Our first real day in Korea was crazier than expected and more fun than we could have hoped for. The fun, though, was in equal proportion to the hard work.
Our day started with our first official though very un-Korean breakfast of cornflakes and bananas. The day ended with us collapsing in bed from exhaustion at only 6:30!
But, lets take it from breakfast. At 9 a.m. we were expecting one of our bosses, Alex, to pick us up and take us to the hospital to get a physical. He ended up calling us and changing it to 12—which was fine because we were pretty tired from yesterday’s craziness. At 12, Alex and the two of us got in his car, picked up the another new teaching couple, CJ and Elise, and headed to ECC. Surprisingly, they were kind enough to give us lunch at the school and this school lunch was amazingly good: gioza (dumplings), kimche, fish, soup, and rice. The school cooks were a very funny and amiable bunch of women. Afterwards, we headed to a conference room in the school and met a bunch of the native English teachers who work here. They were all so nice to us and very relaxed. We also recieved a packet showing what our schedule would be this week and other information. Our teaching observation would official begin at one. First, though we had to head to the hospital for our physical. This experience itself was pretty memorable.
We hapened to arrive at the hospital during their shift change and had to wait a while before we could be seen. While we were waiting, all the nurses lined up in a line and all listened to an anouncement over the speakerphone. They then proceded to chant these phrases in Korean (we don’t know what they were saying but it kind of sounded like the korean version of the pledge of allegience.) After they were done, work was resumed and we were able to start our physical. We all had our eyes, ears, weight, height, and blood pressure checked. We then went to a differnet floor to get a chest x-ray and have our urine and blood tested. The experiece was much different from hospitals in the states—there really wasn’t much privacy during our physical. For example, we got our blood taken at what looked like a normal school desk while surrounded by a bunch of other lab workers. Also, we had to carry our urine sample across a long halway, trying not to spill it on any of the other patients sitting in the hallway. In a word, that situation was awkward!
After we were finally done with the hospital, we went back to ECC to observe some classes. We observed four differnt classes of different age groups and took notes on our observations and how the teaching system worked. Unfortunately, we wern’t able to observe any kindergarten classes, but we will for the rest of the week.
After we were finally done observing we both were so exaused we could barely stand. We managed to walk home with two other teachers and immediately collapsed in our bed and fell asleep. On the way home, one of the teachers compared the goings-on of the school to a merry go round and that one had to jump on and hold on and go for the ride. We the thought that was an apt comparison as we felt like we just went on a fun and exhuasting carnival ride.
