An Elite Update

IT WAS 72 DEGREES IN SEOUL ON SATURDAY!

Anyway, hello friends and family! It certainly has been a while since my last post. My apologies; I've been putting in a lot of time at Elite lately. We officially opened the kindergarten on March 1st and since then it's been a non stop debacle around the office. A simple word of advice to anyone thinking about working abroad for any period of time: In addition to the language barrier and obvious speedbumps that you will encounter along the way, keep in mind that much like the variance between cultures, there are also differences in managerial styles of different countries which will no doubt frustrate your socks off. For example, there are three "secretaries" working at Elite and each one has a different job but none of them know what their actual duties are. This leads to a lot of confusion about who has superiority in certain situations and who is supposed to do what. And to add to the chaos, in South Korea there are strict social hierarchical undercurrents that have to be taken into calculation whenever you're in a situation with people of different ages. To add to the muddle, my interim director speaks pretty terrible English and she exhibits no teaching experience, which I would think should be two dealbreakers when you're hiring someone to run an ENGLISH SCHOOL. But hey, let's just hire wrenches to throw at our teachers, that seems to be the theme in Korea. Lesson learned: bring lots of socks.

Now, kind readers, I don't want you getting the wrong impression about my experiences in SK. The actual kids I am teaching are precious, adorable, a joy, wonderful, smart and always nonstop entertainment, if nothing else. Starting with the Kindergarten, let's play a game, raise your hand if you can see Meg Paladino being a kindergarten teacher. If your hand is raised, you need to go back to Megucation 101. The idea of me teaching kindergarten is like imagining a cat trying to sit in a rocking chair. I've got no idea what I'm doing and I basically just make up how to keep my balance every day. I thought this would be a bad thing at the very beginning, but as it turns out, if you are patient, funny and are willing to make a complete buffoon of yourself teaching Big B to little munchkins, hard work pays off. This week, my kids successfully read their first words in English.

Buh... Ahh... Duuhh. Ok, put it all together! "Teacher! Bad!"

Most of the kids already know the alphabet, but reading and sounding out words is foreign (haha! get it? foreign? cuz it's English!) to them. Pretty awesome and rewarding to see them forming words from letters.

You also need a certain "roll with the punches" attitude. This past week I had a kid put a booger in my hand. She evidently picked her nose in class and wanted to share the fruits of her labor with me. "Eacher! Eacher! Yogiyo!" (read: Teacher! Teacher! Here!) I totally lost my "Kindergarten teacher" facade and ran to the bathroom to wash my hands.

Moving on, teaching the older kids still remains to be the high point of my day. I have six classes and three private lessons. Obviously, you are always going to have a kid here and there who just wakes up wondering what he/she can do to just really push Meghan Teacher's buttons. But more often than not, they're good kids who make me smile every day. Even though I am putting in a lot of hours the most difficult part of my day is dealing with my director. The kids themselves are little Asian bundles of joy who sometimes do their homework.

Pictures of my students are on the way.