End of Semester

Even though it's only my second real day of teaching today was the last day of the semester for the students. Which involved a lot of work and a lot of play.

First things first, I have no idea if my two alarms didn't go off or if I actually slept through them going off right next to my head. I wasn't late but I had to rush and look spiffy to meet the parents who were coming to attend the presentation today.

I had breakfast of processed meat on a stick. No time to waste!

My first job was to keep the kids entertained while the other classes were being 'presented' to their parents to show how much they've learned. This involved a bit of talking but mostly watching videos like this, or this.

The play, known as Musical English, featured students in the kindergarten grades acting, singing and dancing for their parents. The younger class performed a version of the Jungle Book, which I'm sad to say I only saw the very end of.

The kindergarten classes are divided by names of birds. I will teach Sparrow, which are the same age as Blue Jay, and the group doing the Jungle Book is young and thus named Hummingbird. The Blue Jay class and Sparrow class worked together on a simplified version of Beauty and the Beast. From what I gather the Beast was a prince who was bad whenever he was tired and hungry, then got turned into a beast because he wouldn't share food with a beggar. The song lyrics for these two part went as follows:

"when he is hungry and tired,

the prince is very bad, he's very bad"

and

"You are a beast now,

you're a beast now"

Beauty was kind of forced to live with the Beast for some reason. The teapot, the tea cup and the clock featured for one song.

"I am a teapot

I am a cute cup

And I am a clock"

Beauty runs away, the Beast saves her and calls her 'beautiful' and BAM! She's in love with the Beast and the spell is broken. I'm not really summarizing here, it was very simplified. Then it ended with 'Dancing Queen' with just added to the randomness. I clapped loudly, it was unlike anything I'd ever seen before. The parents went a step further and brought bouquets of flowers for their children.

I was supposed to be introduced to the parents but the director ran out of time. Which was no trouble because many of the parents came to greet me, and, more often, take a photo of me and their child.

After all the parents had gone home and we had a nice long lunch. The lunches here are outstanding. I was very impressed by todays lunch. The soup here has a clam base. There's some traditional kimchi, which will feature with most dishes here. That's shredded ginger beef on rice. At the back there is egg battered zucchini slices next toe a mix of quail eggs and whole roasted garlic cloves. Damn!

After we took the kids to the park down the road. All three classes holding hands making a big long snake. It did not move very efficiently but we didn't lose anyone. The kids and the teachers went wild on the playground with all kinds of games and running around. One woman came up to me smiling and asking me questions in Korean, I redirected her to the head teacher who discovered that she had seen us having so much fun and wanted to know which school we were with because she wants her grandchildren to have this experience. What great feedback!

The older kids in the afternoon were completely finished their workbooks so I got to keep them busy with MORE GAMES! We played Jenga and Memory. This was really good since it was the first fun time I got to spend with my regular class. In the next block we brought them into the library to play dodge ball.

I was really pleased teaching the eldest kids in the evening. We started with a bit of reading and writing and they all worked really well and got everything done to a pretty high standard. In the second block we did debate, which was not really a formal debate so much as a discussion. This time we were debating whether or not "Advertisements do more harm than good". Most of the students agreed with this statement  but we discussed some good ads, like disaster relief funding or anti-smoking campaigns. Then we talked a bit about false advertising, annoying advertising. Then swung back to the benefits of advertising, like if you didn't see movie trailers you might miss out on watching a good movie. Or if websites and newspaper could sell ad space they might be very expensive. Probably the only point that made the debate controversial was the idea of paying to use Youtube if it didn't have ads -which everyone would hate. We talked about advertising for dangerous or addictive products and I told them a bit about Canada's regulations and Australia's proliferation of gambling ads. They told me about the sorts of ads they see in Korea. I enjoyed talking with them so much the time just flew by.

After work I went to, FINALLY, get a sim card. In terms of getting my life in order I'm going to the hospital tomorrow with the director to get my mandatory medical examination, and then I can get my alien resident card. That card will allow me to get a bank account so I can actually buy some groceries in case -god forbid I don't feel like eating out.

In short, today was really fun, tomorrow I will pee in a cup.