culture in korea

After two months in South Korea I am by no means an expert on Korean language or culture.  However, I definitely have learned a lot about Korea and Koreans.  These are some of the culture differences I have noticed between Koreans and Americans:

Men and Women
When you have dinner with Korean families, the men sit on one side, the women and children sit on the other.  They will talk amongst each other, but conversation is more kept within the groups than I am used to.
Most Koreans live with their parents until they are married.  Usually the women live by pretty strict rules, whereas the men are pretty free to do what they want.  The only example of this that I can think of is that women living with their parents usually have a curfew, whereas the men usually do not.  Even 30 year old wome still living with their parents have a curfew. 
Men are the breadwinners in Korean families.  Women do often work, but usually get paid much less, as I have come to understand it.  This isn't completely different from America as men do get paid more than women, but there are definitely a fair few families where the wife makes more than the husband.

Drinking
Drinking is part of their culture, and it is looked upon well if a man can drink a lot.  The earliest I've seen a bar here close is 6 am, though I'm sure there are some that close earlier (they probably close if they have no one in there).  I don't think their alcohol is taxed very much, because I can get imported beer for near the price I get it in the states, and soju (a local rice based liquor that has about half the alcohol content as vodka and tastes pretty much like half vodka) is plentiful and very cheap.

Education
Koreans are a very education oriented people, just about all families that can afford it send their children to private schools, even after their kids go to public school.  So kids may be going to two or three different schools a day.  There are children that are learning English and Chinese on top of their Korean studies, and many spend all day at school or studying all the way through Highschool.  This is a bit extreme compared to America, however I have talked to Koreans about it and they say that once they get to college school is a breeze.  Though they don't know what to do with having free time for the first time.
My take on this: it is a bit extreme, children need to have some free time to figure out what they like to do, play sports, even just relax.  Training your brain is like training your muscles, it's good to work out a lot, but you need to rest as well.  I have read that playing a sport is good for healthy brain development, which America is a lot more sport oriented that Korea, and is a good thing, but I think that too many Americans don't place enough emphasis on education for their children and their country as a whole.  What is one of the first things to get cut when funding is low? Education.  What is the number one factor to increasing future economic growth? Education.  Education should be one of our top economical concerns, and I'm not just saying that because I'm a teacher, I've always thought that!  But in conclusion I believe that in general Koreans put too much emphasis on formal education and Americans put too little emphasis on it.  If we could meet somewhere in the middle we'd be great.

Gifts
It is common to receive gifts from Koreans and Korean families, especially food.  There aren't many weeks that I don't come home from work with at least one gift from one of my students' families, or sometimes even Korean coworkers.  On thanksgiving I brought home about 4 bags of food, part of it leftovers from our festivities, but a lot of it was gifts from parents.

Service in Korea. 
In Korea you don't tip waiters, taxis, bartenders, anyone.  I have seen some foreign bars that leave tip jars out, but that is it.  In fact, not only do they not expect tips, but sometimes they give what is called 'service'.  Which is where they give you a few free beers, or some extra time at the noraebong (private karaoke rooms), free friesor something of the sort.  They usually do this when you are with a big group.  How I reasoned it is that when you bring a big group of people they make more money.  When they give you stuff, it makes your experience more enjoyable, which makes you want to come back.
That and the fact that they charge enough for their food and services (still less than America in my city, though comparable, Seoul and bigger / international cities are more expensive) to pay their employees without having tips a necessity.  Tips in America are expected, which in my mind undermines the whole idea of tipping.  You are supposed to tip when you feel service was especially good, not because it is required.  It should be the responsibility of the company that employs the workers to pay them an appropriate amount, not the customers.  If customers feel that the person serving them did an exceptional job and want to give them extra money because of it, THAT is what tipping is about.  If you need to raise your prices in order to make enough money off your product and still pay your employees an agreeable amount, so be it.  Service in Korea is usually better than what I'm used to in the states anyway, and they don't even accept tips.

Trust
Koreans are much more trusting, and.... trustworthy.  In general..  I've seen trucks filled with boxes of fruit sitting on the side of the street over night.  At least some, if not all, of the inventory would be gone in the morning in most parts of America.  I've seen mini marts with fridges of beer sitting outside them, no one looking after them.  Beer would definitely get stolen back home.  I'm not sure if it being such a small country, somewhat cut off from the world has anything to do with it. 
I only say somewhat cut off because it is surrounded by ocean, and North Korea which no visitors come from that direction.  It has a fair amount of foreigners in it, many more than I expected.  Also a much more western society feeling than I expected (except all the fried squid being sold everywhere, ha).

Language
The language is simpler than English, it is more methodical.  I read somewhere that Korean is ranked by many linguists as the most scientific or mathematical language... something to that extent.  Which I could see that.  Writing Korean only consists of straight lines and circles.  They don't seem to have as many tenses and times where you need to change a word.  You can use (phonetically spelled) 'ee eh yoh' which translates to "am" after your heritage, after your name, after your employment, after another person's heritage or name or a group of people's heritage, and many other instances without any changes.  In comparison in English we say, I am, or she is, or they are etc. 

This is all I the differences and a bit of analysis on the differences that I can think of at the moment.  I'm sure I know of more, but am not bringing any to mind.  I may come back and edit this post and add what I think of later if I come up with something good in the near future.  I expect I will do another analysis of this sort around the time I am leaving, when I know more about Korean culture, and hopefully the language also (I've been putting a decent amount of time into studying Korean recently, and am improving slowly.. the hardest part is the pronounciation).  Oh and one last little note... Koreans in general seem nicer than Americans.  At least where I live, most people are very kind.  I don't know if that is true of all Koreans (obviously not ALL Koreans or we wouldn't be having this conflict with the North having bombed one of the South's islands right now) but it does seem significant enough for me to take note of.

I've been studying Korean, and can now read it, though I don't know what most of it means.  There are a good few things spelled in Konglish, so it's written in Korean but when you read it, it says an English word.  So that's kinda nice.  But I definitely need to study more.  I probably won't do a lot of studying in the next week or two, as we will be busy at work.  Also, I joined a book club, we are reading a book about North Korean defectors, people who have escaped from North Korea... they have a really difficult time assimilating to life in South Korea and other places, after being cut off from the world and living like they're in the early 20th century instead of 21st, it's no wonder why they have a hard time fitting in.  That plus the fact that they are looked down upon.  The book is called "Nothing To Envy" by Barbara Demick, I suggest it to anyone that is interested.  I got the book late, so I need to catch up, so I'll probably spend free time catching up in the book before I do any serious studying.
Also taking up a bunch of my free time is writing report cards, which are due soon and take a long time.  We also, have to write a script for a play for our classes.  Anyway, it's getting busy at the moment.

I'm trying to be a good teacher, I definitely think I'm getting better.  I like teaching the older kids more, but I don't think that would surprise most people that know me well.  My only third grade class I really enjoy teaching.  My 7 year olds are usually good, and my 6 year old class (remember 6 = 5, 7 = 6 in age where we come from) can be quite challenging at times, but it is rewarding when I can tell they are learning.  It is also rewarding when they are calm, hah..  they're a pretty crazy class compared to the others.

I'm making new friends, including some locals.  The locals are really nice, the parents of some of our students took my teacher friend and I out to dinner last week, and we even went out for a beer after with one of the fathers.  It's starting to get cold, I need to get some more long sleeved shirts because I unfortunately didn't bring mine from home.  I'd take time to read through this and maybe time some more, but I have dinner plans with a bunch of the teachers, our boss is taking us out, and I have to get ready, hope you enjoyed this update!

New classes

So on Wednesday I had one new class scheduled, an afterschool Kindergarten class for 4 students who are behind in English development.  It's definitely different from every class I've had so far, there were only three there, they talked very little, and were very subdued.  This class is definitely a new challenge in figuring out a way to get through to all of them.  I have some students in my 6 year old class who are about their level of English speaking and writing capabilities, maybe one or two, but they are energetic, and I can at least get them to try and say the words.  I have to figure out a way to get these kids going, I think I just need to go in there with a lot of energy, try and have them sing and dance, see if I can get the energy up like that. 
But at least it's not like my Daisy Duck class, with half the students not paying attention, hitting each other, or running around constantly.  I get one student to behave and two more stop paying attention or start hitting each other...  There are good days and bad days, the days that I have more energy definitely tend to be the better days, and I'm thinking I'm going to have to get addicted to coffee in order to succeed at this teaching kids thing, which I'm already on my way to... hah.

After my new afterschool class I packed up my stuff, walked down the three stories from the teachers office to the front door, and was walking out the front door when a Korean man that works in the front secretary office walks up to me and says to me in pretty broken English that was mostly understandable that there was a scheduling conflict and my new 3rd grader class that was supposed to start the following Monday was actually today, and had already started.  So I hustled back upstairs, grabbed what materials I thought I might need and headed in there to wing it with teaching this class.  It went great though, the kids were nice enough, and even though it's the lowest level of classes our English program offers (means these kids have the worst English out of the elementary kids) they understood me just fine, and I was able to teach them some new vocabulary and read stories with them, play some games.  It was a nice change of pace, not having to talk in very simple and direct dialect, and having my students listen whenever I said something.  I didn't have the powerpoint presentation I was supposed to present to them handy, so I filled the extra time with games and a reading out loud team game.  Which after my boss talked to me after the class seems like exactly what they want anyway, the foreign teachers in the elementary classes only meet with the students once a week, and they pretty much just want us to get the kids to get a lot of practice speaking English during that time, and hearing our accents.

Today (Friday) I drank an entire coffee drink from a mini mart, the little chilled ones they sell.  I usually only drink half or have a few sips, because I don't want to drink lots of coffee and get addicted to it.  But I've come to the conclusion that I need to.  I had a whole one today and was hyped up all day, and had a lot of fun with all my classes.  Daisy Duck was still a bit of a hassle with kids not listening and hitting and what not, but I had more fun than usual. 
So in conclusion, bring on the coffee!

I have my first day of Korean class on saturday morning, and I have work right after it.  Sports day it's called... we are getting all the kids and their parents together in a park and playing games and giving out gifts, doing some rehearsed dances that I've practiced both songs twice each day for the past week and a half...  Besides that, I might run the mountain behind my apartments a few times, it's about a 40 minute jog if I take the short route and jog through town to my apartment, and it's got good scenery.  Probably play some more poker if Josh and Darrell and one or two other guys are up for it.  Give me a call if you want to chat! 916.265.0228

update

So it's been a little while since I've updated, so here's the skinny on what I've done the past few weeks.  I hiked the tallest mountain in this province, mu deong san, with my buddy a few weekends back.  It was a pretty easy til the last half kilometer or so, which was pretty steep and tiring. 

One weekend more recent than that I went to Busan, an international city on the South East side of South Korea ( I live in the South West..) for an international fireworks festival with my friends Josh, Darrell, and Brooke.  We left Gwangju at 8.30 am, checked into the hotel and got to the beach around 1.30.  The festival didn't start til 8, but we heard that it got super crowded, so we got there early and set up a portable picnic table and just poker on the beach all day, had a few beers and got dinner while we waited for the show to start.  It was a good thing we got there early because by 7.30 you could barely get off the beach to go to the bathroom and get back on (which after drinking beers all day was needed often).  Then we eventually managed to get onto the subway and get back to the area of Busan we had a hotel in.  On our way home we got some snacks from a mini mart, and when we came out it looked like a guy was proposing to his girlfriend outside, he was down on one knee and everything..  Josh went up and started clapping for the couple, but apparently he wasn't proposing to her, or she said no, because the Korean guy wanted to fight Josh about it, I had to jump in between them and cool it off. 
The next day we went to the bus terminal to get tickets home, but they were sold out of the soonest available bus, so we had to wait 2 and a half hours for our bus, so we whipped out our handy portable picnic table and our cards and started playing poker.  After about an hour of playing a cop came up to us and confronted us (it's illegal to gamble in Korea I think) it's understandable, we did have a crowd of people watching our game, we felt like we were playing in the world poker tour or something!  But the cop said something to us, and we tried to explain to him that we weren't playing for money (our poker chips was a big bag of change so it looked like we were... and we actually did have 5 bucks each riding on the game...) he seemed okay with it, the Korean guy next to us said the cop said we could keep playing...  But the cop came back 5 minutes later with another cop that was itching to give us a ticket.  We put the cards and chips away immediately and managed to not get a ticket.  All in all it was a really fun trip.

We had a halloween / birthday party last Friday at school, which was a lot of fun.  There is a themed birthday party for everyone who had a birthday in that month on the last Friday of every month, and the whole Kindergarten part of the school (4 - 7 year olds) get together to celebrate.  Most of the students had costumes, and we had a haunted house which was really lame, but scared the crap out of some of the kids.  I wish I had remembered to bring my camera that day, or to the fireworks festival (I brought it to Busan, but left it at the hotel).

This last weekend was my friend Shannon's birthday, and we had a crazy hat party at her place to celebrate, and then went downtown.  Besides that I just hung out with friends and played a bunch of poker.  I wanted to go climb the nearest mountain, but was too lazy and unmotivated to do it by myself. 
My classes are pretty good.  Daisy Duck (my 6 year old class) is still a little wild, but I'm figuring out what works as I go.  I found one activity they all do well, so I printed out a bunch of similar ones so I can have them do that if they finish early instead of run around hitting each other.  Today was a long day, my first class got me flustered because three boys kept fighting, which had me in a bad mood for my second class, which is a rather unruly class.  I usually have fun with that class, but not today because I was already frustrated with my first class, and the fact that I have two more classes starting this week, new books, no cd's for the books, and an oddly planned field trip and work this weekend.  I have a bunch of paperwork building up from all the new stuff I have coming at me.  I am also still having some of my classes observed, which makes me nervous when I have my boss sitting in class watching me, and I have to do detailed report cards on every student I have in the next few weeks, so it's just a really busy time for me right now.  Oh, I also start my Korean class this Saturday, and I also have work Saturday.  I think I can manage to do both if I time it right, BUT my fellow teachers that have taken the class suggest that I learn to read the Korean alphabet before I go to the first class, which is gonna take up what little free time I do have this week.  I also had a spider bite on my wrist for about a week now, which hurt and was swollen for the first few days, now it's just a bump going away.

I know it will get easier once I get used to these new classes and get this coming stuff out of the way.  So next week should be better, and hopefully this field trip on Thursday is fun.  The field trip is actually to get all the foreign teachers out of the building because we have some inspector coming and it is technically illegal to teach the younger kids at our school english... or something like that.  so the big boss just figured it would be easiest to send all the foreign teachers out with the older kids.  Alright, well I'm going to look up something online that can help me learn Korean alphabet, because I don't have a book yet.  Hopefully my next update will be sooner than it took me to write this one!

establishing authority

So, I made good friends with a guy out here, unfortunately he leaves in 5 weeks.  But at least until then I have someone to watch football with, play basketball, and hang out with.  The girls I hang out with a lot (Caroline, Shannon, Vanessa) are great, but it's good to get some time hanging out with just guys in too.  He's a really good teacher, and giving me some pointers for my '6' year old class.

Today I started implementing a new punishment system, since the way I was doing it before obviously wasn't effective enough for the 6 year olds.  Now, instead of giving stars for being good or answering a question (1 star = 1 sticker at the end of class) and X's for being bad (3 X's is a severe punishment like take them to the hall and lecture them, and 1 X is minus 1 star).  Now I am giving out stickers immediately when they do something to deserve them, I take a sticker away if they are misbehaving, and if they are blatantly misbehaving or ignore my instruction I take off a sticker and send them to the corner to stare at the wall for about 2 minutes.  If that happens twice and they are still misbehaving I send them to another teacher's class (the kids absolutely hate that).  Today was my first day implementing this strategy, it worked beautifully in my 7 year old classes, though they weren't too bad to begin with, but my more hyper 7 year old class was just peachy today, and I only sent two kids to the corner.  We finished all our scheduled book work 20 minutes early and played games the rest of the time, which was a lot of fun, and made me feel really good.

My 6 year old class I had a lot of kids going to the corner, a couple of repeat offenders, and I sent (carried is more like) one kid to another teacher's classroom when he wouldn't stop hitting another student, and I had already had him in the corner twice... (Evan is really smart, but he's such a trouble maker!)  They weren't perfect, but my countdown (from 10, 5, or 3, depending on what I want) is a lot more inspiring now, and by the end of the class I hadn't wanted to rip my hair out once, which is an improvement from the average day with the 6 year olds.  I definitely need to stick with this routine, I think I need to make a few changes to my teaching style still, get little games / songs going in between book work, but I am trying to stay on schedule with the work they are scheduled to do, and I don't have time to do much of that... Anyway, I think the kids will be better at listening to me after a few days of this punishment strategy, and I might be able to keep them organized enough to have time to do more fun things between work.

The head foreign teacher is observing me next wednesday, which is a bit unfortunate because I would like a little more time than 2 and a half weeks with my classes before my teaching is analyzed by a superior..  But it isn't that big of a deal, it's more to help me improve than anything.  You have to be really bad to get fired I hear, I'm not worried about that at all.  They just don't offer you a contract renewal at the end of the year if they don't like your teaching style by then.

Below are a few of my photos from the field trip to Hwa Soon 

 

Field Trip

We had a field trip today, it was a lot of fun.  I was in charge of my 1st period class, which is my best behaved class, so that was pretty lucky.  We took a bus to the train station where we boarded a train to Hwa Soon, a town not too far away.  When we arrived there we took buses (the same buses we originally took in fact, the train was pretty much just for the kids entertainment) to a nearby park.  We ate lunch and played games in the park.  Most of the time we played *chase Chaz Teacher*... you can imagine what that consists of, hah.  Then I got tired and we played duck duck goose.  We just took the bus home, no train, but the bus ride was nice.  I got to relax and listen to my ipod for a lil while, then when I was rested enough to get back to the kids I played games with them, sang Yellow Submarine, and made faces at them.  You know, general kid car entertainment.  When we got back to school there was about an hour left before most students go home, so we put a movie on for that class and then I had to go take care of my '6' year old class.  Which at the end of a field trip day we aren't going to get any work done, so I just helped them eat (every single kid wants to share their snack / lunch with you) and clean up their snack and played simon says pretty much until it was time to leave.  I took pictures, I will try and post them this weekend.  Hopefully I will have my internet working then...  But, it's time for me to go home, so until next post!

Quick update

Today was a good day in school, I had arts and crafts in all my classes today rather than workbooks.  I managed to keep the 7 year olds occupied with that most of the 80 minute class, they both finished early, one of the classes I had read books, the other I had work on workbooks because we got a little behind the day before.  The 6 year olds of course were a bit more of a problem, they of course wanted to run around more than they wanted to draw and color.  But it went well more or less.  Yesterday was a good day too with the 6 year olds, though the most tiring I've had.  I spent more effort controlling them yesterday than I have any other, but we got a lot of work done, and it wasn't too chaotic.  There are three trouble makers in that class, so I never have an easy day, and they are 6 years old so they are all full of energy, and all want my attention.  But I know all their names now, and am picking up on who needs special attention in what areas, so I can better focus my attention and keep the class working optimally.

We have a field trip tomorrow, I'm curious to see how that goes, but excited to get out of Gwangju and see somewhere else.  Here are a few of the photos I took on my day off, I will put all of them on facebook if you want to see the rest.

Sunset viewed from outside my apartment building



Cool outdoor shrine thing, no shoes allowed on it, even outside!



I like how the giant apartment buildings are across the street from the forest

during my first whole week of teaching

On Thursday I had the day off.  So I slept in til about 8:45, considering I've been waking up before 7 every day before that, that felt pretty good.  I hung around the apartment, made breakfast, and read a book untill around noon.  At noon I went to the nearby mountain / hill and hiked all the way up and around it, taking pictures.  It took about 4 hours in total, and was really pretty, and a good hike.  They had workout equipment along the trail in several spots.  The hike definitely taught me something about the area where I'm living.  It gave me a good view of the area around, and though I may be living in a city with 1.5 million people, the part i live in, and every part, is pretty much surrounded by hills.  So the city is split up into lots os small sections, so I can't really get lost in my section of the city, which is nice.  Also, the way the city is built, there are hills and undeveloped areas all around and in it.  It looks a lot better than just a vast expanse of developed land, and it’s nice having nature nearby.  The big apartment buildings just stop in places, and on the other side of the street is a small forest next to a 12 story apartment building, you can see what I mean in my pictures, I took an interest in one example of that in particular, and took pictures of it from many different angles as I walked around the hill.  There are a few pictures below, I will more on facebook if you are interested in viewing them all.

I had my first day of teaching Friday, as well as my first night on the town.   My day started out well, my first class was peachy, my second class a little harder to control, but I still managed.  It was my third and last class that gave me problems.  They are my youngest class, Korean 6 year olds, which is 4 and 5 year olds for us.  In Korea a kid is 1 when they are born, and turn 2 at new years.  The agenda for that class started out with some of the same course work I was doing with the seven year olds, so I figured I would teach it in the same way.  But their understanding of english was not good enough to comprehend it.  So I was caught a little off guard by that, and tried to accomodate, but found it difficult.  One of the kids decided to go to sleep, I tried to wake her and get her involved in the class, but I couldn't.  When I had them working on a workbook, one kid just couldn't do it, which it was a tracing letters exercise, so I don't understand why she couldn't... Whenever I sat next to her she could do it just fine, but the moment I turned away she would stop!  All the other students were done, so I had to check their work, and give them their stickers to put on their pages.  So I was dealing with 11 kids calling out "teacher teacher", trying to figure out their names so I could give them THEIR stickers, and get a student to do her work.  Then, the ones who I did give their stickers were yelling “teacher done, teacher done!”  so I had them read a book.  They finished their books pretty quick and started running around, grabbing markers and writing on the white board, or doing pretty much whatever they wanted.  I tried to get them settled, but I was still trying to check students' work and get the one girl to work on her workbook.  It was all I could do to keep myself from ripping my hair out.  But the 7 year old classes went much better.

Bad news for you mom, apparently bars in Korea don't close at night.  I went out to a good bye dinner for the teacher whose schedule I am taking over.  We went to a soju bar after (soju is like vodka but only 20% alcohol, and tastes better) and a noribong (karaoke bar with private rooms)  then I went downtown with a few of the teachers and went to a couple bars.  I had a good time, met some locals that spoke good english, and some foreigners living in the area, and made it home around 6 am, woke up around 2 pm. 

I moved into my new place on Sunday, it’s nice, though small.  The biggest difference between Korean and American apartments is the bathroom.  When I first went in my bathroom I was thinking “Where’s the shower!!??”  Their bathrooms just consist of a removable shower head for a shower, a toilet, a sink, and a small cupboard on the wall; so I didn’t see the shower head at first.  My Korean is developing very slowly, because I only speak English at work and usually only hang out with English speaking people outside of work.  But I can get around the town and get anything I need, directions to a cab driver, ask for something, whatever.  I’m going to take Korean classes when the new classes start at this local place that offers it, but that doesn’t start until the beginning of November.

I’m also eating a lot of different food.  We get free lunch in the cafeteria every day, and I haven’t had a main dish twice yet, though the veggies or gim chi is usually the same (I don’t like gim chi unless it’s cooked or in something, and the way they prepare the veggies isn’t usually very good either), but some of the main dishes have been really good, not that I know what most of them are!  I had pig skull the other day, which wasn’t bad at all.  I need to get going, so bye!

I'll post pictures of my hike soon

First real post

My first week in Korea:

When I got into Gwangju one of my Korean bosses met me at the bus stop (it was a 3, maybe 3 and a half hour bus ride after the 12 and a half hour flight.  I didn't sleep at all on the plane, though I slept some on the bus.  He dropped me off at my apartment, gave me the key, told me how the AC and water heater worked, and told me the head teacher was going to come by my place around 1 pm the next day, and left.

After one of the most fulfilling sleeps of my life I woke up, watched tv for a bit, got bored and started exploring the neighborhood around my apartment.  I got breakfast at a family mart and ate in the children’s park near my apartment.  After I ate I explored some more around town, got a little lost, but made it back to my apartment well before 1.  Nigel, the head teacher, came by my place with two other teachers, and we went out to lunch together.  After lunch I went downtown with a few more teachers, and checked out the market. 

The first few days of work I spent observing other teachers.  I picked the brain of the teacher whose shift I'm taking over.  There are a bunch of English speaking people working at Jeongsangd, more than I thought there were going to be.  I had a 'Mexican Monday' dinner night at Shannon's apartment with her, Caroline and Vanessa (all native english speaking teachers).  I had a lot of fun, those three seem like people I can really get along with.

The next night I checked out the shop and restaurant area in my neighborhood with a few other teachers, five of us total.  We got dinner and ate it in the park, then we went to a bakery for desert and a bar for soju cocktails.  Then we went to a noribong, where you buy an hour of time in what is most easily described as a bar full of private karaoke rooms.  We had a blast.

Now I have a day off before I start teaching on Friday.  I am excited to get to start teaching, I was a bit nervous when I first started coming into work, but after observing and participating varying amounts in classrooms for three days, I feel ready to get started.  My biggest worries about starting work are knowing where things are when I need to get them, and knowing the students names.  I know my job would be a lot easier if I knew all the students' names', so I'm going to work hard on learning them fast. 

The language barrier with the kids is a problem, but it is not too difficult to overcome, you can usually understand what they are saying or trying to say, and when you can't it usually isn't important enough to dwell on.  People find a way of conveying what is actually necessary to convey.  I am able to communicate with the locals enough to get what I need, for example.  I know how to ask for something "chu se yo" (please give me), I know how to say hi, bye, and thanks.  Those are by far the most common things I say in Korean, though I know a little more than that.

I have been thinking about teaching strategies a lot over these three days, and I feel like I have a good idea of how I want to be with my kids, I just need to implement a solid plan.  Once you get them to respect your authority, it is much easier and even more fun to teach them.

in SFO

Well I haven't even made it out of the country and I already have something to talk about.  They wouldn't let me on my flight from Sacramento to SF, because the plane was 'full'.  So myself and another passenger had to wait around for an hour, waiting for the lady to figure out what to do with us.  We ended up getting a cab to SF, paid for by United Airlines.  They also gave me 400 dollars in travel coupons, which is cool.  The guy with me was going to his hotel, and the cab driver didn't know how to get there.  Luckily I had my GPS unit with me and was able to give the cab driver directions to this guys' hotel and then to the airport. 
Of course my ticket didn't have my gate number on it, and I only got there an hour, hour fifteen minutes before my flight, so after I ran to the bathroom, I had to find someone to tell me where my gate was.  Anyway it all worked out and I'm boarding my flight to Seoul now.