Kai Carpenter

C&T 598

Dr. Cho and Johnson

July 1, 2019

Final Reflection

My time in Korea has been absolutely amazing. Even from the first day when after we

spent fourteen hours on the plane, we got to participate in sports day and dance with the students

at the end of sports day. The next day, Greg took us on a tour of Gwangju, showing us the

important things around, and making sure we knew how to get around town. On Sunday, we

explored Gwangju on our own some and did a bit of shopping.

On Monday we got to enter the classroom for the first time, where we spent the week

introducing ourselves to the students and then getting to talk to the students in groups of three or

four at a time. Talking with them was a lot of fun for the most part but was a little draining when

you were with a group who didn’t want to talk much, and you had to force words out of them.

The second week at Kyunghwa we observed a lesson that Greg was teaching about

tongue twisters, and after a couple of times observing we began to help him run the lesson.

Halfway through the week we left to visit Sokcho, where we went to Seoraksan, visited the

temple on the cliff side, saw the lighthouse, and played on the beach. The trip to Sokcho was a

lot of fun but we missed out Wednesday classes which was a little sad.
 The following week we helped Greg with a lesson on riddles, which was a lot of fun

because we got to interact with the students a lot more and helped them with the riddles when

they got stuck.

The week after that was when we began to teach our first lesson plans. Patrick and I

did a lesson about describing people and had the students sit back to back and describe a picture

of a celebrity for their partner to draw. This activity was very fun because it gave the students the

opportunity to be creative all the while practicing the vocabulary that we had taught them.

That weekend we left for a weekend excursion to Seoul which was a lot of fun, but

incredibly busy. On Friday we went to the Boshingak Bell ringing ceremony and got to ring the

bell while wearing hanbok. Afterwards we went to the museum about King Sejong and the

creation of Hangul which was really interesting to see. On Saturday we went to Gyeongbokgung

palace and wore hanbok again as we got a tour of the palace. Next, we went to Hanok village and

saw the traditional villages that was really cool to see. After that we went to Namsan tower

which gave us such an amazing view of Seoul. Finally, on Saturday, we went to the baseball

game that was LG versus Kia. Lastly on Sunday we went to a few of the museums, one about the

Korean war, and the other being the National Museum of Korea.

Over the following week we taught out final lesson. Patrick and I taught a lesson

about onomatopoeias and used haikus in order to allow the students an opportunity to use the

onomatopoeias creatively.

Overall this entire trip has been an amazing experience that I would not change for the

world. It was an honor to be able to work at Kyunghwa and work with the amazing students and

the amazing teachers. I feel like I learned so much from this program whether it was about
teaching English, the school system in Korea, or even just Korea as a whole. If everyone had the

opportunity to be apart of this program I would one hundred percent tell them to be a part of this

program. It was a lot of hard work but the payoff was absolutely amazing.