Lately I've been discovering just how unchallenged I've been the past few months. I've started reading some international theory books again, and it's like going to the gym after 6 months off. I can literally feel my brain starting to fire again. I think I've learned a good lesson that a life of all leasure and no challenge isn't a very high quality life. Like Ive stated over and over again, I love what I'm doing right now. I would be a complete fool to complain, and be making a total ass of myself. But, there's more to life than shopping and scenes and money. Those things are great on the weekends and holidays, but you need something stimulating to pass the time inbetween. At the very least I'm continuing to learn what's not right for me. Though it seems that that's all we ever find out. All I can do is keep moving forward the best I can with this information though.
Now, to answer a couple of questions.
1. Yes, I get to watch the NFL over here. I wake up every Monday morning at 2 AM(That's noon central time) to watch the NFL. I have a program that allows me to watch just about any game I want. Here's a pick of my computer last Monday:
That's 3 games at once. So yes, I'm probably watching more football than I've ever gotten to watch before. The only thing that sucks is that in about a month you'll all fall back an hour. This means games will start here at 3AM, which means the late afternoon games(Read-Broncos games) won't be over until I'm already at work. As it is right now they get over about 15 minutes before I have to leave. Ugh. I'm not sure what I'll do at that point. I can pay $25 a week to get all the games from Yahoo international, and then I can watch them any time over the next 48 hours, but if I do that for the last 6 weeks of the season that's $150. I dunno. Depends how well Denver is playing at that point. (Not looking good)
2. There's been a lot of speculation lately about what I'm doing at the end of my year here. And with almost 8 months done, I'm starting to speculate myself. I really hate talking to too many people about things I'm planning, because if they don't pan out then I look, well, typical. Everyone loves to talk about how they're going to do this and that, but so few people back it up. I like to make sure it's concrete before I talk about it.
I will say a few, cryptic, things as not to jinx it.
1. I'm about 90% positive I won't be doing another year in Korea. I'm just not a fan of how business is done here. Awful business climate. It's my fall back though-you simply can not argue with the type of money you make here, and it may be too much to pass up if some of my other ideas fall through.
2. I'll say there's a 70% chance I won't be seeing summer again for 18 months. Still speculation though, so I don't want to say anything more than that.
Don't know much else that you'd be interesting in hearing. It's really started to cool down here, and I always calm down weekend wise when the weather cools down, and it's not very interesting talking about the great cup of coffee and the crummy movie I watched this past weekend.
Oh, one quick anecdote about my students:
Most of them know curse words. Some of them are actual taught them at their after school program. I don't think that's a bad idea. They're gonna hear them on TV and in the Movies, so you might as well inform them what they are. Anyway, this week one of my classes has been big on talking about cuss words.
-On Tuesday I told a kid to shut up(jokingly), and one of the girls said "Teacher can we cuss?!" I said no. Totally dead panned she says "Damn it." Couldn't help but laugh at that one.
-In my advanced class I had them do a "Fill in the picture" activity where the scene was two people ordering at a restaurant. I had just spent like 20 minutes telling them that you always say "Excuse me" to get a waiters attentions. (Here in Korea they don't use the Korean word for excuse me, ever. At a restaurant you just say "Come here", but it's considered polite). Anyway, one group is filling in their boxes. For the first box they have the couple at the table say "Excuse me", then the second box is the waiter's response, for the waiter's response they write "What the hell do you want?"
Again, can't really argue with that...
Generally I don't punish the kids for swearing in English. Firstly, they don't really know what they're saying to a large degree. Secondly, as long as they're using the words properly it is English practice, and that's what I'm there to do with them. I certainly don't encourage swearing, but meh, I'm not about to kill them for it. Kids don't understand the concept of loaded or hurtful words.
Actually, and I know I said I was done, but that had me thinking. It's really interesting when a kid says something hurtful, and then realizes it was hurtful. For instance, I was trying to do an activity with the kids-it wasn't the most fun thing ever, but it was focused on the lesson so it couldn't really be party time or anything-and one of the girls told me the game was stupid and wasn't any fun. I told her that was a really mean thing to say. She thought about it for a minute-I kind of moved on, but then she came up to me and said she was sorry and she thought it was a good game to help her learn. I remember enough from being that young to remember what it was like when you'd learned a serious lesson, and I could see on her face that she had struggled with it and felt totally awful, but also it was a lesson she'd learned.
One of the great things about teaching the kids(as unstimulating mentally as it is) is I really do learn from them-in so many different ways.
Ok, NOW, I'm done.
Adios.
1 comment:
Bret,
I just want to let you know that lots of people ARE reading your blog, don't know why they don't comment, makes it feel like your just talking to yourself, doesn't it?
But your not, I hear comments about it all the time, from my family and friends.
Love You and keep up the blogging.
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