First day teaching!

Well today was "orientation day"at school,We thought it was a chance for us to meet the teachers again, see the classes and possibly observe them in action... well "orientation day" ended up being "Ali and Joseph freak out because they really are supposed to teach day". Unfortunately there was a slight miscommunication with Adam and Jennifer ( the people we replaced) and our Boss Grace. The miscommunication being, "who's job it is to tell Allison and Joseph what to do". Grace assumed that Adam and Jennifer had told us what to do for each class, but they thought Grace was going to do it... which ended up to a mad rush today for Joseph and I to make copies and get correct books to teach our new classes. It was very fast paced, but the classes went by quickly. I had five classes today and Joseph had four ( lucky duck) but we made it. The kids may not have gotten the best lessons early in the early sessions, but by the afternoon, both Joseph and I felt more comfortable with the material and what was expected of us... I might even go so far as to say my last class of the day went "pretty good!"

We have a bunch of pictures from this week, but unfortunately they are still on our camera, so I will just give you a short run-down of the weeks coolest events since I last updated. Pictures to come, I promise! Look for more blogs and more pictures this weekend, I am going to try to make up for lost time. It is hard to keep up when I have to use the PC cafe rooms. We will try to transfer all the pics this weekend since it is the holiday! We get friday and Monday off, so we should have time. Hopefully they will have internet in our new apartment which is #1 of 3 cool things that has happened... Here is our list.

Cool things from Ali and Joseph in our first week!

#1, we finally got a new place. Have not even had time to take pictures yet, Our Manager at work, Daniel (but we call him Manager) came and picked us up at noon today and helped us move all of our bags to Jen and Adams old apartment. We literaly put our bags on the floor and had to turn around and walk back out the door. We had to be at a "teacher meeting" by one, so Daniel walked with us to show us the new way to school ( which was similar to the old way since our apartment is just up the street from where the Hotel was.... which is very nice). We then went over the events for the month ( Halloween party on the last day of the month... she wanted us to brain store fun ideas!... Caroline we may need your help! I am going to make Joseph dress up as Buddy)

#2 - I am now officially Teacher Allison. and Joseph is now Teacher Joseph. We thought we were just going to observe classes today, but low and behold, miscommunication is a beautiful thing, and we were supposed to lead the lessons. But as crazy as it was, both Joseph and I taught lessons and no Koreans were harmed in the process! ( They may be slightly confused, but glad that we didn't assign them homework because we didn't know how to do it!)

#3We went to the Geoje Island Prisoner of War museum and recreation park. We saw the name on the map, and since it was not quite a mile away, we put on our hiking shoes and with Joseph's amazing Map skills ( since i have none) he navigated us right to the front gate, and then also found an alternate route for us to go home, and see more of the city. We were both very tired after all of that, but I got some great pictures of the city and the POW park, which I will post later ( hopefully this weekend!)

After our full day of teaching we went to the mall and tried another fantastic Korean dish we have no clue how to pronounce! It was like a rice and shrimp omlet but it was huge like a burrito, but as far as I am concerned that is the best thing I have eaten since coming to Korea! It had a really tasty brown sauce too ... we got a picture... I will have a massive picture posting this weekend!

Hopefully this weekend, along with updating pictures, we will travel to a waterfall we see on the map, clean our apartment, and hopefully do some cooking after a big shopping run at the Home Plus.

For chuseok, our boss Grace was very kind and bought all the employees a gift of cooking oil.... it was in a box with grapes on it, so we thought it was wine at first, but she corrected us and told us " you really not want to drink that... you feel sick! Just for cooking"... yeah, Oil is not really up there with Coke or anything!.

We did try a new soda called McCol... which tasted like coke with chocolate... neither one of us could decide if we liked it or not... we may have to try it again... maybe it will grow on us.

We are very excited for our long holiday weekend! Hopefully the Home Plus will be open! More updates later!