Day 348

Monday November 30

I had a pretty good day.

I have a runny nose. It creeped up on me all of a sudden. why? Stupid cold weather. I took some allergy medicine but it didn't stop my nose from running. The box said 24 hr relief from runny nose and itchy throat. (my throat also hurts). The medicine isn't helping at all. I would take a dayquil but I don't know if I should mix medicine and I only have one left I think.

My first class was really good. I think they are my new favorite class. They've always been the good class. One of my kids is no longer in my class. She moved up a level in math and her math class is the same time as English. One of the kids asked me to say something in Korean so I told her my name in Korean in a sentence. Then they were so excited. They kept asking me to say more, but I eventually ran out of things I could say. I'm still a beginner. They asked me if I could write Korean. Then they asked me to write their names on the board. They liked when I did that also. They had to help me a little. Some of the sounds confuse me and I don't know how to spell it just by hearing it. They were asking me if they can come to my house. I don't want to say no, but I wonder if thats allowed. I don't think it should be a big deal but what am I going to do to entertain 11 and 12 year olds at my house? I don't have anything fun to do. I told them "maybe". The students asked me to pick a favorite student. I told them I liked them all equally. 3 of my students said they didn't like English before I was their teacher and now they like English. We had a good lesson today. We were talking about traffic laws and smoking.

My 2nd class was good. I only had one student. Today's lesson was about making "what" questions. He was having some trouble so I had to help him out. There would an answer and he had to think of the question. Example: I like bulgogi. "What kind of food do you like?" One of their answers stumped us. It said an English-English dictionary is a good way to study English. What is an English-English dictionary? Shouldn't you just say "english dictionary". I can understand Korean to English but English to Enlish? a bit reduntant.

Today was my last conversation class. I don't think the kids know. 2 of them said they would see me next week. I didn't tell them it was the last class. Class was decent today. Only a few people actually pay attention. Its hard to try to talk over everyone. I'm up there talking and they are just talking away like I'm not even there. Its quite rude but they dont seem to even mind. Only a few people actually do their work. One boy wouldn't do his work. He said he had a headache. Then I told him "you have a headache every class". Seriously, he says that every class which leads me to believe he's just being lazy. Today's lesson was about future actions/plans. There wasn't really any conversation practice for today, not that they would actually do it anyway.

My last class was rowdy as usual. They were being loud and not listening. When I yell for them to be quiet they just laugh at me. They also like to talk while I'm talking. I think we only covered 2 pages in class. Its hopeless. One of the boys wasn't paying attention and didn't write down the answers. I erased them and he told me he didn't get the answers. I just told him it was too bad because he wasn't paying attention. No one really deserved a sticker, but I gave one to the girls since they were the lesser of two evils. I didn't give any stickers to the boys because they wouldn't pay attention.

I finally got to try food in the food court. I had dongas omurice. Its a pork cutlet with a rice omlette. Very delicious!

I'm really getting into a Korean drama. Its called "Boys Before Flowers". Its really good. There are 25 episodes and I'm on episode 6. I found a site that has the show with English subtitles.