Gyeonggi Suwon International School

School is continuing to go well, and the time is literally flying by. We are now only 3 weeks away from our major break for the academic year. We finish on December 22 and start again on January 4. Not the 7 weeks that we had become accustomed to in Australia, but we’ll make up for that when our June/July holidays come around. My role over here is Middle School Language Arts Teacher and I teach 5 classes: Beginning ESL (Grade 6 and I have 3 students in the class), Grade 6 Reading and Grade 6 Writing (10 students in each class), and Grade 7 Reading and Grade 7 Writing (14 students in each class). As you can see, the class sizes are very small and it is amazing how much you can get through with such small numbers. Education is very highly regarded in Korea and teachers are seen as highly respected professionals, hence the business card and the door name plate. Shouldn’t be too long before I change their perception of teachers.

Jenene is in charge of the Early Learning Centre, which is only available for staff children. She has 3 kids in her care, Promise, another Australian girl (4 years old), and a Korean girl (1 year old). She is enjoying basically being her own boss, but she gets very bored sometimes with no adult company for eight hours a day, and then only having me to talk to when she gets home. It is such a great feeling having all the family at the same school and being able to see each other regularly throughout the day.

The fees for the school are about $20 000 US per year and there are no words to describe how glad we are that we don’t have to pay for our kids! The school building is amazing and it is a strange experience to start a school with facilities that most schools have to wait for 15-20 years to achieve. Our Gym and Swimming pool are currently under construction and should be ready in March. Once that is done, the facilities offered by the school will be second to none. It is really a once in a lifetime opportunity to be a part of starting such a momentous project. This is something that the Cooper family will look back on fondly and it may be many years before we truly appreciate the magnitude of this experience.

Picture Update

Thought we'd just put in a few photos of some of the things we've been doing over the past few weeks.A container full of eels for sale at one of our local markets.

We went to the Hwaseong Festival a couple of weeks ago and saw all sorts of traditional dress and warriors.Hanging out at the Hwaseong Fortess wall has become one of our favourite pastimes.

When we're not exploring the trails in our local bushland that is.

The kids love making new friends - no matter what they look like!

They like talking to real people as well.

We are getting to see lots of amazing sights.

The kids are really getting the hang of posing for photos.

All the leaves are brown, and the sky is grey.

Things are really starting to cool down here in Suwon. Autumn (or fall) is well and truly here and it has been amazing to watch the leaves go through their transformation of colours before dropping to their inevitable end. We really got to experience this during our trip to the zoo where we were amazed by the many different colours. The experience was enhanced by the surrounding mountains which looked like they had been painted using the full spectrum of fall colours. The kids particularly enjoyed all the leaves on the ground, especially throwing them up in the air and letting them rain down. I think they actually enjoyed this more than seeing the animals. Over the past week we have been enjoying daily temperature ranges of 0 degrees to around 10-12 degrees. I was looking up some monthly averages the other day and found out that the average high for January is 0.6 degrees C, and the average low is -6.4 degrees C. Certainly something for us to look forward to.

Beondegi Anyone?

The Coopers have been keeping busy over the past few weeks and we have settled into a routine that sees us out and about exploring our surrounds every Saturday. Last week I took the kids to Seoul Grand Park, a beautiful area set into the side of a mountain; it contains an amusement park, a zoo and a hiking trail. We skipped the amusement park and headed straight for the zoo. On the way to zoo the path was lined with street vendors selling all sorts of snacks and novelties, including ‘Beondegi’ (boiled silkworm larvae). I couldn’t resist the temptation to give it a go and the vendor obligingly gave me a couple to try for free. They were extremely salty and surprisingly soft. The fact that I didn’t throw up or pass out was all the motivation that Harper needed to spear a couple with a toothpick and shove ‘em down. He actually liked them so much that he wanted to buy some – he ate about half of the cup before he said, “I think I’ve had enough now.” Promise said she wanted to try some too, but when she got it near her mouth she changed her mind – maybe next time. The next thing on our gastronomic hit list is ‘Mettugi’ – fried grasshopper. We’ll be sure to let you know how that goes.