The Home, the Office, and the Adjustments
Posted by Afrojew2 | | Posted On Sunday, October 25, 2009 at 1:26 AM
So, it’s officially five weeks into the Korea experiment and I’m just starting to get settled in. Routines are forming, new friendships are burgeoning, work is stabilizing (kind of), and home is starting to feel a little more like it. Oh, and I got paid for the first time last week, even more than expected. Payday makes everything better. So let’s talk daily life.
My apartment is… interesting. It’s the second floor in the back of this building, above a restaurant and below my Korean landlady.
We’ll start with the good. It’s free. Its also about a five minute walk to my school, a seven minute walk to a shopping center, a ten minute walk to the subway, a twelve minute walk to the University area, a 30 minute walk from a beautiful lake (reservoir) park, a one minute walk from a convenience store, and a two minute walk to several Wang Galbi (Suwon’s famous beef ribs) places.
Other than that it’s just a place to sleep. Which brings me to the bad. Well, I say bad, but it’s really just a question of adjustment which, after a month, is approaching normality. First, I have to turn on the hot water and let it warm up for 10 minutes before I use it… every time. That’s not too bad though, I’ve already got a system down. Second, there’s no A/C. That hasn’t caused my any problems thus far because it gets nice and cool at night. We’ll see how I fare in the summer. Last, the bathroom. My toilet, sink, shower, and washing machine are all within five feet of each other and all drain through the same pipe, the shower and washing machine water going through a drain in the floor. Yes, clogging is a problem. This was all a bit of a shock at first, and it’s taken some getting used to. Now, while it’s not my favorite room in the house, it’s become the norm. I should say, I don’t mind this kind of situation while traveling, but I’m just not used to staring down 6 months to a year of less comfort than I’m accustomed to. Which brings us back to the word of the day: adjustment.
My job is… growing on me. The first day was pretty awful. Not that the teaching was especially difficult, but I had no idea what I was doing and it felt like I was the one being taught. Not a good feeling when you’ve got 35 pairs of eyes on you the whole time. The next day and the rest of the week was infinitely better. I learned how to do the lesson after many repetitions and by the end of the week I felt much better about life. My second week was even better than the first. I started to loosen up “on stage” and I’m getting more comfortable acting like a fool, which my kids (4th, 5th, and 6th grade) just love. Also, I met my special class for the first time. The special class is a group of 20 students from all three grades who are especially advanced in the language. They understand my instructions and we can actually have conversations. The only difficult part about that class is that it meets for two hours a day, three days a week, so there’s a lot of lesson planning involved, and I have to take attendance using their Korean names which I never pronounce right. Oh, and they all try to steal the chocolate I give out as incentive when the class is over. So needless to say, I’m enjoying my job a lot more now that I was. Granted, I haven’t taught a full week yet. My first week was 22 teaching hours, the second week was 19, last week was 23, and I’m supposed to teach 34.
My school is… wonderful. My co-teachers are spectacular. They help me out immensely. My handler, Mi-ae, has taken me to the doctor three times, the immigration office twice, and gotten me faster internet, among many other things. She also took me out for the most amazing meal of King Crab last week. Joy (her English name) is a wonderful, strong woman balancing 3 young kids and her full time teaching job while her husband is living about 2 hours away working for a promotion. She loves talking to me and speaks great English. Mrs. Kim is soft-spoken and doesn’t speak English very well, but we get along fine and she helps out a lot with her classes.
My classroom is almost palatial. And the students come in every day at lunch to clean it for me. I’m a lenient taskmaster. Step into my office.
My social life is… growing. Kind of. I’ve met many foreigners through Meetup.com, a website designed to put people living abroad in contact with other people in their area. I’ve gone to a few meet-ups and met some interesting people. I’ve also met some nice people living around Suwon, and I’m making fast friends with the teachers at my school. My teacher buddy Jang and I went out for a hike and some galbi last weekend.
The problem is most days I’m too tired from teaching to do anything social. I just want to run home and collapse in bed. I’ve heard that’s how it is for new teachers… there’s a long adjustment period. Regardless, I’ve done at least one new thing every weekend since I’ve been here. I have not left the greater Seoul area yet, but that will happen soon. I’m planning a trip somewhere to be determined. It’s difficult because most of the things I want to do in Korea take more than a weekend. Traveling becomes something entirely different when you’re working as well. My goal is to find one thing every day that makes me say “wow, I’m in fucking Korea.” I’ve been pretty successful so far.
My apartment is… interesting. It’s the second floor in the back of this building, above a restaurant and below my Korean landlady.
We’ll start with the good. It’s free. Its also about a five minute walk to my school, a seven minute walk to a shopping center, a ten minute walk to the subway, a twelve minute walk to the University area, a 30 minute walk from a beautiful lake (reservoir) park, a one minute walk from a convenience store, and a two minute walk to several Wang Galbi (Suwon’s famous beef ribs) places.
Other than that it’s just a place to sleep. Which brings me to the bad. Well, I say bad, but it’s really just a question of adjustment which, after a month, is approaching normality. First, I have to turn on the hot water and let it warm up for 10 minutes before I use it… every time. That’s not too bad though, I’ve already got a system down. Second, there’s no A/C. That hasn’t caused my any problems thus far because it gets nice and cool at night. We’ll see how I fare in the summer. Last, the bathroom. My toilet, sink, shower, and washing machine are all within five feet of each other and all drain through the same pipe, the shower and washing machine water going through a drain in the floor. Yes, clogging is a problem. This was all a bit of a shock at first, and it’s taken some getting used to. Now, while it’s not my favorite room in the house, it’s become the norm. I should say, I don’t mind this kind of situation while traveling, but I’m just not used to staring down 6 months to a year of less comfort than I’m accustomed to. Which brings us back to the word of the day: adjustment.
My job is… growing on me. The first day was pretty awful. Not that the teaching was especially difficult, but I had no idea what I was doing and it felt like I was the one being taught. Not a good feeling when you’ve got 35 pairs of eyes on you the whole time. The next day and the rest of the week was infinitely better. I learned how to do the lesson after many repetitions and by the end of the week I felt much better about life. My second week was even better than the first. I started to loosen up “on stage” and I’m getting more comfortable acting like a fool, which my kids (4th, 5th, and 6th grade) just love. Also, I met my special class for the first time. The special class is a group of 20 students from all three grades who are especially advanced in the language. They understand my instructions and we can actually have conversations. The only difficult part about that class is that it meets for two hours a day, three days a week, so there’s a lot of lesson planning involved, and I have to take attendance using their Korean names which I never pronounce right. Oh, and they all try to steal the chocolate I give out as incentive when the class is over. So needless to say, I’m enjoying my job a lot more now that I was. Granted, I haven’t taught a full week yet. My first week was 22 teaching hours, the second week was 19, last week was 23, and I’m supposed to teach 34.
My school is… wonderful. My co-teachers are spectacular. They help me out immensely. My handler, Mi-ae, has taken me to the doctor three times, the immigration office twice, and gotten me faster internet, among many other things. She also took me out for the most amazing meal of King Crab last week. Joy (her English name) is a wonderful, strong woman balancing 3 young kids and her full time teaching job while her husband is living about 2 hours away working for a promotion. She loves talking to me and speaks great English. Mrs. Kim is soft-spoken and doesn’t speak English very well, but we get along fine and she helps out a lot with her classes.
My classroom is almost palatial. And the students come in every day at lunch to clean it for me. I’m a lenient taskmaster. Step into my office.
My social life is… growing. Kind of. I’ve met many foreigners through Meetup.com, a website designed to put people living abroad in contact with other people in their area. I’ve gone to a few meet-ups and met some interesting people. I’ve also met some nice people living around Suwon, and I’m making fast friends with the teachers at my school. My teacher buddy Jang and I went out for a hike and some galbi last weekend.
The problem is most days I’m too tired from teaching to do anything social. I just want to run home and collapse in bed. I’ve heard that’s how it is for new teachers… there’s a long adjustment period. Regardless, I’ve done at least one new thing every weekend since I’ve been here. I have not left the greater Seoul area yet, but that will happen soon. I’m planning a trip somewhere to be determined. It’s difficult because most of the things I want to do in Korea take more than a weekend. Traveling becomes something entirely different when you’re working as well. My goal is to find one thing every day that makes me say “wow, I’m in fucking Korea.” I’ve been pretty successful so far.
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