"Words have no wings, but they can travel a thousand miles" (Korean Proverb)

Welcome to Flying Words, Jon and Aileen's blog of our adventures in South Korea! We will be in South Korea for a year, starting in mid-July, teaching English in a private school. We just graduated from college this past May, and are looking forward to having some adventures before continuing our education. 
We started this blog to keep all our family and friends updated and to share our photos and stories. We hope this is entertaining for you! We will miss you all, and are very thankful to have the internet to keep us in touch. 


Sunday, August 17, 2008

"My father thinks he is very handsome, but I do not think so."

Don't worry, Dad, the title of this blog is not about you. :) It was actually the first sentence of a student's response an assignment I gave one of my classes- to write 10 sentences about their families. It gets better-- the student is the 13-year-old daughter of one of the directors at the school! Mr. Lee, the director in question, is super nice and awesome, and I have both of his daughters as students. They are both energetic, precocious and enthusiastic. As are many of me students. Either that, or they're very quiet. But their writing assignments continually make me laugh. Another student, in response to the same assignment, wrote "My first sister has huge eyes." 

I've decided that I need to dedicate a blog entry to how lucky we are, so far, to have a good school. There are other foreigners we have been hanging out with who have been having trouble, even in their first few weeks, with contract issues like getting paid on time, teaching hours, vacation time, etc. While we haven't really had an opportunity to have problems, our school does provide very well for us--- they buy dinner every night (delivered from a nearby restaurant, usually soup with varying vegetables, tofu, seafood and sometimes chicken, which I try to avoid, with rice.), provide snacks like bread, jam and a toaster to make toast; energy drinks; eggs and a frying pan; and little yogurt drinks. There is also a steady supply of (really good) instant cappuccino at the water cooler. Oh, and on Thursday, Mr. Lee handed us an envelope with $100 (100,000 won) and told us to go to the beach (it was a long weekend) and that it wouldn't come out of our paychecks. 

My classes are going well. Like I said, some students are a little too quiet, and it's a lot of work to get them to participate in discussions. And my younger classes have trouble settling down. But it's nothing major, and they're getting better. We still have small classes, which I like, but there will be more students next month. We have pretty set curriculae, and it can be hard when there are things a class needs to work on outside of that, like a specific grammar point, to find class time to do it. But it's flexible enough that I've been able to move things around and make room. 

Our Korean counterparts, young women our age named Laura and Dana, are lots of fun. We went out with them again Thursday night (since we had Friday off), and Jon, Laura and I ended up at a karaoke place. It was really a lot of fun-- they had a good amount of English songs. Laura and I rocked out to Destiny's Child together, we all sang some Backstreet Boys, and generally had a good time. 

Oh, and Anna, Erin and Mom...guess what song I also did! Build me up, Buttercup! Haha it reminded me of Leddy Beach :) 

And Kelli, we did Bohemian Rhapsody, although it was not as good without you. :) 

6 comments:

Lyn said...

I'm glad you're having so much fun! Sounds like you're staying entertained both in and out of school! :)

Anna said...

umm interesting students you have...
oh and im sure everyone was happy to hear you sing buildme up butter cup escpecially the first "why"

hahahaha

Anna said...

oh and i think the title does apply to dad haha :)

Mom/Mama Bear said...

Love how you write! and now I've got that stupid song in my head for the day, thank you very much:)

Anna said...

during freshman orientation, build me up buttercup played, and i was singing it through the halls SO loudly.

Anna said...

that was erin, not anna btw