Now what?

Finished up the camp yesterday, and I'm honestly sorry to see it finished. It was a great month of teaching and spending a lot quality time with some amazing children. There were a lot of tears on the last day!

What to do, what to do... I'm going to do a little cycling around Korea if the weather holds. There's rumor of a Typhoon out there though, so who knows what's going to happen.

A position teaching at the here at the University opened up for this fall that is mine for the taking. It would be a great job. Only 3 hours of class every evening with 14 uni students. Same deal with the room and board, and I could study some Korean with the Chinese students every morning for a small fee. There are also free tae kwon do lessons twice a week. Best part is it's only a three month contract that finishes up on December 1st.

Hmmm. Not sure if I'm going to do it yet. Your suggestions are welcome.

Here are some pics from the past few weeks.

Ye-won and Hyun-min working on a Valentines Day crossword puzzle in the evening.

Morning exercise. Bring it on.

Left to Right: My students Hyun-chang, Min-kyung, and Eun-ji at morning exercise.

Young-in taking a break after morning exercise.

Hyun-min's morning face.

Ye-won and number 1 student Yu-jin pose for a picture. That's Jun-ho in the back.

Another day, another meal complimented by Kimchi.

Class 14!

Here are a couple pics of my homeroom class and our super awesome classroom decorations.

That tree contains a panda, a cameleon eating a dragon fly, a little yellow bird, and a bee hive. It's quite a little ecosystem.

The kids are really good, and having them all day makes things pretty easy. I've developed an easy going teacher student relationship based on mutual respect, which allows me to quietly emotionally blackmail them when they are bad. Needless to say, the kids behave really well.

This week has been a lot easier than last. Though the general atmosphere of stress amongst the teachers increases daily, I find myself more relaxed and energetic everyday.

This past weekend I went for a great bike ride with my 54 year old roommate (also a Canadian). Given the circumstances, you might be thinking that we were out for a leisurely country ride. You would be wrong. Gordon, who looks about 10 years younger than his age, has been a competitive triathlete for years. He's the kind of guy who gets up at 5:30 everyday and goes running. I'm the kind of guy who gets up at 9:00 everyday and drinks pu-er tea for two hours.

He just finished off a tour of Thailand and Laos by bike as well, and he told me that everyday he got up early enough to meet the first rays of sun on his bicycle. Brett and I were usually on the road by 10:00. Well, at least 10:30, or 11:00 at the latest.

Anyway, I have to reiterate that Korea is similar to Taiwan. Biking around, there's a similar feeling in the air.

Actually, I know nothing about Korea. I don't really feel like I'm anywhere. I'm just at a summer camp. It was a funny feeling to walk into town for pizza on Saturday - I was shocked to find myself in Korea.

I mean to say the Korea looks a lot like Taiwan. The buildings and the roads and railways. The brand new cars. The heat. Like that. It's hard to enjoy it as much not being able to talk to people, but it's still a cool place.

As a side note, I have to mention an experience I had here on my first weekend. I went along with a big group of teachers to what was said to be the "best club in town". But, we walked in and found the dance floor was empty. The music was quiet, and terrible besides. I was pretty disappointed, so I went to buy a beer to console myself. I turned around a minute later, beer in hand, to find the entire dance floor full of people. At least 50 people were suddenly dancing. Strange.

Of course, we all went out on the floor to dance, and we were having a really good time until about half an hour later. The DJ said something into the mic in Korean, and everyone walked off the floor.

Apparently he said "now is time to stop dancing".

Twenty minutes later the DJ returned and seemed to announce "time to start dancing", because within ten seconds, all 50 people returned to the dance floor.

This happened again and again over the next two hours. Does this happen back home?

I'll try to post some more pictures later, including the much sought after "Aaron leads morning exercise in front of 250 elementary students" video.

The life of a career English teacher

I feel like I might be becoming just such a beast.

No chance actually, but oh, how I teach and teach.

Got to JinJu (check it out on the google map here) last Thursday night after 24 hours on the high seas. I was the only westerner on the boat, and I got upgraded from "first class" - which is the lowest class actually - to "suite class". Turned out that the only difference between "suite" and "first" class is that there are only two beds instead of four... but the status! I met a couple of Korean students who have been studying in Beijing for a couple of years now and spent most of the trip with them. Not the isolation at sea I was half expecting.

Now I find myself right back in the thick of teaching english again. Not the old "sleep in till 9:00 or 10:00 o'clock, spend two hours drinking tea and reading, go for a bicycle through the rice paddies, and roll into work at 330 in the afternoon to prepare for a 5:00 class" kind of teaching though. Not this time. This time it's a summer camp, and so tomorrow morning I'll be up at 6:45 to lead exercises for about 250 elementary students, and I should finish up the teaching day around 9:00 in the evening. It's a pretty good set up though. I've got twelve 11 and 12 year students with whom I can pretty much converse with. They are diligent and quiet and cute and I have them all day. The cirriculum is set up fairly well. I've most of this stuff before, so most of my prep is quick. There's not too much to tell really.

I've included some pictures from BeiJing, The Great Wall and the Forbidden City below. My camera is kind of broken right now, so I don't know if you can expect any original photos of this fine country any time soon. I'll try to get it fixed though.

I was forbidden to enter the city because it closed at 5:00 in the evening.

HuTong alley way in the dead centre of BeiJing.

The SiMaTai section of the Great Wall is very steep and mostly unrestored.

It was a pretty cloudy/foggy day.
This is my friend Patrick whom I mentioned in a previous post.

and now one step back...

One more post concerning Taiwan... probably.

I lived in Ilan for two years, and it was hard to leave. Apart from the lifestyle, the students were also hard to leave. I have been teaching some of these people (and little people) for a year and a half.

Here are pictures of a few of my favourites.

Children S, formally the notorious Children X class... When I first got this class I dreaded teaching them every week, but after a few months of tough "Aaron teacher" love, they came around nicely and became my favourite children's class.

Front Row Left: Henry Lin, Tina, Crazy George (frontmost), Brother and Sister Joe and Sharon, and Eric.

Middle Row Left: Henry Zhou, Judy, Karch (it becomes a name after you yell "KARCH BE QUIET!" about fifty times), New Kid, Candy, and Ella.

Back Pair: Brother and Sister John (the one with the speech impediment) and Penny.

Here is my baby class... I love these guys. They get so excited they jump on me during story time, give me spontaneous hugs, and follow me everywhere before class. So cute.

Here are a few of the hard core adult club students. From the left there's Jane, quiet girl, Karen, Peter (Koala's number one student), and Jack.

And finally Langer, who is handsome.

Oh yeah, I forgot. I teach English.

Although I guess everyone I know is aware that I'm teaching English, I wonder if people might not misunderstand a few things.

First, I teach in Taiwan, NOT Thailand (Taiwan is the country that the tsunami did not hit). I am sure that there are still a few people that believe I am in Thailand.

The second point is that I really do live the life of a teacher day to day. I teach a mix of children's, high school, and adult English classes six days a week.

I write lesson plans. I mark homework on my own time. I give kids stickers when they do their homework well, and I take A's away from children who don't do their homework at all. I have spent hours considering and discussing how to discipline students. I intentionally embarrass myself in front of high school students to break the tension. I regularly make stupid jokes that only children find funny. I play good cop/bad cop everyday with my students (though in my case it's nice teacher/not nice teacher, and they are both me). I YELL at kids who don't pay attention, and I scare children with threats to report unfinished homework to their parents. One or two children probably really don't like me very much at all (although 99% of the kids really do like me).

I like almost everything about it.

I think it's that I love being with kids that I have stayed teaching this long. Being around children and interacting with them on their level has a way of keeping ones perspective on life fresh. Kids laugh and get excited about things that adults don't even notice. They don't hold back their feelings.

While the grown ups in a foreign culture might seem very different from grown-ups from back home, elementary students are, in my experience, the same everywhere. Enculturation, if that is in fact a word, doesn't seem to start kicking in until junior high.

That being said, I've realized that teaching is not my calling in life. Originally it was a means to an ends. A convenient way get out of Canada after university at a time when I didn't have much money. A way to see the world, and make some cash while doing it. It still remains, to an extent, a means to an ends. Right now I am still working here to save a bit more before I head out into Asia proper early next year.

But, until then, I will teach and teach again. And anyways, living in Taiwan is not so bad, either. ; )

Don't worry though, I will stop someday.