Check out a few of my good classes!

So I thought it would be cool to show everyone my students here are 5 of my classes which I enjoy teaching.
Here is one of my very gifted classes. They are 10 years old and have a very high English level and use the highest level book I teach.
English Names (left to right): Julie, Alice, Martin, Denny, Chris, Andrew, Joelle (who is also my director's daugter)

 Here is a class that their English class isn't so high, but I have fun in the class and the kids seem to enjoy my class. They are also about 10-11 years old. I have them obsessed with reading with a lot of emotion when they see an exclamation point. They find it hilarious.
English names (left to right): Thomas, Jack, John, Sky, Lily, James, Jeff, Sally, Sophia, Gloria

 Here us a class that I like the students, but sometimes the girls are so difficult to teach.  Celina and Cena randomly start singing and are always being ridiculous.  But on its good days this class is awesome and they are fun to talk to. They are about 12-13 years old.
English names (right to left): Celina, Anna (in front), Cena (in back), Angella, and Robbin (he is so awesome, one of my favorite students).

 This class is 14-15 year old students and is my favorite class to teach.  They have the highest level of English and are able to have conversations about more relevant topics that the boring stories in the book.  We have a good time and often just spend classes talking about a topic for the whole time and not use a book. I often feel bad for the one boy in this class because I know he gets picked on a lot, but he is a strange guy.  I am always nice to him and have lots of conversations before and after class with him.  But one time I asked him what music he liked. He told me rock and pork. I said to him pork is a meat. He simply replied, ya I know and then walked away.  Pretty hilarious.
English names (left to right): Jason, Lina, Lucy, Kathy, Sandy. And there is a girl ducking down in the back and I just call her ms. smartphone.

 This last class is one of my later classes where the students are 13 years old.  They can be a chore to teach because the class is so small they go through everything fast and we often move too quickly in the books.  The boys are crazy. Every time they see me they say, "LETS PLAY GAME!!" and they always have weird conversations with me and stalk me when i teach other classes like jumping so they can see into the window of my other class.  They are still a pretty fun class to teach though.

I have quite a few other classes, but they are just not as cool as these ones.

Little update

So life has been good in Korea.  I am definitely settled in just in the groove.  I have been having some fun weekends with friends.  We have been hanging out at my apartment a lot since it is probably the biggest place of all the teachers I know in Ulsan.  Other than that been enjoying nice dinners out with friends, going to the beach and lighting off fireworks and having random adventures.  A friend had a motor scooter which she was not using.  It ended up breaking down and was taken to a shop.  She said she didnt want it anymore.  I offered to buy it from her, but she didnt care about the money, she just told me to pay the mechanic to fix it and I could have it.  For the last month the mechanic said it was "lost"... So we had basically given up on it thinking he had sold it for parts or something... Somehow he all of a suddent comes up with it waives almost all the fees to tow and fix it and now i have a new scooter which only cost me 20,000won (or about $20).
Here's the beast!

Also here is a picture of the front of my hagwon, Saint Andrew, that I teach at. I also live on the top floor....

This is a crazy teaching week for me.  I have open class for my kindergarteners, which means their parents come to the school and watch my classes.  The directors are also filming me to make a video to basically advertise that they have a foreign teacher and our classes are awesome.  It was a bit stressful, but it went very well. Anyway, hope I have some good adventures soon to share. Cheers.

Halloween weekend

What a crazy weekend.  First, Friday was just a wild day at the school.  I was told to start my day at noon which is 50 minutes earlier than normal. Which was no problem, but then I get a call from one of the other teachers at about 11:40AM telling me I am late. Which from what I knew about when I was supposed to be at work that wasn't true.. Anyways, we were celebrating Halloween with the kindergarten classes and had to dress up.  So i bought the cheapest stuff I could find which ended up being an eye patch and crappy pirate hat.  worked out fine.  All the kids dressed up and we took them out around our area walking and singing Halloween songs in our costumes.  Then we ended up at the park where each of the teachers were on the corners holding bags of candy and the kids would trick or treat and get candy from us.
Here is an awesome picture which is also extremely funny in front of the school:

Friday night was awesome. went to my friend shaun's dad's new bar called pub hq.  The best part was that I was on my bar A game and won 3 games of darts and a game of pool! what a night! 

On Saturday I took a train with 12 other foreign teachers to Busan to watch one of the biggest fireworks shows in the world.  It is such a big event when you go you have to go stay on the beach all day to stake out a spot.  We got to the beach at around 2pm and the place was already getting extremely busy.  The show didn't start until 8pm.  So we waiting on the beach all day, which ended up being a fun time.  Unfortunately it started to rain around 7pm, so we were waiting on the beach in the rain for another hour to watch an hour long fireworks show in the rain too! it was a bit crazy doing that, but it was well worth it.  That was easily the best fireworks show I have ever seen.  People really need to take notes for the 4th of July hahaha.  That night we went out to a couple bars in Busan which was a good time. And there were plenty of foreigners out which is really fun.  I ended p sleeping on the wooden floor in a hotel room some of the other people in my group rented.  That was awesomely painful, but a lot better than sleeping outside in the rain.  Great weekend though, and met a few really cool people who I will continue to hang out with. Gotta love making new friends.

ULSAN HYUNDAI!!

So this weekend was pretty low key. Stayed in Ulsan and had a nice relaxing weekend.  On Friday night I hung out with a friend, Shaun, and a couple girls he knows.  After doing a little bar hopping we decided to go get something to eat.  One of the girls challenged me to eat one of the peppers because I said I liked spicy food.  So I decided to be dumb and do it. The pepper had no flavor really but the spice was almost unbearable and definitely made me cry hahaha. We all got a good laugh out of that.  That was truly painful. Saturday I met back up with Shaun to watch the Liverpool vs. Manchester United game at the bar which Shaun's family owns. which ended up in a 1-1 tie. not a bad result I guess..  On Sunday I went to the Ulsan Hyundai Tigers vs Pohang Steelers K-League professional soccer game! It was a blast. Josh and I went to that and got to see Ulsan win! The goals were even amazing! what a blast! Ulsan scored in the last minute of injury time to win the game 2-1.

Here is a picture of Josh and me with the mascots (who were not even good mascots they just walked around blowing bubbles trying to be cute.. we decided that wouldn't fly for an American sports mascot.)

I even got to pick up one of their official jerseys at the end of the game so I could be a true tigers fan!

Mask festival

This last weekend was awesome! 5 friends and I went to a mask and dance festival in Andong.  We woke up at about 7am to take a train for three and a half hours out to this city.

Here is me and my good buddy Josh on the silly little train....

Once we got there we decided to take a bus out to a small traditional very rural village called Hahoe (pronounced Haw-Hway somehow....).  This buildings and houses in this village still have grass roofs! it was pretty cool looking place.  Anywho... when we were in Hahoe we watched a traditional Korean mask dancing performance. It was a little difficult to understand what was happening since it was all in Han'gul, but it was still a fun time. Then in the middle of it, they kind of decide to pick people from the crowd to get up and dance and of course....they picked me...


Here is a picture of me there....

That was definitely a highlight of the trip.  After that we decided that we had to explore the village oh Hohoe. One of the first things we notice when we are in teh village are there a ton of awesome tiki statues it is a garden full of them.

Here is a picture of me doing the Korean man squat (all korean men just do this anywhere they want on street corners with their friends or alone, so I thought i would pay tribute)

But soon we notice that this garden of tiki statues isn't just a normal one... all the tiki statues have penises all over them! it was the weirdest thing to see in a rural village...

Here is also a picture of me and the group I went with on for this trip. so nice!

After going to this traditional village we went back to Andong where we thought we were going to be catching a train back to Ulsan... funny thing is that we missed the train that was leaving... so we thought we would wait for another train to connect in a bigger city to go back to Ulsan. Another funny thing about that is that after going to grab some food to kill some time we missed that train too.... So we thought we were going to have to sleep at a jinju bong (this is a bath house in Korea. Koreans go to bathhouses often to bathe, get scrubbed by another person or even to sleep. It is a cheap $5-7 per night to sleep on the floor)  So we decide to just enjoy the later parts of the festival since we are now thinking we are stuck in Andong.  It was such a cool experience when we got back to the festival. There were hundreds of tents selling trinkets, food, clothes and whatever you want.  We would literally not b able to walk more than 5 feet without people saying hello to us and wanting to take pictures with us like we were famous. We stopped at this stage to watch a dance contest which was a good time.  We were dancing to all the songs playing and these five older women probably about sixty years old were dancing next to us and having so much fun, it had to be the highlight of their night if not their year hahaha.  Eventually we just keep walking around the festival taking a lot more pictures with random people thinking we are celebrities.  Finally we find someone who speaks decent English and he tells us there is a train leaving Andong to Ulsan at 12:40AM.  So we have to run for a mile (which ended up being the wrong direction, but we find a cab and we stack all six of us in the cab.  The driver didnt want to but we explained we had to be at the train in 5 minutes to get home and he reluctantly let us all in the cab.  we got the train station with a minute to spare and got on a train and got back to Ulsan at 4AM.. What a crazy adventure. More pictures from this to come soon once I get them from all the people who were there.

Best Friday so far...

So this week was a little lonely, but I had a good Friday to look forward to.  I got to go on a field trip with the kindergarten classes.  We went on an hour and a half bus ride out to an apple farm to pick apples.  It was really nice to not have to teach and it was a fun day being outside with the kids.  Then when we got back to the school, I still had a few classes i was supposed to teach, but it was a big testing day so I didn't have to teach at all.  I just gave a test to the students and hung out. Pretty easy day for sure it was very nice.

Here is a picture of me and 3 or the 4 other teachers at my school. from left to right its Shiny, Melissa and Kate (obviously their English names)

I should have a bunch of pictures they took with me and the kids, so look forward to those!

Oh a holiday, is it?

Okay, so.. it has been a while since I have updated this blog, but it was because things were a little boring for a while. My friend Josh was back in America for some interviews at a couple schools to go into a dentist program.  But I did eventually find some way to cure my boredom. 

So this last weekend was Chuseok! (Korean equivalent of Thanksgiving) I also got gifts for Chuseok.  One of the student's parents gave all the teachers a big gift box, each containing 6 tubes of toothpast, 2 bottles of body wash, and 1 bottle of lotion.  cool.  All of the teachers also got another gift box from the directors. This one had 2 bottles of canola oil, 6 cans of tuna and 3 cans on original spam.  Im atleast happy about the canola oil haha. And I had a nice long weekend. I had Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday off!   Over the long weekend I met some new friends.  They are also English teachers at hagwans that live near by.  Their names are Josh (from Canada)  and Paul (from London).  We seem to have a lot of fun together and have hung out quite a lot. It was nice to have some days off and meet some new friends. There was a little of a downside though... Teaching only 2 days in the week makes the kids very restless in class because it is almost the weekend on the first day of class in the week.  Even though a few classes were difficult, I still had a good time teaching this week. 

My school just hired another teacher, but not a native speaker.  Melissa is a Korean teacher, but she just returned from being at university in Canada for the last few months, so she has good English.  It is nice to have conversations in good English with someone at the school finally haha. 

I have also gone to dinner and drinks with my German neighbors Hani and Maria.  They are leaving this Sunday to return to Germany for about one month.  So I am taking care of their plants and their mail. They are extremely nice to me and I think this is something nice I can do for them.  They gave me a bottle of wine for helping me, I hope my friends like wine!

All is well in Ulsan and at St. Andrew.

Here are 2 pictures i took on my cell phone camera of cool things from the Tongdosa Buddhist Temple I went to my first weekend here.

These are two of the four guardians carved out of wood.  They are truly awesome in person. They are about 20 feet tall. Sorry for shaky hand cell phone quality :)

Here is an huge 3 floors high woven Buddha and other important figures. again bad quality...

First week down.

I have now been in Korea for over a week.  My first few days were taken up by travel.  I had a 12 and a half hour flight followed by an hour train ride, and then again followed by another 3 hour train ride.  I didn't arrive at my apartment until 1am two days after my flight...  Getting picked up at the train station by my two directors was an experience in itself.  For one it is a married couple, the man doesn't speak one word of English, and the woman speaks very little English.  Once we loaded all my bags into the van, the first thing that was said to me was,  "we think you are very handsome, you are so tall."  I thought this was kind of a weird start at 1am to our employer - employee relationship. 


I finally arrived at my apartment where they kind of gave me a tour of the place and told me how everything worked, but I was so tired that the next day I was very confused about how to get hot water.  I had to turn on a thermostat, which is all in Korean, and also heats your floors which I found out later by standing in one place too long.  For my first two days I just walked around aimlessly around my area of the city.  Its a pretty cool area, I live only about 5 blocks from the ocean.  Unfortunately it is not a part of the ocean you would want to swim or go to the beach, there is a ship yard kind of near by and the water is a little dirty.  but there is a good beach about a 20 minute drive from here. 

My first week of teaching was very interesting to say the least.  I teach from 12:50-8:40pm  I teach 3 kindergarten classes first which only last 20 minutes.  then I have a break, then the rest of my classes are 30 minutes a piece, with breaks scattered throughout the day.  some classes speak almost no English at all, and others are decent.  The ones that speak none are very difficult to teach because they just sit there and stare at you and getting them to speak is a challenge.  But other than those few classes it is pretty good.  I am definitely worn out by the end of the day. 

The first weekend I went to an Irish pub and met a couple Russian guys who were a lot of fun.  They took me to this other bar which was not as awesome...  So here in Korea there are many bars which say "Western Bar" on the outside, which I kind of found out to be a sort of brothel for foreigners.  Once it got later in the night I noticed a lot of foreign guys getting frisky with the bar tenders, and then I quickly realized what was happening in the bar.  I quickly paid for my drinks and hightailed it out of there.  The next night some neighbors, who are German, noticed me just hanging out on my balcony and invited me to dinner with them.  They were extremely nice.  We had an awesome meal at this restaurant has the grill in the middle of the table and you get to cook right in front of you like its your own benni hannas, pretty awesome.  Afterward, they took me to a couple of bars that were not shady like the ones the Russians took me to, thankfully.  Then on Sunday, they took me to Tongdosa, which is the largest Buddhist Temple in all of Korea.  It was beautiful.  That was really a sight to see.

This weekend I went with a new friend, Josh who is from Indiana, to meet up with other English teachers.  We ended up going to a nori bong.  If you do not know what this is I feel sorry.  Nori bong is awesome, it is basically a room you rent and for your group and its a karaoke room! you get served food and drinks and do way too much karaoke.  It was a blast.  Afterward we went to a bar and met some new Korean friends and had a blast with them.   I also played some soccer with one of my little students which was kind of cool.

I will update the journey soon and hopefully get a camera soon to help share the craziness.