School and such

As of today, I've been back for a month. In some ways it feels like I never left Korea, and in other ways it feels like I just got here.

I'm still kind of settling in to my new apartment. I had a few problems when I first moved in, but they've all been sorted out for the most part. The main issue I had was with a gate on the third floor landing - I live on the fourth and last floor.

view from my front door down the stairs

When I first moved in, I was told that the landlord locks the front door and the gate at 2:30 in the morning. The problem with this is that the gate has a bolt on it that can only be opened from the inside.

note the bolt on the bottom

So if I came home after 2:30am (which to be honest, isn't that often), I would have to call the landlord and ask him to come open the door. This was a problem for a few reasons.

1. He has a wife and daughter. I don't think it's fair to call anyone at 2:30 in the morning (or whatever time) to ask them to open someone elses' door. It's doubly unfair to wake someone up who will probably wake up others in the process.

2. He said that the bolt is there because all the tenants in the building are women, and it's safer to bolt the door. The problem with this logic is that all the tenants except me live below the gate. The only people past the gate are me, and the landlord.

3. Late at night, there are 4 locked doors you would have to get through to get into my apartment. The first one is bolted with a key-code alarm. The second one is the gate (which has a key lock as well as the bolt lock that remains constantly locked). The third one is my front door. The fourth one is the entry-way door that has a lock as well. If someone is that determined to get into my apartment, a bolted gate is not going to be a deterrent.

4. I've never had a curfew. Even when I was living with my parents, there was not a set time I had to be home. It was simply a matter of being responsible and making sure that they knew when I was going to be where, and an ETA for getting home. And I haven't lived with them for 10 years. I don't need a curfew now.

I tried to explain to him that I didn't want him to bolt the door. My Korean isn't that good, and his English isn't that good, so the communication was probably amusing from an outsider's perspective, and could probably make a good sitcom joke, but it was annoying and frustrating in actuality.

So, I wrote my landlord a very polite letter explaining my position and reasons for wanting him to not bolt the door. Then I politely asked my co-teacher to translate it into Korean for me. Then I taped it to his door, along with my payment (early) for the electric bill for the month.

He hasn't bolted the door (that I know of) since then. And I did get home at 4:30 once this weekend.


I've also been settling in at work. I've gotten my kids into a routine, which of course makes things in general much easier. I enjoy working with the kids that I have, and the small problems I was having with the curriculum (like getting a power point and worksheets for a lesson the day of, and being expected to add things to it and do extra research) have been resolved for the most part.

My boss seems to like me quite a bit. I've been told on numerous occasions that I'm one of the best teachers that they have. I was observed once for each of my lessons, and then they added more observations so the staff could see what I was teaching (things like learning centers) and learn from what I was doing. The principal sticks her head in my room just to look at my bulletin boards, and she's asked me to send her files for things that I've done so she can share them with other teachers. It's certainly a different atmosphere from what I'm used to in Korea, where if you don't hear any feedback you're doing fine, and any feedback you do get is usually what you're doing wrong.

I'm also a member of the national council for ATEK (Association for Teachers of English in Korea), an infant organization that's still in it's first year and in the process of electing its first president. I haven't had to do much so far, though I feel like I should be doing more. At this point, it's more a matter of keeping current and up-to-date with things happening in the ex=pat community, like the H1N1 virus that has a lot of teachers quarantined without pay, or the recent cancellation of foreign teachers' contracts in the Seoul public school system a week before school started.

And I've been traveling a bit as well. I went to the DMZ a few weeks ago, I went to Busan last weekend with a friend who's leaving in a few weeks, and I spent this weekend out in Seoul celebrating a friend's birthday (hence coming home at 4:30am on Sunday morning).


Don't ask an ajuma to take your picture in Busan. First she'll refuse, thinking that you want to take a picture of her. then she'll squint at your camera like she's trying to look through a viewfinder, when your camera only has a 3inch LCD display and no viewfinder. And then she'll cut your head off when she does take the picture.