One Step Closer to a New Home

Tomorrow is our last day here at Dankook University but today was our last full day.

This morning we had to present a 15 minute lesson plan in groups of 3 or 4. Since Shannon and I have been teaching for over 3 years it was no problem for us, but there were other less-experienced teachers who were stressed to the max.

For our lesson, we chose dream jobs as the theme and presented it along with our friend Randy Kim who was a little nervous since he had never taught before. It was a fun lesson and our instructor ranked us 3rd out of 14 groups so it definitely wasn't bad.

The best part of the lesson was making the Photoshopped images to accompany the theme. As you can see, we took pictures of ourselves in the classroom and then I photoshopped in our "dream jobs". The other teachers really liked it, especially when they realized that we had also superimposed our faces over the people.


Anyway, we also got our cell phones today and they should accept foreign calls so if anyone wants the number, please email us and we'll send them to you. The phones are really flash, too. They have all sorts of technological wonders built into them, for example Shannon and I can even video call each other. How cool is that?

The best part of the day was at 3pm when all of the Busan people (200 or so) were herded into one giant room and given the chance to meet our supervisors from our POE (provincial office of education). We finally know where we'll be in Busan! We don't have an address just yet but we know which part of Busan and which schools we'll be teaching at.

So, Shannon and I found out that we're going to be living in a part of Busan called Bansong. Bansong-dong is a region inside the district of Haeundae in the city of Busan.

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Shannon will be teaching at the Bansong Girls Middle School and I'll be teaching at the regular Bansong Middle School (we're not sure yet if my school is co-ed or not). From the map and from some Korean EPIK staff that we've talked to, it should be about half an hour from the city center as well as the most popular beach in Busan, Haeundae Beach. Most of the people we talked to said it was be a pretty nice location.

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Like I said earlier, tomorrow is our last day. From 9:00am - 9:40am we have to load our luggage onto the bus. Then we have our closing ceremony from 10:00am - 10:30am and then around 11:00 it's goodbye Dankook University and a 5-6 hour drive to Busan!

So, we don't have a mailing address just yet but we're one step closer!

Another note, this one at the end of the day

The classes we had today were great but tiring. There's a lot of information to digest and I know that I can't wait until orientation is over so that we can just get started doing what we do. A lot of this information is aimed at the extreme newbies who've never taught before but some of it is very useful, especially the stuff about Korean culture and working relationships.

One thing that is very different here is that when there is a problem, you don't go straight to the top boss. Instead, you go to the person just above you and then if they can't help you then they (not you) will go to the person just above them and then so forth. According to our instructors, our Korean co-teachers see us as cultural infants and tend to have a parental attitude toward us, as in "I must protect them and help them since they don't know how we do things here." If we bypass our Korean co-teachers in the hierarchy when we have a problem then the top boss will think that our co-teachers aren't being good parents and they'll feel very embarrassed, perhaps even betrayed. So, of course that's no good, but it is useful to know.

We had 4 lectures today:

1. Life as an EPIK Teacher
2. How to Co-Teach (we'll be team-teaching with a Korean teacher)
3. Songs & Chants (useful only for those brave people who chose to teach elementary school - myself not being one of them)
4. How to Teach Reading & Writing (actually a lot more fun than it sounds)

Notable things I came away with today:

• "As a foreigner it is sometimes best to let things go unexplained. To continue to seek a rational explanation will only result in frustration." (author unknown)
• "We're here to teach English, not change a culture." (one of our lecturers, Scott McLaughlin, on the topic of corporal punishment in the classrooms by our Korean co-teachers)

So now it's the end of the day but I decided not to go to our optional Korean classes tonight so that I could relax and unwind. One thing they teach you here is not to push yourself too hard and take a time out if you need one. It's a good thing to remember as well.

A brief note between classes

Today we had 4 lectures on a variety of different subjects. In order, they were:

1. Exploring Korea
2. The Korean Secondary School System
3. The Korean Elementary School System
4. The Theory & Practice of Teaching & Listening in Korea

They were all well done and gave us a lot to think about and mull over.

One of the moments that stuck with me was this:

• Instructor: "What are you teaching?"
• Everybody: "English!"
• Instructor: "Yes, but remember you are also teaching people and people are more important than English."

It was an interesting interchange and definitely something I think that all of us as teachers need to remember.

Now it's off to our first class on the Korean language!