Where am I and what am I doing?

The first week was great and a bit of a whirlwind.  I finally went to Avalon English's Junggye campus to work with the LangCon program.  Ok, so what do all those words mean? I know a lot of you don't fully understand what I am doing, honestly I am still trying to fully understand what's going on around me.  Let me explain what I know thus far.

Avalon, is one of the biggest and, according to My Asian, top three English hogwan programs in Korea.  Hogwans, in simple terms, are after school programs.  At Avalon the students can attend a 3 day program (MWF) or a 2 day program(TF).  LangCon, from what I've understood so far, are the lower level students in the Avalon English structure.  However, I have met some students at LangCon with better reading, writing and comprehension skill than many students in the US her age.  I am not entirely sure at what point students move up to Avalon's other program, which I believe is called Champ.  Since I missed orientation, a lot of things are still fuzzy.

Junggye's is one of the five main sections of Nowon(pronounced no-juan).  Nowon is one of the 25 gu(districts) of Seoul. Seoul, in case you don't know, is the "Soul of Asia" and the capital of the Republic of Korea.  I don't know a lot about geographical break down of Seoul, but feel free to check out Seoul Village, a blog I used to help he better understand.

(map of seoul with nowon)

For the first few days several of the students had dramatic external reactions to me.  I was told, but I already knew this, that Korea's have a reputation of being prejudice towards black people.  Apparently it is mostly because of a lack of exposure.  In a few students' eyes I saw genuine fear when they first laid eyes on me sitting in their classrooms for observations.  It was really neat to see the fear, shock and bewilderment melt away and turn into curiosity.  There are still a few student who I have not had the chance to be in their class, so they still look, point, whisper and giggle, but for the most part the student body has warmed up to me.

*****

Sidebar: Seriously, black people, outside of Itaewon, the Black People Capitol of Seoul, are few and far between.  Up until Saturday when Eunice, My Asian, took me to Itaewon, I had not seen any black people outside of the handful at Rachael's church, Onnuri.  So, when saw this group of people at the train station in Ichon, I had to take a picture.  I made Rachael pose for a fake photo just to capture the moment.  Apparently, I was not ninja enough, because it totally looks like that guy is staring into my lens.  Probably shouldn't have had her posing for several seconds while I took several photos.

(black people in korea)

*****

Back to explaining. As a foreign teacher, I try to help young Korean students(grade 1-6) better understand, read and speak English.  At Avalon Junggye's campus there are 4 Korean teachers and 4 foreign teachers and for now we all get along.  Students have one class taught by an foriegn/native speaker teacher and one taught by a Korean teacher.  Right now I am mainly teaching Language Arts, but have one class where I'll be teaching social studies.  We teach the beginners the alphabet and simple words.  As the students progress through the program, harder task are required for them.  The most advance students are writing and communicating so well they make presentations and have debates in English.  It's quite impressive.

Mostly, I teach students the mid range students.  I have only one class where the students are just leaning words in English, my Atlas class (I'll talk about the class names and breakdown the system later). Other than that, most of my students can form very simple sentences in English.  My class sizes range from 1-11.  I teach 9 different blocks of 6 types of classes over 2 days this semester.  Today, I taught both of my one student classes, however I had an extra student in the class that's supposed to be just one boy.  Apparently she's in my class only Monday and Friday this week.  I am extremely excited to teach these one-on-on classes because they are in my wheelhouse.

In one of those one-on-one classes, I have a girl a lot of the teachers say they dread teaching, but I am excited.  She reminds me of all the wonderful times I have had in the past 7.5 years as a private tutor to so many lovely young women.  I really think I can help her focus and push past her attention issue.  Plus, this one-on-one attention might be what she needs to drastically advance her English skills.  I have three months with her this semester and I cannot wait to see how The Lord will use me on her life. 

That's about it for now.  It's really late here and I need to get my brain rested for day two. 

Laters Ya'll,

miss Phyl