Happy Children's Day!

So this entry is about two days late, but alas. At least I'm writing it. Things have been going... relatively well for the past five days. This will also be really long and rambly, I think, unless I institute some sort of organization scheme on it quickly, so here goes.

Thursday and Friday's Classes
were surprisingly good. None of my lessons were too unbelievably boring, and I instituted a new participation policy in third grade that is (so far) working like a charm. I used to have index cards with students' pictures on one side, and name on the other, which I used for learning their names. Now, I have a new set of cards, with just names on them, which I'm using for randomized forced participation. Like I said before, I previously didn't have the heart to just call on students who I knew weren't particularly good at English, so now I showed them the stack of cards, let them watch me shuffle it at the beginning of class, and just call whoever the next card is. It ensures that everyone gets called on equally, and removes the puppy dog/averting eyes element from selecting the next participant. Now there's a lot less repeating and a lot more individual speaking, which the students hate, but which is better for their overall conversational development, and that's what should matter most to me. Oh yeah... Thursday night Mr. Jerk (I mean, Mr. Hong) from science high school treated my co-teacher and I to dinner (traditional Korean fare... not delicious) in Naju. It was nice of him, and he didn't seem like such a bad guy. I gave him a bit of a hard-time, and he was good-natured about it, so I've let it go completely. His criticism, if insensitively delivered, inspired me to force my students to speak the limited amount of English they know, so it all worked out for the best.

Special Class on Friday
Have I mentioned, lately, that I now actually live for my special classes at good school? That's not entirely true... I live for my third grade classes (there are 6 of them every week), and then the pinnacle of the week is my after-school advanced class on Friday. For the first 45 minutes, they're evenly divided by ability level and we all study together, usually a song. This week we studied vocabulary for description. Then, for the second hour, they're divided by grade level, and I teach the 4 third grade boys, and my co-teach teaches 1st and 2nd. I came up with this plan because a. The third graders really can learn a lot more if they're challenged at a higher level in a small group, and b. I hate the first and second graders. Co-teacher is a saint for agreeing to it, so now I get to have a small group English conversation for 45 minutes a week. This week we studied the R. Kelly/Usher music video for "Same Girl." It worked well because the video explains the song really well, and the lyrics aren't that difficult, except for some slang I had to teach them. Plus, the song is a dialogue between Usher and R. Kelly, so I split them into pairs and made them practice the dialogue. But one of the boys left early, so poor HW (my favorite student) had to practice with me. Hearing him valiantly try to say "Straight up, dog?" and "Daaaaamn" with proper hood pronunciation was probably the highest point of my life. It will, no doubt, be one of my most long-last memories from Koera.

Three-Day Weekend
Saturday: This was a three-day weekend, but perplexingly, I accomplished about one-third of what I did last week. Strangey. I can't even really remember what I did, which doesn't bode well. Ah yes! I ran! You can read a semi-detailed account of it at the other blog if you like, but I did Saturday's run on what I thought was the actual race course, and discovered that it must not be the whole race course, because I finished it much faster than I ought to have. Nonetheless, it was a hard good run, in the middle of the morning in the sun, and I definitely needed a nap afterwards. The highs have been in the 70s and mostly 80s lately, which is surprising and (so far, at least), mostly pleasant. My host sister's school was having Sports Day on Saturday, so I also stopped by there to see what was up, but didn't see her. The rest of the day was, if I remember correctly, phenomenally unproductive. I also went to the gym, I suppose.

Sunday: Sunday was equally unproductive, but a little more fun. I spent a lot of time this weekend reading. I'm still slaving away at Moby Dick, but towards the end of the week last week I started to fall behind in my daily reading for the first time, so I had a lot of slack to pick up this weekend. I was 50 pages behind when I started on Saturday, which meant I read a total of 350 pages in the past three days. And it was rough. I mean, as I get further into the book and I get more of the narrative, it becomes more interesting, but there's still so much stupid stuff mixed in that it's hard to read for more than an hour at a time. So Sunday, if I remember correctly, was spent mostly in bed, reading Moby Dick off and on. After lunch I got up with the intention of going hiking, but I wasn't really enjoying it. I stopped halfway up to read for awhile, and as I was doing that it started unexpectedly raining. It was just drizzling, actually, but then I started to get a little chilly in my t-shirt, and bored with the book, so I decided to head back down. At which point it, of course, started pouring. It wasn't too bad when I was on the trail, but once I emerged, I got solidly drenched, and quickly. It was a 25 minute walk back to my house from the mountain, and I was dripping, but I think I smiled most of the way, amused at the sheer absurdity.

After that a shower was in order, and I got into my PJs and climbed back into bed with the Moby Dickster. I was just starting to get phenomenally bored with it, around 5pm, when the doorbell rang. I wasn't expecting anyone, particularly anyone to ring the doorbell, but then host sister runs in my room and is like "Briy... student." I put on a t-shirt over the tank top I was wearing (with my open-flied boxers) and emerged from my nest. Random aunt (Dad's sister, maybe?) and her son were visiting, and she looked amused, but I peered out to see fave ever student (HW, who wrote last week's adorable letter) sitting on the stairs outside. Grandma, aunt, and nephew had been driving me nuts all weekend, so I went back inside, put on real clothes, grabbed my umbrella and my student and made an exodus.

(Side note: Grandma is in one of those phases where she likes to take an active role in my life, by summoning me to meals I don't want to eat, bursting into my room for no apparent reason and speaking Korean, asking me where I'm going and when I'll be back, and telling me I'm coming home too late (at 9pm). Ha! Then the other day she demanded that I lend her my necklace and earrings, because she was going to Seoul with her boyfriend. What?)

Me: What are you doing?
HW: [thinks hard for 10 seconds] Seeing you.
Me: Well alright.

That's the right answer. It later came out that he'd been studying in the library with other friend and then left him there to come see me, and he had an hour before they were meeting again. It was still raining, so I brought him to the coffee shop nearest my house, and we had a nice little English chat. He mostly told me lots of random gossip, but he's always super-polite and earnest in his efforts to speak English, which is why I appreciate him so much. We finished up and I walked him back to the bus terminal, which is right next to my house, where we met friend.

We had a further even more adorable conversation on instant messenger later that evening. Highlights: We both agree that we prefer very cold weather to very hot weather, if pressed to choose. He wants to see a white Christmas, but asserts that if there is one, we will both be very cold, because we don't have boy&girl friend. (ha!) He wants to go to American university, because if he is near Florida, he can visit me. I warned him that Florida never has white Christmas, but he countered with: "I will be okay, because in Florida there is you." (haha!) He's a really sweet kid. I love him to pieces.

Monday: Yesterday was awesome. No school because of "Children's Day" (lamest holiday ever--Korean kids are such spoiled brats). It was the last day of the weekend, so obviously time to really buckle down on my to-do list. The only task I was really actively dreading was lesson planning, but I already had a sneaking suspicion I was going to be lazy and re-use a different lesson today rather than make the new ones I'll still have to make for Thursday, so I called up Meghan to see if I could interest her in some procrastination. She's always game for not lesson planning, and it turned out to be one of the most productive procrastination days ever. She took me to an amazing clothing store she'd discovered IN TOWN, where I'm going to buy a million new outfits as soon as I get paid this month. I actually FIT INTO some Korean clothes, which was awesome. Then we headed to an electronics store to check out the selection of Easy Bake ovens, but then were really expensive. We hit a few more clothing stores, and I tried on a mini-skirt that was waaaay small, and then we had a late lunch and parted. I finished my 350 pages of Moby Dick for the weekend, but not a whole lot else. Ah well.

Today's going fine so far. My third graders were a little annoying, but I made them speak a lot of English. I had first grade do a word search, which actually doesn't in any way resemble a conversation activity, but it helped me maintain my sanity. I had yesterday off, and I'm going to have Thursday off too (Buddha's birthday), which makes me feel like it's already the middle of the week and I'm dragging my way towards the weekend. I also have next Monday off, don't know why. (I was supposed to be off from May 3-May 12, the entire week, but then "spring break" got cancelled, by "popular opinion"... not sure whose.) It's sort of fine with me... I don't know what I would have done for the whole 9 days besides study Korean.

This week's cultural sharing with the family: the tooth fairy. Host sister lost a tooth, so I explained the whole under put it under your pillow and get mad cash thing, and then gave her a dollar. I'm not sure how she actually interpreted what I said (I'd be interested to know) , but she took the money. I'm mostly just hoping she'll tell host brother and he'll intentionally try to knock out some of his teeth. It would be worth it.

Tomorrow... pictures.