Saved by the bell...

So what consumes all our time here besides countless Law and Order reruns? School, of course. School is where we spend 9-5, Monday through Friday. After working 12-hour days/nights/weekends as nurses, this schedule was hard to get used to at first, but we're starting to get the hang of it .

We teach at Chilwon Elementary School in the English Activity Town. We teach a range of students from 3rd to 6th grades, and once a month we get the privilege of being visited by the 1st and 2nd graders. The English Activity Town is actually a pretty revolutionary method for teaching a foreign language (at least in theory). The idea behind this place is that it's a portion of the school (the 3rd floor) that is not supposed to be considered Korea at all. The students are supposed to treat the Activity Town as if it were America. The primary language to be spoken on this floor is English, with only support Korean.

The English Activity Town is comprised of 4 rooms and a teachers' workroom. One room is a large activity room complete with state of the art computer linked television technology (for displaying digital teaching materials). One room is a classroom and two of the rooms are intended as role playing scenario sets. One room includes a post office, museum, market, and a home setting. The other room consists of an airport, and immigration office, a restaurant, and a bank. One of the major goals of the English Activity Town is to teach the children practical English for real life scenarios. These rooms facilitate this learning. For example, the first four weeks are spent learning an airport scenario (wish we would've learned this in Chinese before we left!). Below are some pictures of the English Activity Town.

This is the entrance to our school

This is the entrance to the English Activity Town

This is a mural of Minneapolis on the wall in the Activity Town.
Kind of random, right? It helps us feel at home.

Here is the "Market"

The "Airport"

The hallway or "Street"

The "Activity Room"