Day 1

Here I am sitting in the main teachers/staff room here at beautiful Samyang Elementary school. This is apparently the largest Elementary school and probably school in general in Okcheon. Korean schools breakdown in a very similar way as American schools, 6 years of Elementary, 3 years of middle school and 3 years of High school, also and this is as an aside and a preemptive strike, the keyboard here at my school feels like the keys are about 3/4 scale of a regular American keyboard so for a while as long as I post from school there will probably be some errors. I just can't be this perfect when I may have a class to go to. Also I'm lucky in that I have a dedicated English teacher. She's dedicated in everysense of the word but I mean in two cases here. 1)She only teaches English and only to the 6th graders, so 11 classes worth. We heard all about people who get teachers who are homeroom teachers and they have to be jacks of all trades. It's like elementary in America where the teacher you have teaches all the core classes then there is still a seperate music teacher and an art class. 2) is she's really good at what she does so shes super prepared.

We also have our own English village which I didn't think we would get. Just becaue I figured that not everyone could be winners but so far I've heard of more people getting "villages" then not. All they are is dedicated rooms to and for English, it's hard to explain but what it does mean is the kids come to us not the other way around. It means the world to teachers who have been here and started with no english room.

The staff at the school has been nice. It's a pitty I can't remember any of their names. I'm just terrible like that. If we didn't have nametags on all the time at orientation I would have known the names of like 2 people. So I'll have to make a seating chart of the office that I'm in so that I don't go around mumbling and pretending to say these poor folks names. Also nametags should be mandatory for everyone in the world at all times. Just go ahead and tatoo it to everyones faces. Good day though