Follow Up

Yesterday (Friday) was a pretty average day at work for me.  I was really tired, so during my hour break I ran down to Paris Baguette to get coffee of some sort.  I chose a caramel macchiato, since I've never had it from there before.  Mistake!  It was like syrup.  Very gross.

A couple of weeks ago Terry and Julia gave me two boxes of cookies to give my students as rewards.  I never found an occasion to use them; I find candy much easier to hand out in that way.  So, yesterday when a girl in one of my classes complained of being hungry, I grabbed one of the boxes and fed the class.  It still amazes me that these kids aren't given time to eat between their activities.  It's as if the parents expect kids to have the capacity to work that into their own schedule.  Many college students don't even manage to do that.  I fed the second box to the class after that one.  From about 5:30 on all of the kids complain of hunger.  It makes me sad.  I fully intend to tell Julia that I need more reward cookies for them.

After work I met Ian at the Dunkin' in Goam-dong.  It's not even a block from Ben and Amy's place.  We sipped our lattes and shared a undercooked (but still tasty) cranberry scone and stale donut.  He told me that Julia and Gene had made up their minds about changing the books for our Essential 1 and 2 classes.  Gene had said he was looking through some books, but I didn't know he was in conversations with Julia, yet.  The books he showed me were pretty nice.  They were mostly conversation starters, which these kids need.  But, Ian told me that Gene and Julia had decided to go with the upper level Gogo series instead of what I was shown.  The Gogo books are our nemesis.  They are dry as a bone and completely redundant.  The upper level books suggest we do "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" with our Essential 1 and 2 classes. Keep in mind that these kids learn that song and vocabulary from the ages of 4-7 here.  Essential 1 and 2 students are anywhere from 11-14.  That's not going to work.  I texted Gene and told him tactfully, but honestly that I didn't think that books were challenging enough.  Even through test his frustration was evident.  He said that the books were simply for speaking practice and to just use them for the next week.  "Plus," he added, "it's Julia's choice."  I feel pretty bad for him.  He's trying to give us a voice in our workplace and in acting as a stepping stone from us to Julia, he is now the one stepped on.

While we were at Dunkin', an older Australian man and his Korean co-teacher came in.  His name was John and his co-teacher's name was Ben.  They were very nice.  We asked questions back and forth about each other's jobs.  John's been here not quite two months, but he's taught in the Philippines.  Ben asked a lot about Yoon's.  He was curious because he was turned down for a job there.  He thought it was because his English wasn't good enough.  We carefully (avoiding slandering our place of employment) told him that his English was better than most of our Korean English teachers.  We told him he probably wasn't hired because he's a man.  Yoon's is disproportionately female.  Ian is one of 3 or 4 men under their employ (counting total staff, not just teachers) in the entirety of Jecheon.  It's very strange.  I think it gives the business a better hold in the social hierarchy over their employees.  Working for Yoon's is all about submission, so it must be easier to employ women.

As I reported last night, we had a great time with Ben and Amy.  We ran down to the little restaurant near their place for a bibimbop dinner.  It's the place Ian likes to get gimbap from.  The waitress blatantly ignored us with a sour look on her face for over 15 minutes.  We finally made eye contact and ordered or simple meals.  After dinner we went back to their apartment, made some little Christmas decorations, watch t.v. and chatted.  We're heading out to Avatar later this evening.  I'll be sure to give you my thoughts.  Here's hoping not too much of the movie is in Na'Vi, as it will have Korean subtitles.  Keep your fingers crossed.

Enjoy your weekend.  Good night!

Fun Lessons

Today I didn't start classes until 3:30.  No one has told me whether this means that I can wait until 2:30 (instead of 1:30) to show up, so I got there at 1:45.  No one seemed to care,  I was going to use my extra time to print and fill out loan forebearance applications, but I actually needed all that time to prepare for classes.  Mondays and Tuesdays always take more time because it's our first few times through the week's unit.

Our Basic 1 class is doing a unit on "Show and Tell."  In the imaginary world of the book the kids have animals that have human traits, like a cat that can paint and a bug that can sing.  Julia wanted us to make copies of the pictures of these animals and make cards for the students to play with.  But, I had a more entertaining idea.  Cartoons are one thing.  But, what about actual photos?  I thought the kids would get a kick out of that and Gene said that my idea was better because it got the students thinking creatively (something kids here don't get enough of in their education, as it's all multiple choice and test driven).  Luckily, with the popularity of LOLCats and their counterparts made it possible for me to find good pictures online.  The kids used the pictures to make the sentences "This is my ______.  It can ______."  Then they played a memory game where they tried to remember what the other students had, too.  "His/Her _______ can ________."  I'm sure you've seen at least some of these before, but here are the animal picture cards I used in class today.

This is my cat.  It can use the computer (read: surf teh internets[sic]).

This is my dog.  It can drive a car.

This is my iguana.  It can play ping-pong.

This is my cat.  It can play Nintendo DS.

These are my dogs.  They can fly.

This is my rabbit.  It can read a book.

This is my rat/mouse.  It can play the piano.

This is my cat.  It can sing a song.

This particular class was all boys, but they still really enjoyed it.  I think my girls will like it even more.  At the very least, it keeps my day entertaining.  I love the internet.  It's amazing how you can use something so silly or even stupid for educational means.  I hope Gene tells Julia about the extra creative work I've been doing.

Ian had to use the ball (a tool we use to get the young kids to talk to each other, they throw it to each other and ask questions) in his Essential 1 class (11-12 year olds) today.  They wouldn't talk, so he knocked them back down to "What's your name?  My name is ______."  I have a few Essential 1 classes that hardly speak as well.  Maybe it's their age.

Ian and I are having (microwave) baked potatoes and vegetable cream soup for dinner.  It's a good standard American meal after our 비빔밥 and 김밥 last night.  I like Korean food, but in small doses.

Good night!

And Now for Something Completely Different: A Good Monday.

We got to the Sinback campus this morning right on time.  Which is a near miracle for us.  Gene was waiting outside the door for Terry, who was inevitably about fifteen minutes late.  He told us that Julia would not be coming.  I guess we can thank Gene for convincing Julia to let him do his job.  It turned out that Terry didn't have a key either ("Key... opseyo.")  So, we went over to the headquarters to utilize a meeting room.  The only other time we've been to the main building was during our first days here when we introduced ourselves in front of a room full of Korean English teachers.  The place gives both Ian and I a bit of anxiety.

The meeting went very well.  It mostly consisted of Ian and I outlining our lesson plans (granted, they are based on the plans Julia made for our week via Gene's translation) and Gene offering the very occasional suggestion.  No repetition, no condescension.  It was wonderful.  Though we didn't get started until after 10:30am, we were still finished before noon.  Ian and I spent our free time this morning at Dunkin' drinking citron tea, which is a little too strong, but I still like it.

My classes went smoothly, though I was very tired today.  My kids give me energy (when they're good), so that helped.  Starting with young classes is always good for me; it cannonballs me into my day and makes it go by quickly (by the way, "hurry up" in Korean is "bali bali!").  I taught one of my Basic 3 (10-11 year olds) the word poo today.  We were talking about compost and fertilizer and they felt they really needed to know how to talk about excrement in English, so I gave them the most comically inoffensive word I could think of.  Come to think of it, I should have taught them "excrement."

Gene was in Ian's classes today, but Terry never showed.  I don't know what's going on with any of that.  I like having someone there to occasionally translate or play partner to a kid who doesn't have one, but at least my every misstep isn't being reported.

Ian brought home 비빔밥 (bibimbap: rice with veggies, a fried egg and red pepper sauce called gochujang) and 김밥 (gimbap: rice and seaweed rolls with veggies or whatever else, like sushi only never raw and no vinegar) for dinner.  The 비빔밥 was good, but the 김밥 had fish cake in it, so I didn't have any.  Ian, however, ate two little pieces of fishcake trying to figure out what it is.  I'm hoping he'll adopt my "it doesn't look vegetarian, so I'm not going to push my luck" philosophy.  I don't know why there was fish cake in it, because Gene wrote Ian a note listing everything we don't eat and asking for our orders of 김밥 and 비빔밥.  Ian had to go to the place we've had trouble with because the good place was closed, which may be the reason.

Here's hoping I don't have to rework the HTML code for this post.  I never successfully fixed last night's.  Wish me luck!  Update: The formatting seems intact for Mozilla and Internet Explorer, but if you're using Google Chrome, it's still weird.  Good night!