Moving time

Kpop Dance Lesson

   Hey guys!! This may be a shorter post, because it is getting very late, and I still have to finish packing my bags! Tomorrow is the last day of orientation, and around 1:00pm, we will all be shipped off to our different provinces. I’ll spend a few days in Jeonju, the capital city of the province (Jeonbuk), and then I’ll head to Gunsan, and start teaching!! Scary…

   This past week was another week full of lectures---so, we learned more about teaching lessons using storytelling, the hierarchy we’ll find at our schools, and that kind of stuff. Luckily, a few of the lectures gave us a chance to move around a bit. We had a taekwondo class that was really cool! Unfortunately, for some groups it resulted in some pretty serious injuries…one kid tore his ACL, and another broke his arm (ABOVE the elbow…had to have surgery…poor guy. He’s back with us now, though!). A slightly less dangerous, but equally as exhausting lesson was our Kpop dance class. We all learned the dance to Sorry Sorry by Super Junior. I can’t say I was very good at it, but it was SO MUCH FUN! I’ve included some of the pictures…but you should all definitely youtube the song. Kpop is really growing on me.

   On Saturday, we had another group trip into Seoul, and this time the weather was infinitely better than it was on our last excursion. We watched “Drawing Show Hero,” which was kind of similar to the Blue Man Group. 

Drawing Show Hero

The art they made was incredible, and they did it all so fast---such a fun show to watch. Afterward, we were all given some time for lunch, and 4 of us found a hole in the wall restaurant on a small street nearby. There was no English to be found, so we walked in, took our shoes off, sat on the ground and pointed at something that another table was eating. Turns out it was squid soup! It was really good, but there were some hidden peppers in there that brought a few of us to tears.

Side street of Seoul

   After lunch we had the opportunity to walk around for a few hours on our own, so my friend Sara and I roamed around the streets to do some window/cart shopping. At one point, two little girls asked if they could take a picture with us, because their homework for class was to get a picture with foreigners, so that was pretty cute. However, it was not nearly as cute as the little boy that shyly caught our eye on the street to ask us if he could interview us for an English class project. He was with his mom and his little sister, all of whom were very excited to talk with us. Turns out, his little sister’s English name is Sara, just like my friend’s, so there was a lot of smiling and high fives about that one. They asked to get in a picture with us, then thanked us and bowed repeatedly. More than any of the sightseeing we did, those few minutes are what really made the day great.

Squid Soup

   This week, we worked at an English language camp for a day, and taught three 1-hour lessons. We had no clue what the level of the students would be when we went in, and it turned out that they knew a LOT more English than we had been previously told. So, we had to scrap our original lesson plan, and do a lot of thinking on the fly. Luckily, the group of kids we were working with was really great, so they were easy to manage and loved playing all the games we came up with. Evidently, if you say the word “game” to any little Korean students, they will get ecstatic about it no matter what.

   As I said, orientation is over tomorrow morning, so I’m not sure what the next few days may hold---we haven’t been given any kind of a schedule.  It is sad to be leaving all of the great people I’ve met here at orientation, but we are all excited to keep in touch, share pictures, and visit each other in the coming months.  Jeonbuk, here I come!