Adventures in Teaching - Begin!/Aventuras em Encinando - Começa!

Joel and I had our first two days of teaching this week! After a whirlwind orientation of observing classes, asking a million questions, and absorbing as much as we could from the two teachers that we are replacing, we jumped in with both feet yesterday and began. We teach from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursday. We have to come in early during our first month of teaching (11 a.m.) to make sure we have time to plan our lessons and get into the rhythm of things, but the school serves free (and delicious!) lunch every day, so it is not a big deal (plus, the school has wireless capability, so we can bring our laptops in if we need to). The kids range in age from 6 or so to upper middle school (14) - we teach elementary-age kids from 3 to 6 and then middle school classes in the evenings. The elementary school classes are pretty simple (today I taught a beginning class about shapes and some of the older ones about insects), but the middle school classes can be pretty cool - Joel has a European history class, and I have two classes where we actually watch and discuss CNN news stories. Some of it is actually pretty interesting!

The kids all have so much energy, but many of them are enthusiastic and genuinely want to talk to us and learn. Middle school is a difficult age to work with, particularly in Korea, since the school curriculum starts to get pretty intense and the students have a lot of high-pressure tests. They are still pretty cool, though.

We are still in our transitional apartment, but we had a meeting with our school administrators today, and they told us that we should be able to move in mid next week. They are planning to replace the wallpaper and make a few improvements to the apartment, so that should be nice. We also went to the immigration office today and applied for our Alien Resident Cards. Soon we will be official legal immigrants!

We also had an awesome three-day weekend here in Gwangju last weekend. We decided to take some time to explore the city, so on Saturday we jumped on a bus and headed downtown. I wanted to go primarily to find the Gwangju International Center so we could get more information about Korean language classes, but when we arrived, we found ourselves in the middle of a rockin' party for "Red Festa," a festival commemorating the May 18th democratic uprising (there was a major protest against the South Korean Dictatorship here in the 80s, I think, and a subsequent bloody crackdown). The main drag had been closed off to cars and several different organizations had booths set up, and we even had groups of students ask to take a picture with us. Later in the afternoon we found German Bar, a bar downtown run by Mr. Song - a Korean who spent 15 years in Munich learning to brew German beer. He is a licensed beermaster (meister?) and brews his own beer, which is delicious. While we were there getting a drink, we met Sang, a neurologist here in Gwangju, who insisted on buying us a round - and then offered to show us around town on Monday!

We found the nearby Catholic church (and serendipitously wandered in just as Mass was starting), then spent the afternoon doing laundry in our coworkers' apartment. On Monday, true to his word, Sang picked us up and gave us the Gwangju Grand Tour, including bulgogi burgers for lunch, the Kim Dae Jung Convention Center (which was hosting a tea expo!), and the mall by the bus station. Joel has pictures - bug him to post them here!

Hopefully this weekend we will get a change to go to Mudeung mountain, which is just outside of town and supposedly has a awesome hike up to a Buddhist temple. I'll let you know if we make it up!