9. Look what I can do!

I just figured out how to upload video, like about 2 minutes ago, and how here you go! My kids in action. Aren't they precious? Just click on the image below and it will play. In case you are at work or something, I should let you know that there is sound.

8. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Please stay tuned to the end of this blog for the addendum – the Totally Freaking Awesome!

1.The Good:

After many, MANY complaints, Mr. Lee (the supervisor) finally decided to listen to me and reduce my number of classes – by one. It does significantly lower my work load, and it means that I end my days at a reasonable hour.

The Bad:

Mr. Lee reduced my number of classes by canceling my favourite class – the class of 4 students, that I have had since the beginning, that has so much fun together, and who I got to see so much progress with. Aside from the fact that I miss teaching that class, it was my last class of the day, so taking that one away doesn’t really help with the fatigue issue. Yes, I end earlier, but I am no less exhausted in any of my afternoon classes. I tried explaining to Mr. Lee that I would rather have a longer work day with a break in the middle, but he just doesn’t understand. Either that or he just doesn’t want to compromise any more.

The Ugly:

Oh man, the tears! That class got canceled with no warning. I taught it on Monday and was told afterwards that that was the last class. So the kids came back for their next class and were told they were being absorbed into other classes (with other teachers) and they burst into tears. One of the boys, Robert, refused to go to class, and the girl (Angela) spent the entire time comforting, while fighting back her own tears. I felt so bad. If I’d known about it I would have thrown a party or something, something to soften the blow. The worst thing about it was that Robert is one of the Korean staff at school’s son (our new liason, her name is Jennifer). And she also spent the afternoon crying, because she really wants Robert to learn English, and she’d sent him to many schools and many classes and he’d always hated it until he was in my class. And then Mr. Lee went and canceled it with no warning to her either. It was all very unpleasant.

2.The Good:

The foreign staff is getting along awesomely well (well, with one exception that I am choosing to ignore. We have decided that we will go out for dinner every Wednesday night, as a way to break up the week and it works wonderfully well. David has agreed to extend his contract until August which is awesome (his contract actually ends May 1st, so he would be gone otherwise).

The Bad:

Well, there is not much bad to say about the people I work with. There is one person who just rubs me the wrong way, but I just choose not to pay much attention to it and I’m fine. The only sad thing is the fact that David will eventually leave, but we have all also decided to not pay much attention to that fact either. For now we just hang out at his place, watching Star Wars and discussing the social impact of the series. It’s awesome.

The Ugly:

Well, it’s ugly to me, anyway. The Wednesday night dinners so far have been held at two different venues – the first is a restaurant that serves Galbi (or Kalbi depending on who you speak to) which is a barbeque – there’s an actual grill on the table where you eat. It’s awesome! The second is a Thai restaurant that is literally a minute away from my house. I have eaten there about once a week since I got here. I LOVE that place, and the lady there knows me and will actually refuse to serve me some things, or when I was sick and would go there she would not even take my order, she would just bring me soup. What’s ugly about that? Well, they’re moving. To another city. On Sunday. It’s horrible. Which reminds me, I have to go there for dinner tomorrow. Can’t forget!

3.The Good:

After about a month of spending every weekend rearranging my apartment, I finally found an arrangement that works. I’d take a picture and post it, but I’ve got laundry hanging everywhere right now, so it wouldn’t be pretty. But I found a way to get my bedroom separated from my kitchen and my “office”. I also got some new furniture off the street! 2 chairs, a bedside table and a little sort of desk thing that I’m using for a TV stand. People here move a lot and they throw out perfectly good furniture all the time. Suzanne, my new neighbour, has awesome furniture and it is all stuff she salvaged from the street. My stuff isn’t as pretty, but it’s quite functional.

The Bad:

Well, The only way to separate my ‘bedroom’ (remember, the entire apartment is one room) from my kitchen was to put it right by the front door. Which means that you open my door and you’re staring at my bed.

The Ugly:

Well, anyone who has been to my apartment can probably guess the ugly – I sort of have this policy of allowing myself a messy bedroom as long as the rest of my place is presentable. With my ‘bedroom’ being the first thing you see it’s kind of frustrating.

4.THE TOTALLY FREAKING AWESOME:

Well, we got the book list for the month of May, and one of the books I’m teaching to one of my advanced afternoon classes is…wait for it, it’s awesome… STAR WARS! I’m sure you would have all enjoyed my happy dance that I did in the office. I haven’t seen the book yet, so I’m trying to brace myself for the possibility that it has nothing to do with the movie, but I’ve asked the director and he is fairly certain the book is a children’s version of the movie. He even told me to assign them the movie for homework. As you can tell, I’m quite excited. That class is actually quite a bit of fun, despite the fact that the parents have complained about me (apparently I don’t care about the children’s posture… hilariously, on this the parents are right. I really don’t care about their posture.)

Well, I know I said the totally freaking awesome would be the end of this blog, but I guess I lied. I have a bunch of pictures to show you, both of my class at school and of a field trip we went on on Friday. So, here you go.

So, here is my class, acting a bit silly-- Back Row: Christina, Shawn, Jim, Helen, Brian, Kiersten. Front Row: Ian, Annie, Ashley, Sally Judy

I'm losing one of my students. Little Ashley in the front row. Her mom came into school and got into a screaming match with Mr. Lee -- something about the bus, she wanted it to come 15 minutes earlier and Mr. Lee wasn't able to do it, so she's pulled Ashley out. It's kind of sad, cause she's really sweet, but it will be nice to be down to 10 students. Mainly because fitting 11 kids around the table in my room gets pretty tight. Especially with the addition of Helen and Jim, who are each twice the size of my other students. I've also been told that Christina will be gone for a month while her mom has a baby. I'm not sure if it's certain, but that's what I've been told.



Here are Kiersten and Shawn in the balls in the playroom. Kiersten is as sweet as ever, but Shawn? Oh man, they gave him a perm (yes, that's right, a 5 year old boy got a perm... it's fairly common) and I swear some of the perm went through to his brain, because he's gotten really bad. It's been really sudden. I guess he's not been really bad, he just has stopped caring about his behavior. What's funny is one of the other teachers (Anita) has a boy who also recently got a perm and he also started misbehaving. The theory we have is that when they get perms everyone starts telling them that they're really cute and then they feel that they can get away with anything.



And here is Annie. Now, we all know that teachers don't have favourites, so... I wouldn't say she's my favourite, I'd just say that I like her more than the others. Heh. The thing is, she reminds me so much of one of my little sisters -- Tori. She looks like Tori, at least to me, and she's feisty like her. That sort of "I'm really cute and adorable but if you tick me off I'll punch you" attitude that I remember from when Tori was her age.



I mean, look at her! Isn't she adorable?



And here is one of my new additions. Judy. She's incredibly tiny, the first day she was put in my class I kept forgetting and trying to send her down to Cookie Monster (the youngest class). I've been known to say that if I could keep Judy in one pocket and Annie in the other, I'd always be in a good mood.



And here is Jim, another one of my new additions. He's enormous, and a little bit odd. I'd say he was a bully because of all the pushing and kicking and punching he does, but I'm not entirely sure he knows that what he's doing is wrong. If you are in between what he wants to get to and him he just moves you out of the way. He's also started the very unusual practice of licking the other students, or licking his hand and wiping it on people.



Another addition which I keep being told will be leaving soon. This is Ian. Now, I know that he looks angry in this picture, and he is, but he doesn't hate me or anyone actually. He's just really young, mentally. He can't hold a pencil properly, which means that he can't do any of the homework. I've tried to help him out, but his mother just wants him around English speakers, so I've stopped worrying about it. His English is odd, actually. He speaks in random words, that I'm sure have some logic in his head, but they come out like this "Teacher! Sword! Invisible! Red! Ball! Power Rangers! Enormous! Ice Cream!"



And here is Brian, formally known as Brian Song. He is on his way to being my top student. I've managed to instill a sense of class pride -- you know, they are all now Elmo Class, and just tell them over and over again how smart Elmo class is, so whenever I give them anything hard and someone starts to whine, Brian will step in and say "We are Elmo Class now. We are very clever! We can do it." It's awesome!



And here is another new girl -- Helen. She is also enormous. I keep asking her how old she is, and she keeps saying she's 7 (Canadian 5), but she's just so much bigger than all the others. She is my top student, but I can't take any credit for that. She came in as so much above the others, she probably should have been put in another class. But I'm glad to have her. She adores me, for whatever reason, her homework is always surrounded by little love letters to me. I have to remind myself to be as affectionate with her as I am with the others, because she's so much bigger I forget that she's their same age, and needs the same kind of assurances. She, unlike Jim, is very aware of her size and so she never tries to climb up on my lap or run and hug me (which Jim tries, and he's actually hurt me a few times).



And here are Ashley (who I mentioned will be gone on Monday) and Christina. Christina is another new addition. But like I mentioned, she will be leaving for a month while her mom has a baby. I don't really know what to say about Christina except that I think something is going on at her home, and that it began quite recently. Her behavior, her work, her marks, her attention span -- they have all gone downhill dramatically in the last month. I'm hoping that it just has to do with her mom being pregnant and after the baby is born maybe things will settle down. Otherwise, I don't know what to do. Anyway, I think she'll be gone for the month of May (the last time I saw her mom, she looked about ready to pop), and so we'll see what happens in June.

Okay, here are the pictures from the field trip we went on on Friday. I believe it was to a Pear Farm, but I can't really tell you much about it because everything was explained to the children in Korean, and no real explanation was given to us.


Well, here's my class at the pear farm, one with me and one without me. It was a georgeous day!



Here's Sally and Ashley on this boat thing that we road for about 3 minutes. Not sure what it was for, we rode across this little pond for no particular reason. When we got to the other side, we had to walk back to where we got on the boat to go back up to the rest of the farm. I guess it's just fun for the kids.


Kiersten on the boat.


Christina on the boat.


Brian on the boat.



And here came the historical tour part that I have no idea about. I think this had to do with farming. This is Mr. Lee (the director) explaining something to the kids.


And here's Mr. Lee with a big beer stein. Well, I'm sure it isn't for beer, but it looks like it is and it made me laugh.



And here is precious Annie playing in one of those inflatable jumping things.


And here's the affect it had on her hair... heehee!


Sally in the jumping thing.





And here is Helen having fun on the farm.


Judy


Judy and Ashley


Jim


This is Kiersten and Ian. And I love this picture of Ian because it to me looks like what is going on in his head a lot of the time... which is basically just something other than what is going on in anyone else's head at the time. I mean, I'll be teaching, say about the human skeleton, and the whole class will be listening raptly and suddenly Ian will yell out "Rainbow!". It's actually kind of funny.


And here is Ian again. He was actually really hard to watch at the farm because he's a wanderer. There was a lot going on all around him and so he never was in the same place for more than a minute. It was exhausting.


Christina at the farm.



Ashley at the farm.


Now, this was the most interesting part of the day for me. The pounding of the rice cakes. Rice cakes here are completely different from rice cakes in Canada. They are not those dry, flaky things... they are sort of jelly like. They are just as tasteless though, well, they pick up the taste of whatever is put in them. Anyway, here, they showed us how they make rice cakes, and it's really quite simple. They take a bunch of rice, and they pound on it and it just turns into the rice cake stuff.


They let some of the kids take turns, and so here's Annie with a big mallet.


And then they brought out some sort of peanut flavoured powder and rolled the rice cake in it and cut it up so we could eat it. I ate a little bit and it tasted fine, although I'm not a big fan of the rice cake in general.

The last part of the day was the children picking "Mugwart" which is a traditional medicinal plant. It was in this part of the farm that had these beautiful trees, which I'm going to guess are the pear trees. Here are the teachers just hanging around in them, watching the kids. From left to right: David, Suzanne and Anita. I know you can hardly see them, but they're there.

And here is Me and Annie in the trees. Look at that, a picture of me! I think I've put two of them in this one post!

Anyway, that's it for now. This has taken an enormous amount of time because of all the pictures so I think I'll go outside now and enjoy the nice weather! Love to all.