First Day at School

I realize that the times and dates of my posts do not reflect Korean times. Apparently they are the current Pacific Standard time and date so don't necessarily make sense in terms of what/when I'm writing. Ignore the conflict.

Yesterday I went to the school for my placement "test." That consisted of reading a paragraph from the second level text book to the school director. She seemed relatively impressed with my ability to recognize the Korean alphabet and pronounce the Korean words. Her enthusiasm waned when she realized that I understood very little of the content. Also, her attempts to converse with me were met with a blank stare of incomprehension. Ultimately she concurred with my opinion that I belong in the beginning class, despite the number of years I have worked at trying to learn Korean. Because the first three days of the beginning class are spent learning the alphabet and pronunciation, she thought that perhaps I should go to a higher level class for those days so I wouldn't be bored. I told her I thought I could benefit from starting from the beginning; if after the first day I felt I was wasting my time, I'd let her know.

Well, after the first day I was exhausted! Even though I knew the letters and how they should be pronounced, I still found going over the information to be useful -- and tiring. What will it be like when we get to unfamiliar material?! There are six of us in the class: three Japanese (one a retired man; the other two college age), one Chinese young man, one Algerian in his mid-fifties who lived in London for twenty years and is now living/working in south Asia, and me. At least four of us speak some English; the Japanese young woman has some knowledge of Korean. The Chinese man seems the most isolated in terms of communicating.

The teacher is excellent. Student teaching for getting my Teaching English as a Foreign Language certificate as well as volunteer work teaching an ESL class, made me realize what a high energy level is required to teach a language to people who don't speak it well, or really at all. Facial expressions, body language, creative drawings, frequent repetition are all needed to communicate with people who don't speak the language. That is very tiring; the teacher seemed to need the class breaks more than the students.

I had planned to do some shopping (mostly food) after class, but it was raining -- and I was tired. So I returned home to nap and do a load of laundry. Bought an umbrella from a vendor on the steps of the subway station. It's ugly -- school bus yellow. I chose that color hopeful that the crazy Korean drivers might see it -- and me.