Slacking on the Blog Front

Monday, August 25, 2008

Hey All!!

Sorry I have been completely slacking on the blog front of things. I have just been adding pictures with little blurbs and nothing else. So, I think I have waited so long to write that I have forgotten a lot of the stuff I wanted to write about. Not too happy about that. So... I guess I will write and see what comes to mind.

From the looks of things, you can see that Kyle and I did decide to purchase our camera. We went with the Canon Rebel xsi (450D) and we are loving it. Well... i am loving and Kyle is seeing me love it. He wants to get more into taking pictures, but hasn't had the time since he has been playing badminton with Matt and I have been taking pictures.

It is starting to cool down here and the days are getting shorter. It is nice because we can finally go outside without passing out from heat exhaustion in under 5 seconds. There have been a couple nights where we have the aircon on in the apartment and I have been sitting around in a hoodie (or bunnyhug for all you SK folk), sweats and slippers. Yes, I did bring myfluffy white slippers from home. I had to make room for them! It has made our adventures outside and around much more bearable as well and makes us want to get out more. Before it was just so humid and hot all the time that we wanted to stay inside.

Teaching is going well. I took some new pictures of my students that I will post on here in a just a little while. My 1-A class seems to be growing in size by the day and with that, growing in difficulty to teach. I now have a class of eight instead of 4 and half of which don't know the alphabet yet. Yuna, my once difficult student, has become one of my favourite students in that class because she is so helpful with the new students and explaining things to them for me. My new students have just entered the first grade, so they are extreme beginners with English. Really cute though! I don't have pictures of the new ones yet since I took the pics over a week ago and they joined the class all last week and today. Yuna came in to class today with a fractured arm. Couldn't figure out why, basically with all the hand motioning and the grunts and the weird sounds that she was making trying to explain to me, I concluded that she, much like myself, is very clumsy and just fell. She took the wrap off of her arm in class and couldn't get it back on, so I had to do it for her and now that class is calling me "doctor teacher". I signed her arm wrap as well with a '"get well soon" and a little heart (since the more cutesy things are here the better). She loved it.

1-B and I are also finding our groove and they are learning what acceptable classroom behaviours are. It has been really nice getting to know my students in that class a little more. I still have trouble with the girl Cindy and the boy Tyler upsetting each other, hitting each other, distracting each other, liking each other, sitting too close to each other, picking on other students, etc, etc, etc. It never seems to stop with those two. I told them that they were no longer allowed to sit together, but they seem to think that just means beside each other, so now they sit across from each other and kick each other and all the above still. Not sure what to do with them.

I think a lot of my changes in thought with my classes is that I finally have textbooks for all my classes and not just dialogue books. You have no idea how awful and boring those dialogue books are. They exhaust me and the kids hate them and never use the language from them.

My 2-A class has grown as well. I know have two new girls in that class, Lucy and Emily. They are extremely smart and extremely sweet. They have great pronunciation and have helped my shy girl, Angela, come out of her shell a little bit. Max, a boy in that class, is a handful with his constant sounds, farting, talking/reading really slow or really fast or high pitched or really low pitched, throwing things, playing with things, sleeping, distracting the rest of the class, etc. He is the class clown, but he drains me everyday. You can tell by the picture I will post of him that he likes to show off and is most definitely a typical young boy who has no way to get rid of his excess energy. When I am busy talking to the other teachers, since I have a ten minute break before my 2-A class, and the time to start class comes along, Lucy will come out and say "come teacher" and she will grab my hand and take me to class.

The other teachers have told me, for my students, that my students love me. It really helps the being here thing as well. I think I will be sad to leave a few of my students when I go, but overall I will be glad to be back in Canada. My students are already trying to convince me to stay and so is y boss.

2-B is still as rowdy as ever. I love them though. We do a lot of acting in that class and I love seeing how creative they get with it. One of the boys, about age 10, has started smoking and I am heartbroken when I see him do it. There is no age limit here on buying cigarettes, so a ten year old can go in a buy them for themself (since they are only $1 per pack basically) if the store owner decides they want to give them to the child. Make me angry when I think about it.

3-A has grown as well. I have one new student in there and they all keep changing their names on me. The girls like to confuse me by always picking names that sound the same. First I had, Hilary, Hannah and Heather, then it became Anna, Alisa and Ashley, and now it is Christine, Kristin and Caitlin. Gah. They tire me out and seem to enjoy when I can never keep their names straight.

3-C is still the same. Nothing new on that front. The adult class is going well. I was supposed to teach them tonight, but they did not come. The girl in the class is moving to Seoul next week to finish her art degree at university. She is really excited. She asked me if I will still be teaching when she is off for Christmas and I told her I would be, so she is making sure to come and do classes with me during her break. She is so sweet. I like her alot. We are close to the same age and have quite a bit in common, but I wish we could communicate a little better. I guess that's why I'm here!!

So, all in all school is going well.

A couple weeks ago we went to Namdaemun market in Seoul, which is where we bought the camera, and it was so busy there. I get so exhausted when we go into Seoul. We also went to Coex Mall and it was even busier there. We were thinking we would go to the aquarium, but when we saw the line up of like 200 people outside of the aquarium, we decided against it. We just left the mall and came home. We saw the World Trade building for Seoul and it was gi-normous. The elevator was so high that your ears were popping immediately after getting in. We are heading back into Seoul again soon for another Costco trip and Kyle and I are going to buy a lens or two for our camera. Will let you know how that goes.

A new coffee shop opened by our house and we are in love with it. The name is really funny though "Cafe The Mary Jane". Ha. We giggle whenever we see the signs. Whenever we go there we always get free stuff like truffles or doughnuts or these amazing tomatoes (the best seasoned in oil baby tomatoes I have ever had). She laughs because I always ask for them when I come and I eat them so fast. She ends up bringing like 4 bowls of them. So yummy. I really like the drinks there too. I always get something called a "Kiwi Vinegar" and it is just like a sour kiwi drink. It has a great atmosphere with big comfy arm chairs and decor like home and they play great music too. Really feels like sitting at a coffee shop at home... just wish I could have my girlfriends here to enjoy it with me. I miss you girls!!

One last thing... then I am going to stop typing. We had our first anniversary and it was a lot of fun. We scrounged up 18,000 Won ($18) and decided we were going to do our whole anniversary on that. We went to Paris Baguette and bought a garlic baguette (2200W) and some sparkling apple juice(5000W) (since Champagne could not be afforded on our budget), a couple apple danishes (total 2000W) and then went to the grocery store. While there, we bought some herb cheese for our baguette (3900W), some little sparklers (200W) and some cookies (450W). We had some money to spare, but we were happy with our findings. We spent the night at home together and pigged out and since it was our paper anniversary we decided to colour. I printed out some colouring pages at work and brought them home. It was a lot of fun to do that together. We then watched Shawshank Redemption on the compie and I fell asleep.

Anyways, I am going. We miss you and love. Kyle just got home from work and I want to talk to him about his day. Bye for now.