Day 371

Wednesday December 23

Current Temp: 35 F
Exchange: 1189 krw = 1 usd

I was thinking that today was one of the Christmas party days, but it wasn't. The Tues/Thurs kids get to have a free day and the MWF kids had to work. Anyway I actually had a pretty decent day.

I told my team leader that my washing machine was broken and it was fixed the same day! It now works-I had to do a load to make sure!

The weather was nice again today which was great!

My first class was good. We usually do our newspaper class on Wednesday but I decided to do spelling. We covered a lot of material-2 sets of 10 words.He does good on finding the patterns, but not so good filling in words to the story or the meanings. I just have to give him answers. Maybe he's retaining it somehow. He wasn't tired today which was good.I let him play hangman near the end of class.He guessed by looking at my book.

My 2nd class was good. We went over a few pages in writing. Today we were talking about a letter of invitation. Their assignment during class was to write a letter to their friend inviting them to come over to play. Its funny how the kids will be asking me something and I totally don't understand. They were telling me how the Korean teacher doesn't like when they ask for free time. She gets angry at them. I don't mind when they ask. We finish our lesson first then have free time. Whenever they say that she gets angry they put up devil horns on their head. haha. Then later I didn't understand what a student was asking. He said "what is tomorrow tomorrow?"...I told him Friday...then he said no..so I said Christmas..no...the 25th no...then another student had to explain...yesterday, today, tomorrow-OK--oh the day after tomorrow..Oh the joys of ESL..Some of my students saw my cute erasers in my box. I bring extras so if someone needs one in class (and I give them to students)..they love erasers..i think its cute. I had some new ones that were in the shape of pigs. And I had some colorful ones that were red, black and blue. They all wanted one so I gave all the students one. It makes me happy to see them so excited over something so small. They all thanked me. After class one of the students followed me out of class and asked me to give him another one stealthly(he showed me in his dictionary)..haha. I told him only one per student. They use their korean-english dictionaries on their phone when they don't know the english word. They made me write on the board "this class was excellent." The Korean teacher must be telling them they have to be good in my class. I don't know, but they insisted that I leave a good word about them. (that class is always good)

The 3rd class was good. I didn't need to do a writing lesson this week so I did the newspaper class. They were confused. They told me it was wednesday. We usually do it on Friday.I told them we didnt have class on Friday so I was doing it today. They were good in class. We were able to cover 3 of the articles. We talked about an orangutan who can take photos, a korean actress, and the golden disk awards (korean music awards).

My last class was great today. I wonder what she drugged them with. just kidding. That was a good change. I usually dread that class! Today I prepared 4 articles. We only did 3 articles to reward good behavior. We talked about a pet elephant, a lion, tiger, and bear who were friends at a zoo in England, and the Vatican.They actually listened, they read, they answered questions…great…I let them have a lot of free time…they played games, wrote on board…After class one of the students told the Korean teacher that they had a good study all class…so I think she’s asking the students to be good in my class and they are listening! Great! Keep threatening them for me!

I learned some new facts. I just thought the Vatican was a building where the pope lived. Vatican city is actually a country. They have their own post office and issue their own stamps. They even issue their own passports. They are one of the smallest countries with less than 1,000 residents. They use Latin, Italian and French as their languages.

I don't have any classes tomorrow!! I still have to be there though...Then its a 3 day weekend. I don't have any plans at all. I need to find something to do at least one day. Or I could just sleep all day. but I do need to get out.

Me and my friend Lesley are going out to eat Thursday night in Itaewon. We're both lonely and missing our 2nd Christmas away from home so we decided to get together to hangout on Christmas eve. We are going to a place called Macaroni Market.