Life's been good so far.

Dear Blog Entry,

So I've done a pretty poor job of keeping up with this blog. Let me try to summarize what has gone on since my last post.

December:
Snow. It never stuck to the ground, and most of my students can count on one hand how many times they've ever seen it snow in their lives, so it was a pretty big deal. I think it snowed twice before I left for winter break. Nothing sticks out in my mind that was very big news at school during December. We began our winter break on December 13 and returned January 7. Since we had such a long break I decided to fly home and surprise my mom. It was nice to see my family and friends and tell them about South Korea.

January:
I came back from break not feeling very refreshed, and not very motivated, so I got into the habit of planning day to day. I ended up staying at school until they closed (6:00 PM) and still working from home most nights. The work never seemed to end. We had our semester exams and I felt good about going into the new semester, except I still wasn't very motivated to plan ahead, so things didn't change much. Having four different classes has been overwhelming at times because of the wide range of abilities in each class.

6th Grade (Pre-Pre-Algebra?):
I never thought I would be a middle school teacher, and my expectations for my students have always been high, so sometimes I need to take a step back and realize I'm teaching 10 and 11 year old kids. I like to be real with my students and talk to them as I would any adult, and that's hard to do sometimes with 6th grade because they haven't quite matured enough. It took me most of the year to figure this out, and things have been going smoother since.

7th Grade (Pre-Algebra):
This class is still a challenge for me. I have four students who took Pre-Algebra last year, so they are learning Algebra 1 content. Because of scheduling conflicts, these four students are in my room during the Pre-Algebra class. For the first half of the year they mostly worked independently on anything I gave them. Having zero instruction from me though made it a big struggle for them to learn effectively. I do my best to split time each class period to teach both subjects, but 50 minutes isn't a lot of time to teach two different classes.

8th Grade (Algebra 1):
Similar to 7th grade, I have two students in 8th grade who are taking 9th grade math (Geometry). They also have been working independently all year. Towards the end of the first semester I was able to give an adequate amount of instruction for both levels each class period. At the beginning of second semester more challenges presented themselves. Two new students joined my 8th grade class. Both students were previously in US schools, but neither student was at the same level as the rest of 8th grade. One student was only a few chapters behind us, but was missing important knowledge, so they had to play catch up. The other student is in 9th grade, but would have been most appropriately placed in Pre-Algebra. This split my 8th grade class into four different courses, making my days exhausting. I never found a solution to give everyone the appropriate amount of instruction they needed, but I have found more efficient ways to handle it. It's still exhausting though.

9th Grade (Geometry):
Since high school students have a more flexible schedule, I only have Geometry students in this class. I have taught the same basic Geometry topics in each of my four classes this year since it's a part of the curriculum for each. I've taught so many things about points, lines, and planes that lately I've been seeing the world in terms of parallel lines, perpendicular lines, equilateral triangles, and all other geometric things. I have become very uninterested in the subject. At my ideal job, I will not be teaching Geometry.

Next year I'll be teaching 6th Grade math and Geometry again, but also Algebra 2 with Trigonometry and Applied Probability and Statistics, which I will teach in a similar fashion to AP Statistics.

February and April (so far):
The biggest news that came from February would be that I dislocated my pinky finger on my right hand. I was playing an intense game of halfcourt lightning with a few students. My ball bounced off the backboard on a miss and when I went to reach for it before a student could knock it away, the proximity of the ball and my hand and his ball was perfect for him to smash his ball onto my pinky finger. It wasn't painful at first, and I was more worried that I broke my finger and needed surgery again. They do have large hospitals, but they also have many specialized hospitals that don't have many doctors. One of the secretaries at my school went with me to an orthopedist, which was only about five minutes from school. I didn't even have to sit down to wait at all before they took me to get some x-rays. I wasn't given any lead vests or anything to cover myself. Then I went into another room with an operating table and the doctor came in. He spoke English well enough for me to communicate with him. It was good to hear that it was only a dislocation. He was holding my finger, a nurse came behind me and put her hands on my shoulders, and the doctor said, "Okay, one time pain." Then he pull my finger and set it back in place. Then all of the nurses and the doctor put lead aprons on, and again I wasn't given one. My hand was put onto a machine that gave a live x-ray and displayed it on a screen. The doctor then adjusted my finger to align everything just right. I was given an entire forearm cast, immobilizing my wrist and every finger besides my index and thumb. I was so happy that I didn't need surgery again that I didn't think about how ridiculous it was that I had a forearm cast. I went back to the doctor once a week for three weeks. Each week I was able to convince them to shorten the cast. I have been splint/cast free for two weeks now. I have been going to physical therapy every day, but I have made so much progress that I will only be going three days a week.

I'll post a picture of my injured finger eventually.

Sports at BFS

During the first week of school I was told that expectations for school sports aren't the same as a normal U.S. high school. After hearing this I had no idea what to expect for practices, games, commitment expectations, skill levels, or even knowledge of the sport. Well it is different for each team and each sports, very different from what I'm familiar with. Students are allowed to play on 2 or 3 sports teams at any time.

Our conference, which consists of all foreign schools, only has one scheduled volleyball tournament. Volleyball was able to practice Tuesdays and Fridays to prepare for the tournament that was at the end of September. I helped out and practiced with them when I could, but the season was over before I knew it. We had handful of students that came to every practice, but some of them had other things going on so they came when they could.

Cross Country has been practicing all year. They run four days a week and students are required to run at least twice with the team. Several of our runners placed in the top 5 at a couple of their meets so far. I think the girl's team is in 1st place in the conference and the boy's team is in 2nd place very close to 1st. They have their last meet today.

Basketball has also been practicing most of the school year so far. I help coach the high school boys team along with two other teachers. We were only able to practice once a week at first because volleyball had two days and the girl's basketball team also needed the gym once a week. Now that volleyball is over, we practice twice a week. We have 9 guys on the team, 5 of them being freshmen. The guys said they averaged about 20 points per game last year. I talked the head coach into putting in the fast break offense I ran when I was in middle school. I told the guys we'll double our points per game from last year. That hasn't really happened, but we've been doing very well. We've had 1 tournament already and have 1 more on November 22nd. We had one game early in the season when I was away on the middle school retreat. Our guys won and the score was something like 50-4.

Boy was it an experience at the 1st tournament. There were 3 teams: BFS (my school), GIFS, and BIFS (sort of our rival). It was a double round robin. There were 3 games before lunch and 3 games after lunch. The basketball was very normal and fun to watch, but the reffing was very unusual. We had 2 refs on the court and 1 ref across from the benches and he was in charge of the score sheet and the scoreboard. I think he was also supposed to be in charge of making sure we knew when time was expiring since there wasn't a horn and we sat under the scoreboard. I can deal with bad calls as far as fouls and out of bounds discrepancies go, but when it comes to basic rules like traveling, inbounding the ball, and basic clock management it gets a little frustrating. For our conference games, there should be a running clock the entire game except for the last 1 minute of each half and it also stops for timeouts. Here are few of the major frustrations I had.

• We were down by 2 points with 3 minutes left in the game. The ball got stuck between the rim and the backboard. They never stopped the clock. So it ran all the way down to 15 seconds before play resumed.
• There were countless times when players would have the ball on the ground and just stand up and there was no call. (Not our players of course)
• They didn't know how alternate possession worked for jump balls and never knew who to give the ball to at the beginning of the quarter.

Sorry for the little vent session. Here are some of the funnier things about the rules that the refs didn't know about that didn't make too much of a difference.

• We warm up pre-game on our side for the first game, then they made us switch for the second game.
• For our first game we shot on the same hoop the entire game. During the last 2 games of the day they actually switched directions twice.
• Whenever the ball would go out of bounds our players would grab it right away and pass it in and fast break, just like when the ball goes out of bounds in soccer. This was great for us since it made it very easy to fast break. I think we only scored on it once though. There were 2 refs that allowed this, and 2 refs that didn't. So our guys were confused whether they should throw it in or throw it to the ref. It cost us a few baskets.
• After the game we all line up straight across from each other, bow, then shake hands. That was cool.
• The refs didn't speak any English, so we probably just looked like a bunch of crazy guys whenever we were yelling about some obscure call. Usually it was towards the score table for the clock or to give us points. Oh boy the score table was also a huge frustration... another time.

So we've been on the lookout for more experienced refs for our next tournament. We ended up 3-1 tied for first with BIFS. We won the tie breaker so we were placed first for our division. That might give us a bye for the next tournament. It was a lot of fun to be around people genuinely excited about every part of the game. I've missed that fun, competitive feeling that I used to get from basketball.

The girls came with us and they had their games in a different gym. They went 4-0!

Other news for sports: I bought a couple of wristbands and a headband and was a badminton player for halloween. My easiest and most disappointing costume ever. I'll have to make next year's costume extra special.

Any requests for my next entry? There are so many things to write about. It's hard to decide.

And I'm off.

Middle School Retreat

Last weekend we had a field trip for 6th, 7th, and 8th grade. It was a 3 - 4 hour drive from our school and our first stop was a zip-lining course.

The biggest concern for one of my students was the disproportionality of the rabbit by number 4 to the person on the line between 1 and 2. So as you can see from the map, there were 9 zip-lines. I was able to get a picture and video of each student on the first few, then I also took videos while zip-lining a few times. All together the course took about 2 hours per group. We had 4 groups and one group went every 15 minutes. First we had to get into the back of a truck with benches, similar to a hayride. We had some tight corners and a lot of bumps going up, it was great! Here are some pictures of each group before they took off.

I missed one of the groups before take off... whoops. Here are a few pictures of the course.

Lucas is excited for the first line. He teaches a variety of music classes at BFS.

This perfectly captures how every student in my group looked on their first jump - excited, but holding on for dear life!

Great view - you can kind of make out the zip line on the middle right of the picture.

The last 2 pictures were from our bus ride. There were mountains everywhere!

We stayed overnight at a camp resort type of place. They had a cafeteria hall where we ate dinner, then breakfast and lunch the next day. Each room had 2 cabinets with bedding, there were no beds though. There were mattress pads about 1-2 inches thick, and then a blanket that was even thinner. Luckily the female chaperones wanted to have a slumber party in one room, so the three male teachers all got their own rooms. We stacked up the mattress pads and blankets and had decently comfortable beds.

The next morning we went to a "Challenge Course." There were rope obstacles that we all had to cross to get to the other side of a stream. Sadly none of the students fell in. The water was only a foot deep. On a different part of the course though, we had to swing from rope to rope to cross some water. A few students fell in here. =)

Anna also teaches several middle school subjects.

This was my favorite obstacle.

Nick is another middle school teacher at BFS.

Here are some of the 6th graders trying to cross.

Jihun is struggling while I catch up to him.

We also had a bonfire and played some night games on Friday night. After the obstacle course we walked down to the other side of a campground to complete a maze made out of hedges. It was actually pretty difficult. Most of us cheated and crawled through the walls.

Overall it was a great weekend. Came home Saturday late afternoon around 4:30pm. I woke up Sunday sore from all of the activities we did... it felt good though. I miss that feeling. I was exhausted on Sunday. I took a few naps and did a little work for school and went to bed very early. I would definitely go back, but there is so much left for me to explore yet!

I think I'm going to hike up a mountain tomorrow, so maybe that'll be my next post.

From South Korea, over and out.

Haeundae Beach

Day 4 in Busan and my sleep schedule still hasn't adjusted. I woke up at 4 am yesterday and did my best to not take a nap, but I ended up falling asleep around 10 pm. I woke up today at 5 am, so I'm getting closer. Today after breakfast I decided to go for a run towards Haeundae beach. It's only a 5-10 minute jog slightly downhill from my place.

The beach was an interesting scene at 7am. I only ran about half of the beach and saw plenty of people working at setting up umbrellas, sweeping the paths free of sand, laying out mats, and preparing inner-tubes. There were a few groups of Koreans still drinking some beers, most likely up from last night yet. I still have a little over a week before my 1st day of school, so I have some more time to explore before then.

Departure Time

Well, it's about time for me to begin my journey to Busan, South Korea. I'll be teaching math at Busan Foreign School for 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th grade. My first flight leaves from Minneapolis to Detroit at 6:30 am tomorrow, so hopefully I'm able to get a few hours of sleep tonight. I spent most of my day yesterday packing with my parents. We did our best to fit everything into a large duffle bag and a large suitcase, along with my carry-on and backpack. Unfortunately I have too many things for that! So I'll be checking three pieces of luggage, each weighing in around 48 lbs.

My first flight is just under two hours, but my second flight from Detroit to Seoul will be around 14 hours. My last flight will be from Seoul to Busan, which is where I'll be living, and it's only a one hour flight. My entertainment for my 24 hours of travel includes: a gameboy, my computer, and a portable super nintendo (including four games). A secretary at the school where I'll be teaching told me that there will be a welcoming party at the airport. Hopefully it won't be too hard for me to find them!

I'll do my best to post regularly, but who knows what kind of trouble I'll be getting in to keep me busy! =)

Here's to hoping my next post will have more interesting information about life in Busan!