My kids were really
awesome today. I greatly prefer my Monday-Wednesday-Friday to my
Tuesday-Thursday. I have kindergarten in the am and the pm on MWF,
whereas on TT I have kindergarten am and then two math classes: one for kids at
normal speed and one for three boys who are a little slow and quite poorly
behaved. It's my hardest class to teach, and there are half as many
students as my next smallest class. I had my two kindergartens today
though, and a few cute things happened.
Thomas, who is really
good at English, and very funny and talkative in general, was putting away his
activity book because he finished early, and on his way back to his desk he
passed a chair that wasn't pushed in, so he pushed it in. Mind you, he's
only six or seven years old. Sonya, who is all the way across the room,
calls out because it was her seat, and she was just getting something out of
her backpack. He goes back to the chair, pulls it out and waits for her
to be done at her cubby (which was about a minute or so) and walk back over to
her desk, then holds the chair for her and helps her scoot in. Seriously,
I know fully grown men that don't do that. He's seven. Chivalry,
apparently, is not dead in Korea.
It's a good thing Linda
is adorable, because she is not very bright. This is not mean, it is a
fact. She has been in this school learning English for two years now, and
she can't say or understand ANYTHING. I ask her today what she was drawing
and she stared at me blankly for about three minutes and then just looked away
and started staring at the wall. Half the time she can't keep her focus
for more than ten seconds and she just stares off into space, or watches
someone else do their work completely slack-jawed. Even when my teaching partner, Grace, talks to
her in Korean, she doesn't respond or show any signs of understanding.
But then she smiles and I forget my frustration, because she is the
cutest child I think I've ever seen. She has curly hair and cute clothes,
but the main power of her cuteness comes totally from her smile. She
doesn't have her two middle teeth on top, and one of her middle teeth on the
bottom, and when she smiles she does so with her mouth partly open and all her teeth
(and the spaces where her teeth will soon be) show. It makes me melt.
And it's seriously a good thing, because she can be pretty frustrating to
work with.
After work today, Tonya
asked me if I was hungry, which I was because I hadn't eaten a real meal yet.
Then Shannon said she and Adeel were going out for Turkish food after
they got off work at 7:30 (we got off at 6) so Tonya came back to my apartment
and hung out until 7:30 and then we all met up. The food was really good.
Garlic Naan is my new favorite thing, mostly because it’s basically
garlic bread, which was my old favorite thing. The chicken kebab wrap was
really good too. Then we went out to Baskin Robbin, which is always good.
Tonya and I get along pretty well, we discovered. We watched
Superbad (or part of it) and just chilled out, and then went to this cute
clothes shop on my street. She's really fun and cool. We're talking
about going to China together over Christmas break. Shannon and I are getting
along well still. We're all going out to
Now Bar, an international bar in Yeongtong- the neighborhood where our school
is- tomorrow night. We might grab a few drinks first and possibly karaoke
after (which means I will watch them karaoke as I am still terrified of singing
in front of people and no amount of alcohol makes me forget this fear).
It should be fun. I'm glad I'm getting to know the area better.
The restaurant was actually near Suwon Station, which is the main subway
stop in Suwon. It has a mall on top of
the subway station, and a movie theater on top of the mall. There are
lots of shops, and small food tables on the street, and TONS of people. In
addition to the subway it is also a larger train station for getting to farther
away cities or getting to Seoul much faster.
I get the feeling that I will be spending a lot of time here, since so
many things are centrally and conveniently located.
I’ve realized that the
neighborhood where I live, called Gokbanjeondong, is very isolated. On one side there is a large field that is
blocked off for soon-to-come construction, on another side there is a freeway,
and on a third side there are several large rice paddies. Just to get to Yeongtong, which is a
neighborhood where many of Suwon’s English teachers live and work, or Suwon
Station, which I mentioned has many of the things necessary to get around and
properly socialize, it takes about 25 minutes by bus, and there is no subway
nearby. More often than not we end up
taking cabs to get places, particularly when there are a few of us going. Part of that is that cabs in Korea are not
that expensive (nowhere near as bad as the cabs I encountered in New York City). It’s also partly that the buses that run
through my neighborhood are not convenient and rarely go exactly where you want
to be. The two buses that do go directly
from the nearest bus stop to Suwon Station actually take almost an hour because
they take a very circuitous route.
It is a bit frustrating
to live somewhere that is so remote, particularly when I was told this would
not be the case. During my interview
with the school I asked about where our apartments were in relation to the
school. Would I be able to walk? I was told that some of the teachers walk to
school, and that it is only about fifteen minutes or maybe twenty away. It’s barely fifteen minutes in a cab, unless
there is no traffic. To walk it takes
around 45 minutes, and no one does it.
Because I had been told it was so close to the school, all the research
I had done was about Yeongtong, the neighborhood where the school is located,
which is a really great place to live.
Gokban? Not so much.
I mentioned this to one
of the other teachers, and she told me that sometimes Korean companies will do
exactly that: tell you what you want to hear rather than the truth. It gets them what they want, so I can
understand why they do it. However, it’s
not great for the person being passed creative realities.
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