Settling In ... AGAIN

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No, I haven't moved my apartment (yet). But I have changed my schedule. I am now teaching two new classes: Middle Writing and K5.5. Right now 4 of the 7 students I teach in K5.5 are students that I've taught before. They also have a TON of things that I have to teach them. I have to teach them phonics (which I personally think is a waste of their time. I agree with the fact that they should learn how to pronounce combinations of letters along with the letters themselves but I don't think they need to - as Merry would say - know how to write the "voice" of all the words). Then I have to review K5 with them and go over a story with them as well as do recitation (where they have to memorize a dialogue and answer the questions to it). This takes up a relatively large amount of time and only leaves for a little bit of time for them to talk. Then my Middle Writing class I have to pretty much organize all by myself but the students are really smart and seem to be a really good group (so far - knock on wood). I have students all the way from K7 - K12 which means that their speaking levels are completely different and their levels of vocabulary are completely different. But it doesn't really matter as I am mainly teaching them things about topic sentences and how to develop a paragraph and that things need to be specific in a given paragraph. These are things that it doesn't really matter what your level is you still need to know it and it still applies to you. So it makes it a lot easier to teach than I originally thought. I was originally a bit worried about this class. However I pretty much have to create everything that I teach on my own for the writing class. It's good practice I think. Once I started these new classes I made some new rules that I hope will keep better tabs on students behavior. These two new classes I teach three times a week instead of two. These classes as well as my once a week classes will end at the end of February and I will have a break off until the beginning of March when my schedule will be pretty much the same as it was from August till before this week. As for tutoring I'm pretty much tutoring the same students except that I'm no longer tutoring Sally and Joe has stopped his tutoring lessons for a while. I'm a bit glad that I don't have to teach Sally any more but a bit bummed that Joe has left us for a while. After I come back from Seoul I will be teaching two students of different levels in the same class for two weeks so that should be interesting to see how that works. I've never done that before.

I think all of my plans are set for Seoul. I don't need a Visa as I'm not going for a very long time and I have my plane tickets. Chris is planning on picking me up at the airport although I'm not sure how we will get back to the military base. I'm sure I will have fun there ... we'll just have to wait and see. I'm definitely looking forward to it.

My health was not good last weekend - I had a massive headache that went into being very dizzy and weak for a little while. Now at nights I still get a massive headache and may have to go back to the hospital to get a CT done (whatever that is). It has been getting a little better every day so hopefully it will continue to do as such.

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