Week 2

I think that it's safe to say that this week of teaching was fifty times better than our first two days. We're beginning to feel more comfortable in a classroom, and we've been talking about what we think our role in the classroom is. Since this is not the children's main school, we are not responsible for shaping them into uplifted citizens of the community. Our job is to teach them English only. This idea makes teaching some of the out of control students a little easier. Below is a picture of our school building, which looks like a typical Korean business building. On the 2nd floor is Espresso Bar Felice, on the 5th floor is a virtual driving range/golf course, and MoonKkang is on the 3rd and 4th floors. The blue sign with white Korean symbols on the far left edge of the image says "MoonKkang Language Academy."

Things are actually starting to feel surprisingly normal here. We have met a number of other foreigners who are friendly and helpful. I'm getting more used to the fact that we cannot read a single sign on the street or understand when the worker at Home Plus tries to explain the difference between two kinds of rice. It's not a comfortable feeling that I have in this situation...more of just an acceptance. It is also motivation to learn Korean. Mitch and I have been studying the alphabet a little every day, but we're finding that things are still hard to translate even if we know the letters. I have thought that translating was an interesting concept for some time now because it relies so heavily on the perception of the translator. No language can be truely translated into another language. I have a different appreciation for that concept now. Mitch had a time trying to translate the three words on our rice cooker this morning; Anyone who sits down to translate ancient transcripts or the Bible is awfully brave. Certainly our lives are different now than they were just weeks before, but we still tell silly jokes, we still listen to Sam Cooke while we cook, we still make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for late night snacks, and we still dance like dorks when we're all alone. Plus, the internet makes the world seem so much smaller than it looks on a map! The first week we were here, I missed home so badly that I felt as though I could cry at any point throughout the week at the snap of a finger. I hated not being able to hear familiar voices or even see the the words "Good morning sweetie pie" (from my mom) in an email. With the internet, I can call home and talk to Mom and Lindsey on Skype like we live right down the street from one another. If anyone else has Skype, you should add Mitch and I as friends so that we can hang out! (cordia.ferguson, mitchell.drennan)

We have a mailing address. It is not to our apartment because we don't really have a mail box here. Rather, it is to our school:

Moon Kkang English School
905-3 JangWon Building, 3rd & 4th Floor
DongChonDong, BukGu
Daegu, South Korea
702 886

We would love to get letters! We have a few letters to mail out, but we haven't found the post office yet.

And, we posted some new pictures here.

-Us