Must Sleep...

So today was my longest day yet. As I said earlier, this is my first week of having a full schedule of teaching. The only wrench in that plan was that this week is "open week". Open week means that, depending on class sizes, each kindergarden teacher has to teach one or two classes with all of the students' parents there, and a camera person. So all of the teachers hate this, obviously, because it's super stressful and impossible to get the kids to act normal with all of those distractions. Thankfully they made special arrangements and had one of the more experienced teachers (who was supposed to be starting at a different school this week) cover my kindy classes. So she had one open class yesterday, and has another one tomorrow. So on Thursday I will actually begin my real schedule.

While she is doing that, I have to cover her morning classes at the Suji branch. It is a lot different over at that school. From what I have heard it is the "forgotten" school. There are a bunch of huge condos being erected right next to the school and apparently it's really driven attendance down. Well, for attendance being down, there sure are a lot of kids. I have eight 25 minute classes from 9-1, and each class has about 25 kids. My lesson plans are getting really repetitive, but the kids somehow always keep your energy up. My new favorite song is the short vowel song, it is super addictive. "A-a-a-a apple, e-e-e-e egg, i-i-i-i inchworm, the short vowels we do sing..." Oh man it is great, and I can't get it out of my head.

Anyway, then I swung back over to the Bojeong school because I had a 1:50 class there. The girl who has been covering for me just wanted me to prepare those kids for the open day tomorrow, which meant make sure they have all of these vocab words memorized. Which meant 55 minutes of Go Fish and Memory! I was like, "Really?" But she told me that was the best way to get them to know the vocab, and I certainly wasn't going to argue. At 4:10 I have my class that I have had ever since the first day. That class is getting more and more interesting, because the kids all know me now, and some of them are starting to act up as they get a bit more comfortable. There is this one girl who knows all of the answers and gets really mad when I don't call on her. Then when we're supposed to all read together she purposely reads way faster than everyone else. It's like having a little me in my class, and I love her.

Then at 5:10 I had my "free-talking" class. It was just three kids (two girls, one boy), and they were all 13 or 14 (which in Korean age, I guess they were maybe 12 or so). There is no curriculum, the head Korean teacher told me I could just do whatever I wanted. So I just spent the whole class talking to them about whatever. I asked them what I should do for fun in Suji (apparently the Suji Royal Sportscenter is the place to be, I'm gonna have to check it out), what they liked to do, what did they do this weekend, etc... It was a pretty fun class. They were a little tough to crack, but they started opening up eventually. We talked about video games, and they said they liked Sudden Attack. They had never heard of any of the first person shooter games I brought up (seriously, you all love "Sudden Attack" and no one's heard of Halo?) One of them said they went to sing karaoke this weekend so I asked them what kind of music they like and they said Big Bang and Wonder Girls. I had actually already heard of both of them so I was pretty proud of myself.

I have to take a second to talk about Korean music. They are absolutely obsessed with pop music. That's all there is. It's hilarious. And they still love the thing that was really popular a few years ago where a girl pop singer would sing, and then some rapper would rap. You know like all the songs with Mariah Carey and Big Pun, or whoever was collaborating for that last chart-topper. That's every song here. Pop, with some rap verses. Also, in order for it to be a legitimate Korean hit, you have to toss some English into the chorus. Points are NOT added if the English words make sense, so no sense in overexerting yourself. But I do have to say that it's hard to change the channel when the Wonder Girls come on. Even though they are basically the Korean Danity Kane, it's somehow different. It's just hard for Koreans to look like nasty hoochie skanks, even when they're trying. It goes back to the classiness thing. Oh, and they're super hot.

Anyway, if you were adding it up in your head, I had 7 hours of teaching today, and my contract says that I don't have to do anymore than 6 a day, so I got overtime today (as I will every Tuesday and Thursday when I have my free talking class).

This one is especially for Brett and Josh, but I'm sure lots of you will get a kick out of it. On Saturday night we had stopped at a little street vendor and while I was just looking at the wares all of a sudden the dude working the stand started saying something and pointing at me. One of the girls I was with says, "OH! He's saying you look like Jude Law." And he's like "Yes! American actor! Jude Law!" It didn't seem like the appropriate time to tell him Jude Law is British so I simply said "kam sa hamnida!" Anyway, got a pretty good laugh about that one, since somehow that became a big topic of conversation back home. So far that is 2 Jude Law's, and 0 Steve Nash's that I've gotten since being here.

Ok, I'm going to bed now, I still haven't learned how to use my Korean laundry machine, that is tomorrow night's project I guess. For now, I'm off to find out if Chuck and Blair can somehow get it together and be happy.