Fulfillment

I have had an excess amount of free time these past two days. I don't see the 5th graders this week freeing me up to teach one class per day. We are in the closing stretch of school before a 2 week break and the start of the new year. Yesterday I spent a whole lotta time doing a whole lotta nothing. Today my official list of things I needed to accomplish to feel like I didn't waste my day are as follows:

- Figure out my vacation schedule for the foreseeable future

- Make a blog post

- Take a nap

As far as I'm concerned, when 33% of one's list of objectives includes a nap it doesn't get much better.

Yes, I checked the vacation schedule and the blog post speaks for itself. The nap did NOT in fact occur. Listening to the Gladiator soundtrack and discovering that Leon (The Professional) was on youtube took precedent.

here's the scoop on los campamentos de invierno

I have actually completed two of the three camps taking place during the winter season. I started with 6th graders on the first and took 5th graders the second go-around. The last week of February will be our last camp held for 4th graders. A lot of the other EPIK teachers have had to make everything from scratch and run it themselves. I on the other hand have the benefit of coming into a team of English teachers and a school that had been previously running them. This meant my responsibilities fell to planning 2 subjects (of 4 total) and running the orientation. Matthew, who ran winter camps last year, gave me one piece of advice before he finished his contract at Hae Song. "Focus on having fun," he said to me, "don't worry as much about the English." I did just that! He was right too by the way because with two 75 minute lessons a day if you just focus on having fun the English follows in line rather nicely.

Orientation consisted entirely of goofy ice breakers and was crazy easy. I chose my words carefully just there because I did in fact teach them .. gasp! .. using crazy as an adjective to mean "very." They really enjoy using the phrase "that __________ is crazy crazy" (No worries, they know it's slang and that they should only use it when addressing their elders, principals and other people of influence - har har).

I've mentioned this a few times but for the sake of everyone hopping in now - Matthew and Blair left school at the beginning of January thrusting me into the role of longest native-English speaker at Hae Song. Janice, the head of the English Dept. left about a month before they did and now Amy our teaching assistant has gone too. I used this influence and divine power to swing my choice of winter camp classes. I didn't want to be greedy so I only asked for PE but (you can tell by the pictures!) I got cooking too. This really gave me a carefree two weeks consisting of cupcakes and capture the flag. I had a wonderful time doing it and it was a pretty drastic change up in terms of work load from what I've been used to. In fact, since about Christmas my schedule has been pretty easy-peasy. School will be starting up at the beginning of March and I'd tell you a schedule if I had one but I don't so I won't. I am relying on the oft-reliable fact that I won't know my schedule until a day prior of it starting.

If there was lots of word repetition and generalized general silliness throughout this post you can blame it on my current reading; Catch 22. How did I go this long without reading this book!?!

Photos from Winter Camp

Here are a few photos from Winter Camp at Hae Song Elementary. The rest are here

From Top to Bottom:
1. Myself enlightening the impressionable minds of 5th Graders to the higher levels of cooking.
2. My crazy and fantastic student Emily.
3. Gingerbear of my doing
4. My student Annie who holds a special place in my heart

The Simple Joys

On the walk home from school today I strolled by a young boy beating a stick on the ground with another stick. This is both a grand and simple reason for why I really like teaching elementary school (grand in impact and simple in nature!).

Quotations I enjoyed on a trivia website sporcle.com (Great place to waste time and at least feel like you are slightly more knowledgeable for it:

Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.
- Dr. Seuss
I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.
- Groucho Marx

Trivia Masters

I have been playing trivia for the last couple months with some EPIK friends in Central Incheon. It is held every Thursday night and the team that won the previous week hosts the next. Each person has to pay 2 dollars to play and it runs in teams of 5 (winner takes all the entry money). Usually it amounts to about 80 dollars for the winning team split 5 ways. This past Thursday my team and I won for the 2nd time in 3 tries. In fact, they had won a few times before I joined up. I won, hosted the following week, and won again. Now it is up to me come up with my questions for next week's topic!! The last time I hosted my questions focused on Lord of the Rings and Zombie Trivia. This time around I might get a little brainier.

All in all, it's a lot of fun and now get excited for every Thursday's coming!

One More Note on Book Reports

One last thing!!

Today, like I mentioned, was Library day and Book Report day. We took both our 1st grade classes and our 3rd graders. For the 1st graders I mostly read with/to them. I did this with most of the class (including my coteacher's, (Mrs. Lim), daughter!). Anyway, I got through about half of "The Seals on the Bus" with one of my students named Bailey before I realized this book was supposed to be sung to the tune of "The Wheels on the Bus." I certainly thought it was odd that everything rhymed but I only paid it a passing glance. Also, this was the elongated version of the song. When she brought me the book I was initially excited because usually they choose really short books. This one turned out to have like 15 verses and run into the upwards of 20 pages. It was terrible because I had to read, over and over, phrases like "The sheeps on the bus go Bah bah bah, bah bah bah, bah bah bah. The sheeps on the bus go bah bah bah, all the something something or other." I paraphrased that last part. I think I covered the whole ecosystem.

Prank of the Day

I think most of the people who read this know me well enough to know how much of a goofball I am. If you don't know me well enough to know that, then get off my blog!! Seriously though, one of the things I love about teaching in an Elementary school is the wonderful outlet it provides for my goofiness.

Case in Point (Prank of the Day):
For book reports my 3rd graders got to choose their favorite picture in the book and draw it after briefly describing what they read. John, one of my star pupils, chose some book about cookies and drew about .. wait for it .. cookies. Anyway, he got up to do something or other and I quickly grabbed his book report, erased part of the cookie, and drew in bite marks and a 70% completed cookie. I wrote "Evan Teacher was Hungry - Mashisoyo" which means "It was delicious." Bam! prank of the day!

I am honestly not happy unless I am stealing something, taking something and putting it somewhere else or generally partaking in random hi-jinks about once every 5-10 minutes or so. Elementary school makes this behavior acceptable, nay, encouragable! Spell Check is telling me encouragable is not a word. Is this true??

Anyway, that probably was not the prank of the day but that was the incident where I decided I'd blog about it so there you go. The great thing about Korean elementary schools is that the students' ages run the gauntlet enough to keep me entertained in all ways. I split my efforts about 50-50 between incredibly silly and enjoying dry and sarcastic humor. In Korean schools, the 6th graders are old enough where this works out well. It was one of the main reasons I loved Westwood!! I was able to start with younger kids and work my way all the up to the 15 and 16 year-olds everyday.

Winter Camp started this past Monday. I will update you guys on my PE and Cooking classes in my next post but know that I am loving it.

By the way, if any of my WW swimmers are reading this, know that I miss you every single day!!