Mr. Chung (one of Mr. Yu's many workers) picked me up from my temporary apartment and took me to school on my first official day in Korea. When I arrived at school, Mr. Yu warmly greeted me and took me into ECC or English Children's Center. ECC is a prominent, private school in Uijeongbu where only English is spoken, but all subjects are taught. Parents pay a boat load of money for their children to go here. The ability to speak English fluently is kind of like getting a college degree in America. You must be able to speak/get a degree to get a good job.
When I walked into the school, I was blown away. First, it is a building that sits on a busy road in Uijeonbu and has 3 floors. The classrooms are small because there are only 8-10 students per class. The rooms are made up of only English material. The school is referred to as an "English only zone" and if we hear any of the students speaking Korean we must reprimand them. I met the foreign teacher supervisor and began my three days of training. I can honestly say that within the first 10 minutes of observing a class with these adorable 5 year olds, I was estatic! I knew that all the saddness of leaving home and the long hours of travelling was worth the joy of getting to work with these kids. They automatically love you, talk to you, show affection towards you, and respect you. There are too many stories of my first school day to share, but here are my two favorite:
It was a break time in between periods (there are 7 periods for kindergarten) and the students were lined up at the bathroom. A little boy, about 6 or 7 years old says "Where you from!?" I say "I'm from America." His entire face lights up like a kid at Toys R Us. He starts yelling "You from America! We love America!" I laughed at that one all day :)
This other story is embarassing but very memorable. I was watching this class and the teacher goes "Everyone we have a new teacher and we are going to let her tell us her name and where she's from." This adorable girl in pigtails goes "Her name is pretty teacher!" And all the kids start going "Yeah! yeah! Pretty teacher!" After they calmed down and I told them my name was Mallory Teacher they laughed even harder because they couldn't say "Mallory." It comes out Mary, Money, or Malbery. The students must say "teacher" at the end of your name . It shows respect and if they don't say teacher you must punish them. We have foreign teachers and Korean teachers at ECC. The Korean teachers are very strict and all the students are scared of them haha. If a Korean teacher hears a student say just your name and not teacher at the end, they will be severly punished by the Korean teacher. The would pull them out of class, yell at them in Korean, call their parents and let them deal with the disrespect issue. It is that severe!
Aside from having an amazing first day at ECC with the students, the other foreign teachers are all awesome as well. They are mostly from Cananda, one from South Africa, a couple from the UK and two of us from America. They are all so welcoming, nice and helpful. They all have opened there arms to me and immediately took me into the group. It is so wonderful to have an expat community to turn to in difficult times!
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