First Post: T-61 Hours

Hello, world!

This will be my blog for my 3 weeks teaching a summer high school science camp at KAIST in South Korea. I'll be teaching the same week-long course in astrobiology 3 times to different groups of Korean high schoolers, and I'll be an hour or so south of Seoul, in Daejeong. There are about a half dozen American high school science teachers at the school, along with another grad student, Mahmoud, from my university, George Mason. I've been told the kids will be fluent in English, and Korea is a pretty education obsessed country, so I'm expecting the kids to be pretty bright. Still, I've heard of problems in the past, so it's entirely possible that "fluent" does not mean the same thing to the KAIST administration that it does to me. There's also the conflict between Western style education, which is more focused on discussion and analysis, and the Eastern style, which is more focused on memorization and drilling. I've been told it could be challenging to get the kids actively involved, between the language and cultural gaps. I'll find out in a week!

 I'm not planning on getting a card for my phone, but Korea is supposed to be one of the most wired countries in the world, so internet access should be good: email, this blog, facebook, and skype. Korea is 13 hours ahead of the east coast US though, so when it's evening for most of you, it'll be the next morning for me. I'll be teaching most days from 9-4, so I'll mostly be available online in your morning to midday, or maybe for short periods while I'm getting ready in the morning, if necessary. Keep that in mind.

I have my visa, plane tickets, and teaching materials as of today, so all that's left is packing.

I'll try to take lots of pictures when I get to Korea, but I'm pretty bad at remembering to get my camera out when interesting things are happening. Still, aside from the actual teaching, we're supposed to take trips to Seoul, the demilitarized zone, and the Korean Folk Village. It's only three weeks, so I'm not sure what else I'll have time to see and do, but that alone should be enough, on top of 30 hours of teaching a week.

This will be not only my first trip to Korea, but also my first time out of the country, and my first time teaching in this capacity, so be prepared for discussion of teaching as well as travel. On the other hand, I'll be teaching Korean high schoolers, so I'm sure I'll have plenty of interesting cultural observations.

I think that's all for now. More updates once things start happening!