Day 390....

Monday January 11

I had a good day today.

1st class was good. We did a speaking lesson about pets and arguing. We had a good discussion. After we finished we were talking about pets and everyone wanted to know if I had one. I showed them a picture of Princess(my shih tzu). One student showed me a picture of her dog on her 핸드폰(Konglish=Hand Phone). One student was telling me about his poodle. He made sure I knew that a poodle was the 2nd smartest dog. I had one person who doesn’t like animals. Then one of my students was talking to me telling me how much she loved me-she's one of my newest students. She also gave me a hug. How precious. She was telling me that her English level was zero. Her dream is to go to Harvard, but she thinks she won’t be able to because her English isn’t good. She’s still got a lot of years to practice. Its great that she has a dream of Harvard. Her English isn’t as bad as she thinks it is. On Friday I'm going to bring in an article about a Korean woman who is going to Harvard for our newspaper class.

2nd class was good. We went over a speaking lesson about Santa Claus. They did a good job and all participated. I couldn’t get the boys to practice with each other. Then I was going to do another activity but there was only 10 mins left so I gave them free time. One of the boys just guessed on the quiz that I gave and he was excited to make a 40. (It doesn't go towards their final grade-I just see if they were paying attention).

3rd class was good. They keep asking for 떡볶이(a popular snack food) so I told them if they were angels on today and Wednesday that we would have 떡볶이 on Friday. There's a street vendor near our hagwon that sells 떡볶이 for 500 won (less than 50 cents usd). All the students love it. They made me pinky swear and sign a paper. We studied 3 pages of new material today. They actually did good and made an effort-bribing this class really helps their behavior. They did good on the new material. Action verbs-run, walk, swim, jump, dance, climb, etc.We talked about their -ing forms. He is running. She is swimming, etc. They talked a little bit but they didn’t get out of hand. It was a good class. I gave them 10 mins of free time. There wasn’t enough time to cover another page in the book.

My last class is so precious. They are my youngest. They did a wonderful job in class today. They participate and do well on activities in class. We learned a new set of words today. One of our activities was putting the words in the catagory of person/place/object/describes. I drew a stick figure wearing a dress for the word "lady" and then I drew curly hair. Then one of the boys shouted "Adjumma"(it means old woman in Korean).When we finished one lesson I let them play hangman instead of starting on a new lesson. They loved it! They were so enthusiastic about the words. They would count how many letters and then look at their words and guess letters. Then they’d get excited when they got it right. That’s the enthusiasm that I wish all my students had!

After school I had a dentist appointment in Gangnam. It was an hour subway ride, but I chose this place because she studied in the USA, speaks English, and I heard that it was a good place to go. I got there just a few mins before my appt and filled out a short form. Then I was taken back to get x-rays. Then the doctor came in to see me. She checked out a few of my teeth. I need 2 root canals. She even started the process for the first one today. I was getting an x-ray to see how deep the roots were and I was drooling all over the place.haha. I had this thing in my mouth that prevented me from closing my mouth and I had to hold the x-ray film to the side of my mouth. It took a while to do the first part of the root canal today because it was a hard to reach tooth in the back of my mouth. When I left the office it was almost 7pm. I got there at 5:30. I have to go back on Thursday for another appointment. I have to get a crown. Today I had to pay 596,000 won for the whole visit which includes the root canal cost. That comes out to about $550 usd. She said its cheaper here than it would be in the states. My lip is a little sore from being held open to reach the back teeth but its not too bad. I have to avoid eating on that side.

On the way home the subway was super crowded on line 2 and line 6. We were packed like sardines. You could barely move. A sea of Koreans and one 외국인. It reminded me of that video of a subway in Japan where they are pushing people into the trains. It wasn't nearly that bad!