Frequently Asked Questions

Or, not so frequently asked questions but a load of stuff that my mum wanted to know that other peope might want to know too. What are you teaching and do you enjoy it? So far I’ve done ‘Homestay’, ‘Physician's Office’, ‘Storytelling’ and ’Bank’. Most classes feature some element of roleplay featuring vocabulary that you are supposedly gonna have taught the kids. For example in the bank I have to teach them ’withdrawal’, ’deposit’, ’teller’, ’cheque’, and so on, then we act out a little scenario where they deposit some money into there account, or whatever. If they’re a higher level class we’ll talk about different currencies and exchange rates etc, but every class is different so I never know what I’m gonna be able to teach a particular group until I’m in there and doing it. You generally teach one class for one or two weeks then move on to another class. Usually you teach on your own, but sometimes there’s a second teacher acting as an assistant. Yesterday for example I was assisting with ‘Medical Centre’ for a couple of hours in the afternoon. Also, rule number one for the kids is 'No Korean!' so it doesn't really matter most of the time that we can't speak their language. What are the kids like? The majority of the kids we’ll be teaching will be between nine and twelve years old, and will come from private schools, though the government also subsidises children from underprivileged areas occasionally. These kids stay on campus for one week. We also run special day-long programmes, and these kids that com to these can I think be any age. On Saturday for example we had some six year-old kindergarteners in. I had three classes of these in the physician’s office. For the first two classes I had Korean assistants in with me, so didn‘t have too many problems. For my final class of the day though - when the kids were getting grouchy anyway from tiredness and hunger - I was on my own, and the only word I can think of to describe that 45 minutes is havoc. Wait, no, that’s not the only word - I could also say anarchic, chaotic, overwhelming, exhausting, and draining. I shouted myself hoarse just to get them to sit down, and was very glad to have it over. I need to get me some better methods of crowd control pronto. Suggestions on an postcard please. Do you have to prepare lessons? There are lesson plans, some of which are better that others depending on the class. If you have a problem with an existing plan though it can be changed as long as you check with admin first. I'm just following mine as I don't know anything about teaching, but for example Doug who teaches music (and who did a masters in music) has pretty much rewritten his. They have to be flexible as you can teach a bunch of 13-year-olds followed straight on by a kindergarten class. Do you have to wear a uniform of sorts for work? Well today I wore jeans and a t-shirt, so no, not really. A few of the classes require uniforms which are provided by the school, though even those are pretty relaxed. The police station class has a just a black shirt with badge on, for example. The magic class has a cloak and top hat, and airplane class has an air hostess uniform, but even then you can wear your own stuff underneath. But we're not allowed to wear flip-flops. What hours do you teach during the day and what time do you have to get up? Classes are 45 minutes long with 15 minutes in-between classes. There are at most 3 classes in the morning and 4 in the afternoon, but it varies from day to day. I've never had the full 7 yet. You generally teach one main class for two weeks and then the schedules are reshuffled. We get two days off a week, not necessarily at the weekend, and not necessarily together. We’ll also occasionally be on ‘afternoon’ shifts, which means starting at 1 o’clock, doing (at most) the four afternoon classes, then a two hour evening activity til 9. This week I’m on dominos. What are your colleagues/supervisory teachers like? Nice. Still getting to know them of course, and there's some I’ve barely had a chance to speak to at all yet. The supervisory teachers Margaret and Braden are nice and approachable (though Margaret leaves in a week) They actually teach too so know what we actually do, unlike the higher admin folk who don't have a clue and don't even speak english themselves. And instructions coming down from on high end up being filtered through 3 or 4 people before we actually hear anything, so you have to wonder how much has been lost in translation sometimes. Who is Emma? I went to school with Emma. She claims we've known each other since we were nine. My memory ain't that good, but I have no reason to doubt her. Anyway, I've been unable to shake her since, and I've been living with her and three others in Doncaster since just before Xmas. Where exactly are you living? Well first off all I’d best remind you that it is South Korea. Even in the week before I left I had people confused as to where it was we were going. So no, it’s not Vietnam, not China, Hong Kong or North Korea (the ones doing the missile tests). It’s South Korea. One of the outer suburbs of Seoul, the capital. In fact, just in case you want to sent me presents, here’s my address: Ryan Jones 102 Antarctic Building Seoul English Village 82-San, Suyu-6dong, Gangbuk-gu Seoul Korea What's the weather like? The seasons here are much like in the UK. Summer reaches about 30 degrees (though I guess that’s nothing compared to what you guys are getting at the moment) and is very humid, with rain often. In fact since we arrived I think I’ve seen the sun twice, and it’s rained almost every day. From what I’ve heard winter tends to be around -5 degrees, with little snow but bitter winds hitting hard. I've heard one report of it getting down to -30, which will certainly be an experience if true. In between times, spring and autumn are said to be just lovely. What kind of food are you eating? We are provided with three meals a day. We eat in the canteen along with the kids, so it's all Korean food. This invariably means rice, a soup (usually fishy, rarely eaten), kimchi (a very spicy pickled vegetable dish, usually cabbage or radish based, and definitely an acquired taste) and two or three other small dishes. Today's was quite nice - a tuna salad, beansprouts, and some little hot doggy things. Some of more exotic dishes we've had include kiwi 'coleslaw', various shapes of compressed tofu and rice cakes, and there's this strange yellow thing they serve, could be a fruit, maybe it's pickled, I don't know. I'll have to start taking my camera in as sometimes we have no idea what we're eating. You honestly can't tell if it's meat, fish, octopus or vegetable. Sometimes it's better not to ask. On the plus side, when I return I shall be a chopstick expert.

An Overdue Update

It is now just 163 hours until our flight to Korea is due to take off. That's next Tuesday. Less than a week. If I was posting on here more often I would've told you the story of the Visa near-catasprophe, but as it is, we do have Visas, we do have our passports back from the Korean Embassy in London, and we are leaving the country in 162 hours fifty five minutes. We're flying from Heathrow, which wasn't our first choice; in fact, we gave them six other choices before that, but apparently London is the cheapest, and at least it's a direct flight. We're still not even nearly prepared. Off the top of my head, we still need to: move out of our current house; pack whatever we can into the measely 20kg allowance we have and decide what we can live without; exchange some money into South Korean Won (thereby becoming insist millionaires); buy shaving gel, soap, and a thousand other consumables; arrange travl insurance; cancel my phone/broadband/car insurance...and probably a dozen other things I haven't even thought of yet. I'm pleased to say my own stress levels have reverted to baseline again this week though Emma continues to do enough worrying for the pair of us.

Things I think I'll miss about not living in England

Dull British weather Good chocolate

Chocolate cake Yummy puddings in general

Wine Bookshops with English language books English languages movies at the cinema Strangers who speak English Family Friends Dancing the salsa Sign Language classes My Dad's 60th Birthday My Brother's 30th Birthday Celebrating Christmas at home The second half of the second series of Lost English tea Learning the piano Blending in with the crowd

Always the last place you look

Hurrah!

How fabulous am I? I found Emma's passport (and all by myself), so very. Feeling quite high in fact! Must take up metal detecting or teasure hunting. Or could maybe moonlight as a private investigator. Cool. We'd agreed to spend the night looking for it again together, but I got home from work before Emma so decided to get cracking with a proper, thorough, look by myself. There's no such thing as a missing object, only an unmethodical searcher. It turned out to be in the back of one of her drawers, in some box that had initially been ruled out as worth seraching as she was so sure it wasn't in there! The downside - for Emma - is that although she now has her passport, I was so um...methodical...that she may never be able to find anything else in her room ever again.

OH DEAR GOD EMMA'S LOST HER PASSPORT

Distaster at the eleventh hour - Emma's passport is missing, presumed misplaced. Last seen in October last year on the trip back from Paris; was thought to reside in Emma's computer desk, officially declared Lost at approximately 2100 hours. Three hours of searching have yielded much frustration, but few passports. Plan of action - sleep on it, and find it tomorrow. Admittedly, this plan does have some kinks in it, but we're going with it for now. There's a slim chance it may be at Emma's work, and an even slimmer one of it being at her Dad's. Tomorrow night we're going to turn the house upside-down, and if it doesn't work, she'll have to shell out nearly £100 for a new one - which, in a best case scenario, will take a week. This is not good. On a happier note, this is good: Since when was I the organised one?And are you ready for my close-up? So at least one of us is ready to go to Korea, with or without his disorganised comrade!

Getting there

Getting close now. Only 11 more days left to work, the contracts have arrived, the transcripts have arrived, we're going tonight to get some predicably frightful passport-type photos taken, and if we can ever figure out how UPS or Fedex work, we'll be sending everything off to Korea tomorrow. Yesterday I had my first round of jabs. I am now free to swim in contaminated water and drink straight from the tap. I've also had Hepatitis A and B, just have to go back for a couple of boosters before we fly. Disconcertingly, when I told the nurse where I was going, she clapped her hands over her face in horror, before scurrying next door to consult her books. After she'd popped her head back round the door for the second time to check the name of the country we were going to, I came to the conclusion she was probably consulting an atlas. She finally re-entered clutching a handful of syringes, before proceeding to dither about whether I needed the Japananese Encephalitis too. According to the leaflet she handed me, this is a 'life-threatenng virus which affects the brain, spread by mosquitoes during the rainy seaon' - so something you probably wouldn't say no to being immune to then. Anyway, she was distrubingly relieved to find that regardless of whether I should have it, I was actually too late to be starting the Encephalitis course anyhow, so it was just tough. Slap on plenty of insect repellant and don't go too rural, were her reassuring parting words to me. Thanks.