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| View from the hike on the mountain near my house |
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| Cheonan |
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| Cheonan |
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| Cheonan |
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| Walking to the trailhead for the hike by my houshour
After an awesome hike on Saturday, the weekend remained
eventful when I went to Cheonan on Sunday to meet up with a friend I had met at
orientation. At orientation in August I had randomly sat at this table during
our Seoul field trip and struck up a conversation with a girl from Alexandria!
We ended up getting along really well and she was one of the first people who I
felt like I made a connection with. A couple of weeks ago we went to Daejeon
for the weekend and had such a nice time that we decided to explore another
town. This Sunday we explored Cheonan which is a city about 20 minutes from me.
They are supposed to have a really good Indian food restaurant so as soon as we
found each other at the station (which took longer than you would have thought
as we were in two different waiting rooms) we walked straight over to the
restaurant. I think we ordered everything they had on their menu, it all looked
so delicious! And it was delicious! I loved the food and we had a great time
stuffing our faces.
After lunch
we decided to just walk around and explore and stumbled upon their traditional
market. There are traditional markets all over Korea and it basically is just a
farmer’s market. But at this traditional market they were actually painting the
street of the market with these huge, gorgeous, floral patterns. And it didn’t
look like an organization but rather a hodge-podge of people, young and old who
volunteered their Sunday to paint the street. The flowers were beautiful!
In
Korea there isn’t much to do besides wander around, shop and hike so we walked
over to the main shopping area and ended up spending some time shopping here
and there. We wanted to try to get our nails done but every place we went to
told us to come back at 5 after their other appointments were done so that was
out. We were tired too so instead of wandering around some more we just had
some coffee and then slowly made our way back to the train station. Although it
was just a Sunday of wandering around, we had a lot of fun and it was nice to
see another Korean city.
Back to
a full week of school again. Things aren’t necessarily getting easier at school
but I at least am getting into a system. I still have no idea what to do with
my first and second graders who hate everything I do. I am trying to teach them
phonics since they already know the alphabet and do this through motions. There
is a great song that we have learned and are learning the movements to match
each sound. They hate doing any activity more than once so I have to always think
of new games. Luckily they don’t tire of getting stamps. They each have a paper
with their name on it and if they do something good they get a stamp, 10
stamps=candy. Every day I ask them “How are you?” and I ask 5 students and each
of them gets a stamp. The reason I bring this up is because of the cutest
little boy named Tae Min. He is known as the terror of the school, a first
grader. About half the time he is unruly, hits other kids, yells and screams.
One time Juny and I were walking downstairs and I turn around and see that Tae
Min was hiding under a table in the hallway. We took him back to his homeroom
where the teacher said she told him to sit outside as a punishment but the
little lump decided to run away and hide under the table. He is probably the
tubbiest kid in school and is always one of the last kids to leave the
cafeteria. I actually love watching him eat because he genuinely enjoys eating,
both his first and second meal! Then he walks around with his little tum tum
pooched out. Anyways, I go around asking the students how they are today and
when I call on Tae Min of course he yells and screams, “I’m HUNGRY!!” It was
just too perfect for me not to mention it. Of course, my little tubby kid would
yell he is hungry!
Today Tae Min was cute but a couple weeks
earlier he was the terror of my class. I
don’t remember exactly what we were doing but I think some activity that
required the kids to get up and move around. Well from the beginning of class
he didn’t want to be in the room because he came in, dropped his stuff at his
table and ran outside the classroom. Then for the next 30 minutes of class he
did everything he could to disrupt us. He ran around the hallways yelling, he
ran around the classroom yelling, he hit kids. At one point, there was this
little girl HanNa (who is really tiny) who was kneeling down for some reason
and out of nowhere, Tae Min comes running towards her and bowls her over.
Literally it was like Tae Min was this huge bowling ball and HanNa was a pin
and she went flying and hit her head on a desk. Thank God she wasn’t hurt too
bad. Well then I grab Tae Min, but the little plump gets out of my grasp and
runs into the hallway so I lock the door. When he learns this he just puts his
face up against the classroom windows and starts yelling “Sit Down, Be Quiet”
the only words he learned this semester. Then he bangs on the door, so I open
the door and just hold him as I continue to teach. Luckily by this time class
was almost over so I release Tae Min and dismissed the rest of the class. It
was actually a workout to hold this kid!
Even though I hate my first and
second graders I have grown to love my kindergarteners. They have no attention
span but think everything is funny and love everything we do! We always start
with a welcome song and then do some youtube videos or songs. They have learned
their colors, their emotions (happy, sad, etc) and one of their favorite songs
to sing is “5 Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed!” There is a video that they
like to imitate and it is literally the cutest thing on the planet. They love
to jump up and down and then they imitate calling the doctor and shaking their
finger when it says, “No more monkeys jumping on the bed.” I love doing it
because they are just too cute. Their newest favorite thing to do is called the
alphabet dance. There is another youtube video danced to the song “We No Speak
Americano” and these dancers make alphabet shapes with their body to the music.
The kids are obsessed with it! And I mean obsessed always saying, “One more
time!” after we do it like four times. It’s so great. And then there is my
old-man kindergartener who gets a kick out of it. He actually is a special
needs kid but he looks like a really small old man, complete with the bright,
yellow, velvet tracksuit. He really likes and is good at English so after we do
the alphabet song and I am about to leave he comes up to me and goes “Young-o
SunSangNim” (English teacher) and moves his finger in big circles and movements
to draw a letter in space and goes “iroke, iroke” (like this, like this) asking
me what the letter is. Most of the time I have no idea so I guess and when I
get it wrong he goes, “NOOOOO, Y” hahahaha! He does this a lot where he tests
me. Sometimes he draws with his fingers, othertimes he imitates the video using
his body to make a letter and sometimes he asks me what something is in English
but speaking in Korea. OF course I don’t know so he just yells,
“NOOO….spider/gorilla, etc/whatever he is asking.” Those kindergarteners are so
ridiculously great!
Besides hating my 1/2nd
graders and loving my Kindergarteners this week I am preparing for the last VIP
English Festival of the semester. It is the same thing every time but we still
have to go for a dress rehearsal some night of the week which is annoying but
at least they give us free pizza. The real festival was held on Saturday and
since it was my third time working as the Master of Ceremonies I felt pretty
confident with it and it all ended up going well. Afterwards they took us to
this little hole in the wall restaurant that I really like for an awesome meal
of samgyupsal and galbi (Korean BBQ). FANTASTIC MEAL!!
Later that Saturday I ended up
going to Home Plus (like Target) and then that night went bowling with some of
the other Americans. I was nervous they weren’t going to have my shoe size but
they did and it ended up being pretty fun, especially since I won! I love
bowling! Then afterwards we walked for what felt like miles to go get waffles.
As I have mentioned before, the cafes here open late and stay open late for a
long time so even though it was like 11 we walked in and got ourselves a really
awesome green tea ice cream and vanilla ice cream waffle.
Although Sunday was a little more
relaxed than Saturday it was still a great day. I had the morning to myself and
then in the afternoon went hiking with some other westerners on the mountain
near my house. It was the first time I had hiked it so I was glad to see how
close the path was to my house. Overall it was a great week and fun weekend!
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