Hey guys, what a dying blog eh?

For a self proclaimed writer I don't like to write all that much...guess I'm more just a reader than a writer...or lazy, either or.


Been having a fun week though. I'm doing a winter camp at a different elementary school than the one I work at, and it's actually been a lot of fun. They're much more organized and supportive than my other school. It's amazing the difference it can make.

I was worried going in because I volunteered to take the lowest level kids. The kids are in the 3rd to 5th grade, but they're English is pretty low. "My name is..." "I go to..." "I like...." are about where they're at. They manage though.
The nice thing about working with these kids is they all really want to learn English-they haven't been doing it 8 hours a day for the past 8 years like my Kwangwoon kids-and because they're at such a low level you can actually see progress from day to day. I was astounded on Wednesday-I gave them vocabulary words on Tuesday. I can in Wednesday expecting to have to go over them again, nope, got them all down. A great feeling as a teacher.

It's also nice to see how far I've come in communicating in Korean. A big part of being able to teach this low of a level is that I can understand a lot of very basic Korean. 10 months ago, I probably would have been really lost in the class. I don't speak Korean back to them(Im an English teacher after all) but when the kids ask me basic questions in Korean I can at least know what they're saying, before I would have been totally lost and probably thought they were making fun of me. In reality they're usually saying "What?" or "I don't know" or "Should I do this?" or "Did we have homework?" not "You're stupid" or "I hate you". It's refreshing to know the difference.

Although, on Thursday we had a 'dinner' with the kids where I taught them "Western table manners" (I was pretty nervous ME teaching table manners is kind of the blind leading the deaf.) anyway, it was a 3 course meal soup/salad steak(chop steak) and desert(jello). One of the girls(she's got to weigh about 30 pounds) says it's too much food for her. I tell her "No! I'm still hungry." and a Korean director tells her it's common for Americans to eat larger meals. So the girl points at me and says "America pig!"...touche Maria, touche...Although I told her it was generally a bad idea to say call anyone an American pig.

The kids are all great. I've grown to really, really, enjoy teaching them. Still couldn't stay another year though-I'm just ready to not be a foreigner anymore. At least for awhile.
And, while maybe I could teach in 40 years when Im retired and bored-I've got other skills to conquer...and well, you know, millions of dollars to make.

Anyway, I'm out.

Im home in 49 days by the way. So, you should all start getting excited about that.