Parents teacher sessions

In South Africa parents seldom pitch up to have these sessions and mostly come to one when something serious has gone wrong, so it is a breath of fresh air when parents do have a keen interest in the education of their children.
http://www.yeojufirst.hs.kr/?_page=41&_action=view&mode=view&no=14340&idx=99987545

One on one sessions also went well.

Here's hoping this year will be better then the previous one..Go Yeoju First High!!!

Yeoju botanical garden.

The garden experience is a  great place to go and relax whilst experiencing nature.

Some of the flowers have been imported from other countries but these indigenous beauties looks awesome and smells sweet.

 some succulents on the left of this path..

interesting sculptures.

Yeoju bus terminal et al

There are several times when I found it difficult to get around and not miss the bus going to Seoul or anywhere else in the republic of Korea so here are some links for
Yeoju bus terminal...http://www.yjterm.co.kr/home/timetable.html

Icheon bus terminal...http://blog.naver.com/PostView.nhn?blogId=dltkdgjs84&logNo=100161996378&redirect=Dlog&widgetTypeCall=true


Taepyong-ri bus terminal...http://blog.naver.com/PostView.nhn?blogId=engyouel&logNo=150145113133
and more will follow later..good travelling!

Yeoju first high school

So I started at this new school and my first high school position,and so far it has been challenging. There are some students in these classes who simply does not want to be at school anymore nor do they have any interest in learning any English whatsoever. http://www.yeojufirst.hs.kr/ is a big school with over 750 students ;not the little primary school I was used too for the last 4 years with just under 120 students. We share the same property with the yeoju first middle school and met the native English teacher yesterday Cindy. She is from Kwazulu natal and have been at the middle school for two months now.
Any way I have decided to write this piece now because I have some time to spare between planning lessons. The school is all buzzing because mid-terms exams are about to start and I have to do a lot of proof reading .
The area is rural and you have a short 20 minute bus ride to get into Icheon the nearest town other than Yeoju. I am also planning on visiting the premium outlets either today or on Saturday to get some gifts for family back home.Hope to write some more posts this time around about my experiences etc...

What a wonderful world!

The first day summer camp finally came and the theme was what a wonderful world.the students wanted to make a music video and this  what resulted.

yeoju times !! really?

So the local also has a yeoju times but everything is in korean so no foreigner can understand anything unless they speak korean and there is obviously no english translation available on the website, but some interesting local news!

http://www.yeojutimes.com/news/articleList.html?sc_section_code=S1N1

2012 our last year in korea.

All things come to an end and so will this journey. When I came to Korea in September 2008 it was never the plan to stay this long. The plan was always to see how Grace and Keren would adapt and if not to return to Cape Town. Over the pas few years we made some great friends and had memorable experiences but we miss our family and the school system is too rigid over here. Keren got into an international school but that did not last long due to unfortunate circumstances. Now we have to homeschool her and hope she will not be dissadvantaged because of it.Grace is content at her school as am I and she was asked to stay on again. The question now remains ,are we staying for the wrong reasons? Time will tell..