Day 131: Falling Into Place

Today was my second day of class observations and it went much more smoothly for me today! Even just after one day things are starting to become more familiar and it wasn't so overwhelming as yesterday was, when I had to learn *everything* from the start.

I seem to be bonding with the kids already and they all seem to like me. I can't wait until I can start teaching the classes on my own for real instead of just sitting in and helping with them. The pre-schoolers will be fun cause they're so adorable, and my older kids will be great because they continually surprise me with their level of English understanding.

Poly is a school that caters to two types of students - 'Returnee' kids, and 'Gifted and Talented' kids. Returnee kids are students who have lived abroad in an English-speaking country for at least two years, so their English is obviously very advanced. Gifted and Talented kids have not lived overseas, but just have natural aptitudes towards learning English and so are much better at English than the average Korean child. This means that ALL my kids are *really smart* kids. Smart enough that the material we're teaching at Poly is actually the material they teach kids (of the same age) in the Los Angeles School Board!! My older kids continually astound me - most of them don't even have an accent and their English is actually...dare I say...BETTER than the average North American kid! WOW!!! Teaching them is going to be a really rewarding challenge as I'll have to raise the bar to keep them interested and still learning.

I also learned something really cool today - the apartment that I'm going to be moving into is actually BRAD'S OLD APARTMENT!!! WOW!!! This is awesome! Brad had a really great apartment and obviously I'm more than familiar with it - now I get to move in and make it my own. Steve lives just downstairs from Brad, and a bunch of my other coworkers live just around the corner. We all live in 'The Village' which is a great little neighbourhood in Ilsan not too far from Poly. I'm also going to be taking over Brad's old phone number, cell phone, and even his desk at work. Hey, I'm like the New Brad! ;-)

Today was an even longer day - classes went until 7:30pm - but it didn't seem as draining as yesterday was. I feel like I'm 'getting into the flow' of things at school. There's still lots to learn but I feel fully confident that I'm really going to enjoy teaching at Poly. Wow - great school, cool co-workers, an awesome apartment in a really nice city - everything in my life feels like it's finally falling into place!

After work today Steve, Amy, Kelsey, and myself went and saw SHREK 2 at the movie theatre at LaFesta. It was *absolutely hilarious* and I haven't laughed that much in a movie in forever it seems... It's going to be so nice to have stuff like shopping malls and movie theatres in close proximity to where I'll be living! ILSAN ROCKS! ;-) After the movie we all went back home and had another early night. Us teachers really do need our beauty sleep after these busy days!