First Day of School

This post is slightly out of sequence, but I had to share the penis viewing!
Oct. 26th was my first day of school and I was supposed to go to each of my classes and observe.
Throughout the day I hear a lot of "What's your name? It's nice to meet you, my name is...." All the students, ages 6-19, have English names, which for some reason I find strange. However, it does make things a lot easier for me. Their English names have nothing to do with their Korean names, which I also find intriguing.
I also hear a lot of, "Wow! You are very tall!" I just smile at them and tell them I am considered tall in my country too.
Classes start at 2:30 p.m. and are 45 - 90 minutes long. There are classes until 9:30 p.m. every weekday. Students come to the private English academies after attending regular public school all day. I really have no idea when students have time to study or sleep. But education and learning English are very important concepts to the Korean people and Korean parents are willing to pay lots of money to ensure their children learn English.
There are Hogwans (private English schools) everywhere. The first level of buildings are made up of Hogwans and restaurants and the other levels are apartments. There are tons and tons of Hogwans everywhere! Mine is called "Talking Club".
Each student has their temperature taken as soon as they enter Talking Club with a digital thermometer that is placed in their ear. H1N1 is quite an epidemic and I'm pretty sure it originated here too. EVERYONE wears masks over their nose and mouth.
The same thermometer is used daily on several students and there is no sort of protective cap on it, nor are there any swipes of alcohol between temperature readings. I find something incredibly gross about this. But I guess it could be worse, it could be a rectal thermometer.
There are a total of eight teachers at Talking Club. Six of those are native Koreans, one is from India and then there is me. We are all female. Mirue is the best at speaking English, she just graduated with a degree in pre-pharmacy from a university in Portland, Oregon and she is waiting to hear if she'll be accepted into Pharmacy school and returning to the U.S. She's a friggin doll and I can talk to her like she's an American and she knows what I'm saying. I don't have to carefully calculate every word with her. It's fantastic!
Jennifer is also really good at English. She spent eight years in New Zealand before coming back home several months ago to teach.
I had one middle-school aged student ask me what my favorite flower was and he told me his was "mara-johnna". Umm, what?! If you're going to try to be a typical snarky teenager then at least pronounce marijuana correctly. I thought Korean children were considered highly naive and the Korean culture VERY anti-drug?
At one point, the Korean teacher in charge of "mara-johnna" boy's class allowed the students to throw Jenga game pieces at each other and all over the classroom while she stared at the table. WTF?!
I sit in on the 6:40 p.m. class. There are two students there and they are fairly advanced at English. I keep waiting for the teacher to show up and nobody does. Finally Agnes comes in and tells me I'm responsible for this class. Ummm.... Good to know. We played "Hangman" and "20 Questions" for the entire duration of the class.
I was solely responsible for the next class too. They were pretty advanced at English too, so we just talked.
I'm overwhelmed by my complete ineptitude by this point and the amount of time and effort I will need to invest just to figure out what is going on.
Do all new ESL teachers in a foreign land feel this way? I feel like I've been thrown to the wolves.
I make it back to my apartment at 9:50 p.m. I lie face down on my bed with my feet hanging off the foot of the bed and my arms outstretched on either side. My first day of "teaching" is finally over
I don't think I've ever felt this unprepared, uncomfortable or completely clueless in my entire life. I'm the only native English speaker at the school and I was given absolutely no direction or instruction from the school director about how to teach the children English. The first three classes I went to were spoken entirely in Korean. The previous Western teachers had no teaching experience either (from what I'm told) and they managed to make it through, but how? I would love to ask them, but no one at the school will give me Alex or Emily's e-mail address because it's "confidential information".