My First Day of School

Before I get to my actual first day of school, I'd like to make note of the fact that I'm coming to you from the comfortable confines of my apartment, which finally has a working network for the Internet. Believe it.

For my first day of school, I got dressed up all pretty in my suit and met my co-teacher out in front of the McDonald's by my place, where she picked me up and drove me to the school. It actually is a really nice drive from my apartment to the school. This really is a beautiful city and I haven't even been to the beach areas yet. Anyway, in Korea both teachers and students are not allowed to wear their regular shoes on the school grounds, which would have been nice to know before I bought two brand new pairs of work shoes back home to take with me. So we get to school and I have to change into slippers that the school provided, but the only problem was that there weren't a pair that were anywhere near the size of my feet! No joke, I had to squeeze my size 13 feet into like size nine slippers. Half of my heel was hanging off the back and the top part of my feet were so squished! My feet really hurt after a while in those things.

The first place she took me was the teacher's lounge, where I was able to meet almost every teacher at the school. They actually all seem really cool. Koreans are so embarrassed to speak the English that they know, especially around a native speaker, so usually you end up with giggles and big smiles when you say hello to them. This was pretty much what my meeting was like with every teacher. Oh, and almost all of them wanted to know if I played volleyball. To give you the quick story on this, every year the staff of the elementary schools of Busan have a big volleyball tournament. I think it's in the summer. Anyway, my school apparently has always been really good and take it very seriously, but they lost the championship last year, so they are hell-bent on redemption. Obviously because of my height they are excited that I said I would play, even though I haven't played volleyball since like junior high. But, as Josh Ko knows, the secret to winning at volleyball is the spike, and I'm going to do my best to spike the ball every chance I get.

So after meeting all the teachers, we went to the school's auditorium for the opening ceremony. Schools in Korea don't actually do anything on the first day, except for the opening ceremony and 1st grade ceremony, which I'll tell you about in a bit. They actually have a name for this day, which I'm forgetting at the moment, but to give you an idea, it's kind of like how we have a graduation day. We don't call it the last day of school, we call it graduation. Same thing here for them. While we simply call it the first day of school, they have an actual name for it. So, as we walked into the auditorium for the ceremony all the students from the school were already inside and there were gasps and "oooohs" and "ahhhs" when they saw me. Children here get very excited to see foreigners.

As part of the ceremony, all the new teachers at the school are introduced to the students. I of course am one of those teachers so I was up on stage and introduced alongside all the others. Here's the thing though. The principal would basically talk about each teacher and then when he was done, the teacher would step forward and bow and the children would clap. Well I don't understand Korean. So I had to listen really hard for my name. I was able to tell when he was talking about me, however, because as soon as he started the kids got all excited. I'm telling you, children love foreigners.

After the introductions of the new teachers, the principal introduced all the returning teachers and then went on for maybe five or ten minutes with some speech. I was sitting there looking at the students, obviously bored out of their minds, not paying attention to one word the principal was saying, wondering why they even do this. You can't put elementary kids in seats and expect them to listen as their principal makes some serious speech. That whole part really seemed pointless to me, but I suppose it's an important part of what they do here. My guess is that it simply reinforces that the principal is "the man" of the school. Rank is very important in this country.

After that ceremony was over we had about an hour and a half until the first grade ceremony. This is basically where the children who are coming from Kindergarten are welcomed to elementary school. All of the little kids were seated in the auditorium with their proud parents seated a few rows behind them, as we watched some serious entertainment from some children who already go to the school. One of the performances was a dance/taekwondo routine that would have had most all of you laughing. It was one of the funniest things I've seen since I've been here. Crazy Korean pop music, taekwondo move, 9-year-olds and dancing. Perfect.

Once we finished with this ceremony my co-teacher showed me the English classroom, which is totally high tech. It's got a flat screen all set up with a webcam that the class uses to Skype with other classes on Wednesdays. It also has an automatic eraser for the chalk board. It's this huge contraption that works like the eraser on one of the magnetic writing pads you'd have as a kid, where you pull it across the pad to erase what you wrote. Anyway, it was great. There was a projector of course and a few computers for the kids to work on.

We went to lunch at around 12:30 and wouldn't you know it on the first day the principal takes us to a fish restaurant by the school. Not only was it fish, it was blowfish. I'm not sure how many of you know this, but if you eat blowfish that isn't cooked right, you will die. I'm not kidding, it's poisonous. Now, if that's not just another argument for why seafood just shouldn't be eaten, I don't know what else to tell you. It's either the ridiculously high mercury levels or it's the blowfish. You choose. So anyway, my lunch consisted of rice, spinach and salad. Yum.

My co-teacher allowed me to leave early that day to go to the immigration office here, where I still need to apply for an alien registration card. She drove me to an area by the bus stop I needed to catch, which is probably about a ten minute walk. Here's the thing though ...  she didn't know where exactly the bus stop was either. She which bus I needed to take, but just not where the stop was. So, she finds some kids that are hanging around this area we are in, which again didn't look too great. She then tells me the kids are going to take me to my bus stop, because they know where it is. Okay great. I'll just follow these kids in my nice suit in this crappy area to the bus stop. Thanks teach, see ya tomorrow!

So I start following these kids and they lead me down this sidewalk by a small creek and into an even more precarious area. Then out of nowhere, one of the kids pulls out a little pellet gun! Holy crap, that thing looked so real! These kids were maybe 10-years-old and I got so nervous, until I was able to tell it was a fake. Man was I scared. They never pointed it at me or anything, or did anything with it for that matter, but still! They actually got me to my bus stop okay and ended up being very friendly, but they were my worst nightmare there for a second.

I hopped on the bus and took it to the nearest subway station so I could head over to the immigration office, which is clear on the other side of town. After I took the subway almost all the way there, I received a call from my co-teacher's son right before the second to last stop where I needed to go. Apparently, there were some documents my co-teacher failed to give me, so I couldn't go to the immigration office that day. So, basically I had traveled for about an hour and paid the subway fees for nothing. Oh well. I needed to buy some new slippers for school anyway, because there was no way I could stuff my feet into what they school had again. I hopped back on the subway heading back towards my place and made a couple stops to find slippers and went home. Every where I went I could not find size 13. I eventually ended up with some size 12 slippers from the Nike store. Hey, 12 is better than nine.

Today at school was a lot more fun. I had slippers that fit and I actually got to meet some children. I didn't do any teaching though. I'll start that next week. This week I'm just an observer. The kids are great. They are just so intrigued by foreigners. I would get up in front of every class and introduce myself and then have a little question and answer session after. Some of the sixth graders were actually very proficient in English, I was surprised. Without fail though, in every class the first question I was asked was, "Do you have a girlfriend?" One kid even asked when I was going to get married! Man, I did not come all the way to Korea to get the third degree about marriage from a sixth grader! Oh, and listen to this! One of the kids told me I have a big nose! No one really laughed, because I don't think they all understood, but I was like thanks! Some other notable comments were, "Why are you so handsome?" to which I responded "because God loves me," and a third grader told the co-teacher in Korean as I was standing up there, "Americans are usually fat, but he's not fat." I thought that was hilarious. They all gasped when I told them I had four sisters. One kid even asked me if I give Kalie, my little sister money. I said, "What for?" and he said because "you are the older brother." I told him "No, my dad gives her money." I asked him if his older siblings give him money and he said no. The whole exchange was very funny.

Lunch today was much better than yesterday. We actually ate in the school cafeteria and they served bulgolgi, which is like flavored meat and vegetables. It was delicious. The seaweed soup, which I was open-minded enough to try, not so much. There were some bomb strawberries though. The strawberries here are shaped a little different than at home. They are much longer here. I'm sure it has something to do with the soil and the climate in which they're grown here or something.

After lunch, there was really nothing for me to do, because all the English classes were over. So I soaked up as much Internet time as I could, because I wasn't sure if mine was going to get fixed today or not. I'm sure next week I'll be able to make better value of that time.

Anyway, I guess I've rambled on for long enough now. I think I'm going to do some more straightening out of my place, so I can get some pictures to post on here for you guys soon.

Take care!