I am back in Korea now, and soon I’ll be officially settled into a new routine teaching within the public scholl system here. This year I will be at a middle school, and two elementary schools. Since last week I’ve been attending the orientation program for EPIK, English Program In Korea.

The orientation itself was quite useful. There was an effort made to prepare and people for the culture shock and give them some basic information about living here and dealing with Koreans and Ko-workers. I was familiar with most of this part, but honestly I did learn a couple of really useful things such as how to address the principal and the vice principal and other Ko-workers. There was also some good coverage of teaching theory as well. A couple of the lecturers were really great and I can only hope that some day I’ll be that good. I generally don’t mention names on my blog too much but since these guys are somewhat established (as in they have websites) I don’t think it’ll be bad to say thanks to David Deubelbeiss and Walter Foreman. After that I’d have to say thanks to my class leaders and the other EPIK staff for their work in providing this orientation time to all of us teachers.

So what’s next? Tomorrow I’ll be seeing the schools where I’ll be teaching for the first time and meeting my partner teachers. I guess starting to tomorrow I can finally say I’ve arrived back in Korea.