Today was the first time we went to work at Kids On Campus, which looks like it’s a great situation. The school is modern, clean, and very nice looking, and the kids are beyond cute. We’ll each be getting our own class of kindergartners (and our own classroom) starting next Monday, so we’ll have this week to learn names and get up to speed on our teaching responsibilities. The kindergartners will come every day to the same class all year round, while the older students rotate between teachers each afternoon, so we’ll only see them a couple times a week. The teachers and administrators we’ve met have all been great and very willing to help, which is good because we’re going to need it.

We also moved into our apartment today, and I must say it’s a pretty nice place. We have two enclosed bedrooms, a kitchen, and a pseudo-balcony with a washing machine. It’s not huge, but it’s pretty nice and very conveniently located about 5 minutes walk from school and a quarter block away from the bright lights and hubub of a major street with lots of shops and restaurants. When we arrived at the school this afternoon, one of the administrators went with our cab driver to drop off our luggage at our apartment, which we now feel enormously guilty about given the number (6) and weight (~50 lbs each) of our bags and the fact that there is no elevator in our building and that our apartment is on the third floor. Wow.

Needless to say, we feel pretty spoiled at this point. Let’s just hope we live up to their expectations in the classroom. Jean (our supervisor) told us that some of the kindergarteners’ parents called to say good things about the new teachers, so that’s an encouraging sign. (Sidenote: It will take some getting used to for me to respond to “Gregory-teacher” and to refer to my peers as “Katelyn-teacher”, “Jeanie-teacher”, “Naomi-teacher”, etc.)

We picked up a few essentials from the Lotte Mart tonight. It’s a mega-store pretty much exactly like a full-size Tesco with the substitution of English for Korean throughout. I suspect we’ll buy some more stuff over the next couple days like plates and bowls and silverware; our school has even provided some cash up front for us to get situated.

So, yeah. Things are looking pretty good, although we know we have challenges ahead including getting adjusted to living in Korea and becoming comfortable as English teachers. We definitely feel more like foreigners now than ever, especially when we have to mime and sharade at McDonald’s. To do: learn Korean, starting with numbers.