first impressions

I've had a couple days now to check out my new school and see how things work. It's a lot different from my situation last year. All the students' books and homework is a lot more complicated, and the philosophy and approach toward teaching is pretty much the polar opposite. But, whatever.

The kids all seem great and a lot more well behaved than what I walked into last year. Part of this probably has to do with the fact that this year I'm taking over for a competent teacher. That wasn't the case last year, where my boss told me on my first day that "you could walk into the classroom and take a shit on the floor and you'd be doing a better job than the teacher you're replacing."

I've had to take in a lot of information so far, and I'm positive that I've forgotten most of it. Had this been my first rodeo, I'd be freaking out right now. However, having done this before and understanding that the stakes hardly effect me at all, I'm pretty relaxed about it. That's not to say I couldn't care less about how well I teach these kids, more of an admission that I'm not gonna know what the hell I'm doing for the first month or so. It'll work itself out though. It's funny, last year I was thrown into a buzzsaw and lamented not getting trained or knowing what to do. This year I'm getting that training, but I wish they'd just throw me into the buzzsaw.

Now, about Gwangju. I haven't seen much of it yet, just the area that I live in which kiiiiiinda sucks. There's only 4 or 5 other foreigners who live around me, and it doesn't seem like there's anybody willing to get bombed on soju and Cass with 4 nights a week, so establishing a social life will be more of a challenge. Last year there were maybe 20 other foreigners around me, so a social pipeline was already in working order. I can totally see myself in two months wandering the streets of downtown Gwangju, approaching every foreigner I see and pleading with them to be my friend.

I'm still living out of the love motel. Still jetlagged.