Child's Play... Wednesday, March 9

Day one of daycare duty.

I showed up nice and early for my first official day at the daycare where I'll be spending the next year of weekday mornings at. I did a nice brisk 7 minute hike up the climbing road to where the daycare was tucked away on and was greeted by a pudgy but overly smiley secretary, who I'll now refer to as Ms. Sweet Cheeks. Sweet Cheeks manages the front room with Mr. Shy Guy, an equally smiley man who is as his name implies, shy and quiet. So my day started off with a good chat with Ms. Sweet Cheeks and Mr. Shy Guy, a morning routine that I will definitely have to start cause they're so sweet to me... gosh, I want to pinch Ms. Sweet Cheeks' cheeks and tell her she's just the cutest... hahaha.

Next it was off for a quick tour of the daycare facility with my director -- a female director I should note (lovin' that fact) -- and wow, the daycare is beautiful! It's a three floor building with a full size cafeteria in the basement for the kids and staff. They've go fish tanks, turtles, a full size jungle gym outside with a slide and two-kid tricycles, but I love their bathrooms... hahaha. Seriously, I'll have to snap some shots of the bathroom; they're just too cute for words. Cause the kids at the daycare range from age 2 to 7, the bathroom sizes have been drastically downsized to a suitable scale, which means when I sit on their toliets my head literally is higher than the stall door... hahaha!!!

After ohhing and awwing over the pure awesomeness of the daycare itself, it was finally my turn to meet my "kids" and see my classroom... wow!!! My classroom is huge! It's the biggest room in the joint and is loaded to the brim with toys and things to do. I'm so jealous in that I never had anything like this when I was a kid. I guess what better than to be paid to relive my childhood and get my turn to play with such things... hahaha.

As for my kids, they're definitely really cool. I'm always thankful for scoring the coolest of kids and my kids at the daycare are no exception! I was quite surprised at just how welcoming and accepting all the children were of me. They really were so sweet to me but it was a bit overwhelming in that it seemed they all wanted to play this and that with me, show me this and show me that, all the while they spoke not a word of English. Already I've attracted a couple of "fans", as one of my coworkers labelled them as being. One of the not-so-popular boys in the class, a bigger boy with missing front teeth who likes to play alone, has attached himself to me. He's labelled me as his new best friend in class, which I think is so cute and awesome in that this little guy's English is going to skyrocket!

Taking a quick break during class to hit the bathroom was followed by this particular boy searching me out. As I had mentioned, the bathroom doors are not much higher than waist-high for the average adult so it was easy to see my head from down the hall. I could have used one of the staff bathrooms but didn't expect a mini Korean to venture out of the classroom at that time. "What are you doing?" he asked me in Korean. I laughed and told him I was eating, "eating" being the new word I had taught him today.

My class consists of 19 children, aged 7, and besides basic English words like various colours and numbers, their English is pretty non-existant. And as for the two young female Korean teachers I work with, Curly-Locks and Songbird, they speak a bit of English but we stick to covering our mouths and mumbling in Korean to each other when we want to speak. We've told the kids that I don't speak any Korean and let me tell you, it's a lot harder to keep this secret than do anything else at this job cause I'm so tempted to speak Korean to the children when they don't get what I'm saying in English.

Located around the classroom are various learning stations, or as the kids are convinced, play stations. Each station is filled with numerous things, ranging from small things like fake laminated money and finger puppets, all the way up to things like computers, a piano and fully stocked kitchen. It's like a whole world of living brought down to the scale of a child. They even had fake reciepts for their mini cash registers!!!

No sooner had I entered the room and introduced myself but some of the children had grabbed my hand and insisted me to come play with them. Turns out they had made a subway train with the wooden blocks and crates in the one corner of the room. I sat down pretended to read a newspaper.

I got kicked off the subway!!!

Yup, it's true. What had happened was one child asked me for money but I had none, so she turned and motioned to two other children who then took me by the arms and took me out of the subway playing area. So I got kicked off the subway for not paying the fare, with the play money that is... hahaha.

The kids were just fantastic today. I could have hugged every one of them and stayed there longer but I had my afternoon part time job at the academy. Going from the daycare, that's just infested with professionalism and awesomeness, to that of the academy, seems like a joke. My part time job is like a walk-in-the-park compared to that of the daycare where I always have to be on my toes, fully alert, and eagerly looking for those teachable moments. None the less, I'm doing both jobs now, juggling my time but not so much my effort.

I had a good feeling about this daycare position the moment I went in for the original job interview but today, after meeting all the staff and getting to finally meet my "children", I definitely have a really great feeling about working here. It just feels so great to finally work at a place where not only I but all the other staff and students want to be. This is definitely a first for me in Korea.

QUESTION OF THE DAY...
Do you do what you love or what pays the bills?

QUOTE OF THE DAY...
Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
-- Aristotle