"What do your students do if they arrive late in an American classroom?" my co-teacher asks as another gaggle of fourteen year old boys bursts into the room, disrupting the introduction of my lesson that hasn't even gotten off the ground yet.

"Well--I taught adults."

Adults, I might add, who had paid to travel to America, paid to learn English. Even when I taught American middle school, I had a teacher who took over the classroom management portion just so I could focus on the details of my lesson plans instead. My current co-teacher looks again as the door opens for yet another gaggle of fourteen year old boys. He glances between my late students and the trouble-makers who've taken this opportunity to chit-chat chatter all over the place and punch their neighbors. 

"Yeah," he says. "You might want to brush up on your rules, then."

…you’ll be knocked out by the end of them.

Obviously I’m not being literal here, but as I sit in my new apartment, arms sore from my week-long housekeeping, I struggle to stay awake past ten.

What’s worse is that you might not have a lot to show for your exhaustion. Take my suitcase, for example. It’s still propped open with clothes exploding from the inside. Or how about my apartment’s lack of internet? Or the recycling I still haven’t quite mastered, or my banking still not finished, or my total lack of bedsheets—thank goodness I brought tapestries.

Despite all my lugging and heaving of household products through the whole of Busan, everything’s only half settled. I’ve made my kitchen my own—but my fridge is woefully equipped with the bare necessities to stave off hunger. My books are all organized...in neat piles on the table that serves as a temporary desk.

Oh? Did you want to hear about the teaching now? Those first few wonderful days meeting my middle school girls and boys? Or how about the real start of it all?

​From Orientation till now…