June Recap

Hey everyone. I hope everyone is well with everything. Today, I am writing while blasting various types of music in my apartment at 9pm on a Saturday. I wanted to write a little bit before I go hang out with my friends tonight. Although, I am going to have to get ready soon, so I might have to come back and continue writing this (seeing as how it usually takes an hour to write). I would have written earlier, but this past week and even the week before has been extremely busy. Between working, partying, and other various activities, I have not had much time to myself.


Starting with last week (Saturday), Kris came in the early evening. I met up with him at about 5 or 6 at one of the big malls in Seoul (COEX Mall). Actually, it’s HUGE! For starters, the mall has an aquarium, which is supposed to be awesome, a movie theatre, and a casino (technically in the next-door hotel). I met up with Kris and his 15 CDI friends from training and stayed outside of Zara (our meeting place) for 1-2 hours. From there, we went to eat, drink, and party. Luckily, the groups split into several smaller groups because it was really difficult agreeing on one place between 20-something people (more people came). The hard part was that there was no leader of the group, so everyone had different ideas with no cohesion. Whatever. I went with Kris, several of his friends, and his two Korean girlfriends to Itaewon (the military area of Seoul). We had a lot of fun, and we went to one of my friend’s favorite clubs. Several of my friends ended up coming out that night, and it was nice because I got to introduce Kris to some of my friends. We stayed out until about 6 or 7, and we ended up sleeping at around 8am. Kris left with his friend Eric at about noon to go meet up with those girls again at Lotte World. And, that was that. I sat that one out because I was exhausted from two straight late nights, plus I didn’t want to go. I should have now that I think about it now, but at the time I was certainly glad to relax. Oh well. I recently made plans to go visit him June 12th. Hopefully, I’ll get to talk to the guy more. When I saw him, we had too many of our friends around and kind of got distracted. Also, he had girls that were taking the bulk of his attention. Haha. Despite the fact that I saw him for only a short while, it was nice to see him at all – short and sweet. Since Monday, I have been swamped at work. I have to interview each of my 70+ kids for 5 minutes and have a small conversation. That means, I have been on the phone during the bulk of my prep time. Furthermore, I got another class. I shouldn’t be complaining because other teachers have it worse, but I am teaching near the maximum of classes (almost 5 teaching hours a day) possible + phone interviews + partying/helping my friends run errands. The storm will be done by Tuesday, but it couldn’t come at a more perfect time because I am beat!

The phone interviews are pretty fun. I have specific questions that I am supposed to ask, but I mostly improvise. I really don’t want to stress the kids out too much because they have finals (as fifth graders). Let me blab for a second: the kids go to all these different academies – English, math, science – in addition to school, and I feel like these finals are the icing on the cake. If they fail, they don’t go to the next grade, which stresses them out so much. … And, they’re in fourth/fifth grade! Consequently, I think I have been pretty fair to them and lenient with what they are allowed to do in class. The poor kids are cooped up studying and not having fun 24/7. Whenever I call a kid, they’re almost always studying! It’s so terrible…


Like I was saying before, the phone interviews are fun. I get a chance to talk to them a little more and get to know them. Also, it allows me to see where they struggle. Ah. So, I had one conversation with one of my favorite students, and he was pretty funny. The conversation went something like this:

Me: Do you know how to cook?
Kevin: NO!
Me: Why not?!
Kevin: Because I’m a boy.
Me: Boys know how to cook, too. I know how to cook.
Kevin: I don’t know how to cook. My mommy cooks for me.
Me: What about … do you clean your room?
Kevin: Yes.
Me: Do you clean the bathroom?
Kevin: No, that’s what my mother is for…

So, the extent of my busyness has peaked. The busiest time came on Thursday till this morning. I went out till 4:30am on Thursday (after a long day at work), woke up at 8:00am on Friday to go to Seoul to help my friend with her Alien Registration Card, and went straight to work until 10pm. From there, I went out until 6:30am. Soon, the phone calls will be done (Tuesday), which is, coincidentally, PAYY DAYYY!!! I haven’t gotten paid yet, and this paycheck will ease some of my stress, as I am sure you can imagine.


To recap this month, I have been, frankly, really irresponsible. I have been going out way too much, spending too much money, not being productive enough, and acting incredibly stupid. In short, I have been living the fast life and a little too much in the moment. On the other hand, I haven’t had this much fun in years. In college, I was the lone kid that didn’t go out, and I just studied every Friday night like it was my religion. I did really well, but it came at the expense of my social life. This is partially the reason why I came here – to have fun and be a kid again before the real world starts. The teaching aspect of my life here has been fun, but surprisingly challenging. I’ve worked with pre-school children before, and I thought the older kids would be more rational/emotionally capable. Not so much. Grade school or prepubescent children are the same, if not worse, than pre-schoolers, and their rationale is not better. Sometimes, I’ll tell a kid to be quiet and twooo seconds later he/she will be chatting it up again or hitting the kid next to him/her. One little girl even had the cajones to bust out her cell phone and straight up starts talking on it in class. Don’t even ask me how I punished her. No amounts of twisting my arm will force me to reveal what I did. I’m not saying. I won’t tell you… (Okay, I’ll tell you. So, this girl busts out her cell phone and talks on it. Not so difficult to catch her when there are only 15 kids in the class. Anyways, I take it away from her, and after class, I have her come to the office with all the teachers. I ask ALL the surrounding teachers how I should punish this girl (in front of her). They ALL say to give her a detention, which was pretty predictable. Well, I have this goal to never give a detention to any of my kids, so instead of giving her a detention, I told her to never do it again and I gave her a chocolate – a chocolate that I actually wanted to eat. In my defense, I threatened her with three detentions if she did it again, but the fact remains that I gave her chocolate when everyone would have given a detention… Again, in my defense, I think severe embarrassment of the student played a big factor in my decision to not give her a detention and a chocolate instead. Anyways, I got crap for that, and all my foreign co-workers were laughing at me (maybe for good reason)). Nonetheless, I think I am getting better at teaching, and I think I am getting better at staying cool amongst all the chaos. Hm… let’s see… other facets of my life here. Okay. The last thing that I will talk about today will be … my Korean speaking progress. I am getting a lot better at speaking Korean. What is more, I’m starting to pick out words and phrases when Koreans talk to me (at regular speed). Obviously, I am dumbfounded 99.8% of the time, but the .02% has been clutch. True story, my cab driver was lost and trying to find out where I live on his GPS. Good thing I can read Korean because I pointed out exactly where I was supposed to go (near the Uiwang Lottemart (the big grocery store/department store in Korea)). Score one for the home team. That … is about all I’m going to write for the night/week. Getting a little too long, even for me. Anyways, take care everyone. Hope to talk to you all very soon.

Love,
Kyle