If
you’re curious about what one EPIK Elementary teacher’s schedule is like in
South Korea, here’s your chance to find out. Though none of our schedules are typical
because each school and each grade level varies greatly, it gives you a little
window into my world.
Friday's Schedule:
5:45am Wake up and think, why body, why? Roll over and go back to sleep.
6:15am
Alarm goes off. I get up five minutes
later and make some ginseng tea and get myself awake enough to cook both
breakfast and lunch. After braving it for three months, I stopped eating school
lunches and now bring my own. It’s a pain, but when you have a gluten intolerance,
food control takes precedence.
Breakfast is boiled sweet potatoes,
a fried egg, and some greens mix from iHerb. Lunch is a marinara sauce, egg and
veggie mess that I shove into my food thermos.
Hot food thermos
7:10am
Shower time. I give myself enough time so my hair can dry before I plunge into the coldness outside. I choose a warm, but
versatile outfit that works for both class and a school musical performance I’m
going to in the evening. Before heading
out the door, I double check to make sure I have everything I need for the day. There will be no coming back to the apartment.
7:54am
Rush out the door, already behind schedule. I’m walking to school because I
know it’s the only exercise I will get today. I usually ride my bike.
Part of my walk to school with the performance hall in the distance.
8:37am Arrive at school. I down lots of warm tea (
because it’s freezing in the school) and prep for classes. No class first period. I briefly phone check Twitter,
Facebook, email, and see what’s going on in the world.
9:50am
Sixth Grade class. Last
comparatives lesson. At the end of the check up, I ask them about four
situations they might come across in the US where they need to know which is
longer, colder, faster, etc. I chose comparing temperatures, car speeds,
hiking trail lengths, and heights of people. In Korea, they use Celsius,
kilometers per hour, kilometers, and centimeters.
Outside my classroom
10:30am
Break. Tea time. Also, I play a game where I
try to guess( in my head) what all the Korea teachers are saying to each other.
10:50am
Two more sixth grade classes.
In between classes, my co-teacher jokes about one time in the US when either he
or his friend only had a car that said mph instead of both mph and km/h, so
when he drove in Canada, he was constantly trying to figure out his speed. How annoying. When I took my car to Canada one time, it was hard enough
constantly looking at the smaller km/h underneath the mph on my car’s speedometer.
12:20pm
Lunch. Students try to peek in my food
thermos to see what I brought for lunch this time. One fifth grade student
says: “Teacher, diet?” Me: “No.” Little do they know that my lunch fills me up
way more than the Korean lunch ever did. That darn white rice makes me hungrier
than if I didn’t eat it.
1:10pm
Finish up the last sixth grade
class.
2:10pm
Free talking class. Today we’re
practicing how to ask a lot of questions for needed information. We’re solving
a mystery riddle: "Jane is dead. There’s some glass and water on the ground.
Richard is asleep on the couch. What happened?" The boys go crazy when they
figure it out. They want another riddle.
3:00pm
Take a deep breath. Almost there. I
prepare for Monday and message a fellow EPIK teacher in Busan about starting up
a writer/editor group.
4:40pm Quitin' time. My main co-teacher pokes her head into my room and asks, “Are you not leaving?”
We walk out together, catch a cab and head to another neighborhood to get
dinner before the concert. The lady who takes our order knows what I like and
my co-teacher thinks it’s funny. I’ve only been there maybe four times, but I
guess it’s hard to forget a girl with hair like springs in a small-ish city in
Korea. My co-teacher insists on paying for dinner, so I am determined to buy us
coffee.
5:25pm Head to Dunkin’ Doughnuts. I buy buy plain coffee in a shop full of doughnuts that I can't eat while my co-teacher runs home to
change her coat. Twenty minutes later or so, I start to wonder if she’s
changing more than her coat. Her place is super close to the shop. When she
finally comes, she confesses that she brushed her teeth and couldn’t decide on
what to wear. I buy her coffee and we head off for the performance center.
6:30pm Concert starts. The boy next to my co-teacher is so obnoxious at times that
I wish his mom would do something about it. Besides that though, the concert is
incredible. I think back to when I was in fifth and sixth grade. In comparison, our school orchestra
was terrible. I’m blown away.
Program
Concert hall before the performance begins
8:20pm Time to go. When we make it outside, my teacher says something like, “I would
have said something to that boy if his mother hadn’t been there.” I laugh and
tell her he was driving me crazy, too.
8:30pm Brisk walk back to my neighborhood. I time it right and catch the bus so I can go to an
atm and get cash to pay for my volleyball uniform and stop at Daiso for
essentials like notebooks and a lint roller. At times like this, I wish I
banked at NH which has atms everywhere in the smaller towns and cities. Oh
well.
9:10pm
Get home. I make tea and organize my thoughts for the next day. I have a
volleyball game and I need to figure out the food situation.
9:40pm Food stores are inadequate. I walk to the closest store and plan to buy some more sweet potatoes and salt.
I come back with all of that plus chocolate.
10:00pm Prep for tomorrow morning. This includes
things like charging my second phone battery, boiling my water stores for the next
day( no joke), and reading emails, etc.
Daily water store
10:20pm Rare TV show time. I get in a few laughs while watching two episodes of ‘New Girl.' I end up eating the entire bar of chocolate, 2
kiwis, and some Kettle chips that I hauled back from a Costco in Ulsan( really
healthy, yeah?) So much for going to bed
early.
12:30am Bed. I wrap myself up like a cocoon and wonder how good my
volleyball skills will be in twelve hours.
