Snippets from Week 1

Well, I survived the first week of school. It has been an absolutely INSANE week. We started classes on Monday, but by the time Monday rolled around, that was about all we knew. None of us in the English Speaking/Writing Program (hereafter known as ESWP) had a class schedule. So, we each sat in our respective office/classroom and waited for students to show up.

I sat and waited, and waited and waited. Around 10:30, the guy who is our English speaking contact with the rest of the university came in and told us that we had to go to the chapel service at noon to be introduced to the university. Students are required to go to chapel every day, but since the whole thing is in Korean, we are not required to attend. We were met near the chapel by the assistant dean of academic affairs, and he told us to follow him.

We were all pretty surprised when he opened a door and we walked onto the stage in front of the entire student body! We sat there, front and center, and listened to an awards ceremony in Korean for almost 45 minutes before we were introduced. Introductions consisted of the university president telling where we were from, what university we had attended and what our major was in Korean and then we were supposed to bow and go sit back down. By far the hardest part was trying to look interested in an awards ceremony that I couldn't understand for 45 minutes ;-)

My first class came in around 2:45. We had to do placement tests for every single student, so the first day was spent in having students write essays to introduce themselves and letting them ask questions. The most popular questions were:

• Where are you from?
• Do you have a boyfriend?
• Do you like Korean/spicy food?
• How long will you stay in Korea?
• What is your favorite thing about Korea?
• Do you want to marry a Korean man?

My next class came in at 4:10. They were my IT English students, and I really like them a lot! It turns out that I get along really well with people who are a little bit nerdy no matter where in the world we are ;-) I have six students in that class. There are four boys and two girls. They got the same round of essay writing/questioning too.

On Tuesday, we administered individual speaking tests and written grammar/idiom tests. Each essay, written exam and speaking test had to be graded and ranked by level by Wednesday at 1:00, so it was a pretty crazy time. We got all of our students ranked, then we had a meeting to sort them out by levels. We had figured out our schedules, more or less, by that point. On Wednesday, I had two advanced classes, one intermediate class and IT English. 

My 8:00 class is advanced and it has five students in it. Four of my students are Korean, and one of them is from Cambodia. I was most pleasantly surprised to discover that there are some international students at my university. Most of them are from Cambodia and mainland China. My 10:25 class only had two students in it, but I found out today that their class schedules had changed, so they are going to be taking an 8:00 class with a different teacher now.

My 2:45 class is my biggest, with ten students. They are all at an advanced level as well. There is one girl who spent a year and a half living in Canada, and she is very anxious to continue to practice her English. One of my students is from China, and he is pretty anxious to go back. The other eight students are from Korea, and most of them are nursing majors. The students who seem to be the most interested in learning English are the computer/technology majors, education majors and nursing majors. Almost all of my students fall into those groups. I have a few odd ones out who are social welfare students. 

I currently have an open class at 10:25 because of the two girls having to switch their time. I don't know what the university is going to put in that slot. I have heard rumors of a TOEIC (Test Of English for International Communication) speaking class. Who knows what will end up going there.

I also met my younger students for the first time today. I spent 90 minutes a week teaching short English classes to 4-6 year olds at the childhood learning center that is on campus. The kids are so adorable!! They are all a comical mixture of really excited and terribly shy. I think that I am the first foreigner that most of them have ever talked to.

I have six classes of kids for about 15 minutes each. Today we practiced introducing ourselves. I don't know how many hundreds of times I said "My name is Sarah. What is your name?" today. We also talked about age, family members and days of the week depending on how advanced the class was. After I was done teaching classes, the teachers at the center invited me to come to lunch with them. They were all really really sweet, and I liked them quite a lot! Most of them speak very little English, and I speak practically no Korean. It is amazing how much you can communicate using single words and wild hand movements. I think that I will be a master at charades after spending a year teaching English ;-)

The last bit of exciting news is that I was offered the chance to teach an additional class. It is part of the lifelong learning center affiliated with the university. I will be teaching a wide variety of ages/backgrounds/professions for one hour each week. The students are apparently all at a fairly basic level of English, and they just want the chance to do some interaction. Registration for that class isn't closed yet, but it will be somewhere around ten students. I'm excited to teach people who are seeking knowledge, and it is pretty nice because they are increasing my pay by a fairly significant amount for doing this!

Really the only other interesting thing that has happened is that Typhoon Kompasu passed over the general Seoul area on Thursday. Everyone was expecting it to be a pretty terrible storm, because contrary to the usual pattern, the storm strengthened between Okinawa, Japan and Korea. It hit much earlier than was predicted. The whole thing was over by about 10:00 in the morning. There were lots of trees that had been uprooted, and a few of them snapped in half. Lots of branches were down, and there were random signs and sheets of metal and plexiglass on the street. From what I've heard, there wasn't any significant damage and nobody was killed. Hopefully this means that the end of monsoon season is near! I'm getting pretty tired of the nearly constant rain!

I think that I'll stop now ;-) It has been a full week so I will spare you any more details ;-)