Buy Buy Teacher

Yesterday I had to say goodbye to my favourite class in the afternoons. They were my last class on M/W/F and were super fun and intelligent. It was the one class where I could actually talk to the kids about their lives without getting 10 pairs of eyes staring blankly back. They would tell me about their weekends (a lot of camping trips, and a lot of study) and their lives in general, which are fascinating simply due to the difference between NZ tweens and Korean ones. The wee dears work so hard and they're still so young and have SO much to go before they can pass their high school exams (considered the hardest ever in Korea) to try and get into one of the top universities. Apparently it doesn't matter what grades you get in uni for most jobs, but where you went. So much pressure at a time I was still interested in Barbie dolls and making huts with my sister.

(from left) Samira, Don, Love (Samira's older sister),

Chester, me, Cherry, Sally and Adam. Such clever kids.

The class left me to go onto a higher level of English study at our other campus so I won't be seeing them around anymore (except Don, who is my director's son). They were super cute on my last day with them, they made me wait outside the class while they decorated the board like so:


And Cherry, Samira and Love were hiding in the closet with a gift of ice coffee and a letter for me, so sweet, and I was genuinely sad to say goodbye to them. My Korean co-teacher Janice got the same treatment, but she was appalled that in her goodbye letter they spelt "bye" "buy".

Cherry, one of the smartest in the class and very

chatty wee lady, she's super funny and always

tells me stories about her weekends.

Chester is hilarious. He's lowest in the class but

always tries very hard and some of his answers are

more than amusing. Potentially to be found on Korean

Queer Eye for the Straight Guy in the not-so-distant future.

Today we got our new schedules and as expected my comfy schedule is just a little harder now... I don't want to complain and moan about it as I feel there is too much of it here, but it is a little annoying some of the changes. I'm here to work, obviously, and I do really enjoy the teaching on the whole but it takes SO much energy and I am worried I'm going to become a really grumpy irritable teacher all the time due to the lack of breaks. Most annoyingly, I've gone from one afternoon class Tues and Thurs to three, meaning I was finishing at 3.30pm, now it will be 5. Not the end of the world but doesn't give you much to look forward to during the week.