Japanese Television, A New Neighborhood, and the Kid v. Teacher Scorecard Continues

I can hardly believe that my first week is already over. It still feels like I just stepped off the airplane, at least in part because I still have a touch of jet lag. Highlights of this week included discovering Japanese television, exploring my new neighborhood, and of course, meeting my new students.

I get 14 television channels without cable. Two are the same station on different channels. Three are in Chinese. One of the Chinese channels shows music videos 24/7, sometimes Chinese, sometimes American. (The Bee Gees just came on. It's a huge improvement over Lil Bow Wow.) Two are in Japanese. Seven are in Korean. One is Muslim Television Ahmadiyya, which broadcasts mostly in Arabic, occasionally in English, and the other night, Bengali dubbed in German. The Japanese channels are my favorite. They're aptly named BS1 and BS2, but at night, they play old musicals in English with Japanese subtitles. It's the only English language programming I've found, except for the music videos. Good thing I never get tired of Singin in the Rain.

My neighborhood is really nice. My new city is a bustling place with a population of over 300,000 people. It's conveniently connected to Seoul by subway. My apartment is on the 11th floor of a building that's a 2-minute walk to school, right next door to E-Mart (huge department/grocery store), and less than a 10-minute walk to the subway station. My neighborhood has two main squares, connected by a pedestrian walkway. Each square has a fountain in the middle in which children are encouraged to play. It's well lit at night, and there is frequently live music. The whole main corridor of the neighborhood is busy most of the day and well into the night.

The highlight of my week was meeting my new students. I'm teaching kindergarten, and like the vast majority of kindergartners in the world, my students are exceptionally cute. Most of them were really good this week.