Seoul Zoo

Thanks to middle school exams (kind of like term finals for the middle school students... it's a big deal here), I didn't have to work this Saturday! I had an actual WEEKEND!! YAY! :D

To celebrate, Tara and I went out to the Seoul Zoo.



It was lots of fun and totally EMPTY!



That might have had something to do with the monsoon, but who knows. It was pretty much pouring buckets of rain most of the time we were there.



We got to the zoo before noon and first thing Tara did was buy a poncho since she didn't bring her umbrella. She later gave in and bought an ugly, overpriced umbrella because it was just raining too hard for a poncho. Even with umbrella and poncho, we still got totally soaked. But it is a really awesome zoo!

Most of the animals were hiding inside where we couldn't see them. Smart. The giraffes were curious and kept looking out at us though.



There were these ads for Nickolodeon all over the place, too. This brought up a good point. Does Dora teach Koreans to speak Spanish or English?



Tara posed with the flamingos. They're all matchy! :D



Then we stopped by the Ape Jungle.



Lots of monkeys. While we were watching the baboons, one of them got a little excited and jumped one of the girls. It was awkward.

Also, we were sharing a bag of trail mix and they kept STARING AT US. It was a little creepy. This little guy got angry that we weren't sharing and turned his back on us. Sad. :(



While we were looking at the monkeys this family came up and the kids started speaking English. At first we thought it was just to impress the foreigners, but it turned out that they were from Canada visiting their Korean grandparents. They were so cute. :)

While we were walking, we found this fun thing where you could put your feet in animal feet (real sized? I don't know) and look at yourself in the mirror to see yourself with animal feet. Rhino feet!!



Did I mention that it was raining? The whole time? POURING?!? I mean, I'm an Oregonian, but we also have really great drainage systems so when you walk down the road it's not PUDDLE! PUDDLE! RIVER!!! As you walk. I think this one is too large to be considered a puddle. A small pond maybe? I'm sure a family of ducks would be quite happy living here.



We did get to see some lions, which was cool. To do so, we had to peer through the thick curtains of rain. All the lions were under their little umbrella things.



There were several places that were not affected by the rain as far as viewing the animals went. One of those was the nursery where they had BABIES!! There was a monkey, a gorilla, otters, two lions (too CUTE!!!), and these little baby monkey things!! Look at them sleeping like adorable little angels!



I did feel bad at one point. These two little kids were screaming at the baby gorilla and tapping at the glass while their parents watched and laughed while the baby got angrier and angrier, throwing itself at the glass and showing its teeth. It was kind of sad and I wonder what the parents were thinking. Did they think the gorilla was playing and having fun?! It was throwing it's body against the glass! What part of that says, "Hey! Let's play!"? Jeez...

Anyways. There was another part of the zoo that was largely unaffected by the rain: the ocean animals!! The only ocean animals that weren't there were the penguins. Sad day.



We even got to see them feed the seals. They were passing out plastic gloves and letting you throw fish. Isn't that cool? I don't know why we didn't grab a glove and a fish... too busy taking pictures I guess.



In one of the seal enclosures was a new baby seal!! The big daddy was looking kind of angry, yelling and running around. But the baby was so wrinkley and cute looking.



Turns out they have a seal and dolphin show! Cool! We got us some tickets and sat down to watch. The little girl in front of us wasn't too sure about this at first and hid behind her parents.



She eventually came around and sat next to her dad. What a little cutey!



The show was fun. Tara was not amused by the cuteness of the dolphins because dolphins are the rapists of the sea. It is also It was still a very good show and the dolphins were able to keep it G rated. I think it should also be noted that the music for the dolphins' entrance was the theme from Star Wars. You have to wonder how many people there actually knew it was from Star Wars? My students don't know anything about Star Wars... Anyways! Here is a short video of part of the show for your enjoyment.



Along with cool animals, dolphin tricks, and rain (rain rain rain), there were some other cool things that we found while we were there.

First, these awesome toys. I have one popular toy: a stuffed animal on a stick. However, I think the rolling inflatable duck pet might be just as cool (if not cooler) than my octopus on a stick.



There were also some exercise bikes looking out over the lions. You know, just in case you want to pretend you are biking after the lions.




We went into a convenience store for a snack and there was this big shelf of foreign snack! There were even flags to tell you where the snacks were from!



And what's more American than fishy crackers that taste like cheese, right?



Last, but certainly not least, a fine example of Konglish. Konglish can be two things. 1) Speaking with poor grammar and thick accent (that's how my students describe it at least) or 2) Bad translations.

There is nothing really grammatically incorrect about this, but I don't think the instructions they wanted to give us were really "Just a moment please." Just saying.



We finished off the day with Korean barbecue. Then it was off to my baby apartment to peel off the rain soaked clothes and lay out my collection of damp ticket stubs to dry before I glue them in my scrapbook.

Coming up next week: a trip where I will actually (hopefully) FIND the Vietnamese Embassy instead of wandering around Namdaemun area (which, I have discovered, is not even close to where I needed to be... oh well).

Dear, Blog... why are you so boring?

So, I've been looking at my posts from the past few weeks thinking, "When did living in Korea become so boring?" Sorry, folks. It looks like I'm just a boring person. My schedule is totally messed right now. I have Tuesdays and Sundays off (yuck) so my desire to spend my days off running around Seoul instead of doing errands is becoming greatly diminished.

HOWEVER! There is hope!

Middle school exams are coming up which means I might actually get one or two Saturdays off! Why is having Saturday off so very important? Well, that's the day all my friends can go do things. This weekend, Tara and I are thinking of going to the zoo. THE ZOO! I <3 the zoo!

There is also my trip to Vietnam to look forward to in a few weeks. As well as the week with my baby sister, Jesi!! YAY!! :D

Really. I haven't done anything that exciting or picture worthy these last few weeks and I feel kind of bad for not posting any adventures in a while. Since I have no new pictures for you, I suppose I will post these old pictures of my baby sister from her 16th birthday (for which I made a rainbow fail cake).


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Obviously, she very much enjoyed it.

Things I like about my job

I got my first job when I was 16, the summer after my sophomore year of high school. In total, I have had seven jobs since then: Peddler's Pack (a local rubber stamp store), Michal's Arts and Crafts, Cosmoprof: professional beauty supply, BYU Catering (for 2 months... horrible), a janitor for a semester, window display designer for the BYU Bookstore (BEST. JOB. EVER!), and, now, a teacher for Chungdahm Institute (or CDI).

As with any job, there are good things and bad things about the job I have now. In this post, I'd like to focus on the things I like about the job.

• Pre-departure help: CDI was very helpful in getting us prepared for our trip to Korea. We had help getting tickets, visas, etc. It made getting ready for the move that much easier.
  
• Training: I have mixed feeling about their training policies, but I do like that we had a week to settle in and acquaint ourselves with the curriculum (well, it ended up we had two weeks) before we teach.
  
• The pay: Per hour, I get paid a pretty decent amount. I've heard that this is one of the higher paying hagwons in Korea. I'm pretty happy when I get my paycheck each month. :)
• The workbook: I have mixed feelings about how we use the workbook, but for the most part I love that we use one. It's good for the students because they know exactly what they will be expected to accomplish and they can study accordingly. I also like it because, well, it makes MY job ten times easier! All I have to do is prepare the answers in the text book and think of some supplementary material to go along with it.
• Same schedule every week: This is something that, when you get a normal job, you come to expect. However, I've worked enough retail where the schedule changes every week that a consistent schedule is a blessing.
• Half days: I had to cut back my hours because of my voice and, as such, there are several days a week where I only work 3 hours instead of six. This is rather nice because I can rest my voice more and it makes the day go by faster.
• The people: We have some very cool people at our branch. I can't believe that some have been here as long as they have. It's great to hear their stories about some of the students. Another thing I love about teachers in general is that they are usually more than willing to give advice and help.
• Students: Some of those kids are seriously adorable. There's a group of girls who come and find me and tell me how they are doing now that they are no longer in my class. They are an awesome group of kids.

All in all, my job is pretty good. Of course, there are some things I dislike about by hagwon. But I'll save that for another post. :)

My Job

I haven't really done anything that exciting these past few weeks so I am at a bit of a loss for what to write about. I could tell you about the training for the program changes for next term (boorring) or about how much fun I had shopping in Myeong Dong (again), but somehow I don't think that would be all that interesting to read about.

I think this is a good time to tell you a little bit more about what I actually DO here in Korea. Particularly about the "school" I work at.


That would be me looking like an idiot in front of the main level of my school (we actually take up 3 floors of a business building... it's kind of strange).

I say "school" because it is not actually a school. Yes, kids come here to learn, but it is actually a hagwon or after school academy. There are branches all over Korea and some in China, Japan, and the Phillipines. There is even an immersion school in Vancouver, Canada where students can go study for three months away from home! Sounds like a terror to me!



These are my class rules. Of course I caught a kid trying to cross out English with KOREAN. Don't you love that he was going to write KOREAN in English? It makes me laugh. :)

Students come to Chungdahm 3 hours at a time usually twice a week. A normal full 6 hour teaching day for me starts at 3pm when I come and print off all the handouts, tests, and other class papers for the lessons I prepped for the day. I might load a youtube video or find some supplementary pictures to go along with the day's topic as well.

Class starts at 4pm. I have anywhere from two to fifteen students in any given class. This is really nice after having thirty-five plus students in my student teaching classes.

I teach two different programs at Chungdahm, both for very different levels of English learners. Each level has a workbook in which we complete a lesson a day. In my Memory Giga (lower level English skills) we start off reviewing homework, a short review test (on the first class of the week; we meet twice a week in this class) and a preview of some of the vocabulary they will see that day. Then we do a few activities including word associations and using context clues to find the meanings of words before our break after the first hour.

Once the kids come back from their five minute break, we start reading a short story and answer comprehension questions. Because this is a lower level class, we focus on simple skills like looking for pronouns (these really throw the kids because Korean does not have words like he, she, or it to replace nouns) and transition words to help them comprehend what is going on in the story.

Then there is a short listening section where they pretty much listen to someone read the story and they fill in the missing words on a worksheet. I personally find this portion pretty pointless.

After some more reading skill practice and a second break, we have group project time. The students are given a task that they must complete with a group and then present at the end of the class.


I like to post some of the more artistic projects on my (nicely labeled) bulletin board. :)

The other program I teach is called the 2020 Project. I teach level 4 2020 which is mid-level English skills. Korea is really focused on the year 2020 as a goal year I've noticed. Many companies are saying that such and such will be improved by the year 2020. This class focuses on developing the essential traits of a global leader. Each term we read two books that Chungdahm has determined will be considered "classic" young adult novels by the year 2020. We focus less on reading skills (they are supposed to learn about those in their other English classes at Chungdahm) and focus more on getting them to talk critically about the ideas presented in the book. We don't actually do much reading in the class itself since they are supposed to do all the reading for homework at home (you can see part of the problem).

Like Memory, the last hour is spent in group work. However, rather than a task, in the 2020 program, students are given a problem that they need to provide a solution to and then present to the class.

And that's my daily schedule for the most part. On a full day, I will have two 3-hour classes back to back. One at 4pm to 7pm and one at 7pm to 10pm. 4pm is Elementary school classes and 7pm classes are mostly middle school.

To give you a more visual idea of where I work, here is a promotional video for Chungdahm. This is even of my branch: the Mokdong branch!! This was taken about a year before I came, so I'm not in it (sad) but a lot of the people in the video are people that I work with.



Of course, the school is not as perfect as they make it look in the video. I want to know what they did to make those classrooms in the video look like they don't have "Blow Up Chungdahm" buttons graffiti-ed all over the wall. They look practically clean! Gasp! I'll give you a better idea about some of the great things about the hagwon and some of the crappier things about the school in a later post. :)