Here's to a New Year

I remember when I was growing up and even into my adult life, in early August Mom would start heading back to school to get her classroom/library ready for the upcoming year.  It was always a process.  Those of you who are teachers know it takes awhile to get everything ready for the next school year.  This idea that prepping for the coming school year takes time to gear up physically and mentally is totally lost on the hagwons (private schools) of Korea.  Yesterday (Monday) was the last day of the previous school year.  Today is a national holiday.  And tomorrow (Wednesday) is the first day of the new school year.  I honestly don't know how we are expected to transition into the next school year that fast.

As I wrote earlier, I am lucky enough to be able to stay with my K kids from last year.  Many teachers will be getting new students tomorrow, who have never attended school.  So I guess I'm lucky in that respect.  But since I'm moving up with my K students, I will be teaching an entirely new curriculum with a new schedule and new classes.  It's a lot to take on after just getting used to my previous curriculum and schedule.  Not to mention, my K kids are still behind where they need to be according to my school's curriculum.  We weren't even able to complete everything from the previous year, but we are supposed to blast ahead full speed.  I foresee tons of extra hours at the office in the next week or 2 as I try to figure out lesson plans, scheduling and try to get my classroom set up the way that I think it should be.

Though I am staying with my K kids, as of tomorrow both of my E classes will be changing, and I will be getting brand new E students.  I guess I'm ready for a change with my E kids, so I see this as a blessing.  My issue is that classes are tomorrow afternoon, and we are yet to be notified of exactly what class/age/level of E students we are going to be teaching.  One of my biggest issues with Korea is that EVERYONE waits until the very last minute to make a decision and then just expects everyone to be able to adequately react to said decision.  I don't operate this way.  I like to plan in advance.  I like to know what is going to happen and what is expected of me.  I'm the person who took all my syllabi back to my apartment after the first week of college and got out my calendar to highlight and write and give myself early due dates for hours and hours to ensure I was ready for the coming semester.  So I often find myself overly stressed and frustrated because it is 2 minutes before something is supposed to happen and the Korean staff has no idea what is going on.  I do not understand how this society functions like this, but they all do.  And I think I might be the only person I have encountered to have a problem with this mentality.  So that's that.

Woah, Kendall....enough of the negative rambling!  You guys wanna hear something funny now?  Today was a national holiday in Korea, so I didn't have to work.  I woke up early and got the apartment cleaned and had this huge to do list of things I needed to run around Seoul and do.  So I leave about 11 and take the bus to Itaewon (another area of Seoul) to go to the Foreign Food Market and pick up some stuff that I can't get at my local grocery store.  I finished there and needed to take the subway to another place to get my cell phone fixed, because it's been messed up for awhile.  I get into the subway station and start heading toward the escalator to take me down to the subway.  But before I got on the escalator, I decided I'd take the stairs for a little bit of exercise.  I usually try to take the stairs unless I'm with people who refuse to do so.  So I'm going and going...there were like a million stairs.  I swear I blink, and the next thing I know I'm like flying through the air, dropping the 2 bags I was carrying and throwing my cell phone several feet further down the stairs.  I must have missed a step or something; I have no idea.  But I took a serious spill.  It most definitely was not funny at the time, but looking back I bet it was pretty hilarious to watch.  I was airborne with everything I had flying around me and scattering to the ends of the Earth.  (It's ok to laugh...I am).  Once I gathered myself, I realized that I'd really really hurt my ankle.  So I just sat there on the steps at the subway station trying to recover enough to get myself home and cracking up at how ridiculous my life is.  That whole incident kinda ended my daily early, as I could barely walk and didn't feel like hobbling around Seoul to finish my other errands.  I'm such a klutz!!!

Well I should probably stop stalling and get back to these lesson plans I need to write...yuck!!!  (I totally understand why my mama is a librarian now!)

Hope everything is well back in the States!

It's All About Him,

KendallCooke