And another year begins.

Well, school has officially been back a week, and I've taught most of my classes. Things got shuffled up a lot this year. I'm now teaching half of every grade and will see the 2nd graders fortnightly for speaking practice. This frees me from the book a little but means I need to prepare extra activities for practice, and most of the kids were my first graders last year so they've seen the best of my materials already. Well, that's life as an ESL teacher in Korea: constantly having to download  make new materials.

I've changed up my discipline plan this year as well. Last year I used a chart with random 'candy' blocks. Do well on an activity, or your team wins? Get a stamp, and maybe candy. This didn't work very well at all. I don't have my own classroom so I couldn't keep the charts myself. Most kids lost theirs, lost the books they were glued into, or just didn't care enough about candy. It also rewarded ability over behaviour which wasn't the aim of a successful motivation/discipline plan. Also, I kept forgetting to buy candy.

This year I am ONLY giving candy out to third graders who have perfect dictations after the first, high-speed reading. Instead, classes will compete against each other by earning points for good behaviour and losing points for bad behaviour. Each lesson is worth either +1 or -1. If a class hits 0, they have to apologise and either lose break time or do a ridiculous and embarrassing chicken dance. If they hit ten, they win a star. At the end of the semester, the class with the most stars in each grade will get a pizza party, ice creams, chocopies, or a movie outing (depending on how awesome they are and how much money I can afford to spend on 90 students). After a star or an apology, the score resets to 5. So far it seems to work. Classroom implementation doesn't really require the co-teacher (mine are sometimes absent): I draw a smiley face and a sad face on the board with a line dividing them. Depending on how things are going, I move a magnet to either side of the line. It is not affected by skill in English, but by behaviour. The point for the class is determined by which side of the line it's on at the end. I decide how far it moves. Eventually I should be able to deal with bad behaviour with just a pointed look and the move of the magnet, without disrupting the lesson, yelling or singling students out. Getting the magnet to the positive side has been enough to prompt answers from students already. If there's a tie between two classes at the end of the semester, I'll have some kind of score-able quiz/activity and see which class gets the most points.

I have to teach with a lot more co-teachers this year, with only 2 classes or so with each of them. They all seem to have different expectations of what my responsibilities are, so I'm wiggling my way around all of them to see exactly where I fit in. The 3rd grade classes so far have been a breeze after I worked my butt off preparing stuff for them last year. I'm trying to put more effort into my 1st grade classes now, and have never taught 2nd grade before. 1st grade seems to be the same plan as last year, and 2nd grade will just be that speaking practice.

I'm in the nice new English Teachers' office, only have 2 classes with my main co-teacher, and so far life seems to be pretty good.

Howdy, neighbours.
Another great change this year is that our little neighborhood of foreigners seems to be becoming more social. My awesome Canadian neighbours were great, but I did feel like it would be nice to have someone to go to dinner with nearby. Sadly they have moved out, back to Canada and travelling elsewhere this year. I am the only foreigner in my building. But there are a whole lot in the building across the alley! One of the new people, Steven, has just moved in. We discovered about 10 minutes into a long anecdote about my first day that Steven reads my blog. Hi Steven.

It's pretty weird to have a lot of the newbies coming up to me and saying they read this blog. I feel like I haven't put that much effort into it lately and could be doing more. I've started doing some editing work for the Daegu Compass and Platform Daegu magazines, to keep busy and keep my CV good for more than just teaching.

Other news? My relationship is going well and we're planning our next steps for After Korea. This will be my last year in Korea, and then I guess the Red Pen of Doom will be giving new expats tips on how to order food and so on from, oh, I don't know... South America?

We'll see.

My WWOOFCSA box arrived!

The other day, I placed my order for my first WWOOFCSA sample box. Korea is the land of deliveries, where most people shop online for everything. You can even have your laundry picked up and dropped off, although I haven't tried that yet.

So anyway, my friend posted pictures of her WWOOFCSA box. And I thought it seemed like a good idea, so I ordered one too. And before I could articulate the acronym, it had arrived.

For a measly W30 000, I have:

Lettuce
Salad greens (different kinds of leaves)
Bell peppers (red and yellow)
Potatoes
Onions
Carrots
The most delicious apples ever
Eggs
Oyster mushrooms (uh oh)

If I had chosen the bread option I'd have a loaf of walnut-potato bread too, and some mulberry jam. Yum. This is the couples sampler basket. I might have paprika.

What is WWOOFCSA, beside being a very long acronym?

Not my box, but very similar

Launched this month, it's a community that coordinates sales, packaging and delivery of organic produce from farm to your doorstep. You pay in advance, which allows the farmers to be able to plant their crops and harvest them. If there's a natural disaster or just bad weather or something like that, it affects the crops. For example, there was a bad broccoli harvest a few weeks ago. The broccoli farmer threw in some extra other crops to make up for it. The food is mostly farmed near the city you live in, and mine arrived fresh, delicious and in perfect condition.

I get mine delivered to my school because I'm never home during working hours. I was worried that the box might be too heavy to carry home, but Koreans are masters of packaging and it's a small, light box. My plan is to see if I can cook and eat everything within the week. If I can, then this will probably become my main dinner source (as lunch is provided by my school).

Read more about WWOOFCSA on their website, and have a look at pictures of what's in the box. For W108k a month, I think that's a hell of a good deal. It's slightly more than I'd pay for 5 jjimdalks. They have breadless and vegan options too. You can also join activities like strawberry picking, and through the main WWOOF organisation you can do something like a 'farmstay' where you work for a certain number of hours in exchange for food and accommodation.

click to embiggen

Less Miserable 2nd Graders

Well, winter camp has just ended, which brings me to the end of my first year in Korea. I'm exhausted.

Here's a fantastic parody my students wrote today:

I dreamed a dream of times gone by

When  class was fun, and life worth living.

I dreamed that kids would never learn.

I dreamed that teachers would be forgiving...

Then I was free and so relaxed,

And textbooks were closed and shelved and dusty.

There was no homework to be done.

No film unwatched, no game unplayed. 

But the exams come in April 

With their questions hard as Mensa.

As they tear your hope apart,

As they turn your dreams to formulas.

He slept a whole week on his desk.

He filled his nights with endless gaming.

He took my champion and my pride,

But he was gone when 3rd grade came.

And still I dream he'll come to class.

That we will learn English vocabulary together.

But there are grades that cannot be,

And there are questions we cannot answer.

I had a dream my life would be

So different from this class I'm studying.

So different now from what it seems.

Now school has killed the dream I dreamed.

The Happiest (and cheapest) Train

Hello, and welcome, children. Today we're going to talk about something very few foreigners seem to be aware of. I only discovered it myself over Thanksgiving weekend. It's a marvelous thing called the Happy Rail Pass.

What is it?
This is a little card that you buy which can then be exchanged for unlimited train tickets for the duration of the period you booked it for. So, slow trains and KTX. But not subways. This saves you a fortune if you're doing multiple transfers, or going up to Seoul for the weekend, for example.

All prices in KRW:
KTX from Daegu to Seoul: 33,600 - 55,300
Saemaeul (slower): 30,000 - 34,000
Mugunghwa (slowest train): 17,200 - 20,000
Bus:  17,000 - 27,700

Those are one way trips. Yeeeeeeeeesh. So, a return ticket to Seoul on the KTX will total over 100,000 if I want to travel in style, or 68,000 if I slum it. Ouch.

Now, we get to the Happy Rail Pass. This pass is best used when travelling in a group.
Happy Rail Pass (solo) for 2 days: 87,000
Happy Rail Pass - saver - (solo) for 2 days: 78,300
Edit: I misread the information, unfortunately. The group price is 78,300 per person.
And that is including your return ticket home, and any KTX/slow train travelling you do during that time.

The Happy Rail pass is aimed at visitors travelling within Korea, but it can be used by anyone, including foreigners with ARCs. You need to use a credit card and your passport number when booking, and include the names and passport numbers of your companions if you're putting them on the same pass. Bring your passport with you when you go to the train station. You can use foreign credit cards to book this pass online.

When you get to the station, take your Happy Rail Pass number (you got it when booking) and your passport to the ticket window. Exchange it for your first ticket. The timer starts now. Keep the little card they give you; that is exchanged for all train tickets during this time except subway tickets.

The Happy Rail Pass doesn't guarantee you a seat rather than standing ticket during peak season, so get there well before it's time for the train to go in order to be certain of one. Peak season is summer vacation, Chuseok, lunar new year and Thanksgiving day, year end and beginning of the year.

Book your ticket online here: http://www.korail.com/
(English version of the site is available). Happy Rail passes are under "Travelling".

Bon voyage.