Quite a few things have happened in the past several weeks, and we are finally feeling more settled in Korea. We got our bathroom fixed a few weeks ago, and we are starting to get used to the fact that the shower in Korea is merely a shower head attached to the wall.

We also finally got our alien cards (a form of Korean ID), so we were able to set up our bank accounts on Friday and get our cell phones yesterday (we are still trying to figure out how to make our phones work in English).

Last week's teaching was a bit more stressful than usual. On Tuesday Amy had a parent's meeting, where one of her classes performed memorized speeches and other English-speaking skills for their parents. It is a way for the hagwan to impress the parents with their child's English skills (although it is not really English skill, merely rote memorization). They feel that this will convince the parents to keep their child in our hagwan and not send them to another one. These meetings are stressful for both the foreign and English teachers because they are expected to put on a perfect performance for the parents. It falls on our shoulders to make sure the students know their speeches, as well as for us to memorize comments to say to the parents. Parent's meetings are probably the worst part of working at the hagwan. Luckily, neither of us have a parent's meeting coming up in the next few months.

On Thursday, we switched schools to get more "training" and to be observed by teachers at the other school (which of course was completely pointless as the two campuses do things very differently and we were already in the swing of things at our own schools). We were both observed by the school's directors as well as some of the teachers, and they gave us "comments" on our teaching. The one thing we learned from the experience is that Amy's campus is overall much better than Scott's--the schedule is better planned and everything is much more organized. There is also more collaboration between the Korean and foreign teachers, which helps the classes run smoother. It was also interesting for us to experience teaching each other's kids, as we have both heard so much from the other about them.

Last Sunday we went to the Ulsan orphanage. Scott had a great time playing soccer with the high schoolers, and Amy had fun playing with preschoolers and babies. The orphanage seems very well run and not over-crowded. The buildings seem fairly new, and the children have plenty of space both inside and out to run around. It honestly felt more like a day-care center than an orphanage. We also met quite a few foreigners--mostly Americans and Canadians. We plan to make the orphanage visit a bi-weekly event.

The next few weeks of teaching should be much less eventful than last week. Both of us our hoping that our worst classes will improve their behavior. Amy's worst class just changed from having 9 students to 13 which will be an added challenge to her days.

We are looking forward to celebrating Scott's birthday on the 19th, and to our summer vacation from July 29th to August 2nd. It is only a 5 day weekend, but we are taking a trip to Jeju Island (the Korean version of America's Hawaii).