Day 392

Wednesday January 13

My mouth hurts-right in the corner! I went to the dentist on Monday and they started a root canal. The root canal is in the back of my mouth so they had to hold my mouth open to reach it. Now I have a sore on the side of my mouth in the corner. There's nothing I can do to make it feel better. I'll just have to wait for it to heal. I keep picking at it because it hurts and has a scab! I wonder if people are looking at it wondering what is wrong with me.hehe.

It was really cold today. At 9am it was 1 degree F. Now it is only 9 degrees F. I don't remember it being this cold last winter in South Korea.

My first class was good. Today was a writing lesson.I left the room to make a copy for a student who didn't bring his book and when I got back they were so quiet. I found it quite odd since there is always someone chatting quietly.They were silent for a while. They eventually started talking some. Our first task today was to write an outline for a personal narrative about a gift they received. We talked about personal narrative,pronouns, and revising sentences.They did a good job on the lesson.

2nd class was pretty good.They wanted to do the reading selection I brought first.We started out with a section from the newspaper called English Letters. We read and answered questions. They did good on that part. Then we did a writing exercise about describing words.

3rd class was better today..I have 3 students who always use one of my pens in class. I carry a basket with pens, chalk, erasers, etc to class and they all come up to my basket and grab a pen. One of the kids was talking in Korean and I understood what he said.He said “I like valerie’s pen”…then everyone laughed.I laughed too because I actually knew what he meant.Today was our newspaper class.They were pretty good today,They wanted me to rush through the lesson.They didn’t want to read it in small chunks so we read in sentences. I couldn't get everyone to read along. I don't think todays lesson was an effective strategy.oh well.They did good on answering the questions.After we finished 4 articles they were looking at my computer.They looked at some of my pictures. They wanted to see a picture of my sister. They also said that we look alike. Everyone I meet says me and Candace look alike. haha. I showed them some pictures from when I was little and they liked them.One of the boys was trying to ask me why I was skinny when I was a kid and fat now…it was funny…i know they don’t mean anything hurtful by it. Hey, its a valid question. Then they wanted to look at my music…I let them listen to music…I have a lot of Korean music on my computer which makes me pretty popular with the kids..hehe

Last class is so precious…Today we did the newspaper articles.They cant find answers so I just write the answers on the board. They like to get up from their seats but I don’t care..they don’t cause any commotion…they are so well behaved and sweet…When you have a small, well behaved class I give them more freedom. There are only 2 boys in the class.

I met an American tonight at McDonalds. She's from Florida. I was waiting on my order and she talked to me and joined me for dinner. It was nice to meet someone in my area. She invited me to join a group of her friends for an art exhibit on Saturday. I might go. I don't have any other plans and its always nice to meet new people although I won't get to know them for long since I'm leaving soon.