World View

I have more classes to introduce to you, but this post will be to assure you that I'm not dead. It will also be my last post in November because Wednesday is DECEMBER. This blows my mind. I swear it was yesterday that I was in shock that is was the end of October. Time is flying by. It's cool.

So if you pay attention to the news, you probably know that things are getting a little tense over here. As of right this second I only know as much as you know. I have not seen anything that makes me nervous. I have opted out of registering with the Embassy because I don't want to receive a lot of emails that will make me nervous. But Jason and Sophia are both registered and have promised to not leave the country without me. So for right now, I'm not worried. You shouldn't be worried. Things are fine.

Last Sunday we had a Thanksgiving Dinner. There were 8 of us. Jason, Sophia and I gave the army base 100 bucks and got a turkey dinner for 12 people. Delicious. We ate some American food, threw a football around, and had a great time with good friends.

Tuesday we had movie day at school. We watched two 3-D movies. One about bugs and one about dinosaurs. They both caused some minor freak outs and tears. Then there was a movie bus that showed a 4-D movie about monsters. I opted out of that due to the fact that it was a small space with a lot of crying kids. The kids all said they loved it though.

Robot class with their 3-D glasses. Molly, Samuel, Rex, Alex 1, Alex 2, Clara.

Thursday we had birthday party day. Those are always fun days.

Rex: "I love teacher"
Me: "Aww I love you too buddy. Please stop tickling me.
Rex:" Hee hee. No."

Birthday girl Molly.

Jessica (Puppy Class) all dressed up.

This weekend I just hung out with Ian. We watched movies and did some damage to some vodka. Pretty unproductive and lazy, but very much fun.

This week Jason is home for his best friend's wedding and for some family time so a girl who finished her contract at another school is covering for him for the week. I feel like Sophia and I are about to have a fairly hectic week. Should be fun.

I hope everyone had a fantastic Thanksgiving! Here comes December! Enjoy the season and let me know if you learn something about Korean Politics that I should be aware of. I kid. A little.

Kisses!

Zebra Class

And now you will learn about Zebra Class! Yay! Like Elephant, Zebra is 6 years old, Korean style of course, and theoretically, they are the more advanced class. Although on the third floor, they are pretty much the same. There are 7 kids in Zebra Class and all of their mothers are best friends and the kids are best friends and some days they just don't need to hear what teacher is saying because they are buys fighting over who gets the scrap of paper. But they are a fun class and very smart as a bunch. Jason is the son of our boss. Every morning I say " how are you today Jason?" and he looks at me with a huge smile and says "Me angry". I then call him Mr. Grumpy Pants and he ends up laughing. He reminds me of a little old man. Jun is a space cadet of sorts. He loves to kiss his friends and massage teacher's shoulders instead of listening to the story. I hate massages though so we fight about it a lot. Jun is very good at speaking English but completes his work at a frustratingly slow pace. Melody is an excellent English speaker, complete with an attitude. She is very bright but has a bit of an attitude issue as far as following instruction goes. She is always the first to pick up on a new idea though. Wonseo is adorable. Thursday I ask him how he is and he always says "Teacher, I am sad." "Why are you sad Wonseo?" "Because tomorrow tomorrow is Saturday. No school on Saturday." He's a cutie with a great smile. His English is also good enough that you can get a piece of his sense of humor. It's always fun when that happens with any of the kids. Rachel has giant chipmunk cheeks and loves to have one-on-one conversations. She gets sad if other people talk when she thinks it should be her turn. She is another student that is a perfectionist with her work and I find that since I am in no way a perfectionist, I get frustrated with how slowwwwww she is. Emily is a pistol. She is usually pretty happy in Emily world and gets rather angry if you call her out of it. She does enjoy singing and coloring. And last, but certainly not least is Joseph. This kid has some of the biggest cheeks known to man, his mother has declared that if he's not in the mood to learn we should let him do whatever he wants, and when he wants a hug he clamps on to your neck for days. When he is in a good mood he is very fun and speaks very well. A majority of the time he wants nothing to do with school and draws hearts on everything. When asked what he wants to be when he grows up, he proudly states "a mommy".

This was a good week. Nothing too special. Pretty exciting week coming up. Tomorrow Jason, Sophia, Ian, Nate, Carly and I are having our Thanksgiving dinner. Complete with football. We're pretty pumped about that. Tuesday we have a field trip. I believe we are going to the movie theater. Thursday we have a birthday party. Friday kinder report cards are due. Saturday we have a workshop. Yay!

Ethan got his first deer last weekend. I'm pretty proud of him. I think that the mosquitoes are finally dead and I have been needing to turn my heat on for about two hours each day.

Things are good. Happy. Fun. Fairly productive.

Jason

Jun

Melody

Wonseo

Rachel

Emily (with a fairly normal expression of joy...)

Joseph

Have a Happy Thanksgiving! I feel very lucky to have made some great friends here in Korea. However, I do find myself getting a little sad that I am spending the holidays only with people I have known less than a year. They're great, but I do miss you. Family. Friends. English. Cows. Mowgli. Woods. You.

Elephant Class

Today I have decided to explain Elephant Class. Elephant Class is on the third floor, and they are 6 years old. Technically, they are the lower level 6 year olds, but we have found that Elephant and Zebra are pretty much the same as far as English goes. Jeff is the kid in class who is either very happy or coming down from a hyper episode and is crying. He loves games, but hates losing. He also loves to work ahead in his workbook and "hide" pencils from me. Sarah doesn't speak so much as whimper? I guess that's how to explain it. Maybe grunt? She rarely uses words without being asked to use them. She loves to be touching teacher and she too loves to try to hide pencils. Julie is a sweetheart. She speaks English very well and last week, she started wearing hot pink glasses. The kicker? There are no lenses. Just bright pink frames. She does not like to share those. Jinny speaks the best English when she is in a good mood. Often times she is angry at someone and refuses to speak at all. She has great handwriting and is able to complete worksheets on her own, which is a big deal across the board. Kevin is my favorite boy at school. Shhh. He's very smart, he's very funny, and he's adorable. He has a weird southern accent going when he says words like pen, ten, and hen. It's strange. Finally, there is Dora. Dora is a nut. She speaks English very well but is very slow and easily distracted. I'll say "Dora, write your name please" and she says "look teacher, I'm a frog" then proceeds to bounce around the room making frog sounds. She also gets bloody noses a lot and falls over a lot, due to the hopping probably.

This was a pretty good week at school. The kids have all been speaking much more English, and thing are going well. I have been working on getting all the paper work together to extend my Visa. It's a pain in the ass, but it's going. I hope. Friday night I went to dinner at a Chinese place. That was delicious. Then did Underground and once again ended up closing the bar. Came home at 6 am Saturday. Woke up, ate a little and played movie drinking games with Ian all day. Went to bed pretty early but was awake from 3-5 and 6-9 hunting for two mosquitoes that were destroying my life. I have never seen mosquitoes outside, only in my house waiting for me to go to sleep. It's terrible. And, it's been below freezing a lot, so I don't know why they are not dead yet. But I'm really over waking up with an eye swollen shut and really itchy feet. Real over it.

Thusday, November 11th is Veterans Day in America, yes? Well, in Korea it is Pepero Day. What is Pepero? I'll tell you. It is a graham-cracker/pretzel like cookie stick that is coated in chocolate and sometimes nuts. You can usually buy packs of them for like 40 cents. Each one is about the size of a number 2 pencil. But for Pepero Day, you can buy giant ones, that are the size of those old crayola piggy banks, you can buy huge gift baskets of them, and you can buy teddy bears holding a bouquet of them. Sadly, it is not a school vacation day. I'm thinking that oreo is really missing out on something great here. The kids talked about Pepero Day for weeks and we got a lot of boxes of cookies. Pretty neat, I think.

Nothing big planned for the next while. I think we finally got a room for the Thailand trip, so that's exciting. Obviously we have to work on Thanksgiving, and luckily we have a workshop to go to that Saturday. So I think that next weekend, Jason, Sophia, and I are going to host some sort of Thanksgiving/Football party. However when we were trying to decide who to invite, we realized that we are really the only Americans we hang out with. A majority of our friends (who aren't Korean) are Canadian, South African, British, Irish, Scottish, or Australian. I guess it's a good thing, but it makes Thanksgiving less cool.

Hope everything is going well at home. I miss you a lot. I miss home. Someday I'll do a post about things I miss and things I do not miss. Not right now. Let me know if anything exciting is happening!! KISSES!

Jeff

Sarah as an Alien

Alien Julie.

Princess Jinny

Kevin

Alien Dora

Puppy Class

I'm not sure if I have explained Puppy Class yet. But I'm going to.

Puppy Class is on the second floor, or 2 floor if you're Korean. They are Korean age 5, which means they are really between 3 and a half and 5. Babies. There are 10 of said babies in the class. These kids can barely speak/write understandable Korean, let alone English. This class is loud and chaotic. I have no idea what these babies have to talk about all day, but it is rarely silent when I'm "teaching". First we have Amy. She's smart and she's a pistol. I used to control her by saying "Amy Teacher, can you help me please?" and she would say YES! and pass out pencils or do her friend's worksheets. Now she says NO! and laughs at me. Juli is also very smart and very quiet. Her favorite thing to do is flip her worksheets over and draw princesses. Juli get stressed out by the crowdedness of the room and the noise and cries about it frequently. Kate sits there and draws with the side of her pencil on EVERYTHING. She laughs a lot and bounces a lot. Sally thinks that her name is spelled Salley. It's not. I asked. She loves hugs and calls me Kelly Teacher. She has really good vocab recall but does not like writing. Jessica sits with her pencil in her mouth. She has been at our school since the end of June and can finally write her whole name on her papers. If I beg. She's usually in Jessica world. She wears dresses or skirts everyday and the first thing she does each class is run up to me, yell TEACHER and spins around for me to see her cute dress. Daniel is obsessed with Power Rangers. His favorite activity is to "powerranger" teacher, which usually means kicking me or karate chopping me. He's very good at English though. Tom is very good at speaking English. He spends a majority of class on the floor wrestling with Daniel or Amy. He is one of the only Puppies that talks to me about his life, and tries to do so in English. Mark. I don't know how to explain Mark. I'm convinced that he's at least a little Autistic. He loves to shake his butt and windmill his arms. He never sits in his chair and I compromise by letting him do his work on the floor. He rarely does his actual work, but instead writes letters on everything. Then saying "teacher, what is this?" and I say "ummmm orange?" and he says "no". Eric is a sweet heart who loves to get ahold of scissors and cut his papers up to confetti. He also freaks out about the loudness of the room. Finally, there is Ryan. He is by far the most advanced of the puppies. His thing this week was "Teacher, I am a mouse" "Ohh! You're such a cute mouse!" "No Teacher, I am a BABY mouse" then there is some biting and laughing.

So that is a brief bio of Puppy Class. I usually leave it looking shell shocked and feeling exhausted. They're so cute and happy and full of energy. Sometimes I feel like they are losing their speaking and writing abilities and I think it's because there are entirely too many of them in one class so one-on-one attention is really hard to accomplish. Real hard.

Sally and Amy

Juli

Daniel

Tom

Mark

Kate

Ryan

Sally and Jessica

Eric