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Week 1 (Mar 5th to Mar 11th) |
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Monday March 6th 2006,My first day as a professor! I was extremely nervous
going in (though loathe to admit it to Carey and
Sylvia, who were with me in the morning still), more
so because I didn't know my schedule and I had no idea
what I was in for. My Monday schedule actually turned
out to be pretty light-- only private students. The
schedule itself is kind of strange-- for each hour, I
had two names written down, which means that I can
choose to teach them together, or I can give them half
an hour each. For today, I just taught whoever showed
up (not all the students showed up today). The first
girl who walked in didn't speak any English at all,
which was a pretty rude awakening. Fortunately, since
being here for a year, I've gotten really good at body
language. I also discovered pretty quickly that my
students are really inexperienced and most of them
aren't even really interested in learning jazz at all.
I was a little disappointed. But some of my students
are already showing some good potential, and because
they are in a jazz program, they will have to learn
jaz whether they want to or not. Today I had Jin Woo
to help me: Jin Woo is a Korean guitarist who studied
at University of Toronto for one year while I was in
my second year there. Now he's teaching at Paekche as
well (you can see the trend with former U of T
students being hired here!). It was nice to have
someone around who can speak English!
In the evening, I went to see Kenji play a gig at All
That Jazz, one of the better jazz clubs in Seoul.
There I met his girlfriend, who is a jaz pianist. It
was frustrating, because she has gigs that she needs
singers for, but the problem is that the clubs are too
public, and the gig is too regular (every week), which
means that I would most certainly get busted by
immigration. But Kenji did ask if I wanted to sit in,
and I turned him down for tonight (wanted to listen
and get a feel for my colleagues' playing first), but
it's nice to know that I've got people looking out for
me.
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Tuesday Mar 7th 2006, Today was my first teaching day at the other campus.
The other campus is in Jeonju, which is about 2 hours
south of Seoul. So every morning, there are school
buses that leave from Seoul at 9am, and return at 6pm.
I didn't realize just how many students Paekche has
until this morning: 8 buses go back and forth every
day! And that's just for the students who choose to
study primarily at the Seoul campus. There's hordes
more of students who only study at the Jeonju campus.
When I got my schedule for the rest of the week, I was
both thrilled and terrified. It turns out that I only
teach Monday at the Seoul campus, and then just
Tuesday and Thursday in Jeonju . . . I only work three
days a week! For someone who's used to working around
the clock, this seems incredible! But I did also learn
that on Tuesdays, I teach two vocal jazz ensembles,
which I will look forward to, but I was worried
because I didn't have anything prepared for them.
Also, on Thursdays, I teach three hours of vocal
improv to 55 students in each class! This is also
something I would love to do, but I have to design the
whole curriculum myself, and seeing as I had to teach
the first classes on Thursday, I was a little freaked
out!
But then in the middle of the afternoon, Jae took me
to immigration to apply for my foreign registration
card, and I asked him about the classes, and he said
not to worry about it for this week, just get the
names of the students, get to know them a little, etc.
I was so relieved! And surprised-- I'm so used to
having such rigid work schedules, where everything is
"not allowed" and "unacceptable", etc., that to
actually have teaching freedom feels like a minor
miracle! That was the first moment where I thought to
myself "Holy crap, I'm actually a professor!"
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Thursday March 9th 2006,These improv classes are going to be harder than I
thought-- there are very few English speakers in any
of the classes, so I've discovered; and NONE of them
have ever improvised before. I certainly have my work
cut out for me . . .
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Friday March 10th, 2006,Tonight I went out with Eoghan (Irish spelling for
Owen), a friend that I knew from Daegu who is now
living on the outskirts of Seoul. He's on the same
subway line as me, but about 50 minutes south of me.
Eoghan doesn't know a ton of people in Seoul either,
and his girlfriend just left for New Zealand for an
indefinate period of time, so I imagine we'll be
hanging out a lot.
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Saturday March 11th, 2006, Today, I had my last gig with Daegu Tones ever (in
Daegu of course). There was a party at the new art
studio space, so we decided to make one last
appearance as a band to support the artists who work
there. It was really fun, and I got to see a lot of
my Daegu friends, which was lovely. I've only really
been out of Daegu for two weeks, but I was surprised
at how much I actually missed some of them. It was
also good for me to introduce Ryan and Lindsey and
Ange to some of the other people I know. Ryan and
Lindsey of course put me for the night; they've been
great and really helpful to me in this transitional
time. They've actually been having a hard time
transitioning to Carey's and my replacements. One of
the new teachers is not working out so well . . .
Anyway, all in all, I had a great first week in Seoul.
It will be really interesting to see how my students
develop, and how the improv class works out, and how
my Korean speaking abilities develop as well.
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