training week, in a nutshell.

this past week has honestly been the longest week of my life. i've had stressful weeks before -- pretty much every finals week in high school/college, the experience of closing down a store with blockbuster... but this was... not enjoyable.

it was, of course, heavily compounded by the fact that jetlag is a bitch, but still. the pressure placed on the trainees was in-tense. basically, if we failed training, we had to go home. and be out a ton of money. ...as well as a job. AND it was all compacted into four days. four very long, very exhausting, very still-jetlagged days...

the first day was orientation/medical exams (which was quite the process itself...), then days two-five consisted of getting up at 6-7am, getting ready/studying, getting to the subway around 8am so we would be at the training center around 9am, 6-7 hours of training (learning methodology, jargon, mock teaching), back to the hotel around 4 or 5pm, maybe a break for an hour to nap/internet, and then studying with my group(s) until 1am-ish. so that plus the exhaustion from the previous week of getting ready to move to the other side of the world? i. wanted. to. die. actually, i just wanted sleep. if i hadn't been so tired? training wouldn't have been nearly as stressful.

i was lucky because i had good training groups (we were all divided into groups of 4-6 based on the courses our locations would need us to teach) and good trainers. and overall, my mock teaching went well and i do have to say that i learned a ton. i actually feel prepared for the classroom on monday. well, at least when it comes to the material. getting up in front of a bunch of kids? that'll be something else. i still have a lot to learn about actually teaching, and most of it can't really be taught.

needless to say, it's such a relief to be on the other side of training. chungdahm isn't messing around with their training week. it's hard. and not everyone makes it through. but going into the classroom is going to be a whole helluva lot easier now and i'm glad i received the training.

today was my break from it all. i have tomorrow free too, but i've got prep to do for my monday lessons. getting to my apartment yesterday and being able to sleep later than 7am this morning was incredible. tomorrow i think i'm going to sleep until i wake up. and then probably nap. i have at least a week of sleep to catch up on.

i'll post tomorrow about my apartment (which i love!) along with some pictures. i think living in korea is going to be pretty damn fantastic. :)