My Students being Adorable

Here are some recent pictures and video of my students. My favorite part of teaching is the 1st and 2nd grade class-- They are so cute and easy to entertain. Their favorite game is Duck, Duck, Goose, although it always ends with at least one child hurt. No matter how many times I tell them to lightly tap their friends' heads, they think it's funnier to whack as hard as they can. Oh well. As long as they're laughing.

Here are some pictures from last week, where we talked about the letter A and "I like/ don't like____."

Katie. "I like aunt. I don't like alligator."

Ellie likes and dislikes lots of things.

Marie likes apples and aunts. I don't think any of the kids like alligators.

Kristy and Kayleigh. Kristy is terrified of me and normally won't participate, but this time she actually did. It turns out she draws really well.

Explaining a game. As usual, they hear, "Blahblahblahblahblah," until my co-teacher translates.

Playing the Rock, Paper, Scissors train game.

Richard is the my only 1st grade boy. Needless to say, the girls gang up on him a lot. He loves it though.

Richard trying to pick up Marie.

He looks mad, but he was cracking up.

Alexa: "I don't like arm." I was running out of "A" words and in desperation added "arm" to the list.

As you can see, I mostly take pictures of my 1st and 2nd graders because they are adorable and well behaved. Normally I don't get a chance to take pictures in 3rd or 4th grade classes because I have to keep an eye on them. The other day I took a couple pictures during the break between my back to back 3rd grade classes. The kids decided they wanted to limbo.

Chuna, my newest 3rd grader. He is pretty mean and I keep trying to kick him out of class.

Henry, one of my former bad boys. He has been really nice lately though.

Kevin, a headache, and Charles, a sweetheart.

Gracey, probably the strangest kid I have. She rarely talks and mostly just growls/ hisses/ purrs at me.

Xavier, my favorite 3rd grader. He says, "OK TEACHA!" to everything I say.

Daejeon ZooLand

Here are some pictures from the zoo this weekend. So much fun!

On the Viking Ship ride.

Safari bus, where we drove through the bear, lion, and tiger cages.

Flower Land.

Me, Dan, Linda, Hayan, George, and Mark.

Gruesome bunnies. They were all missing ears and/or legs.

Man dangling his child over the vicious rabbits.

Sad baby monkey.

Pretty fountain.

The Lantern Festival

This weekend I went to Jinju for the Lantern Festival. According to Wikipedia, this festival is a "nationally designated cultural tourism festival that features a spectacle of lanterns floating on the Nam River to commemorate the patriotic spirit of the 70,000 militia corps and government troops who died for their country defending Jinju from the Japanese forces during the Imjin War (1592–1598)."

Jinju is a very pretty little city in the southern part of the country.

First we had lunch. Almost everyone had grilled pork wrapped in lettuce leaves.

We stopped at a convenience store and were thrilled when we saw $2 Tamagotchi's (virtual pets). That entertained us for a while.

The festival itself was really fun, probably the best I've been to in Korea so far.

This guy filmed us for a while. He wanted to take shots of foreigners at the festival.

Zillions of fabric lanterns.

Phil, George, Dan, me, Merry, David, Linda, Wendy.

We should have paid attention to those ominous clouds.

We took cover under a bridge when the downpour hit.

We passed the time by playing Telephone.

By the time it was dark, the rain had let up enough for us to venture out.

The floats reminded me of Disneyland's Electrical Parade.

The red area is all of the fabric lanterns lit up.

That night we stayed at a jimjilbang, which is basically where you can shower/ sauna naked with strangers and then sleep on the floor. We were all tired enough to sleep pretty well, even though the floor was uncomfortable. I didn't mind the 20 snoring men, but I did get annoyed with people answering their cell phones in the wee hours of the morning.

The next day we took the bus back to Daejeon, where we snuck into Costco and convinced another group of foreigners to let us use their Costco card. Everything there was pretty expensive, but I did splurge on a block of Tillamook cheese.

An Unintentional Poem

Yesterday my mentor teacher asked me to stay after class and help her grade some English essays. They are in the process of selecting one student to represent the school in an English competition. The assignment was to write a letter to a friend or family member. This one was by far my favorite, even though my mentor teacher couldn't understand why.

"Dear Hyun Jung,
Hello. Your eldest sister Hye Jung.
These days. Caught your cold as it gets.
Bodies don't cool.
Because thought caught a cold.
Hyun Jung. I think. You Puberty.
A little sensitive and I raise a lot of petulances. Then it is very hard.
I suffered puberty. Puberty that get along sagely help yourself.
Still, believe that may be a result.
That should like to do hard.
Always fighting.
I love you.
Good bye.
2010. 10. 6.
Hye Jung"

Anyway, here are some recent miscellaneous photos:

REALLY BIG SPIDER

Cute 1st graders, Alexa and Ellie.

My friend Linda and George's kitten, Mol Lie Oh.

The crazy horse that almost trampled us 10 seconds after I took this photo.

3rd graders.

1st and 2nd graders taking Duck, Duck, Goose to an extreme level.

They got soo into it.

Cutting my birthday cake.