always a surprise

Only in Korea: I was walking home from grabbing lunch the other day and saw a bunch of my students playing with broom sticks in the car park underneath my apartment building. I was really excited, because I haven’t seen a lot of my students since I’ve been back with it being summer and all. I was walking up to say hi, when I noticed that they were pushing around and playing with a dead cat! UHHHHH! They saw me walking up and saw the look on my face and just laughed as I walked away. Kind of a given, that I didn’t eat my lunch when I got up to my apartment. The next day one of the parents in my class said her son saw me, but I didn’t say hi. When I told her why, she just laughed as well…She hates animals and thought it was hilarious how traumatized I was. Oh Korea : P hahaha

In other news:

We had a typhoon warning last Wednesday, but it didn't end up being too bad. They did cancel classes; it was extremely windy and rainy, but cleared up by the end of the day. My umbrella did that whole folding up breaking thing in my 30 second walk to school, glad they didn't make the kids do that! Apparently it was supposed to be pretty bad on Sunday again, but it doesn't seem like there will be any repercussions of all the rain and wind (except that my internet was out at home for a bit...many lame).

Last week I taught adults for 2 hours a day. Only 2 out of the 7 that signed up for my class showed up, so there wasn’t much teaching. We basically just sat and talked and they asked me questions. If we ran out of questions, I would just teach some sort of rule and start conversation from that (ex: past tense). Friday was the last day and one of the mothers walked 20 minutes to class to tell me that she couldn't be there b/c of a family tragedy. I was sad she couldn't stay. The other woman and I ended up talking, she brought in all the stuff and taught me to make gimbap (rice, seaweed, w/ vegetables roll type things), we made pb&j's, played kongi (traditional Korean game like jacks), and I taught her war and go fish! haha it was great. Both of them gave me gifts too, a pencil case, and a mini traditional mask. I just gave them notebooks and a pencil : / I think they liked them….It was so much fun and the two of them were really interesting! They both were so interested in learning another language, it was amazing! One woman was Mongolian, studied French, studied in Russia, and married a Korean man and now lives here. She knows Mongolian, Korean, and a bit of English, French, and Russian! The other woman volunteers in the library, so I’ll get to see her every now and again! It fascinates me how a lot of the older generations here still have such a passion and drive for learning!

This week and next week I am teaching an essay class with students. I didn’t think it would be so bad, but it’s a little tough. The level ranges from my most advanced student to students that cannot even write a sentence. Most of them are pretty low level; therefore, there is no way to get them to write individual essays. This week I’m just teaching the basic structure and collectively writing an essay. I’ll probably just teach a basic form for a movie review next week….that way I can show a movie one day too : P It’s also really difficult because I have one of my most disruptive students from any of the regular school classes in this class. Then there are 5 others who can be disruptive, but kept under control, but not with this boy as the ring leader! YIKES! Oh well, my goal is to just get them comfortable writing consecutive sentences, helping those more that have trouble forming the sentences.

Other than sitting at school from 9-5 and only teaching 2 hours of it, I’ve been reading a lot. Too much rain to do much else. Two weekends ago a friend took me on my first motorcycle ride to this really great beach. That was pretty fun. This past weekend was pretty low-key b/c of more typhoon warnings and such. : P Saw Toy Story 3 and caught up with some friends who have been away working at camps. I was trying to go paragliding or whitewater rafting, but that will have to be saved for another weekend. In exactly one month I’ll be in the Philippines, so I guess low-key and cheap is the way to go right now!

Hope all is well!