Week One for Michael Teacher

I've finished my first week here in Pohang, and it's been pretty great.  Let me tell you about it.
As for the teaching part of it: I don't have to be at school until 9:15 so it's nice to have some wakeup/reorientation (where am I again?) time.  Then I take a nice 10 min walk to school and get ready for teaching at 9:50.  There are 5 other English speaking teachers, and they've been very helpful and welcoming (more on them later).  There are also 6 Korean teachers, one of which is my support teacher in the morning. She's been very helpful, helping me understand how things work.  So I have five 40 minute classes with my wonderfully behaved and very cute kindergarten class from 9:50 until 2:30 with 10 minute breaks and a lunch in between them.  I only have 12 kids and they're all very very smart and fun to be with.  It's really great. Oh, and they call me Michael Teacher, which I like.
Then in the afternoon I teach 5 or 6 elementary aged classes from 3;00 until 7:30.  I teach things like Vocabulary, Grammar, Science, Writing, and I have a debate class one day.  The afternoon is a little more relaxed and I haven't had more than 4 people in any of the classes.  I've really enjoyed some of the classes because most of the students are very attentive and just seem to absorb everything we talk about.  So our hours are pretty long, but overall I'm very happy with how things are.
Then outside of school, my fellow English teachers have: introduced me to a good group of other foriegn teachers from Canada, USA, England, and South Africa; showed me the good bars; brought me with them to play soccer; showed me how to get around on a cab; brought me to the beach last night and today; introduced me to some really good Korean food and restaurants; and insisted on paying for everything.  So I'm excited about getting to know the other foriegn teachers more as well as Korean culture.

Here are some more pictures:

This is my apartment building.  My room is the closest one on the 3rd floor.

This is the local Family Mart which is a good meeting place in the neighbourhood.

These are a couple of the gardens/small farms that I see on my walk to school.  Jangsung-dong is the neighbourhood I live in and it's a developing area with quite a few open lots that are sometimes used for these gardens.

These are some large appartment buildings just down the road from the school.  It's funny, in Pohang there are these random outcroppings of really tall appartment buildings all over.

My School

The Teacher's Room.  My desk is the last one on the left.

The front room of the school.

My classroom, which is full of Kindergarteners in the morning, but this is my afternoon 5th grade class.

I didn't hang that up, my Korean teacher did, to the disgruntlement of some of the American teachers.

Thanks for reading.