After the weather this week I think we can safely say that summer is officially here! Daegu is known for being the hottest city in Korea and it’s definitely living up to the hype. Because it’s situated in a geographic bowl all of the hot air gets trapped in the valley and none of those nice coastal breezes can make their way in. It’s 95 today with a high of 98 projected for tomorrow. Yikes!
I grew up in Louisiana and most recently lived in North Carolina, so I am used to some merciless heat and humidity, but it’s different here because the air conditioning is non-existent. That’s right. It’s 95 degrees and my classroom is NOT air conditioned. All of the windows are open (they don’t have screens, by the way, so there are always bugs), but unless your classroom has windows on both sides (mine doesn’t), it’s hard to get much of a cross-breeze going. There are these rotating fans that hang from the ceiling that we use instead of air conditioning, but they won’t let us use them right now because “they haven’t been cleaned yet” and they are dusty. Apparently a little bit of dust for a few minutes would be hazardous whereas the “yellow dust” (toxic pollution from China) that we are breathing in from the windows being open is no big deal. Hard to argue with that kind of logic.
Aside from the heat, Daegu is so much prettier in the summer. This is a path where I like to run.
It feels a little weird for this to be summer because we still have two full months of school before our summer vacation. So while everyone back home is graduating and getting ready for summer trips we are still in the middle of the semester. Apart from being sweaty all of the time things are chugging along like normal here in the ROK. I realize that we do a lot of blogging about traveling and fun new experiences we have, but not a lot about everyday life, so I thought I’d share a few recent teaching experiences.
I teach 3-6th grade in an elementary school and my students are generally pretty low level, but I have this one magical 6th grade class where at least half of the students have really good English. They are really positive and motivated and can do so much more than my other classes.
Our last chapter has been about jobs and how to say, “I want to be a police officer” or whatever. I wrote a bunch of jobs on the board and then had the students read them, trying to explain any words they didn’t know. When I got to “waiter” and they gave me the blank-faced stare of ignorance so I said. “When you go to a restaurant, the waiter is the person who comes and asks what you want.”
My boy, Min Woo, interrupts me and says, “Oh yes, yes, teach-ah. I know.” And then, doing different voices for each character: “’Hello, what do you want?’ ‘Oh, I’ll have the foie gras’.”
Oh em gee. Most 6th grade kids who actually speak English don’t know what “foie gras” is. I was dying.
Min Woo is a particularly bright student, but some of the others are equally amusing. Later on I taught the same lesson to a different class of 6th graders. While playing a game, one boy couldn’t remember the word for astronaut. I patiently waited for it to come to him.
“As… As… uh”
Encouraging nod from me.
“Ass-pilot!” Triumphant.
Burst into very unprofessional laughter.
While my 6th graders are fun because they understand more and can interact at a slightly higher level, it’s hard to beat the cute factor of the third graders. Except for this one girl who really creeps me out. One morning I was teaching them animal names. I showed a slide with a picture of a cartoon penguin with a little bowtie. The students were all exclaiming, “Oh! Cute!” Then this one girl in the front row mutters in a creepy-deep voice, “Mmm…delicious.”
I told this story to a few other teachers and they mostly thought it was funny, but also that I might have misheard her. I conceded that this was possible. Until yesterday when I taught her class again. We were singing a youtube song about the colors. There’s a little yellow bird flying around the tree in the video singing sweetly. Once again this little girl said, “Oh, delicious.” This time the other students around her looked shocked. “No! Not delicious!” But she just smiled creepily and said in her husky little voice, “Yes, very delicious.”
All I can say is I am not turning my back to that girl. Ever.
Two Sore Thumbs 
This made me laugh! Ass-pilot and tasty penguins/birds – the things the kids say are hilarious sometimes!! Thanks for sharing 🙂
After a long week teaching this post made me laugh out loud! You’ve got some interesting kiddos! How fun though! I’m sure each day is a new adventure! 🙂
Hi Lily! I also have a small little travel blog and am hoping to move to Korea in August to teach through EPIK as well. I am going to check out the rest of your blog, but was wondering what you think about Korea and the program? Are you enjoying yourself and would you recommend it? Love for you to check out my blog as well. Thanks! xo
Hi Alexa, your blog is beautiful! Did you do the design yourself? Also, your South of the Border post cracked me up. I lived in North Carolina before Korea and had a good friend in Charleston. Every time we drove down to see her we would stop and take ridiculous pictures at South of the Border. That place is a cultural gem. Haha. Anyway, I think teaching in Korea is a really great opportunity to save money, live in another country, and travel in Asia. The jobs themselves can be hit and miss – even with EPIK people’s experiences vary widely depending on their specific school and coworkers – some people have great coworkers and their teaching load is easy – some people have coworkers who barely speak English and are difficult to communicate with or have more responsibility in the classroom. It really depends on your school. Overall though I recommend EPIK over a hagwon (private school) for a few reasons – guaranteed on-time payment (which can be a problem in privately owned hagwons), significantly more vacation time, fewer teaching hours, daytime work hours (most hagwons run 2pm -10pm and I’m more of a morning person), and a Korean coteacher to help explain and control classroom behavior. Having said that….unfortunately the department of Education is making HUGE budget cuts right now. As of right now, the city of Daegu is not hiring any teachers for August 2015 (my contract won’t be renewed). While there are cuts across the board, there may still be some areas that are hiring. I would suggest talking about it with a recruiter. We used a recruiter that we were very pleased with called Gone2Korea. They were very helpful. If you do go the private school route, try to talk with a teacher at the school you are interviewing for. Hagwons can be awesome, but they are also notorious for firing people for little or no reason, requiring weekend work, only letting people take one vacation day at a time so they can’t travel, not paying on time, or even going out of business and leaving people jobless. It entirely depends on the owner. Hope this was helpful!
Hi Lily, very helpful thank you! I have submitted an application to Gone2Korea, so we’ll see how that goes. I’m pretty sure I’m qualified. Do you remember how long it took them to get back to you by any chance? Trying to get a jump start on things here but I feel like I’m a little ahead of the game… just antsy. 🙂
South of the Border is so weird! Every time I drive by there I always have to stop and it never gets any less bizarre. So funny.
Hopefully will be able to get a job with EPIK for this fall- fingers crossed! Thanks for your help!
I really don’t remember how long it took for them to get back – they are probably scrambling right now with people who are doing the February intake so they may not be all that worried about yours until after that. I do know that applications for EPIK usually open April 1st and our recruiter made sure to submit ours the first day. We had our interview within a week of that and found out a few days later that we’d been accepted to the program. The recruiters are probably also trying to figure out what the status of EPIK is right now. For my city we were told that there would be no new hires in August and that they would cut current positions by 60%. But they said they would likely be re-evaluating and possibly rehiring by next February. It sounds like they are trying to consolidate into one intake per year. But again, that’s just for the city of Daegu -other areas may be doing different things. I do know two couples who teach with the Jeollanamdo Language Program (JLP). It is also a government program with very similar benefits to EPIK, but is concentrated in the Jeollanamdo area and the schools are more rural. You might consider checking that out. Let me know if there’s anything else I can help with!
Oh and thank you! Yes I designed it myself- just tweaked the 2014 theme a bit. Getting sick of it though and feel a change coming up… Oh the insatiable woes of an artist, haha.