the 'after-school schools' that so many Korean students attend, oftentimes more than 1 each evening. Some of my students finish school, hop from one academy to the next, and then come to their 3-hour English class with me. (And they still work their butts off. Rare breed of kids, I'm tellin ya.)
The PTown Post also has some great poetry written by Masters students, a comic strip drawn by Ann, one of my elementary students, and the Shout Outs section is pretty hilarious. Once we send it to print I'll try to get it on here somehow.
Welp, I gotta get to sleep extra early since our co-worker camping trip turned out to be an absolute success. TOooOOOooo much fun. - - - I could not possibly be happier that I was placed at Pyeongchon, these people RULE.
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