Co-teachers

I'm sitting here drinking my Dunkin Donuts coffee. Its a caramel latte :) Its not the best, but its better than instant coffee, which is a favorite among the Koreans.

I have 3 co-teachers at my schools. My co-teachers obviously help me teach, but they help me with life too. They are the people I ask all my questions. They tell me good places to go, how to get around on the bus, and they help me learn Korean. Without my co-teachers I really don't know what I would do.

Yu-ri is my co-teacher at Sun-am. She is the one who is in charge of all my paperwork, plus we teach half my classes together. Her English is not the greatest - sometimes its really hard for us to communicate, but she's very nice and very helpful. Once she understands what I want/need she does whatever she can to make it happen.

Jenny and Sam are my co-teachers at Jangsaengpo. Jenny and I don't teach any classes together, but if I need something at that school she's the one I go to. She's really funny and we get along great. Her English is better than Yu-ri's, so I can have real conversations with her. One of the first questions she asked me was "Are you married?" then it was "Do you have a boyfriend?" Then she not-so-sneakily mentioned that a lot of teachers in Korea marry other teachers, and whenever she introduces me to a guy at school she'll say "He's very nice, but he's married" or "He's very nice, and he's single" So, if its up to her, I'll have a Korean teacher husband by the end of the year. We'll see about that...

Sam teaches all my classes at Jangsaengpo with me. The very first thing he ever said to me was "I'm the PE teacher. I don't know why I have to teach English." Awesome. So I do all the planning, and he shows up sometime during class. He's mostly a translator. But, I definitely need him, especially for the little kids. Most of the time they don't know what directions I'm giving them, like raise your hand, sit down, come here...so he tells them what I say. We also get along really well and have fun chats in the teacher lounge...he's just not as enthusiastic about English as I am. The little girls think that Sam and I love each other. False. He's married with a child. And he's 31. Not my type.