My First Day Teaching

Well, my first day of teaching is done and it went much better than expected! I say that because I have this terrible habit of imagining absolutely everything that can go wrong and preparing myself for the worst. But after about five minutes into teaching, I realized that everything was going to be alright. Sure, there were some hiccups during the day, but I got over each of these without too much trouble or embarrassment. And I'm truly enjoying being a teacher (and it helps that my coworkers are all amazing people).

I had met a number of the kids before I started teaching, so I sort of knew what to expect from the students I hadn't met yet. Originally, I was irrationally afraid of the students being too much too handle, or running around the room top speed, or even just being generally rude. Maybe it's because I'm a new teacher, but this wasn't the case at all. Almost all of the kids were pretty well-behaved and listened when I told them to do something. There's a couple of troublemakers, but even then they're not very crazy.

And even though my first day was already exceeding my expectations, it didn't stop there. After I finished teaching, marking essays, and preparing my next day's lesson plans, our boss decided to treat us to dinner. So an already amazing day, turned into an even better one. I'll talk more about dinners in Korea and food a little later, so in this case, I'll just let the picture do the talking.

I'm finding it incredibly difficult to put my experiences and emotions into words right now. The amount of change I'm experiencing right now is huge and I think the reason I have trouble describing my experiences is because there's just so many of them. I could talk about my experiences with a single student for almost a complete post in itself. I could write an essay on how different it is to walk into a bakery or order a drink at a coffee shop. And I could definitely write a book on just my first week here.

You know how people say "never meet your idols"? I was worried coming to Korea would be like that; that I had set such a high standard in my mind for the experience that there was no way it would ever live up to that. I've been amazed at how wrong I've been. And considering the fact that my journey to Korea was set on such a high pedestal, the fact that it's better than that is incredible. I have no doubt in my mind that travelling here was the best decision I've ever made and also that this next year is going to be the most incredible year of my life.