Thursday, June 25, 2009

This kid is a crack up. He was hiding under the desk so he wouldn't have to do his English homework. And as his shirt so aptly reminds us..." Mic Hine London. Cruise in a yacht."

Wednesday, June 24, 2009



these are some of my students. they're awesome. and they're great at teaching me korean. they all give themselves english names. good thing. i'd be lost otherwise. notice how i can barely say "what's your name?" in korean.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Friday, June 19, 2009




One of my bosses (on the left) and another teacher took me out for for samgyeopsal last week. I learned the words for "chopsticks," "spoon" and "garlic." I also learned that garlic is not consumed in small quantities here.

Thursday, June 18, 2009



this is a hiking trail near my place. pretty sweet.
OK, so I've been in Gimhae for nearly two weeks now. They had me start teaching the day after I got here...less than 24 hours after my flight touched down. Nice. The previous posted video was made about 3 days after being here.

I'm working at two separate after-school academies or "hogwans." They're both part of a franchise called GnB English. So far the teaching has been pretty fun. I teach about 8 or 9 classes a day. The students are pretty cute. Most of them are in elementary school. Each class is only about half an hour long...so I'm not sure how conducive that is for students to actually learn much, especially given the fact that I only teach some classes once a week. I'm the only native speaker at both hogwans, and am surprised that some of the some of the other "English" teachers don't speak that much English. I'm still trying to figure out the curriculum at both academies, and doing my best to communicate in a culture that is very foreign from my own. But hey, it's been pretty low stress, so I'm just rolling with it. Plus I'm in a pretty good situation to learn a lot of Korean quickly...which I've been doing. So that's been fun too.

Met some other foreign teachers last weekend. We hung out sunday afternoon and ate some bulgogi. Got some perspective on korean culture from other outsiders who have been here for several years. Some of them live in my same neighborhood, so hopefully we'll see each other fairly often.

So, things are off to a good start. More later.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009