here i am!

well, i'm finally getting settled in my new home. i have been placed in Young-Eun Middle School in Gimhae, which is near Busan in the southern province of Gyeongsangnam-do. i have been set up in a newly renovated studio apartment - new fridge, gas range, wsahing machine, microwave, toaster, rice cooker, electric tea kettle, wardrobe, bed, tv, table and chairs... well, you get the idea. everything is new. there are no bugs, and it's clean. what more could one ask for? i was missing gas and, therefore, hot water for a few days, but everything has been sorted out, and it's starting to feel more homey.

today i'm off to Busan to apply for my alien registration card - that will allow me to get a telephone and the internet (at home) which i am looking forward to, since this PC at school just doesn't cut it for this Mac user! besides which, this version of windows is in Korean. for some reason blogger is also all in Korean, so it'll be nice to be able to use my own computer and really understand what i'm doing.

so i teach four classes a day - except tuesday and thursday when i also teach the teachers (five classes). so far it's gone quite well, i think. i'm not really sure, since i don't get any kind of feedback from anyone. the vice-principle comes to a few of my classes a day and stands at the back watching me, i'm not sure why since he doesn't understand English at all... maybe just to get a feel of my classroom technique? which, of course, is nil. lol... i'm hoping that some of my "team-teachers" will be open to new teaching methods - i would like to make class fun and interesting for my students... i think some of them will be into it, and others not so much.

anyway, this is not a very interesting post - no pictures - but i just wanted to put something out there, let everyone know that i am alive and well, and will post something more interesting soon.

keep watching for my post on the "Korean Village" - a working traditional village that i visited last week...