I finally got a hosted site for blogging and as such, this ‘old’ blog is going to slowly fade away… My new blog is at www.riehler.com and if you are interested, please check it out.

This blog covered a lot of my experiences as an English teacher living in Jeonju South Korea. My new blog will continue covering some of my experiences, though I now live in the USA. I will also be focusing a lot more on teaching issues (mostly pertinent to teaching in the USA), and learning (specifically: beginners using PC’s and the internet).

Other than that, this will ne my last post to this blog…

So, farewell!

I know it’s been a while since I last posted to this blog, but it isn’t because it have given up on blogging (quite the contrary!), I am preparing to start up a ‘real’ blog in the next month or so… as a consequence, there are a few things worth mentioning.

1. this little blog is already over a year old!
2. (not that it would show…) this blog, and most of my blogging with be done with a NetBook from now on ( quite noticeable to me…).
3. I will be posting a link to this new blog as soon as I have it up and running
4. most important (for me and this blog) I will be on a sort of hiatus on this blog until I post the link to the new blog…

This means that, firstly, this blog is almost finished, and secondly, the picture at the head of this post is supposed to represent some moss (which I haven’t been gathering!).

So, I will be posting a link in less than a month!

see you then!

Many children in South Korea go out on Halloween evening to trick or treat…. but most of these costumed candy grabbers don’t know much of the Halloween back story. I guess, that when you look at my interaction with the class I may have given my first public service announcement…

In the mean time, back here in Northern Minnesota, things don’t look too much like Halloween. There have been a number of snow flurries, and many of the trees still have their leaves (still!).

It’s only October 10th…

This isn’t totally unexpected, but regardless of how much I love all the seasons, this first early snowfall does give pause.

I guess I’ll have to write a “Why yes AND/OR no’ page now too…

I am thinking of a lot about the state of education (here and abroad), and this blog may be a place to start  voicing my thoughts and concerns. As a start, I am wondering, just what is important to know, important to learn in this rapidly changing world? How important is technology in the classroom?

My time in Korea, as well as while I was in an education curriculum has led me to consider (as an operative hypothesis), are we still ‘fighting the last war’ with regard to what is being taught?

My best guess (this afternoon) is that it is (quite obviously)much more complex than that. But I am getting far ahead of my little story here…more to come…

Minimally I suppose I could just let this blog turn into one of those ‘personal’ blogs that are so full of meaningless blather (besides which, I’m on Facebook already…).

In any case, I certainly have plenty to think about … I should also take the time to mention that my former next door neighbor and fellow teacher back in Korea, Andrew is about to leave as soon as he finishes his contract there. This is my time and place to wish him well in his soon to take place travels in Asia. Good luck!

In the mean time, everyone else should feel free to give as much unsolicited advice as they wish (for this limited time offer!).

In any case, this idea came to me while i was working as an English teacher in South Korea. There were so many good teachers I had the chance to work with, I though “ why does it have to end here?”.

So, there you have it

p.s. with this started (i.e. about 50% of my work may be done, at least for the near term), I might be able to get back to posting to this little blog! Oh yeah, this is my driveway…

I suppose I should mention that in the relatively near future (within a month or so) I will be starting up a ‘real’ blog. That is, a blog on a self hosted site (my site instead of WordPress.com). I will most likely continue with this blog, but the main thrust of this will start to change into a ‘personal blog’ . My new blog (name pending, along with a lot of other details as of now…) will start off will content for Korean middle school students (and anyone who may find this interesting…). I am also planning on developing some content to help seniors (e.g. anyone older than me…) who would like to get a deeper experience out of computers and the internet, after this I still have a lot of increasingly vague ideas (all my ideas start out pretty vague, more on that at a later date….self referential vagueness here!).

In the mean time, I am luxuriating in my return to one of the lands of coffee drinking (!), and will try to keep you posted!

So…last week…

and now, this week…

I am thankfully past the 14 hour jet lag (!), and now I can start to get on with some of my agendas regarding providing some online content for my friends (and students) back in Gimje and Jeonju South Korea.

More later…

Almost any travel involves some sort of adventure, that is a set of experiences that are a mixture of good and bad, fun and frustrating, sometimes rewarding and at other times almost surreal. This certainly describes my time in Jeonju and teaching in the much smaller city of Gimje. For me, it was an adventure. I have also had the chance to hone my teaching chops, especially regarding teaching non-English speakers (something which may become a growing need in the USA, for good or bad). IN this regard I feel like I’ve accomplished a lot.

My next post will undoubtedly come from the USA, so I guess this is my blog’s farewell to Korea.

Annyong He Gasayo

Most of the work in camp is done, now we have just a lot of Korean ritualism to get through and it will be over!

I guess we will have to wait…. (I’m a bit curious too!).

All in all, I’ve come from this…

to this…

The first picture is from September 26th (2008), and the last is from July 22nd (2009), and visually describe that very few things have changed here during my visit (other than me!). Perhaps a less maudlin description of these two pictures would be to say that I have come full circle in my stay in Korea!

If I don’t get a chance to post here before I go back to the USA, I’d like to say that this is a great job, and that with any sort of travel, has been more educational for me than for my students!

P.S. you can still comment on my posts, but I might take a bit of time of moderate them (i.e. for them to show upon the blog…).

The crux of the issue for most of these questions is: how does teaching in Gimje compare to teaching in Seoul? Seoul is a huge city (almost half of all South Koreans live there!), and as such is a busy, sophisticated, cosmopolitan place having more in common with other huge cities than with small Korean towns.

I was given an opportunity to teach in Jeonju (3/4 million people), and was later assigned to a job teaching in a variety of middle schools in Gimje ( a very small farming city of less than 100,00 people). Here are some things to consider…

· Since Seoul is such a huge ‘world’ city, life in Gimje is intrinsically more of an adventure and more of an opportunity to learn about Korean culture and Korean people (i.e. life in Korea versus life in Seoul…)

· The students here in Gimje are more open and less sophisticated than those in Seoul (they are also quite sweet!).

· There is much less western influence in life here, consequently, as a teacher of English; you can make a greater difference. That is, there is more of a need for you here!

Here are a few anecdotes to explain what life was like for me in Gimje:

I would literally run into a great variety of students on the streets (before and after school). Even as a middle school teacher, I would often talk to elementary school students on the streets (they would approach me!). I am talking about 2^nd and 3^rd grade children here!

In my job at the Gimje Middle School (a public boy’s school) I generally would hand out and receive about fifty high-5’s a day! At the Girl’s school (the Morning Star Girl’s middle school, a private religious school), I would get about as many high-5’s along with the same amount of handshakes every day I was there!

About once a month, at the bus stop, when I would be waiting for my bus home to Jeonju, I would meet a very small, very old man (obviously a ‘Korean War’ veteran), who spoke very little English, but was quite proud to greet me with a very ornate English greeting every time we met. After several of these greetings, he would often be accompanied by some of his friends (his posse, to witness this exchange of pleasantries…).

Life isn’t perfect. Even my co-teachers at the boy’s school would admit that teaching 2^nd grade middle school boy’s can be a bit trying (I had class sizes of 35 or more students… all boys). But this is a challenge to teachers in every middle school on earth!

There are a few other things to consider about teaching in Korea:

· Koreans are more interested (generally speaking) than their American counterparts.

· Traditionally, teachers are held in quite high respect in Korea (Korea may be the most traditional Confucian culture!).

· Many students in Korea go to after school academies (sometimes more than one) after school every day, and with homework, these students are often studying regularly well into the night (midnight for middle school students!).

This is in part, my farewell to Gimje, and I would like to thank all of my Co-teachers, the rest of the faculties, the school administrators, the students, and the people of Gimje. I have had a wonderful experience and hope to continue working with ‘my’ teachers and students in the future (from the USA!).

p.s. for new arrivals from western countries…. The food here is quite good too!

The Girl’s school…

like the sign says…

I’ve been teaching at both of these two schools for the whole spring term (March 1st through the third week of July).  There was snow during the first week in March, and now it is the rainy season (hot, very humid…), but in between these two extremes, I found spring and early summer in Korea to be incredibly beautiful.

another picture from the boy’s school…

another view of one of the manicured trees…

another view from this garden

this is a bus-eye view of some of the rice paddies surrounding Gimje in the early summer (July 2nd).

This last picture represents the ‘more whimper, less bang‘ perspective of my remaining time here in Jeonju. After all the demolition that took place next door to my apartment, I now have a much wider, but much less attractive view.

I will be finishing my work at these two schools in Gimje this coming week, and soon I will work at a final language camp, before leaving Korea.

This shot was taken on October 4th 2008, after I’d been living in Jeonju only a couple weeks…

This is an early morning view of the front garden at the Gimje middle school… (very early morning!)

This picture (the source for this blog’s banner photo…) is a view from my then office at the middle school in mid October…

These fall colors are from November 5th!

This is fog at the middle school on November 9th…

The middle school entrance on November 10th!

This is the evening view from my kitchen on December 4th…

The same view on February 19th 2009 (early spring fog…)

These pictures capture the first half of my stay in Jeonju and Gimje well enough. I came here in what would be called the late summer, taught through the fall, and worked at a three week language camp in January (essentially the winter…here). This last shot, taken in late February, was the time I was preparing to get back teaching at the public schools in Gimje…

When I first arrived in Korea, and got settled in Jeonju I started to see a number of seemingly small things that were quite surprising to me…then. Now I rarely notice these things…

· I would see very old women (well past 70 years) walking down the streets or alleyways using a baby stroller. At first I found this image a bit jarring, it took me a long time to see that it was merely a good tool to help these women get about. Osteoporosis is a big deal here since traditional diets are so low in calcium and protein. Many of these old women are almost doubled over from calcium loss.

· There are many clinics and hospitals in Jeonju. As I rode my bus to work, I would sometimes see ‘patients’ in hospital gowns and robes out on the sidewalk smoking cigarettes, sometimes while dragging along IV’s! I still see these ‘street scenes’, and just shake my head.

· Many Koreans are very careful about sun damage. As the spring wore on I would see more and more people (generally middle aged women, but there were many other groups of people represented here) wearing white gloves (to keep sun spots a bay…) and very large visors. These visors are the big brother of what accountants might have worn a couple of generations ago. On the street I see people wearing these gloves, visors and sterile facemasks all at the same time.

· Facemasks. I don’t really need to say much more.

· I live near a couple of colleges, and can see that while many young men wear very similar clothing to their counterparts on most American campuses, there are many young college women who , in contrast, wear clothing that would have been au courant way back in 1968. Stiletto heels and micro mini-skirts are the way to go (seemingly). Sigh, sometimes I feel so old…

· I will close this post of these differences with something that I think is wonderful: on the streets I see people of all ages all the time. I have gotten used to seeing kindergarteners and 1^st graders walking home after school alone on city streets (sometimes walking for a mile or more!). I also see many families walking down streets. In America this is what mini-vans are for (I guess…). I once saw a family crossing a street (6 lanes wide…) where the Father was holding hands with the mother, who also held the hand of the eldest daughter, who held the 2^nd eldest’s hand, and so on through all 7 children. It was a beautiful, charming sight, seeming to me to be a vision from Dr. Seuss.

As you can see, not everything here is exotic and exciting. My friend Andrew has some well written similar sentiments too! But this got me thinking… there were so many things that I found to be interestingly strange when I arrived, and for the life of me, I find trying to remember some of these details very hard to do… now. So, As soon as I can re-collect some of these fleeting impressions of my time here, I will try to show a few more things before I head back to the USA!

Oh, and by the way, of you are feeling that you are in an alarmist mood, check out some of these links!