The very first day I landed in South Korea, I was brought to my new life. Oh, and what a new life that was! My very first stop was Chunbo Middle School, my school. That day, as I stood in the hallways talking to my new co-teachers, students from every corner stopped...and stared...and gasped. I had just stepped off a massive flight from Texas, so I thought my jet-lagged look traumatized them.
The next day I walked into my first classroom. It being my first true teaching job, my biggest fear over the prior months was, what if I fail as a teacher? THEN what?! So I stood there with my first lesson, in my first class, in front of 40 kids looking wide-eyed at me...and then everything inside me stopped. All those nervous, sleepless nights and what-ifs and I-can'ts instantly VANISHED the second I said hello. Never in my life have I left work thinking, THIS. THIS is what I want to do with my life. Until that first afternoon.
Six months in and I have become deeply in love with my students. Leaving them in April will be equivalent to 840 heartbreaks in one hit to my gut. It will shatter after leaving Chunbo behind. I can give a million reasons, but one example is, in America, I won't have students running up to me screaming, "Teacher! I LOVE you!" or "Teacher! So pretty! Like flower!" or forming their arms into enormous heart shapes while yelling they love me. This, of course, being a random outburst in the middle of a lecture. No, that won't happen anywhere else but here in Korea.
Aside from my students bursting with love, they also set their minds on creativity, even with the teeny amount of time they have away from their studies. And although MANY of them talk and sleep and pay no attention to my lecture unless I'm dancing and singing and throwing K-Pop stars and games into the lecture, they still have a great amount of creativity and will to learn. Sure they might make paper airplanes out of those worksheets, but those are some damn good airplanes they make! Therefore, I make sure to leave much room for them to create as they wish.
And aside from my students, I nearly run as fast as my students to the cafeteria for some delicious school lunch. I've always been a fan of school lunch food...yes, I am an odd one! But Korean style school lunch food is QUITE different. Each item goes in a specific section on the I-feel-like-I'm-in-prison metal trays. The soup goes on the right side while the sticky white rice goes on the left. And if you mess that up, be prepared to get some confused looks. Because while both sides are equal in the amount of food they can hold, the soup DOES NOT belong on the left side of the tray! It becomes clear when serving the soup with a huge ladle onto your tray. Why would you drag the ladle across the tray to your left, spilling soup juice all over your rice?! Besides the tray specifics, which took me a good two months to finally get down correctly, the food itself is amazing. AMAZING. Some days I have no clue what I'm eating, but I'd rather not know.
As far as foods go, I will write more about this in a blog alllll about food! For now, I will end this with an I <3 Chunbo.
<3 ReneeInSK
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