“Uh, yes, so…” begins my director, “we’ll have a meeting tomorrow to confirm everything, but you’ll be teaching 6 extra classes, working an extra hour each day, and designing the programme for the new first graders. Also, you are now the only teacher of your 5th grade class, so you’ll have to call their parents [...]
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Say what you want about the trials and frustrations of working in a foreign culture, but it has done something very important and useful for me. It has made me almost blasé about sudden changes of plan or last-minute information that I would once have expected to receive several weeks in advance. It drove me [...]
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Oh, help. I can’t really write anything tonight because of all the tears, so suffice it to say that the whole saying goodbye to the kids thing doesn’t get any easier from one year to the next. After our last lesson together, and hugs galore, two of my girls came to my classroom with a [...]
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When you’re a kindergarten teacher, you laugh every single day. If you don’t, you may not be doing it right! I’ve found that it doesn’t matter what sort of mood you happen to be in, you will always be forced to laugh out loud at some point whether you thought it possible or not. You can [...]
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It has occurred to me that although I’ve been living in Korea for what feels like forever now, I’ve never documented one of the biggest parts of my life here: my home. Now, to be perfectly honest with you, this is mainly because I am a disastrous mess who generally lives in something approaching squalor. [...]
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I am a guilty person. It’s not the sort of guilt that means I should rightfully be in prison. It’s more the kind that has me feeling bad about the slightest little things on a daily basis: a careless comment that I worry might have hurt someone’s feelings; a white lie that I fear will [...]
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Warning: total sentimentality overload. It’s no secret that I love Dr. Seuss. I mean, how could anyone not? I use his books often as a way of introducing my kindergarteners to English spoken more quickly than we normally talk to them, as you kind of have to read the stories quickly in order to hear [...]
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About halfway through my alcohol-free month of Project Pull Self Together, I am pleased to report that I am a much happier Hails. No doubt this is partially to do with the relief being experienced by my body, particularly my poor liver and sleep-deprived brain, but I have also been making a conscious effort to [...]
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To understand what I’m talking about today, you’ll need a brief crash course in Korean. Ready?! OK. In the Korean language, there are three main ‘registers’ or levels of speech – which one you use depends on your relationship with the person to whom you’re speaking. The highest register – the most formal one – [...]
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Freezing and hungry as I made my way back to the train station last night, the smell of kimchi jjiggae stopped me in my tracks and lured me into a little station eatery for some hot, comforting goodness. I am comfortable here now. I can hop on and off the subway in various cities with [...]
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You Say Goodbye, I Say… Historical Snapshots It Just Makes Me Happy
