First Day of School!

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(Same pictures as FB posted to webshots)

So yesterday was my first day at Froebel School! A person from my school was meeting me at my apartment at 10am to take me to school so I woke up nice and early to have some breakfast and tea, and to take my time getting ready for the day. I also got to skype my mom on "borrowed" internet :D

Charles (thats the guy) asked me if I had had breakfast, but since he came about 10 mins early I told him I hadn't. He is korean but speaks very good English, but even then its still difficult to understand sometimes so when he said "McDonalds" I had no idea that he assumed I wanted McDonalds breakfast. So I smiled and nodded and went along with it until we passed a sushi restaurant and I looked inside, clearly interested, and so he was like "oh you want korean food?!" haha, well...yes I would like to eat Korean food...? (still not getting we were on our way to McDonalds). Anyway, we stopped in this place and he asked me if he could order for both of us and of course (since the menu was completely in korean) I said yes please! So he ordered us "breakfast" and this is what we got.

Two kinds of sushi, a fish soup, kimchee, and a spicy noodle dish with half a hard boiled egg. AND he treated (Korean style - if you go out the elder or person of higher status pays for the meal)

So we take the bus to Froebel which is about a 20-25 min ride so not too bad.

I was introduced to all the teachers (foreign and korean) and everyone was so nice with big smiles. They call the teachers by their first name followed by "teacher" (So I am Meghan Teacher). The students will call me that also, which is super cute when a little korean kid says it if you can imagine (: When I walked into a classroom of 6 year olds they all smiled and waved and said "new teacher! new teacher!" It was pretty adorable.

It is the last week of the school year here so its pretty hectic. The school is also expanding two floors so people are moving desks around, getting schedules ready, finishing up assessments and planning new student orientation and all the general chaos revolving around a turnover of that sort. They also put on an end of the year musical drama performance, which I have the pleasure of sitting in on yesterday, today and tomorrow.

This is a picture of all the kids lining up and parents in the back ready to watch the performance.

This is my school from across the street. The first few floors are the classrooms and stuff, and the upper floors are where all the childrens books are published. Froebel is the leading publisher of childrens books here. I really like the rainbow doors (:

I found out I will be teaching 6 year olds (4-5 years old in our terms...in Korea everyone turns a year older at the lunar new year no matter when your birthday). My classes I will be teaching are "Literacy Play" (basically taking a theme such as "supermarket" and learning vocabulary associated with it - fruits; eggs; cashier; etc. - and then doing role playing to apply the vocab and imitate that situation; "Gym" (pretty self explanatory, I have a lot of creative freedom with this so I will have to come up with active games that get them moving); and "Musical Drama" which basically means I will put together a simple play that goes along to a song. I dont know which afternoon classes I will be teaching yet, but I will keep you updated when I find out!

Overall I had a very good first day. After school, I came home to Rachel who was unpacking and hanging out since she didn't have to work. We made dinner plans with a couple who live near us. One works at CIS (Rach's school) and the other works at my school. They have been here 6 months so they kinda get whats going on and its nice since each of them can give us advice specific to our school. We met up with them and they took us to a really neat restaurant (one of the million near our apartment). The restaurants here tend to have half of the seating at regular tables and half where you take off your shoes and sit on a cushion on a heated floor. We sat on the heated floor and there was a fryer in the middle of our table. Of course, I got giddy right away...I LOVE stuff like that. Anyway, we talked with them while the servers brought out raw meat, kimchee, bean sprouts, garlic cloves, raw onion, etc and put it on our fryer. A few times one of them would come over and pour something on the fryer and light it on fire! Here is a picture of the meal:

They were very nice and helpful about our schools and all of our questions. Turns out they only live a few blocks from us too! They are also from MN (small world!).

So for some reason koreans tend to put random pieces of furniture out on the side streets for either the garbage to pick up or for English teachers on a budget to pick up and carry home because they have no closets or dressers, hahaha. So Rach and I spotted a table and I went to take it, but it being my first time swiping random furnishings from the back alleys I was a little hesitant when I saw a lady inside the store the table was in front of. So I made eye contact with her and pointed to the table and made a motion of me taking it with me down the street. She came out smiling and made the motion of "yes please take it its all yours!" so I took it and carried it all the way home. It is currently Rach's nightstand. Tonight we spotted a bookshelf and a sweet chest with glass doors. Yep. We took them. It took two of us to grab the chest and haul it up our stairs (a pretty comical sight, no doubt) and then we went back for the bookshelf. While we were trying to get a grasp on it and haul it over to our apartment, a Korean guy around our age came over from across the street and asked us in English "where are you from?" We sure felt awesome telling him "America" as we were hauling a random bookshelf from the front of some apartment down the street over to our door haha but he knew what we were doing and actually offered to help us carry it. He carried it up the stairs for us and didnt know much English but we all just smiled alot and it seemed to get the point across. He then came back and knocked at our door, and get this, brought us little wet wipes to clean the furniture off because it was a little dirty from being out on the street. He was so friendly, not creepy or threatening in the least and the experience pretty much made my night. (:

Rach and I also explored the Olympic grounds and found the LG Twins baseball stadium. Thats right...their baseball team is called the Twins. The logo is pretty much the same as well which makes it even more fun. We can't wait to go to some games! Especially since the stadium is within walking distance of our apartment!

Speaking of walking...we will walk a MINIMUM of about 40 mins/day. Which will be great, but at the moment our legs are kinda sore :p

Since this is the LONGEST post in the history of the world I am going to let you all digest this and pick up with my experience sometime later this week. I hope you all have a fantastic day/night/whatever it is haha and log onto skype!