Advertisement
Published: September 17th 2008
Like every day, I had the Kinders this morning. They were pretty tame today. Maybe it was because we were missing two of the rambunctious ones. They wrote, “Shoot a star,” twice and many of them had very good tracing. We still need to work on our fine motor skills, and I guess gross motor skills as well because we trip over our own feet! It’s Thursday, so it was board game day. On these days, I pick out three or so board games from the common room and they make up their own games. Today, while I was out getting the games, I returned to a little boy pants-less on a chair. Apparently he had wet himself and my co-teachers were trying to clean him up. What was also great was that I had bare feet. Great. I just decided to stay away from that side of the room. (Note: We go either barefoot or wear slippers on the fourth and fifth floors.) I put out all of the games and the kids were on them like a pack of starved wolves. One of the games was a Tangrams-type game with many colored shapes that fit on game cards to
My Laundry Room
It's like a four-seasons room with windows on two full sides. Ideally, you're supposed to dry your clothes out there, too.make different objects. One girl really took to that game and was working diligently when Mrs. Ahn came in and said that her mom was in the school. So I was a little confused on what I was supposed to do, so I sat and played with her for a bit until they came and got me and we went to Mrs. Ahn’s office to talk over tea. Yes, we had tea cups and saucers and sat in plush chairs. It was quite different from the public schools. I think mainly because of the tea…well and the chairs…okay so the fact that the parent just came in to see me when their child wasn’t in trouble or for a conference was a totally new concept in my book. HA! It was also different because Mrs. Ahn was basically talking about the girl’s emotional side while I was focusing on her academics. I guess it’s just something I have to get used to! She also was telling me that the students have been going home and telling their parents that I look like Miss America. Haha! Yeah, it’s pretty flattering, but I’m not exactly Miss America! Actually, yesterday, my co-teacher, In-Suk,
asked me what cosmetics I use (Mary Kay, of course) and she tells me I have beautiful skin every single day (seriously, not even joking). I guess I’m pretty exotic over here, and exotic is trendy!
I left school and went home for lunch and as I was walking, a moving-type truck was parked outside my building with two men in it. I try not to stare at people and just mind my own business, so I hurried past them thinking they were just staring at me because I’m a Wayguk, but then they followed me and started jabbering in Korean and then my phone rang! So much at once! It happened to be Mrs. Ahn who said the delivery men were outside my apartment to deliver my laundry mat. It all made sense now and I just said, “Washer?” to them and they understood and followed me up to measure the door before they brought it up. (Very smart!) So I hurried and finished my sandwich so I wouldn’t be rude and eating in front of them (Who really knows if that’s rude here…), but anyway, Mrs. Ahn soon arrived and the men were working on installing it and removing the old one. Luckily no water spilled out of the old one because I could hear it sloshing around somewhere inside of it. While the men were working, I was cutting up my celery and offered some to Mrs. Ahn, who accepted and she told me that she would ask the men to explain how to work it since the directions were in Korean. I appreciated that. Then she had a banana and I had some peanut butter and celery. She probably thought I was an alien because I was putting brown goop on a vegetable. One of the men explained how to work it and then I had to practice it five times according to Mrs. Ahn’s orders. I’m lucky to have a caring boss like her. She sees that the most important things get taken care of to her high standards. From what I hear from other foreigners who work at different schools, their bosses don’t care nearly as much, so I’m very happy that I’m at one of the best Hogwans with a great boss.
After getting my washer, I had to return to school and have gym/dance class with the Minnie and Mickey classes. Haha! Me teach gym and dance?! Right. Well, we did some stretching, partly because I wanted to and didn’t today, and boy it felt good! Then we played Simon Says and I love that game because if Simon Says to be quiet, all the kids are totally silent! I wish my name was Simon, then I could always say! HA! So we played that for a good 15 or 20 minutes, then we did the Hokey Pokey 3 times, which ate up about 10 minutes and then we did the chicken dance 3 times which again ate up 10 minutes and then I beat feet out of there! I’ll have to think of a fun game of some sort for next week - keeping in mind that we play in that pink common room with all of the board games on the walls (look at earlier pictures). Oh yeah, and I stood by the air conditioner the whole time. My momma didn’t raise no fool!
After gym and dance, I had a free hour that I prepared for my classes and worked a little on my computer in the lounge. Then I had classes straight through from 3-9 with 10 minute breaks at every hour. Pauline and I split a small pizza for dinner at our 6 o’clock break, and it was pretty delicious. I think it came from the pizzeria across the street. Don’t ask me the name, because I have no idea, and if I did I probably couldn’t pronounce it anyway! After our pizza, we ran to our next classes. I had Joni’s class since she’s still vacationing, and they weren’t very good today. I had to fight them to put away their food; I had to take a cell phone away from one girl, a puzzle away from one boy, and a video game away from another boy! ARG! Talk about disrespect today! Hopefully tomorrow will be better! Then I also had Joni’s adult class and I had two come today. One was an older man and the other was a high school girl. The girl didn’t talk much because I don’t think she is that comfortable yet, and is just a beginner. The man, however, spoke very well and we did two pages in the book and had a lot of conversation. For the older students, conversation is more practical. Basically, we would do a section, and then I would go off on a tangent about that section trying to get them to talk back and forth. Like one was about vacation, so we talked about vacationing and what there was to do around the city and we discussed life in America versus life here. It was actually very interesting. The man also made the Miss America comment, so I think someone has been spreading that around! I’ll just take it as flattering and say thank you, because what else would you say? Anyway, it was a good class.
After class, I waited around since I was the only one in the building. I didn’t know if I was supposed to wait for someone or just leave, so I made few calls, and Brian said to shut off the air conditioners, shut off the lights, and then shut the doors. Since I couldn’t get a hold of Mrs. Ahn, that’s what I did. As I was shutting the doors, she came around the corner and it was dark. She didn’t see me, and I didn’t see her and we scared each other half to death! She was at the hospital, and I was scared for a moment, and then I remembered that in Korea hospital also means doctor’s office. So she was fine, and we talked about two new students in Joni’s first class today. I thought they were very nice boys and maybe would help tame the class down. After all, they were the ones who kept me sane for that 50 minutes!
Well, I just got off the webcam with Mom and my kitten, Max, so now it’s time to go to bed! An-nyeong-hi-kye-se-yo!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.059s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 11; qc: 31; dbt: 0.0315s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Pam
non-member comment
Miss America
I'm the mother of Miss America and no paparazzi(HAHAHHA) at my door! Just gotta love those kids. Keep smiling. Love,Mom