Within my town there are plenty of buses— but if I want to go to Changwon which is 15 minutes away by car, I have to wait up to 30 minutes for a bus going in that direction. And certain buses only come every 60 to 90 minutes. What is this, America? Every day a buying a car seems better and better. Over in Changwon, met a friend for Chinese food and she took me around the bustling center. “Where you from?“ Greeted a strange young man on the corner in possibly the rudest way to meet foreign friends. I stared at him in confusion, trying to decide which approach…

One con of living in a small town is I had to walk twenty minutes to get to the nearest post office. The pro was on my way back a group of middle school girls stared at me, said “wow”, and then waved. The road to local celebrity? I accept. I seem to get no reaction out of anyone else so I appreciate whatever fan club I can get. Today I had planned to do a writing worksheet and comic drawing with my fourth graders today but I quickly realized I had heaped too much on their plate for one 35 minute class. Luckily, I was able to learn from…

I am really not joking when I say that I may have imprinted on my fifth graders. I was down in the fourth grade hall and en route to room 5-4 when suddenly class 5-4 clamoured around me and shouted that we should walk together. Slowly I was enveloped by a chatty group of ten year olds who happily marched me back to their room. The 5-4 homeroom teacher doesn’t speak much English but actively participated. She offered to click through the PowerPoint for me and as our signal I shot her increasingly ridiculous finger guns. After relevant video clips, dialogue listening, and phrase practice, I had the kids play…

These days I finish class around 11:40 or 12:35, have lunch, then enter a fugue state until 3PM where I am furiously and single-mindedly putting together a lesson for the following day. Once I week I serve as a teacher at another school: today I took the bus with all the high schoolers to my travel school which is in the old center of town. I swung by a bakery before I arrived thinking that it’s never good to arrive empty-handed. I discovered my travel school has no single, permanent native teacher and I was glad to have gifted them with treats, since they likely never receive much recognition. The…

Last week, co-teacher Helen told me the sixth graders have nunchi. Nunchi, as I’ve mentioned before, can be EQ or the ability to “read the room”. My Seoul sixth graders were not mature enough to have nunchi, but Helen was right about this group. They are clever, funny, engaged, and easy to form a relationship with. I so much enjoy teaching on my own. Except for one rowdy fifth grade class– they weren’t bad but two kids did have the theatrical need for attention. However, their homeroom teacher, a young man and unlike the capable-looking male fifth and sixth grade teachers, asked me after class if next time he could…