Day 1- Graduation

Got up at 7am just for the hell of it. My jet lag has put me out of sync and I'm definitely not one to get out of bed early!

I have entered the Disney World of Schooling. Yesterday was my first day at the school and it was graduation for the 8 year olds. The kids all donned their baby blue graduation gowns and hats, sang Auld Lang Syne and the Grease song We Go Together to a backdrop of images from their Grease show and various outings to the zoo. There were speeches from some of the Korean staff and parents and each child got a trophy and a present along with their certificate. There were bouquets of sweets from the parents and a lot of photography!

I'm in school today (Saturday!), as the new children and their parents are coming along to the school to meet the teachers. I'm really looking forward to it. I'm not as nervous as I expected to be. Having spent some time in a couple of classes yesterday, I feeling more confident. The children are a lot noisier and cheekier than I thought. Whoever said Korean children are shy is wrong! This is a good thing, as I was worried about that.

Every child in the school is given a western name when they start-so I was introduced to various Eric's, Mavis's (!) and Alice's. I was told by one teacher that at one point a teacher had given some of the children farm animal names, and taken it upon themselves to name one child Cock. Harsh!...but amusing.

Everything at the school is very "cute". All the classrooms have ice cream or teddy bear wallpaper. The children have their own mini kitchen and each class is named "Space World", "Nature World" etc.. and matron's room is simply, "Sick World".

The other English teachers seem really nice. I was taken out for a traditional Korean lunch, which was delicious. Apparently they're not really into eating gross things, and intestines are really only as bad as it gets. We had a barbecue in the middle of our table and were given a big dish of raw, marniated prok, which you cook at your table. This was accompanied with about 10 dishes which varied from Octopus, Kimchi, potato noodles (which were amazing) and some weird dish where various scraps from the kitchen just get thrown into a mayonnaise-like sauce..this was also pretty tasty, if a little wrong.

I underestimated how little English was spoken out here...only people in their 20s will speak a bit of English, but that's it. Walking down the street, there's so much signage. I don't understand any of it, which is a weird feeling. When you're in Europe you can at least make out what things mean..here, no way. Looks like I better start getting friendly with the Korean dictionary, although it's the symbols I actually need to learn, as nothing is really written in the romanised alphabet.

Better get ready for work now..