Monthly Roundup Three
Not much of note happens in my daily life, so I figure a monthly check-in is good enough.
Life in Anyang has been happening. Oddly enough, I feel more settled into this place in just this month than I did with my two months in Suwon. Perhaps it’s because I know Suwon is in the past and it’s never coming back.

I moved to Pyeonchong just in time for the summer intensive schedule to start, which meant morning hours and slightly longer days. Summer intensive basically covered the kids’ summer break from school, so they could come to their extra school in the mornings instead of in the afternoon/evenings.
The elementary school teachers started the summer hours on Wednesday of the first week of July while the middle school teachers started on the Monday of that week, so the office was slightly out of sync at the beginning and end of the intensive schedules. As I understood it, the students in the summer had three-hour sessions three times a week, as opposed to two-hour sessions three times a week. They also got to see the native teachers three times instead of two.
Morning session ran from 8:30 to 11:30, afternoon from 1 to 4, and then evening from 4 to 7. Since teachers were supposed to show up at least an hour before their first class, the longest day would be from 7:30 to 7, which happened to me because I’m fortunate like that. Luckily, it only occurred once a week. My schedule on the other days were 6 hours of classes, except on Monday when I had just 3 classes filling the evening block.

Summer schedule was great in that we got out earlier in the day. For perspective, typical work time goes from 3 to 10. On weekdays, there was also an hour and a half break between the morning and afternoon sessions, which meant there was a chunk of time to lesson plan and eat lunch.

My schedule was a whole mess of different classes because I basically covered whatever day the other elementary native teachers had off. I tried really hard to learn all of the students’ names, but there were just so many of them. I got a lot of the names of students that I saw more than once a week. I think once I adjust into the new fall schedule where I don’t have 21 different classes, I will have them all down pat. Being able to call on students by name makes such a difference.


Making effort to get to know the other native teachers has been good, too. I mean it’s not like I wasn’t friendly with the other native teachers at Suwon, but we never actually did anything together outside of work. This might also add to the feeling of being more settled into Anyang than Suwon that I mentioned at the beginning. We have gone out to eat a few times and I went to noraebang once with them as well.
There were two days off at the beginning of the last week of the summer schedule, but it didn’t make much of a difference for me since I normally had a light Monday and Tuesday was my day off. Although, Sunday the 13th was a team building event hosted by the company and the intense race around Seoul (that I didn’t even manage to finish and dropped out of in the middle) left me quite sore the next day, so it was fortunate that they placed it right before the two day break.



The company event started at 9:30 in the morning in Seoul, so it felt like a work day having to wake up early to do the commute. It was my first time taking the subway into Seoul since moving to Anyang. The race portion of the event started at 10 am and the first place winners didn’t roll into the final location until about 3 pm, so it was a lengthy ordeal. Kudos to everyone who managed to solve the clues, catch the appropriate transportation, and complete the race. After the racing, there was food and talking, which was kind of nice.



To round off this first month (in Anyang), I have gone for another health check. Evidently, I need to be registered at the education office for this location since I’ve moved. They requested that I go do a health check in the middle of the summer schedule, so I hadn’t had time to go until it finally ended. The clinic was nice enough. It was pretty much an identical process to the first health check I did — not surprising since it’s the same E-2 visa health check situation.

I guess I’ll see you next month with how the fall schedule is going. The endless grind of making lessons is tiring though. I feel like I never have ideas. Will it come more easily as months pass?
