what is life?

So Chungdahm training was the most stressful, strenuous, ridiculous thing I have ever put myself through and needless to say I failed. Failed? LOL. Yes. That shit was tooo hard. I was teaching "Controversies surrounding CCTV surveillance". Like dude, I'm from America. We don't even use CCTV's here. We have security for that shit. But anyways, because of the fact I failed, they revoked my contract. It was a Friday and they gave me two free nights in a hotel (until Sunday) and pretty much wished me luck. Like "oh hey good luck finding a job on the weekend when everything is closed, but we don't really care" kind of thing.. in not so many words. They told me how enthusiastic and great I was and how they really wanted me to teach younger children (like I was told I would be doing to begin with) but there weren't any jobs open until February. Soooo now I'm like WTF?! Homeless. I haven't slept in days and now I needed to worry about landing a job and finding a place to live. What is my life?! A fellow trainee from England pretty much has been a godsend to me during those two days. He was going to let me stay with him until I found a job and even was going to travel an hour to my hotel to help me move my three suitcases. Needless to say, Chungdahm is absolute shit. And after some research.. everyone who has ever taught English in South Korea agrees. Apparently they are one of the worst companies to work for (even if you do pass training). Their hours suck, their curriculum is too strict and sucks, and you don't even get any paid vacations. But what would I know? I'm a newbie to all this. But my newbie opinion says that Chungdahm sucks. Even the people in the program who passed complained all week. Just another lesson learned. I could have gone through training (with a free hotel stay) for the easier program, but what was I supposed to do until February?! Like, come on.

But anyways - after I had a severe midlife crisis in the middle of a foreign country all by myself, I landed a job on Sunday.. an hour before I needed to check out of my hotel. I had an interview via Skype with a recruiter and then the director of the school gave my hotel room a call for another interview..
and boom.. just like that, I was hired. It seemed beyond sketch but I mean, I really was on the verge of being homeless so I was just going to roll with it. I met my recruiter at the bus terminal and she bought me a ticket to Yangsan, a four hour journey from Seoul. When I got there, the director of the school met me and hugged me like she had known me for years. She drove me to the school and my apartment, helped me with my bags, and gave me a little welcome gift. Now I took the first job that came my way because I wanted security of having some place to lay my head. I guess I can't really complain about anything that comes with it.

My apartment? Is huge. And my roommate tells me how we hit the jackpot because apartments in Korea are like tiny holes in the wall. Roommate?! Yes. Was that part of the plan? Absolutely not. But oh well, I guess. We each have our own room with our own bathroom and then a shared living room and kitchen. The rooms are giant and so is the common living area. Living on my own was 90% of the reason why I decided to come to Korea but again, oh well. The apartment is above the school. And it really isn't as bad as you would think. We have our own entrance and exit. It still is kind of weird, but I've only been here for one night so I can't really give my full opinion on the situation yet. All I know is.. Chungdahm screwed me and the director Kate came
to my rescue. My roommate is from New Zealand and he is actually married and has two kids.. in the next city over. He needed to get this job to make ends meet and I guess he goes home every weekend, which is cool. He's been in Korea for four years and he claims that this is the best school he's ever worked for and this is the best living arrangement that has ever been provided. I'll take it. The real icing on the cake is the roof. O
nly the two of us are allowed access. The view is absolutely to die for and being able to go up there whenever I want, makes the fact that I have a roommate absolutely okay.

Today was my first day. The school is adorable. It's all kids ages 4-10. What's really weird is that we HAVE to take our shoes off. Even the kids take off their shoes. I know it's a Korean culture to take your shoes off before you enter one's home, but to see it enforced in a school setting blew my mind. So I taught all day in my slippers. And ya know what? I don't hate it. Buying some warm, fun slippers is definitely on my to-do list. The day flew by. The classes are taught in 40 minute increments, there's three classes, and the instructors switch between the classes. For the first half of the day, I taught kindergarten, which they call "kindy" here. The biggest class size was four students. You teach one lesson per session (right out of the book) and it seemed too easy to be real. The lessons are like two pages each and we mostly colored and played games. The second half of the day was the elementary students. They were a little more disruptive, but for the most part, just as easy. I taught four thirty minute sessions, again, right out of a book. There's only four teachers here and two of them are foreign teachers, including myself. When I was supposed to be working for Chungdahm, the majority of the teachers were foreign teachers. It's not what I had set out to do but that's okay. I still intend to make the most of my time here.

Now, Yangsan is about an hour subway ride to Busan. Busan is the second largest city in Korea. The area from what I have seen so far is cool. There's a downtown area with lots of food and little shops. I can see a mountain from our school and I guess it's beautiful to go hiking up there. There's a Buddhist temple that allows temple stays there so that's definitely on my to-do list. The director took us all out for an amazing dinner. One thing about Korean culture is that when you go out to eat, you don't order a dish for yourself. You order two or three dishes and they are used for sharing. They're big enough to do that too!

Cutting this short because "teacher jerrica" is tired. The students always put the word "teacher" before your name. It's adorable. Peace out.