Oscars!

Every year my family does oscar picks. This year I plan on winning. Lets hope catagories like Documentary Short, Art Direction, and Sound Mixing don't let me down.

Food!

Recreation Time

My impressions of where I now live

The housing is pretty great. There are two main buildings here, one for classes and students and one for teachers. It's much like a really good dorm room. You will have your own room, each room has there own heating system, bathroom, little kitchen area, desk, about 32'-40' wall mounted TV, closet space, fridge, and remote control floor heating (crazy). Overall I am very impressed with the cleanliness and livability of the space. It's only been a week but I feel very comfortable here. There is also treated water here (uncommon for South Korea), and a laundry room on the floor. To be honest, this is probably the best living space for english teachers provided by a school and since all the utilities are paid by the school there is no worry about high power and eletric costs.
Pretty much the coolest learning facility I've ever seen. It's closed off from the next major city and it pretty much has a learning compound feel to it. It takes up about ten acres in and around mountains and hills (staff here say the hiking here is excellent). They provide you with a laptop (if you have your own bring it as the ones they provide aren't the greatest and are more for school work). There are two main buildings, one has all the offices of the admin, conference room, weight room (pretty small), teachers lounge, teachers computer room, and sleeping quarters. Building 2 has the cafeteria (during the week three meals a day are provided for us for free), the students sleeping area, and the classrooms. Ok, I must stress that these are not your everyday classrooms, they are built with practical learning in mind. For instance, there is a hospital room which looks and feels like a hospital, a television broadcast room (where we film the kids doing newscasts and play it back for them). Each room has a TV and a computer that are linked with high speed internet access. To be honest, extremely impressive. There is even a kareokee lounge in which students actually do kareokee, and that's A CLASS. One thing that I've found is that this place operates more like a camp then a school. A new group of 120 students come here each monday and leave on Friday. For them it's a way to practice with native english speakers in a setting that resembles real life. Because of this the students tend to be happy and excited to learn as there are no tests and there is a lot of playtime.
Obviously it's still early but I think I will enjoy myself here. As long as the staff are fun and the classes don't get too repetitive this should be a very fun year. I am fairly outgoing and that's the way I teach so this school is perfect for me as the classes are more fun then boring and the students tend to have a great time all week. It's so crazy, at the end of the week the students are so upset that they are leaving and take a million photos of the staff and write notes and letters to their favorite teachers.

1st official blog in South Korea

This one is for Peter, who has created this blog with me and pushed me to constantly add to it.

BFF