Diary of a wimpy Ry

It's almost the end of my third week here. So far things are pretty good, but there are still a few issues that need to be worked out. Namely, I don't have a passport or alien registration card right now and thus still don't have a bank account here. Those things will be worked out soonish (I hope).

Apparently my teaching skills are ok, although sometimes I have no idea if these kids are actually learning anything from me or just repeating what I say. I've had this conversation with a few people here and it's interesting to see the difference between American/European kids and Korean kids as far as school goes. Korean kids have an incredible amount of work. They go to "regular" school every morning, go home for a few hours, then go to English school for 3-4 hours. They have massive amounts of homework that no American kid would do (at least I wouldn't). But their style of thinking is very different. They memorize and regurgitate, instead of thinking critically. And it's not a critisim, just an observation. For example, we had a "mystery" unit last week and the idea was to find out who broke into a store. The dective asks kids where they were at specific times. One kid said he was at the movies at 10pm, but another kid said he couldn't have been there because the theater closed at 9:45. So I asked, "Where was Simon at 10pm?" "the movies" "Well the movies closed before 10, so could he have been there?" Silence. True, these are youngish kids, but they don't really have reasoning skills. And that's hard to teach when it's not part of their culture.

My other issue is meeting people. Now I don't need to be around people all the time. I'm pretty content to stay at home at play on the internet or watch movies or read etc. But, I wish I had someone (or a couple of someones) to go to dinner with. Claire and I go out occasionaly, but I feel bad about following her around all the time. I'm not someone who is totally embarrased to do things alone either. I've been to the movies by myself on a number of occassions. But here, dinner/lunch is a social event. Meals are usually designed to share with at least 1 other person, if not more. So it's awkward to go to lots of resturants by yourself. Pizza places or fast food type places are different - you can normally get take out there and it's not so bad. It's the places where you go and sit, the places with traditional food - the places I want to try out, where it's better to have someone else. And for some reason, I don't mind being "different" as much when I'm with someone else who is also "different". It's like, we can be awkward and point at things together. I know it doesn't make much sense, but it's how I feel.

Hopefully I will be able to branch out some, but that's part of the reason there aren't that many posts - I don't go anywhere. I go to work, then home, then back to work. I'll explain more later...time for work!