Well..

It had been a long time coming, but they finally canceled school at Hae Song Elementary.

They have had several meetings here and there about swine flu. A few days ago, they had 6 deaths in one day here in Korea. All of next week school will be canceled. I will still be getting paid .. and I will still have to show up too! The only thing is I will have no classes - so it will be 8 hours of dead time every day for 5 days. Not too bad though, I can catch up on some reading and knock out lesson plans from now until Christmas. The only reason I can't plan further than that is ... by the way, yes it is further and not farther (I looked it up to double check but I got it right on my first try, booyakasha!) ... anyway, the reason I can't plan lessons further than that is because I will have no clue what my schedule will be and how it will change after the semester.

The two big changes will be:

a. It will be a new semester. The new school year for Korea starts in February, so everyone moves up and some of my classes (like the immersion class I mentioned before) might be different. In fact, they are thinking of adding a 4th class per grade, which will completely change everything about the way our school runs. No one knows what to expect though.

b. Matthew and Blair, two teachers from the English center at Hae Song, will be finished with their contracts. Describing the workings of the Hae Song English teachers can be a little tricky. First of all, there is Josh and Amee, (Amee replacing my good friend Ryan after he changed schools) who do a private after-school program we usually refer to as Okey Dokey. Then comes Matt and Blair, who have been at Hae Song for 8 months or so and have a couple left on their contract. They work out of the English center, each teaching to half the grades (Matt takes 2/4/6, Blair takes 1/3/5 or something like that) plus a couple of after-school programs themselves. I teach the official, by the book, English class. I am not too sure on the differences between responsibility but they work out of the English center and I work out of our official English classroom. Anyway, this has been sufficiently boring - the point is when they have finished their contracts, all these different classes will be up in the air and I have no clue how they will fall because there will most likely be two new English teachers to come in after.

So that's that. All I wanted to say was that school is canceled week. However, I decided to indulge a thinking aloud urge .. or a thinking composition if you will. Or just writing if you aren't into the whole brevity thing.