Nic Trips

The first classes I ever taught independently (with out a co-teacher or any sort of guidance for subject material), in my first few months in Korea back in 2014, were a mess. I had lots of big ideas for sure, but I know now my execution of them was poor and overall they were generally unorganized. After a year of teaching regular classes, after school classes, 2 camps, and several Saturday classes, I was ready to make my last Winter English Camp the best of all. Not only did I collect a plethora of great ideas for this 2 week camp from my year of experience and from my other teacher friends, I was able to finally put everything I've learned about teaching together without any outside assistance and create a camp itinerary, system and syllabus I was proud of. For starters, the theme of my camp this year was "America". I wanted to take the students to the USA in terms of teaching about the country, culture and language. I told them that while we were in English ...

Christmas is my favorite time of year. So of course, I brought the holiday into the classroom as soon as the holiday season rolled in. I set up a Christmas party class, the same as last year, on the days before Christmas for each of my grades. This school year, I have WAY more students than last. So this meant spending my entire Sunday baking 400 cookies and mixing up several sets of colors of icing to decorate them with. I spent hours with my after school class making decorations for fill the classroom with some Christmas spirit. All this work? TOTALLY worth it. I had so much fun, the kids had a blast and all around everyone enjoyed the week. Same as last year, I tried to take as many pictures and videos during the classes as I could to compile a fun music video! Merry Christmas~! I would begin each class teaching the kids a little bit about how we celebrate Christmas in the USA. In Korea, Christmas is celebrated as a "couples' holiday" (more similar to V...

If you can get past the yellow dust coming up from China and the heavier seasonal rains, you'll see spring is a beautiful time of year in Korea. The warm, sunny days and drizzling, cool nights provide the perfect environment for the plants to grow green and bounce back from winter. It's now that you begin to realize how many flowing plants there are in Korea. It seems as if nothing is grown (on purpose) or planted unless it produces blossoms at sometime of the year: the most common being spring. Thus my walks around the city, either for transportation or simple enjoyment, have been filled with flowery aromas and wonderful colors from the array of flowering growth. Cherry blossom trees can be seen everywhere. For the Koreans, they are both a beautiful signifier of spring and a sorrowful reminder of the Japanese (who planted them during their occupation of Korea). Taehwa River, and the many tributaries leading to it, seem to be a central point for many of the gr...

As part of a documentation of my life in Korea, I decided to take pictures of my school lunches everyday for about 2 and a half weeks. I can't tell you what each thing is or is called, but I will try to get my co-teacher to help me label them sometime next week. For now, enjoy the pictures! And, know that there is a typical (and expected) order of food on your tray. First, on the bottom left is always the rice. On the bottom right is always the soup. Then from left to right on the top row goes: kimchi, "vegetables", meat.