From Luke( English Teacher at Nogok Middle School from Chicago)

Hi Jiwon,

What a cool email!  Yeah, these questions are a little difficult but I think they are all great ideas!  Good for you for wanting to help people so much!

1. ) OK, some things you could put into a manual:

How to open a bank account
How to transfer/remit money from a Korean bank account to an account in the teacher's home country
Some basic words or phrases in Korean - written phonetically and in Hangeul ! ^^
A calendar for the school year that shows when all of the holidays/vacation times are.  (I would have loved to have one this year!)
A map to immigration along with the subway stop, exit number, hours of operation and the English website address.

I'll talk to Laurie and try to think of some more suggestions for you.

2.) Hmmm, games may be difficult to explain over email.  Maybe we can talk about this tomorrow at school.

3.)  I really like Korea. I think there are a lot of wonderful things about it here. Although, I do think students study too much! LOL!  I'm very impressed with how smart they are and how hard they work but, if they only study, then they will miss out on many other important experiences. 

Also, when Korean students study, they seem to just try to remember the correct answers instead of understanding WHY an answer is correct or if there is another possible answer.  I was just talking to a Korean friend last night who works at Samsung.  He was telling me how great Samsung hand phones are, but he said the problem is that the software is not very strong.  He said he thinks the problem goes back to the fact that students here only remember answers instead of being encouraged to be creative.   Korea has so much potential but without teachers and parents encouraging creativity, I wonder if that potential will ever be reached.

I'm not sure how you could help with that, but I guess I'd encourage you to be creative! Have fun and think of different ideas.  It's great to think about the possibilities!

If you'd like to know more about how foreigners think about Korea, you can look at my cartoon: www.ROKetship.com

I have drawn a cartoon for the last 2 years about a foreigner living in Korea and trying to understand the culture.  It may be interesting to you!

Anyway,  I love that you want to help people.  I hope you have many chances to do that and that you get to feel wonderful as a result! ^^

Good night,