Hey!
Almost a week later, sorry I promise I'll start writing more regularly to whomever read this. So this week has been pretty standard, although I did start teaching multicultural lessons to 6th grade classes. It's no so much a multi cultural lesson as much as it's supposed to be about me but I think that would also be boring for the kids so I tried to have the 2 classes do surveys. I don't want to bore them but I have to say I gotta kinda write these lessons and the kids off because after December and English camps I will probably never see any of these kids again. 6th grade is the end of the Elementary school line and I don't really see them poping in to visit cause I've only seen 3 middle schoolers in the school at anytime afterwards anyway, I don't want to sound cold cause there are really good kids there but I'd like to make it really interesting for the kids who start 6th grade after the winter break.
P.S. Winter Break in Korea is like 4-7 weeks
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Friday, November 6, 2009
Big day today
Today was AWESOME!!!!! I got to talk to the other two Korean English Teachers a ton today and they are hilarious. The 3rd and 4th grade teacher I talked to the most we had a demo class that people could come and sit in on and we got together and practiced for a hour before hand. After our walk through we just talked, she probably isn't the best English of the bunch I have but she expresses herself the most. We talked about Korean culture and how much she doesn't enjoy some of it. She has to cook... alot, and she doesn't really enjoy it cause ya know, she has a full time job. She told me about ceremonies for dead ancestors on her Husbands side only, and how because he is the oldest son she has to do the cooking for the events. Her mother-in-law chips in a ton though but she had funa and was asking my opinion on alot of it. She also talked about how men don't cook here. Asked me how it is in America and marveled at the fact that some men do cook and some actually do all the cooking, that's pretty much unheard of here.
After class we went to the gym where there was a ceremony for our big day. 3 classes of kids did dances, one Thai, one Philippine and one Korean. All I'm gonna say is they were like 3rd or 4th graders and they broke out the smoke and bubble machines for it. Then we heard speaches. I've never laughed so hard on the inside and stayed so still on the outside. The other teacher is the 5th grade teacher and her and the 3/4 teacher were just like "uhhh why won't this end". They hated every moment of every speech and often would turn to me and say "aren't you bored?" to which I would reply "I can't understand so I cannot be bored" Which is true for me. I just sat there tried to spell some stuff in Korean and listened. Then at the end the Superintendent of Chungbuk-do, which is the province that I'm in that is a "State" to those of you in the States. He apparently said that I did a good job for the class that I did, he went as far to say my name, my full name. I laughed out loud, not very loud but it was audible. Good times.
After all this we went to a dinner my first dinner with the or either school. This is what I read about although it was still like only an hour I enjoyed every minute of today.
After class we went to the gym where there was a ceremony for our big day. 3 classes of kids did dances, one Thai, one Philippine and one Korean. All I'm gonna say is they were like 3rd or 4th graders and they broke out the smoke and bubble machines for it. Then we heard speaches. I've never laughed so hard on the inside and stayed so still on the outside. The other teacher is the 5th grade teacher and her and the 3/4 teacher were just like "uhhh why won't this end". They hated every moment of every speech and often would turn to me and say "aren't you bored?" to which I would reply "I can't understand so I cannot be bored" Which is true for me. I just sat there tried to spell some stuff in Korean and listened. Then at the end the Superintendent of Chungbuk-do, which is the province that I'm in that is a "State" to those of you in the States. He apparently said that I did a good job for the class that I did, he went as far to say my name, my full name. I laughed out loud, not very loud but it was audible. Good times.
After all this we went to a dinner my first dinner with the or either school. This is what I read about although it was still like only an hour I enjoyed every minute of today.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
2 posts in one day, how dare I
Back again because I forgot to mention something in the first long and rambling post of the day. My main school decided that it would be a good idea to close down for Tuesday thru Thrusday because it was supposed to be so cold. Needless to say it was about as cold on Monday as it's gotten since I've been here and Tuesday was also cold but today(Wednesday) hasn't been bad and Thursday isn't looking so bad either. School closings here are just like teacher work days back home, if the teachers back home just sit on their asses all day and surf the internet. It's not to say that I didn't get any work or planning done. It's just that it only takes so long then you're done.
Anyway early this afternoon I got word that my Thursday/Friday school might be doing the same thing on the days I was supposed to be there this week and it was confirmed midafternoon. So tomorrow I'll go back to the Main school and sit a desk tomorrow and try to plan while on Friday we have an Open day which means that we start at 8:30 instead of 9 and random important people get to come in and judge us as teachers and people based on one class. Nay not even one class but maybe 3-5 minutes of one class which is most likely a special lesson that I've planned for a month and done with the other 3rd graders.
Anyway early this afternoon I got word that my Thursday/Friday school might be doing the same thing on the days I was supposed to be there this week and it was confirmed midafternoon. So tomorrow I'll go back to the Main school and sit a desk tomorrow and try to plan while on Friday we have an Open day which means that we start at 8:30 instead of 9 and random important people get to come in and judge us as teachers and people based on one class. Nay not even one class but maybe 3-5 minutes of one class which is most likely a special lesson that I've planned for a month and done with the other 3rd graders.
Since Halloween
Back again on a Wednesday, I promise that I'm going to start writing more as things have calmed down and now I feel like I know what I can do and when I should try to do it. Halloween was fun, if you want to se pictures facebook me. I could use the slight boost in friends. Went as Harvey Dent, the Billy Dee WIlliams one from the first Tim Burton Batma and had a great time. We were literally out all night as we were at bars from 10:30 til 4 and then we went to a Nore-bangh for like 2 hours or something like that, probably closer to 90 minutes but I'm just not sure. Also we may have been at the bars for longer and Nore-bangh(which is Korean singing room aka private karaoke) shorter either way it ended up being fun and lots of songs were sung at the nore-bangh, drinks were had at the bars and we split up and returned to the place that we were from at around 6:30am after McDonalds for breakfast.
I got home at 7am Sunday morning and was seriously worried about being able to sleep and still wake up before 1pm. On the cab ride from Daejeon to Okcheon I texted my friend who I hang out with her and her family on Sundays afternoons and speak English and try to speak Korean. I tried to explain that I might be late for th meeting. I went to sleep as soon as I got home at 7am and was awake and eating breakfast at 11am. I thought I was going to die at church but I survived service, cause the pastor like any good pastor tells jokes and even though they were translated I still enjoyed them. After the service we have Fellowship, Koreans are still slightly strange to me in some small and inconsequential ways, when you answer a phone and you know who it is and say "Hello" most will say "I'm so and so". That comes down to mostly a translation thing think, at fellowship I was talking to one of the High School kids who other than the adults are the only people who usually talk to me and then some one brings up this woman, and the introduction went like this:
Person A: "Hello Bernard"
Me: "Hi"
Person A: "This is Person B, She is 23, I hear you are 24. Friends?!?!"
Me: "Sure"
While "friends" is being said there is a hand jester going on to signal that we should talk. Then Person A walks away and I start talking to Person B, I don't even think I got her name but I do know she is a University student at a school in a town like 30-40 minute bus ride away from Daejeon, she is studying Tourism and Recreation (yea they've got that here too) and she speaks really good English. We talked like 15 minutes who know if we will ever have another conversation again, probably, but they may end up being of the how was your week variety. We'll see.
Anyway turning towards the much more boring professional life I'm carving here, class is gonig OK. I've made the unthinkable decision to not play a game every single class that I am given total control. First reason is I can't think of but so many games and I don't want the kids to get tired of the same stupid card games, the second is I just don't se what they can get out of the games that wouldn't be better served by me taking more time on the actual lesson stuff and then ending the class with a tip or a correction of popular yet wrong phrases they use here. Example, my last 2 or three classes on Monday instead of playing a hastily prepared game, I exlpained the difference between "Nice to meet you" and "Good to see you" If you walk around a school for more than 2 weeks you will eventually get tired of "Nice to meet you" and I had so it was time to put my foot down and actually start teaching them things to fix mistakes that they are maknig and that I know they are making. The best part was that my co-teacher was there and she didn't hate the idea and hasn't really mentioned anything about it so it must be ok with her. And that's a good thing
I got home at 7am Sunday morning and was seriously worried about being able to sleep and still wake up before 1pm. On the cab ride from Daejeon to Okcheon I texted my friend who I hang out with her and her family on Sundays afternoons and speak English and try to speak Korean. I tried to explain that I might be late for th meeting. I went to sleep as soon as I got home at 7am and was awake and eating breakfast at 11am. I thought I was going to die at church but I survived service, cause the pastor like any good pastor tells jokes and even though they were translated I still enjoyed them. After the service we have Fellowship, Koreans are still slightly strange to me in some small and inconsequential ways, when you answer a phone and you know who it is and say "Hello" most will say "I'm so and so". That comes down to mostly a translation thing think, at fellowship I was talking to one of the High School kids who other than the adults are the only people who usually talk to me and then some one brings up this woman, and the introduction went like this:
Person A: "Hello Bernard"
Me: "Hi"
Person A: "This is Person B, She is 23, I hear you are 24. Friends?!?!"
Me: "Sure"
While "friends" is being said there is a hand jester going on to signal that we should talk. Then Person A walks away and I start talking to Person B, I don't even think I got her name but I do know she is a University student at a school in a town like 30-40 minute bus ride away from Daejeon, she is studying Tourism and Recreation (yea they've got that here too) and she speaks really good English. We talked like 15 minutes who know if we will ever have another conversation again, probably, but they may end up being of the how was your week variety. We'll see.
Anyway turning towards the much more boring professional life I'm carving here, class is gonig OK. I've made the unthinkable decision to not play a game every single class that I am given total control. First reason is I can't think of but so many games and I don't want the kids to get tired of the same stupid card games, the second is I just don't se what they can get out of the games that wouldn't be better served by me taking more time on the actual lesson stuff and then ending the class with a tip or a correction of popular yet wrong phrases they use here. Example, my last 2 or three classes on Monday instead of playing a hastily prepared game, I exlpained the difference between "Nice to meet you" and "Good to see you" If you walk around a school for more than 2 weeks you will eventually get tired of "Nice to meet you" and I had so it was time to put my foot down and actually start teaching them things to fix mistakes that they are maknig and that I know they are making. The best part was that my co-teacher was there and she didn't hate the idea and hasn't really mentioned anything about it so it must be ok with her. And that's a good thing
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Wednesdays
Everyone always complains about "Mondays". "Monday this, Monday that", personally I love Monadays because it means I get to see my three favorite classes at my main school. Wednesdays are the day of horrors for me not because of something anyones done or the way kids act, I have one class on Wednesday, and it's at 9am. I sit around in the office from 9:40 until 5pm in a mind-numbing state of boreodm and all I can do is look at my computer screen and do nothing. This stinks.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
The Bet
So here I am sitting in South Korea, 7:16pm on a Tuesday night. Listining to a group called Wonder Girls and their single "Nobody". I have 5 weeks to learn it. I have a group of kids that are gonna sing a Backstreet Boys song on the 17th of December it's "As long as you love me". The songs are about comperable in terms of duration, you will not be able to say the same thing about the level of embarassment between the two performers. I take on this challange not because it is easy but because it is difficult, I think this is a worthy cause if it will encourage the kids to speak or in this case sing more English.
Another thing probably not balanced is the actual lyrics of the songs. You may not know this but uhh the Backstreet Boys never really realeased a Korean single. Not a single word of it. Whereas every popular song here has at least one english word or sound that is familiar to English speakers in it. Add in the fact that the word is probably repeated 1000000 times in the song and it becomes slightly easier to sing. My method for learning it is to look at romanized lyrics since I still cannot really read Korean yet. The second part of this evil plan is to listen to the song over and over while reading those very same lyrics. Like I said the song is so loaded with English that if I can learn it quick enough I want to learn a second song, also I want to learn "He's singing in Korean" from The Colbert Report cause that's a classy song to sing to 5th and 6th graders
Another thing probably not balanced is the actual lyrics of the songs. You may not know this but uhh the Backstreet Boys never really realeased a Korean single. Not a single word of it. Whereas every popular song here has at least one english word or sound that is familiar to English speakers in it. Add in the fact that the word is probably repeated 1000000 times in the song and it becomes slightly easier to sing. My method for learning it is to look at romanized lyrics since I still cannot really read Korean yet. The second part of this evil plan is to listen to the song over and over while reading those very same lyrics. Like I said the song is so loaded with English that if I can learn it quick enough I want to learn a second song, also I want to learn "He's singing in Korean" from The Colbert Report cause that's a classy song to sing to 5th and 6th graders
Friday, October 23, 2009
Still here
66 Days in and here comes the crazy. Tomorrow is my birthday (hooray) birthdays are the one time of year when it should be all about you right? Sure why not. Well my crazy has arrived in that I made a face book group only 4 others said they would come whateve's it's just facebook not everone checks their stuff all the time plus it's in Seoul and next week is Halloween I get it. I get it i get it. So now here I sit on the eve of my birthday and I want to go to Seoul but no one else will be there tonight and I don't want to just spend a night in Seoul alone so now I don;t know what to do because the plan was go up tomorrow morning but now I really don't know what to do or when too go and I've told 2 people who still say they are going that I may go up tonight but that would be really depressing and also I can't cancel the hostel reservation I made for 5 people so now I'm going to pay for 4 people and have the brave soul who is still maybe probably coming with me and staying with me(2 others also) pay for himself cause he didn't come to pay for their way and I made the reservation but anyway I can't cancel because they don't speak english and now they won't answer the phone when I call so I just have to eat it. Don't you just love it when a plan comes together.
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