Ok I should start being better about posting what I promise to post.

Well sorry everyone, I kinda dropped the ball on regular updates. To be honest, I was kind of building to something and I wanted to make sure it panned out well before I was posting regularly again. I will start continuing to tell about things now that it panned out. Of course as many of you may know, what I'm referring to is the girl I was dating here for a while. I was hoping to wait until we officially became a couple or something (moreso than just going on dates every weekend). Unfortunately it didn't pan out as I had intended and we broke up recently. So nothing going on in that department now. But I did get practice dating and stuff so it wasn't all bad. I'll enjoy some single life for now then try my luck somewhere else. A co-worker actually was going to set me up with a friend of his wife's before I started dating this other girl, so that might actually happen soon because I think his wife was really hoping I would go on a date with her friend. Who knows, maybe that could turn out well. In the meantime, I'm not too concerned with it. I'll just go back to my old routine.

But I do owe you a new post about some other aspect of Korea outside of my house.

How about work?

I pull regular hours each week which total to 40 hours (five eight-hour days). Of those 40 hours, I spend only 16 in the classroom. The rest is all planning. We come up with our own curriculum and work with our Korean co-teachers to make lessons that are relevant to the students' needs and the co-teacher's own curriculum. At the end of the day, they're the teachers and I'm not. My classes are times when otherwise they would just have classes with the students so my lessons need to at least supplement what they're doing in their classes. I have a partner teacher who is also a foreign teacher and we teach eight classes together. We split the classes in half though so our classes are like small group classes. We teach second and first graders in high school (the equivalent of juniors and sophomores in American high school). At this school, every student studies two languages. They study either English Major/Chinese Minor, English Major/Japanese Minor, Chinese Major/English Minor, and Japanese Major/English Minor. Each of the four options has two classes per grade so in order it would go 1-1 and 1-2, 1-3 and 1-4, 1-5 and 1-6, 1-7 and 1-8. Me and my partner teach the English majors and the other two teach the non-English majors. All students except third graders (seniors) get taught by a foreign teacher. So eight classes that I teach, two classes each per week is my regular schedule. It's not too bad.

In addition to that, I'm also a middle school teacher! Every other Saturday, I teach a first, second, and third grade middle school (7th, 8th, and 9th grade) class (each one hour) of students hoping to enter (test into) this school someday. It's a pretty good gig and it pays extremely well so I like it. For this, I made my own curriculum so that was nice to have free reign of what I teach PLUS it looks excellent on a CV if I apply for other teaching jobs someday.

I also teach night classes (every foreign teacher gets one) to students. These are run like AP classes and again, they pay extra from my usual salary. Also, like middle school, I have complete control over the direction of the course. Normally, we would get two per semester. I don't know if it will happen next semester though as interest is dwindling due to the changing nature of college applications in Korea these days. I actually had two CP classes cancelled on me this term, so I don't have one. The other two foreign teachers that were here at the start of the term did get classes though. I could have had a class this term, but I conceded it to my partner who was really bitching about not getting a second one. Plus, I got two CP classes in the first term (I'm special ^_^) so I figure not having one this term is no loss for me since I just did more work up front. When I did do the CP classes, I had one class of Microeconomics which was fun for me to teach. The class was the biggest of all the CP classes and unfortunately not enough signed up afterwards even though I kept getting compliments of how good it was. Since it was econ in another language for the students, it was an interesting challenge to teach. My other class was a writing class specifically designed for senior students. So I'm the only foreign teacher here that's taught 3rd grade students which is great for me because it gives me the exclusive relationship and cool teacher status with a whole grade now. That was a small class of only seven, but they were really cool so that made the class fun.

And I have one last job which is elementary school teacher! Sometimes, we are called upon to go to the library on Saturdays and teach English lessons to elementary school kids in partnership with our school's Red Cross Youth program. My partner is a masters certified teacher who has only ever taught high school. The other teachers are two guys who have only taught middle or high schools. While I've never taught, I grew up around an elementary school teacher my whole life. Every teaching tip I picked up from her has perfectly applied to this experience so while the other three have had a terribly hard time adjusting to the kids, I have probably had the easiest time. I still wouldn't want to do that for a living though. It makes me glad that I decided to take this high school job instead of settling for an elementary school position just to get closer to Seoul. That would not have been worth it.

So those are my main jobs. Of course since I'm the youngest/cutest/most aggreable/what have you, I get roped into a lot of  other side jobs too which are no trouble. It usually just involves proofreading things for coworkers, translating some stuff if I can, teaching some coworkers English, and generally just helping out with random stuff. I also offer to read essays for students and things since I have a lot of planning time and feel like I should use it well so until recently, I was looking at a student's essays every day. He was in my senior writing class and he plans to study at Harvard, so he took the SAT recently. He wrote me a practice essay every day for about 3 weeks and I graded them SAT style every day.

I'm happy with the amount of work I'm doing. It doesn't really interfere with my weekend free time too much so I still have time on those days to relax and hang out with the guys online or go to Seoul or go on dates (until recently, brb going to go drink to forget T__T). I also ran through my finances the other night out of boredom and I noticed that if I keep the same costs throughout the whole year, I will be able to live off my extra job salaries alone (CP, middle school, and elementary school) then at the end of the year I would pocket around 105% or something of my base salary. That would be pretty sweet. Maybe I should get a girl to spend it on or maybe I should actually buy something to improve my quality of life to human standards.

Nah who am I kidding.

Until next time, peace out!