Lets learn about stuff through ESL books

So at one of the schools I teach they use small story books to help teach the kids English.  They are pretty up to date, and are pretty interesting to read.  I find myself grabbing them and paging through them when I have a few minutes between classes, and always end up laughing at one thing or another.  The books themselves are only a few pages long, probably around 20 pages maximum, filled with illustrations or sometimes stock photos.  Either way they are entertaining and I thought to myself.  Why I do believe I've found a gimmick for the blog!

Now I would like to stress that I am not the creator of these images, and that showing the pictures from the books are for entertainment purposes only.  All of the pictures belong to the English Vine Corporation.

It is like starting into the gaping abyss that is my heart.  I would just like to say how much I adore pride parade Bowser there.  Though I don't remember a big pink horn on his face.  Just look at those stubby little arms.  I also like how blue Mario has what I believe to be a Y on his hat.  He shall now be known as Yario.

Look at the face on that star, that dude knows the score.  This is the gallery of children with improbable hair.  I mean serious we have red headed M haired girl, and there is a boy in a purple shirt who looks like a dog is laying on his head wagging its tail.  Heart shirt kid's arms confuse me even if they are correct, I keep thinking they should be switched.  The kid in the orange shirt looks like he has broken his leg.  Seriously though, that star is probably going to murder them all.

Its so beautiful.

I knows its a Japanese thing but I still don't get the whole snot bubble nose thing.  That is gross yo.

That green haired kids mouth freak me out, how is he able to grin that wide?  Did someone cut his cheeks like the Joker?  Oh god green hair?  You might wanna call Christian Bale kids.  Just don't let him show you his magic trick.

Mario is wearing brown Yoshi's skin.  I haven't seen many brown frogs, so perhaps it is a toad suit?  Either way it looks like he can unzip the crotch.  Creepy.

My Korean children all call gorillas King Kong.  So perhaps he is Donkey King Kong?  That or a confused and poorly spellchecked racist ape.

I will update the blog with more amazing books that I read for my other class as time goes on.  Some are boring but others are absolutely fantastic, and I will share them with you.  I do it for the love.

Cold in Korea

It's cold, cold, cold here in South Korea right now. If the frost on the windows wasn't any sort of indication, the frigid outside and the numbers from the weather websites I follow certainly confirm it. In fact, per Yonhap News (in English of course), Record cold snap grips Korean Peninsula.

As of right now, which is 10:52AM here in Korea (that would be 8:52PM in the EST time zone) the temperature is -15 °C and the high is -2 °C. Last night's low temperature was also -18 °C. Needless to say it's extremely cold. 
The bus is a welcome change from the cold temperatures, but we still do a lot of walking to and from certain 
places due to our location. We've also run into issues of frozen pipes downstairs in the school kitchen due to
the temperature. Fortunately, our boiler seems to be doing well enough that we get water for showers and have
water for the upstairs plumbing. It's the little things.

Speaking of little things, a McDonald's opened up near us (a few blocks walk away) which we've visited once
and will probably be frequenting since it's convenient, in addition to being cheaper than back in the US. We think
the quality is better too. :)

Another little thing, for me anyway... I tried these prize machines back when we first got here, but only recently 
have I actually played them more. Basically, in the bottom left corner there is a rod with a white cap on the end
and you use the pink joystick on the left side to move it to the right or left and then use the big white button to 
raise the rod upward from wherever you moved it horizontally. Then you cross your fingers and hope that it
pushes your desired item to the back to drop down at the bottom for you to take home. 

I have come to greatly enjoy these games because they're cheap, have entertaining things in them oftentimes, and 
they're just kind of fun and something kind of neat to do when there isn't much else in winter. I even won this cute 
little husky (also known as Brownie) for 2000won or two tries. 

Otherwise, we've visited the foreigner bars around here for Western food, but have been inside much more. Our
current pastimes? Video games, reading, browsing various websites (I'm on Pinterest a lot lately), and going out 
for things we may need or want. Someone posted a picture in the local Facebook group with the text "Apart 
from drinking, there is absolutely nothing to do here" and it is a sentiment that I feel is pretty accurate. That said, 
if skiing or snowboarding is your thing I know that is something to do. With the frigid temperatures lately I think I
prefer to stay inside though!

On a final note before we head out to do a little bit of shopping. I was given this adorable card(??) by one of my students, James, for the new year. It is adorable and sweet and I will have to get a better picture of it.

Otherwise, I hope everyone's 2013 is off to a good start! We're off to trudge into the snow to pick up a few things, including lunch (and if I'm lucky a play on those fun games, even if it is cold).

The continuing path of becoming a teacher

From left to right Kate, Lily, Aiden, Carley, Susan

One of my lessons

So now that I have been in Korea close to 3 months it is time to talk about(after a long hiatus of not posting sorry about that) what my feeling are as a teacher and what turning into a teacher is like for me.  For a long time I actually dreamed about being a teacher and helping shape children into successful adults.  I was hoping there would be children who looked back upon my classes fondly, but due to being a terrible student (or at least having a bad first few semesters in college) my dreams of being a teacher were put aside.

So my topic today is how I feel about being a teacher and my continuing path to actually feel like I am a teacher.  When I first arrived in Korea I was overwhelmed at the idea that I would be in charge or (close to) 10 children all of whom I would have to take care of, teach, and furthermore discipline if they got out of hand.  The first two weeks didn't really help matters.  The former teachers Rob and Rachael warned us that the kids were going to be worse due to our presence, but it just heightened the overwhelming feeling.

Now that I have been teaching for three months I am finally starting to get my wings with the whole teaching thing.  While Monday and Tuesday are usually lost causes due to the kids being so riled up from the weekend.  Wednesday and Thursday I get some real teaching done, and then Friday both I and the kids are so exhausted from the week once again nothing gets done but that is OK because its FRIDAY!  While the kids still run wild due to being children I think I am getting better at discipline aspect of the job.  I have experimented with a few different formats of discipline, of which writing the offending child's name on the board seems most effective.  Of course this only really working for the Kindergarten class, since they are actually feel shame at being bad.  Contrast this with me Elementary class where the bad kids are the heroes of the class almost no discipline system actually works, other than literally forcing the kids to do what they need to do.

I think I can see my house from here!

Days like today are great, everyone gets along I am in a good mood and things actually get done.  Whats even better is that these sorts of days are increasing, and with it my comfort in teaching in general.  I'm three months through our ESL Honeymoon Adventures and I am looking forward to the next 9 months and of course to coming home to start a brand new domestic adventure afterward.

Pre-Chuseok and September birthday party

I must apologize for the delay in putting this post about Chuseok (which was September 30th) up here because I wanted to have the time to sit down and actually talk a little more in depth about the holiday and the happenings at the school. I also wanted to be able to show you all the neat pictures I was able to take of everyone in their hanboks. 

So basically Chuseok is Korean Thanksgiving. They dress up in their hanboks and visit with family. People are usually off work or out of school to celebrate. We had a 5 day weekend because of the holiday which was very nice. We knew that, but it was a bit of a surprise to suddenly find everyone dressed up in their hanboks on Friday before the Chuseok holiday on Sunday.

We were sitting upstairs until it was time to go down and then we both started hearing little voices yelling "Man Teacher!" and I hear Zach go downstairs and say "oh, you're so cute!" I ran down quick and everyone is dressed in their hanboks. I obviously had to then take my camera with me so I can shower you all with amazing pictures of these little people and their hanboks. 

Friday was also the day to celebrate September birthdays so there was an afternoon party and it was all around a pretty crazy day. The songpyeon was pretty good though. 

Everyone was dressed so nice. This was at breakfast, before classes started. That's James and Julia in the front. Evelyn is watching behind them. 

James seems to think that something is hilarious.

Everyone doing their homework before they eat breakfast.

Sarah and Evelyn sitting in my class in the front (L to R) and then Julia and Stella are in the back.

They're both little hams, aren't they?

Everyone lined up for a class picture. This is one of my favorites. 

I nabbed this picture from the school website, this is me in my natural habitat. Surrounded by tiny people.

Speaking of natural habitats, this is Zach in his. Surrounded by slightly bigger little people.

Luke is being his cute self here, accompanied by Lily's profile. You can also see Carley in the back.

Left to right from front to back you have Chris and Susan and then Aiden and  Kate in the back.

Time to do worksheets!

The boys work on their own worksheets. Also, Daniel has arrived (he's in the front).

My class frequently sees drama, so here you have Julia being motherly and drying Stella's tears. 

I love this picture of John, so cute!

So let me tell you a story. We read a picture book about this little boy who was "turned into" a pizza on a rainy day because he was sad he couldn't go out to play with his friends. Then we talked about pizza toppings and what you put on pizza. Well, the week before we had read Brown Bear, Brown Bear where a macaroni penguin is mentioned. Thus, pepperoni penguin became a thing and this is my stirring rendition of pepperoni penguin art. They all decided suddenly that they were going to erase pepperoni penguin to make me a sad, sad teacher. The end.

In the morning we all helped make songpyeon with chef teacher. 

Hana Teacher wore her hanbok too, it was lovely.

Everyone had a really good time, some of them concentrated very hard while others really didn't.

Songpyeon made by big and small fingers ready to be steamed!

Carley, of course, decided to make snowmen.

After the songpyeon is made it's steamed for a while on a bed of pine needles. They're tasty, but stick to your teeth when they're still warm. They're better when they're cold.

After we had a short class following lunch it was time for the September birthday party. Because some of the kids changed out of their hanboks they all had to get dressed again. Here Julia is helping Evelyn back into hers.

That looks good... oh... wait...

That's better, she forgot a layer!

Everyone waits patiently while things for the birthday party are prepared.

Here everyone is getting ready and lighting the candles on the cakes. This month were birthdays for Christina, Tomas, John, and Jake.

Finally, everyone got to enjoy cake, fruit, juice, snacks, and more. This also meant that we had completed our first month here (give or take a few days)!

Looking snazzy, blog

This post isn't anything terribly exciting, just to let you know that the blog look has been updated for fall! Since it is fall we've been talking a lot about Halloween and pumpkins and the school was recently decorated for the upcoming occasion. Because it's been nice out, it seems like it's picnic season though.  The picture above is from our Korean bbq lunch we had on Friday and we are going on another picnic next Friday.

They really went all out with the decorations on Friday. Look at all those pumpkins!

This is outside of my classroom (Silly Sally). They're being good, mostly.

More ghosts and pumpkins.

The lovely decorations outside of Zach's room, Rainbow Fish.

Even though this got me a "talking to" by the director, the kids had fun making their skeletons and then I helped them name each and every one of them. It's hard to see, but the one on the far right is Tomas's and he decided to name it Pooh. Fine motor activities like cutting out skeleton parts are good for 4-5 year olds, but then you run into the cultural differences.

So I saw this bat in Zach's room and had to ask him who did it. He told me that his student Lily drew this bat.  I am in love. All I can think of is "rainbow croissant"! <3

This is Stella being all cute (she can be a drama queen too, don't let her fool you), she's all dressed up in her school uniform. Isn't the tie a cute touch?

Adult classes vs children classes

This short update is on my views as the differences and pluses and minuses about teaching adults and teaching kids.  I admittedly only taught adults for a bit over two weeks so my experience is largely biased since I didn't have a full year/a full time gig doing it.  I guess I should give a bit of a background on my adult teaching in general.

About a week into our little Korean adventure our director pulled us aside and basically said one of us (she said she would prefer Amanda) to go and teach adult classes at this school called BCM English Institute.  The director there really likes foreign women, but since Amanda wasn't comfortable with our surroundings yet I was "volunteered" to do the teaching.  I was very annoyed with this since it would mean getting rid of all of my prep time and taking on an entirely new class which I had no prep for.  Luckily this seems to have scared the director into realizing I am not going to take any bull from her when it comes to a million extra hours.  My first night teaching adults was a bit awkward, I didn't actually have anything planned out and kind of stood in the front of the class looking dumb.  Little by little however I began to get comfortable, and by the end of the week I was pretty confident.  The classroom atmosphere with adults is just so much nicer than with kids.  Most of them are University students or business professionals who really just want a place to relax and talk after super stressful days at work or school.

I taught adult conversational classes so there wasn't any writing or testing involved in the process.  I simply would go in, think up a topic, write a few questions and try to keep the class talking until the 50 minute mark hit.  The topics I did ranged from relationships, sports, love, apartments, jobs, to even sex now and again.  It was nice to have such a laid back environment where there isn't any real pressure.  The only real downside of the adult classes is that 3 days a week I would be getting off work at 9:50 and not make it back to our apartment until around 10:30, only to have to go to bed an hour or two later.

God I have such a tiny head

Teaching children is difficult, at least teaching my kids is.  You can tell they understand a bit of the language, but as the weird foreign teacher they really don't want to listen to you.  The worst two days of the week are Monday and Tuesday because you literally can not get them to pay attention to anything.  I end up losing a lot of my voice those days just due to the sheer amount of times I need to yell at my kids to get them to listen, although I am getting better with getting their attention other ways.  I just think a lot of this job will be dreading those two days, then by Wednesday the kids are a little more relaxed and I am just slowly waiting for the weekend myself.  Since the kindergartners are still so young I don't have to worry about homework with them either, but it is just really frustrating to teach.  The good part about the kids is that I can play with them, for example the boys like to get into fights and its fun fake punching them and hearing them yell out in "pain."  Its also nice because I can give them a worksheet and let them do their own thing for about 30 minutes while I relax and let them draw to their hearts content.  It is rewarding teaching both, but I think if I had to come back to Korea again I'd probably go the teaching adults route full time, even if the split shift is a real killer.

I will miss them!