Welcome back readers of the BIK Blog- thanks for stopping by!
Time is getting down to the wire here as my days in the good ole' U.S. of A. dwindle down and a year in Korea gets closer. I've got a week and a half before I take off on August 30th and I'm finally starting to get the reality check that I've been waiting for for a while. It's an interesting feeling. Getting my official assignment has helped. That came about a week ago...
I've been assigned to be an English teacher at Bangcho Elementary School in Anseong City, South Korea. Anseong is a decent sized city of about 150,000 people located about 50 miles south of Seoul. A couple of weeks ago, an email had been sent out notifying us TTGers that all of the placements for this year were going to be "rural". When I heard this, I was freaking out a bit because instead of living in an urban metropolis, as I had understood we were, this message made it sound like I was instead going to be living here. Not quite what I signed up for!
A few days later, we got a second message explaining that the word "rural" was a bit lost in translation and that it simply meant that we were placed in smaller cities around the province. Whew!
I'm not sure if I'll be assigned to one particular age group or if I'll be teaching multiple age groups within the school. I do know that elementary school starts at age 6 for Koreans and lasts until age 12. I'll be teaching in a classroom of about 40 kids with a Korean co-teacher who will be helping me with any translation as well as taking care of a lot of the discipline issues as they arise.
Last night I officially booked my plane ticket to Korea as well. $951.00 on the old credit card...ouch! I'm told, however, that my school is going to reimburse the cost of the ticket when I get over there though which is super nice.
Well, that's all for now.I'll check in when I'm down in Chicago on the 29th. Things should start picking up here pretty quick!
Mike
