EPIK Program

I have had a cold for about 2 weeks now so my co-teacher took me to a traditional Korean tea house so that I could have some red ginseng tea. Red ginseng is the good stuff that comes from North Korea and it supposedly be more beneficial than regular Korean ginseg, which is many times better than ginseng from other countries.

We took off our shoes and nice smelling incense greeting my nostrils as I entered the tea house. The place was decorated very nicely with wook panels, solid-wood tables, and some ink brush scrolls hanging from the walls. First, we had some house tea with dok (no, not dog), which is chewy pounded rice that is rolled into cylinders and cut into small pieces. Some pieces of Chinese lemon jelly was also served with the dok.

The ginseng tea came in a bowl, which made the experience all that more pleasurable. The taste was slightly bitter to the tounge and tasted like something that is really good for you. I don't know how much of the feeling came from the fact that it was supposed to be good for you but, in any case, I really felt like it would help me with my cold.

This is my blog about my experience living and teaching English on Jeju Island, Korea. I am working at two elementary schools: Jungang Elementary School and Samsung Elementary School. I teach at Samsung on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and Jungang on Wednesdays and Fridays. I alternate schools every other Monday.

All together, I have 8 different co-teachers and am doing my best to adapt to each teachers style of running their classes. Some of them run their classes with an iron fist, pulling students over their chairs by the ear and flicking or knuckle-punching their foreheads, while other teachers rely more on the rewards system to get the desired behavior.

The students are very cute and classes are going well for the most part. I have found the exercises and activities in the textbooks to be quite fun and at an appropriate ability level for the students. This was very different from my experience teaching English in Okinawa, Japan, where the textbooks were boring to the point of being unusable. I would say, however, that the reason may in the simple fact that elementary students are more fun than their older peers.