My first week teaching English

I have survived my first week teaching English in a South Korean school. I had it pretty easy this week. I had no classes Monday and Tuesday because the school was still working out my teaching timetable and on Thursday all the students had to sit exams all day so all my classes were cancelled. On Wednesday (the first day that I actually had to teach) I had to go and set up a bank account in the afternoon so I missed those classes too. So far this week I have only had to teach 6 classes. All of that will change next week. I have a full schedule (22 classes) of grade 1, 2 and 3 middle school (grade 7, 8 and 9 in Australia) classes next week. 

Alien Registration Card (ARC)
This week I also applied for my Alien Registration Card. Two of my co-teachers took the afternoon off to sit with me for 3 hours at the immigration office in Daejeon. 3 hours later I had a piece of paper which says I have registered for an ARC. The ARC itself will arrive in about 2 weeks time. A couple of things to note about the ARC.

1. It now costs 20,000 won to apply for an ARC (it used to be 10,000 won ~$10)
2. It costs 4,000 won to have your ARC card posted to you
3. It costs 1,000 won to get the piece of paper which says you have registered for an ARC. You can use this paper to open a bank account with some banks (not all banks will accept it)

English Class

My first class this week did not get off to a great start. Power Point was not installed correctly on the PC in the room I was assigned so I was thrown in the deep end for my first class. I bluffed my way through the first 15 minutes before I thought of running the slide show on my laptop and walking around the class with my laptop. My second class I had a working power point but I ploughed through my material way too fast and was left with 30 minutes and nothing to do. I got the balance right today. All my classes went amazingly well. I am really happy with how things went today. I don't think they could have gone much better. Fingers crossed I can keep it up for the rest of the year. 

I have worked hard this week to prepare my lesson plans for next week so I have the weekend free to travel to Seoul with my girlfriend and meet her friends. I am still a little sick (I have a cough) but I am feeling a lot better.