A Day in the Life

So, just in case you’re curious, here’s what a typical day in Busan looks like for the two of us.  It’s a drastically different schedule from the one we kept in Lenoir, and while we miss some things (Iike Friday night lights at HHS), there are a lot of liberating aspects of this life we got here.

8:00:  We wake up.  Usually. Sometimes we sleep as late as 8:30, especially if it’s Wednesday or Friday and we don’t have hapkido.

9:00 or so:  On Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, we head out to catch the bus to hapkido.  This involves a ten minute walk to the bus stop (there is a bus closer but it’s so obscenely crowded at this hour that we prefer to walk a little farther) and a twenty minute bus ride to the Gwanganli neighborhood of Busan.  Sometimes there’s a stop at the post office on the way to the dojang if we have something to send.

On either Wednesday or Friday, we’ll dust off our trusty, rusty (emphasis here on the rusty) bikes and pedal over to the grocery store or to Costco to do our grocery shopping.  Anything else we need we can pick up at the small markets on our street or near our hapkido class.  

10:00-11:00:  Hapkido sweatfest with the amazing Master Yoon Il-Bong.  We usually leave exhausted and sore in at least one major muscle group.  It’s the best.  Sometimes there’s a stop at the local Woori (pronounced “ooh-ree”) Mart for groceries before catching the bus back home.

11:45ish:  Home.  Ric starts lunch, unless we go down the street and pick up takeout kimbap (yum) or bibimbap (double yum).  After lunch, we putter around the house, nap, clean up, etc.  OK, Ric cleans, I nap.  No sense in pretense. 

1ish:  We start getting ready for work.  It’s only a block or so away from the apartment, so it doesn’t involve massive planning or preparation.  We shower, throw on some teacher clothes, and waltz on in.  

2:15-9:10:  Work.  This time includes an hour of planning and 6 (or 7 if we have overtime) 45-minute classes that we teach.  Our students range from 6-16 years old.  Average class size is about 12, but it’s 12 very high energy children who have already put in a full day of school and are slightly stir crazy.  On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I teach the Ivy Veritas students, the pure gold babies of our English academy.  On those nights, I teach until 10.  Ric hangs out and runs copies until I finish up.  Two days a week I give private English lessons to our school director’s five year old daughter, and I come in early for those.  No real grading.  No real planning.  And if we take the 7th class, we make overtime pay. There is no wasted time.  We have alternating five and ten minute breaks between classes.  We usually grab a half-sandwich for  a snack.

9:15 until midnight or so:  Most days we are already home by 9:20.  On Fridays we might go out for pizza or cheeseburgers.  Usually Ric makes us a quick, late dinner.  We catch up on Facebook and hang out for a couple hours, reading, watching TV, etc. until one of us gets tired.  This is a great time to get us on Skype, by the way.  (It’s about 8-11 am EST).  

So that’s our life.  No cars to worry about. No house maintenance.  No parent conferences or PEPs.  On Saturdays and Sundays we start our day with a run and usually concoct some kind of adventure to pass the time.  It’s remarkably low stress, and after the hardest year of both our educational careers last year, it’s pretty much exactly what we need.  

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Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Busan, Korea, Teaching