Goodbye Andy!

Remember little Andy from Poly School? You know, the super-genius kid that stole my heart? Well, he had his last day at Poly School a week and a half ago, so Mark and I went back to Poly to say goodbye to him. He was doing his little blinky eye thing trying not to cry... and according to some of the teachers the whole class had a cry at lunch about his leaving.

Bye Mr. Andy Bernard, I'm sure you'll do great things and it was so much fun knowing you!

Gulp... trial by fire

On Monday we went to Poly School to check out our new apartment. The apartment is much smaller than Father's (not really a surprise), but pretty cute. It is located about 2 minutes from the Guro Digital Complex subway stop. (If you want to find it on the map, it's on the green line and called Gurogongdan. It's four stops away from our school's exit: Seoul National University.) The entire commute will take about 25 minutes, which is much nicer than the over an hour commute from Father's apartment.

The area seems to have a lot of high rise apartment buildings. We'll be living on the 4th floor. And we will actually have a kitchen/living room and two other rooms. The rooms are teeny tiny, but should serve their purpose. In addition, there is a loft area above, which will provide some great storage. (And a place I can hide from Mark since there's no way he can get around up there - hee hee.) We'll take some pictures the next time around, it just felt creepy to take a bunch of pictures of someone's random apartment with all their stuff in it. We can officially move in on Feb. 28th. Until then we will probably be commuting from Father's apartment, though in a few days we'll have a single studio previously used by one of the single teachers at Poly made available for us to shack in.

When we were at the school on Monday, we received some very sad news. One of the teachers got a call that morning informing him that his brother passed away, so he was catching the next plane back home on Wednesday. And the school desperately needed someone to cover his classes on Wednesday and possibly even Thursday and Friday (when we were supposed to be training). Sooo... Mark and Kim to the rescue! We're going to be teaching our first classes tomorrow with absolutely no training whatsoever. (Actually, one of the teachers tried to give us a brief overview, but it was more confusing than anything.) So we're going to show up at Poly tomorrow and completely wing it. We'll let you know how it turns out! Wish us luck.....

Gainfully employed

After waiting over 27 years, Kim and I now have an all access pass to the teacher's lounge. We have entered the lucrative field of education. Before long, we'll be living the high life.

On Sunday night, we finalized our contracts with Poly Institute in Seoul. Our branch will be located in Bongcheon-dong Gwanak-gu. The hours are longer than we originally planned on, but we're being compensated with higher pay. We'll be working from 9-7:30 with about 6.5 hours of that being actual teaching time.

The morning will be spent teaching 5-6 year olds and the afternoons will be with primary and middle school kids. It should be tiring, but a lot of fun!

{Pictures courtesy of Poly's website}