Medical Check Day

It is officially 10pm here in Korea, which means that I stayed up a full day without taking a nap!!! Jet lag was definitely much better for me today. For once, Gianni is more tired than I am at night. He was supposed to blog about what we did today, but he was too tired, so I'm going it again. Please also note that Gianni will now be posting in italics, so that you know who is talking. He wrote additional comments on the first post I wrote in Korea, so check that out. I'll make him do the second post from yesterday as well.

Today marked the start of our real orientation courses. Gianni and I are in group 6, and we had courses in elementary school education, lesson planning, and class management. I found all of the classes very interesting and helpful overall. We had one less class than usual today because the morning was spent doing our medical checks. We weren't allowed to drink past midnight last night or eat past 10pm last night. The medical tests occur on the STAGE where the opening ceremony happened. We had a height and weight test, an eye exam, a hearing test, gave blood, provided a urine sample, and got a chest xray. Two very strange things: the urine sample was given in a paper cup! The top didn't stay on very well, and the cup was pretty flimsy, in my opinion. You also had to walk it from the bathroom and just put it on the table for the medical people dealing with it. Kind of like the walk of shame. In the bathroom there are these like metal poles coming out of the walls with cylindrical blue soap on the end that you are supposed to put your hand around to take soup and wash your hands...suggestive? Also, don't people in the States usually wear lead vests to protect themselves during xrays. Yeah, there was none of that. I'm a little concerned about radiation poisoning to tell you the truth. I did surprisingly well with the blood tests. It didn't hurt at all. We also made new friends at the medical test. Maria and Matthew are a married couple, and Maria has the same problem I do about giving blood. They are both really nice, and they are also going to Daegu! Daegu has the largest group of teachers going there I heard. I guess there was a lot of turnover last semester. Everyone has been talking about how much they love it in Daegu, but also telling us how extreme the heat is going to be over there. Gee...I'm so excited.

The first lesson was taught by a Korean co-teacher from Seoul. She talked about how to specifically teach elementary school students. She was the kind of person I'd love to co-teach with. She seems to be really friendly with her English-speaking co-teacher, and, from what she described, it seems as though the co-teaching is really effective. Both she and her co-teacher plan and carry out lessons. The dynamic was excellent. The first class was unbearably hot though because the school forgot to turn on the AC or something. The next class was much more comfortable once they got it on. Lesson planning was taught by a very energetic and engaging native English-speaking teacher who has been here for several years. He talked to us about how to plan lessons and got into some details about the lesson demonstrations we are going to have to do on Monday.

As we were changing classes we saw some Korean guys with a stretcher walking to one of the classrooms. Apparently someone collapsed during the first class due to the heat, which is kind of crazy. I guess the little fans they gave us weren't enough to cool the guy down. 

The last lesson was my favorite of the day. The teacher was a woman who came from the US. She loved the middle school she used to teach at, and she came here for a year anticipating coming back after she got some professional growth experience, except that she never came back! She is hilarious. She talked to us about all the bad experiences she's had with classroom management in Korea and how to deal with them. Apparently, Koreans use English swears a lot. They don't really see it was inappropriate to do in front of teachers Bridget says that when it comes up, she will make sure they are using the word correctly and pronouncing it correctly, but then tell them that it is inappropriate for class. Another one of her stories connects to the poop discussion from last night. She said that in elementary school students will "deong team" you. I definitely didn't spell that right, but it translates to "poop needle." Basically, a student will make a gun shape with both his or her hands and fingers and come try to put their fingers up your butt when you bend over. They find this hilarious! Why? I couldn't say. I wouldn't DREAM of doing something like this to one of my teachers growing up. Insane. Bridget also talked a lot about one of her students in particular, idie. Yes, you read correctly. He told her to call him idie, and she went along with this because he originally asked her to call him DUCK PHANTOM! This kid sounds amazing!!! She showed us a video of idie explaining a comic he had drawn. In it, there is a man who does not have a penis, and he meets a man who he decides to have sex with in order to get one, I believe. There were swears all over the place in it too. God he was hysterical, but completely inappropriate.

When Abbi saw the video of Idie she immediately started laughing hysterically and didn't stop for a good two or three minutes. Her laughter in itself was pretty funny. 

After some really interesting and fun classes, we ate dinner and took a break before Korean class. Last night, we had group meetings, and we signed up for what Korean class we wanted to do. I signed up for Level 2, because i could read the simple words on the paper, and Gianni picked Level 1. I'll let him talk about his experience, but my class went really quickly. I have a lot of work to do to catch up to some of these people. I can read Korean, but I'm not perfect at it by any means, and I'm still slow. Still, I'm really excited to be learning Korean. Learning new languages can be really fun!

The Level one Korean class was really fun. Our group leader Song is my teacher and she is very nice. It's helpful to see someone pronouncing the words and letters for you. We went over the basic vowels in Hangul, which is the Korean alphabet, and then learned a few key words and phrases. Our homework is to write out our names in Hangul for the next class. I've got an app on my iphone that has all the Hangul letters in it so I think I'll try to practice memorizing everything using that. 

That's all for today. I think it's bed time. I'll let Gianni comment on the last post and this one tomorrow, and tell you how things are going from his perspective.