First few days

Hello everyone! It has been quite the busy week for me. I met up with Brandon and Lisa on Monday for lunch in Itaewon (American part of town) and walked around there for a while. There I discovered that Korea can be a place for haggling as well. Brandon wanted to buy a backpack and she originally told him 65,000 won. He said no, he would only pay 30,000. It was clear she really wanted to make a sale, so they kept bargaining until he got it for 35,000 won. They also had a lot of fake Coach and Luis Vuitton purses there too, and a lot of American sports gear. I also got ice cream from Coldstone, which was very good!

I spent all day on Tuesday setting up my classroom, and also went to the hospital for my medical exam. Part of the deal with coming over here is getting a medical exam to make sure I'm not carrying infectious diseases. One of the supervisors came with me and translated everything so it was no trouble at all.

Yesterday was my first day with the kids. I have six kindergarden students. Sam, Uni, Kelly, Eddie, Joseph and John. These are their names that they picked for the school. These are not their "real" names as their real names are Korean names. However, to make it work with the school policy of no speaking Korean they have to choose English names. The kids seemed a little scared of me at first, but now are starting to warm up to me. I was told before I came here that kids might be scared of you at first because they don't see that many people like you in general. Since the population in Korea is 95% Korean, that makes sense. The book that we were supposed to use at the beginning of the day yesterday hasn't come in yet, so instead we started coloring flowers for our classroom garden. There is a wide range of English abilities. The student in the class with the best English can read and write without problem. The student who is struggling the most has to have things repeated several times before he gets it. I try to speak very slowly and clearly so that they can understand what I am saying. They are doing pretty well so far. They have been at the school for a year, but somehow some of them missed learning the alphabet, so I am doing some review on that now.

I also have two afternoon classes, one with nine 8 year olds, and another with 4 4 year olds. I really like both of those classes, and I really like that one of my 4 year olds comes in with a faux hawk everyday. He also likes to sing and after we did "Head Shoulders Knees and Toes" he kept singing it while he was getting ready to go home.

So far so good! I also found a website to download American TV shows, so I can keep up with my favorites from back home. Additionally, I set up a Skype phone number. It is (630) 303 9875. You can call this number from your regular phone, and if I am signed on to Skype I can answer, and if not you can leave me a voicemail. Also, when I make calls from Skype to a phone, that is the number that will show up.

There are so many things to do in Seoul! There are definitely plenty of different activities I can do to keep me entertained.

Well it is about time for bed, so have a good day everyone!

-Emily