14. Friday! Yay!

To celebrate the end of the craziest, busiest week in the history of weeks (well, that might be overstating it a bit) I thought I'd let you guys see the other little movie I made.

What has made this week so busy? Well, our evaluations were due (read: report cards) and we weren't given the templates for them until Tuesday, so that was a bit of a rush. It's also the end of the month, which means the new lesson plans are due for the next month today (I'll be doing that during my precious break). Oh, and the end of the month also means that it's test time for all of the afternoon classes. I have spent several nights this week staying up until after 1am writing evaluations and tests. But it is all over as of today (well, as of the end of my break) and then things will go back to normal, or as normal as things are at LCI.

Anyway, here's the little movie. It's the longest one I've made so far, about 8 minutes long... and I recognize that it gets a little over the top towards the end, but I couldn't help myself! When you watch, you'll see what I mean.

Love you all, and enjoy!

13. Snapshot.

Well, I've been having way too much fun with Windows Movie Maker... so I've made another movie... actually, I've made 2, but I thought I'd just put the one in this post, and I'll save the other one for a few days. This here is just a little snapshot of my day. Nothing too significant.



Oh, and for those who entered the competition... I'm afraid none of you were right. I admit it was kind of a trick question, but the answer to the clue "to press something sharp against the skin and cause pain" was "bite". How that is true, I have no idea... but when I asked Mr. Lee about it he insisted it was the correct definition.

Love!

12. Yummy, Yummy, Yummy

So, today was interesting... and by interesting I mean infuriating. I was told that my kids would be given a test tomorrow, so I thought I could use today to prepare them -- both mentally and emotionally -- but today I went into work and was told that the test was, well... right away. No warning, for either me or the kids. And the test, which was made by the director (Mr. Lee) was horrible. His understanding of what children are capable of is about as extensive as his understanding of English (and by that I mean he has no understanding whatsoever). The vocabulary section of the test was a crossword puzzle... and my kids are 5 (Canadian 5, anyway). I've been working on crossword puzzles with them, but it is just a hard concept -- the fact that the question is down at the bottom, and you have to write the answer up at the top, and in these little squares... they're still getting used to that. Not to mention the fact that 'questions' on crossword puzzles aren't usually technically questions, so that in and of itself is kind of an abstract concept. Oh, my kids are smart and will be doing crosswords by themselves in a few months, but for now it's just too much for them to do alone.

And I haven't even mentioned that the way he was testing their vocabulary was by using definitions... I don't know if there is any way to convey how ridiculous it was. I mean, one of the 'clues' was "to open your mouth wide and breathe in deeply". I didn't know what that was. Apparantly, that is the dictionary definition of 'yawn'. Or how about "the soft part of the inside of your mouth". When she read that, Annie started groping around inside her mouth to see if there was something in there she didn't know about. That was the definition for the word tongue. Oh and 'the front part of the top of your body' was 'chest', and 'feeling tired' was 'bored', which we had to tell the kids was a mistake and then act out being bored for them. The craziest one was this: "to press something sharp against the skin and cause pain". I could not for the life of me figure out what that one was. I almost don't want to tell you and see if any of you can figure out what it was... as a matter of fact, I think I'll do that. If you submit the correct answer you win a prize... um... I think my undying admiration should be sufficient reward.

Anyway, the test was stupid and caused one of my precious kids to have an anxiety attack -- poor little Judy just burst into tears, and even when I sat beside her and hugged her and basically told her the answers, she wouldn't write them down because it was all too overwhelming, so I told her the test was stupid and that she didn't have to write it because I know that she's smart. I spent most of the day feeling very angry and protective of my children.

I refused to put my kids through any more intellectual stress, so I spent 20 minutes on the easiest subject for them, and then we worked on some songs. I took some video of them and have just today discovered some editing software on my computer so I've put a little something together. This is my first time doing this sort of thing, so it's a little rough, but I'm fairly impressed with myself. Enjoy.


As always, love to you all!

11. Teacher's Day

Today was Teachers' Day, which in the public school system means that teacher's get the day off... but in the private Hagwon system just means that we get a lot of presents. I got presents from all but one of my kindergarten kids. When I told Mr. Lee this (after he asked) he told me that a)this means I am a very popular teacher (apparantly the average is half), and b)not to 'care for' the girl who didn't bring me gifts. At first I thought he was joking, but no... he was serious. The funny thing is, the girl who didn't bring me a present was Annie, my favourite, and I know she likes me so it wasn't that. Secondly, I'm not going to stop 'caring for' a child because their parents didn't remember to buy me a gift. Anyway, what Mr. Lee said was that "Annie's mother is so busy, so don't care for her." I guess his thinking is that her mom is too busy to notice if she's learning or not. Mr. Lee has a real bias against working mothers... this is not the first time I've been told that a certain child doesn't matter very much because "the mother is very busy."

Anyway, onto the gifts. Here's a picture of my load.



And here's my favourite of Suzanne's gifts... it looks like a scepter! I actually saw some other women with scepter-like flowers walking around La Festa (the mall area) tonight, so maybe it's a traditional thing.


Actually, here's a video of La Festa at night, just so you can see what I'm talking about. And yes, that is a Starbucks.


After work Suzanne, Anita, David and I went out for dinner... twice. We went to this one cheap galbi place (Galbi basically means 'meat'... you'll see in a minute) that was kind of gross, so then after we 'ate' all of that, and by 'ate' I mean, picked at it and mostly just watched Dave eat, we went back to our regular galbi place and ate supper for real.

The 'meat' at the first place was a little bit unappetizing.


When you go out for galbi, they bring you raw meat, and you cook it on the grill in the middle of the table -- or if you are us, you let Anita cook it on the grill in the middle of the table. This, of course, is the galbi at the first place we went... as you can see, we are not happy.


Our regular place was much better.Of course, we still make Anita cook for us!


I had some other pictures (including one with me in it) but blogger is being frustrating and I'm having some difficulty uploading them. So we'll move on to the next feature. The video tour of my apartment.


Well, that's it for now. Have a wonderful week, folks!
Love and Hugs.

10. Children's Day

So, Friday was Children's Day... but it was also apparantly Buddha's birthday so it was a holiday (yay! Man, were we ever hurting for a holiday!). Anyway, we had the children's day celebrations on Thursday. I was really dreading it when we were planning it the day before, but it wasn't that bad. Of course, I was exhausted by the end of the day -- again, YAY for the 3 day weekend! I have no exciting plans for the weekend, unlike Suzanne, who is in China for the weekend (I'm not at all jealous - heh). I'm just looking forward to the rest and relaxation.

Anyway, I took a lot of pictures on Thursday, and managed to get some pictures of the other staff, so you can see what my friends look like.


Okay, this is Anita surrounded by her kids. Seconds after this picture was taken she was burried in children rubbing grass in her hair.



And here is Suzanne, who is also my neighbour (who is in China right now... again, not at all jealous!)


And here is Martin.


And here is David with some of the little Cookie Monster kids.


And here he is explaining the tug of war to the kids. Actually, David practically did the whole thing, planned all the events, ran them, etc... It made it a lot easier for all of the rest of us.

And here are the kids doing the tug of war.


And here is Mr. Lee trying to beat all the children. He did not.


And here is Mrs. Lee, the actual owner of the school (and Mr. Lee's sister). She speaks practically no English... and she is bizarrely frightening. I'm not sure what it is about her, but she scares all of us.

Of course, I took pictures of the kids too.

Here's Shawn, who isn't making the peace sign for the first time. The minute my camera is visible, all the children will make a V with their hands. It's a little frustrating.



And here is Kiersten, who I'm liking more and more. Suzanne actually put it quite well the other day when sae said that Kiersten is the type of little girl that you know is going to be a really nice woman... the kind of person you can see yourself being friends with.



And here is little Judy. That picture with her with her bum sticking in the air reminds me of pictures of me when I was a little girl. She is just so adorable.


And here is Brian making the dreaded "V".


Jim, Ian and Shawn.


Ian, just pointing. I actually assigned Jim the job of looking after Ian and making sure he didn't wander off too much. Jim was all over it.


The kids were divided into 2 teams, the Lions and the Tigers... here is Helen cheering for our team.


Some of you commented recently about the perms, and here is the worst example. This is a boy named Hubert. They often divide the children by gender and it has happened more than once that we've mistaken Hubert for a girl and tried to put him with them. Some kids are more androgynous, but Hubert did look like a boy before. I just can't wait for it to grow out like Shawn's did.

Another comment I got was that there weren't enough pictures of me, which is just a difficult problem to solve because I'm always holding the camera. But I tried this time.

Here's Me and Sally, Anita took this picture.


Me and Judy, obviously a picture I took myself.


And me and Brian, another picture I took myself.


I also took a bunch of video, and now that I know how to post it, you get to see the kids in action. This first one is a clip of the first event, the sponge race. This is mainly my class. Of course, it's a little shaky because I was also trying to direct the kids as I was filming.


There was also the 3 legged race, here's a short clip of that.


And here's just a random clip of the kids milling about.


And here's some more random kids. I think this is the one where you can see Jim doing his duty and bringing Ian back into the fold.


And here is where we had run out of activities and David just started running and let the kids chase him... and then he almost ran me over. Seconds after this video clip stops, David let the kids catch him and they all piled on top of him. Oh, and the voices you here in this clip are me and Anita.


Anyway, I think that's it. I'm going to go and enjoy my holiday now!
As always, love to you guys.