Chrissy Renae

Monday was the last day of school, followed by a TEACHER RETREAT with all the employees at my school. We took off for the mountains of Pocheon and spent the day going out to eat for various meals and drinks, and had a planning workshop for next year. Unfortunately I don’t speak Korean so the workshop was very long and boring, but luckily the teachers next to me were bored too, and taught me funny Korean games while we pretended to vigorously take notes. Hopefully the principal didn’t notice…  I stayed up until 3am with my principal and a bunch of the male teachers talking important things like sports and politics, and then crashed on a pad on the floor in dorm style rooms. Surprisingly comfy, although I can’t imagine teachers in America evvver being OK with sleeping on the floor on a school field trip. Too spoiled, I guess.

In the morning we went to breakfast all together and then to Uijeongbu cinemas and saw Ninja Assassins, an American movie that stars the Korean pop star “Rain”. Goriest/bloodiest movie I have EVER seen. It could be considered awkward since I was with a bunch of co-workers…. but they seemed unphased.

The coolest part of the retreat was that it gave me the chance to actually get to talk to a lot of the other teachers and make some more friends. At dinner all of  us younger teachers sat together and chatted all night, and I realized many of them speak more English than I thought. At school we don’t really get to talk except a quick “hi, bye” in passing as I take over their classes when it’s English time. So I think this was a good intro for next year, and I can hopefully have some real friends at school now (aside from Sophia, Mrs. Kim, and Mr Che.)

(I just downloaded Windows Live Writer and am giving it a test run, so hopefully my blogs will get cooler now. The kids are on vacation for the next 6 weeks, but I still have to come to my office every day… so it looks like I have an abundance of spare time ahead of me. )