My classroom in Hannamdong

So I have officially begun teaching this week. Today was my second day and I teach six 5 year olds who are incredibly cute and who I will eventually put up pictures of but for the time being I want to get to know them a bit better first!

 This is my classroom!

Our board!

Our message board that has a new message everyday for the kids to take home and then I mark them the next day to make sure they wrote it correctly.

The school is incredibly clean and new and the staff are very nice and helpful. The majority of the students come from quite affluent families which is a bonus for us because it means for the amount they pay everyone means they can afford an entire kitchen staff to prepare all of us free and delicious food everyday, so to my surprise I am eating a lot better than I thought I would be.

I only teach for some 4 hours a day and the rest is lesson planning for the following day and serving them food at lunch before we serve ourselves. At the end of the day I have to get their outdoor shoes on and zip up their coats and walk them hand in hand to their designated bus.

An interesting aspect of Korean teaching standards is that they consider a child 1 when they are born. So in actual fact I am teaching 5 year olds in grade 1, as opposed to a North American standard that would have 5 year olds in kindergarten. I have some kids who were born so late in the year that by North American standards they are actually 4, and I am teaching them subtractions already!

For the most part the students have English names, however some have Korean names which I find difficult to pronounce. They of course find this very funny and have also adopted me my own nickname in the midst of trying to pronounce Robyn, so now many students call me 'wobaband teacha.' Yes, I am rubber band teacher.

Today we played games at the end and I introduced them to duck-duck-goose. They didn't know what a duck or a goose was, but they liked it! Once the kids are gone at 3pm I have 2 hours to myself in the teacher's lounge for lesson prep for the next day.

Myself and the staff went for a pint at Wolfhound Pub in Itaewon after work. An awesome Irish pub because it was 2 for 1 fish n chips night tonight. It began snowing heavily but I managed to get a few pictures on the way home from the pub.

 It was so cold my hand was shaking when I took this photo. It is supposed to be of the North Seoul Tower but even though it's blurred I think the light pattern looks good!

 And then it started snowing.. a lot!

Kind of creepy but this is the wall to the Yongsan US Army garrison at night and these line the outside perimeter some 2 minute walk from my place.

Hopefully when the weather gets better I can take much better and clearer photos of the area. At the moment Seoul seems to be experiencing more snow than apparently it has had in years, so when it clears up I will venture out further and take some more interesting pictures of the city!