So it's been a long time since I posted a blog, I know both of you have been waiting on the edge of your seats! lol... It's Friday evening here, and boy am I glad it's the weekend. Teaching has gotten easier for me, less wearing is probably a better way of putting it. But this was a long week. With a dumb disagreement with a co teacher, to a kid stealing my candy, and a few other petty things and some not petty things wearing on my patience, I am ready for the weekend.
I had to test my older kindergarten kids (Korean 8 year olds now that it's a new year and they all turn 8) to see what level elementary school English class they should be placed into. This was tough on both my kids and me. A lot of them didn't do as well as I expected them too, though some did better than I thought they would. I guess we are all biased... Plus some kids do better on tests or under pressure than others. They had about 50 minutes of written test, and 5 - 10 minutes for each individual student to take an oral test. Their reading comprehension seemed very weak overall. Though Koreans tend to teach children to memorize more so than understand, which would make reading comprehension difficult... One of my brightest students and best behaved students aced most of the oral test until it came time for the reading comprehension. She got the first 3 questions right without much of a problem, but couldn't for the life of her come up with an answer to the last two questions and nearly broke down crying. I felt so bad. The next day I made sure she won a game and gave her a piece of chocolate for winning the game.
But it's time to forget about that because it's the weekend, and it's payday!! I'm going out to dinner with a Korean buddy and his wife tonight. Might get a few beers with him after, but not staying out late. I have Korean class in the morning and want to spend a good amount of time studying after class with my buddy from class. Studying before as well would be good, but I rarely get up in time to do that. I have been relatively adament with my studies. At first when I was trying to think of something in Korean I would often get Spanish going through my head, now at the end of studying Korean for a few hours I can hardly remember Spanish at all.
We found out today that our usual 5 days off in the summer (9 days total with the weekend before and weekend after) has been cut to 2 work days off. This sort of blows for me as it's my first year, and I probably won't get the "approximately 10 vacation days" my contract states. But one of my co-workers is contacting the foreigner labor department through the Korean government and asking about it, so maybe it will change. We are also putting a letter together to our boss basically saying that we know we have pretty good working conditions, but that all teachers get a week off somewhere. Some public school teachers get months off, we don't even have a full week off scheduled for the entire year. 3 work days in a row is the most. A little frustrating when you want to travel, not to mention you see all the other teachers taking a month off during Christmas and a week off here and there. But, I figure if I save up some money I can see a lot more if I do my travelling all at once after my contract(s?) are done. As airfare is generally the most expensive part of travelling (depending on where you go and what you spend your money on obviously) a one way ticket and travelling from place to place thereafter would be much cheaper and give more time to explore.
Well, I have dinner plans soons, so I will get going. peace!
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