Not done much Friday

Good thing I'm going out tonight, because today was full of nothing! I pimped some more worksheets, and added fun sounds to my slide-shows. Yup, that's it.

Oh, and I paid my gas bill. Which was suspiciously small... there might be something wrong there, but oh well :)

No snacks Thursday.

Another day of make-work today. 

I know, I'm like a worksheet artist now.

I have probably got about two to three months of after school lessons planned now as well as two weeks of Christmas lessons and three weeks of winter camp. I've been a bit bored today, but I got stuck into planning tomorrow's after school class so that it is hopefully really good. That's the class I've been asked to make easier, so I have used a student workbook as a base, and focused in on a very small area of vocabulary and sentence structure, and then just go over that again and again in different ways. I've got a power point of the stuff, some worksheets, two speaking exercises, and an awesome power point game I modified to fit the topic/ target language. I doubt we'll have time to get through it all, but there is a lot of variety of activities, but a lot of repetition of language. With any luck this will be easy enough to satisfy the boss, but varied enough not to bore the more advanced students to tears. I went all out and my ppt presentation has animations and everything. Man is it tricky to get pictures that match verbs though! I managed fairly well, I think. I am especially looking forward to trailing the speaking tasks.

It's Thursday, so I have had no classes at all today. Just desk work. Man, do I need a good stretch now!

In other news, my busy weekend, just got busier, with an invite to go with Courtney and Jen tomorrow to a foreigner bar in Suwon. So, out Friday night, out at the conference all day Saturday, and then out all day Sunday in Seoul for the ice-hockey. Awesome :) I might be bored at work, but at least I'm not bored the rest of the time!

Also, I am starting the war against snacking. I have developed a very bad habit of eating crap ALL the time. My excuse is that I'm trying new things, but it has to, if not stop, then at least slow down. So, "Hello, my name is Sam and I'm a snack-a-holic. I've been snack free for 19 hours". Basking Robbins once a week does not count. Neither does fruit.

And, for something interesting to do (if not to watch), I made a video of my walk home from the bus :)

Slooow Wednesday

So, I am sitting here trying to find things to do. I have made another nice worksheet, this time for use in my after school class. 

I've reached a bit of a difficult patch concerning the 1st grade after school class I teach Tuesdays and Fridays. I think I've said they are a bit of a pain, mostly because there are two girls who are very outspoken and good at English (for their level), two students who are about where I think they should be, and two who basically need to go back and learn the alphabet or something. So, it is a challenge to keep the advanced ones busy, give the middle ones a chance to speak and answer, and keep the really low ones engaged. I have actually not managed it at all so far. I can cope with the middle and top students, but I am really losing the two lower guys.

I think I also said that one of the staff room ladies is coming to this class now too. She's there to half help me with the lower ones, and half because she wants to improve her own English. So, naturally, she's sat next to the problem kids. I thought this was going to be really good, but after class yesterday, it turns out she'd telling Mr Beak my classes are too hard. He told me I need to make them a lower level. This is fine, I don't mind that at all, BUT what about everyone else? The two top girls get everything 90-95% correct, the middle ones are somewhere in the 70's, so I feel I'm about right on that count. The lower ones, however, will barely look at the worksheets (probably because they have no idea what they say). I tried to explain this, but Mr Beak kept talking over the top of me in Korean to Chloe (the offending office lady). I think he understood what I was trying to say, but then just started saying something about next year, and how I need to make winter camp really easy and stuff. Well, that's all good... I can certainly make lower level lesson plans. 

Sadly, what I was teaching yesterday was already an elementary grammar point (and these are almost 2nd year middle schoolers). All we were doing was categorising nouns into 'can count' and 'can't count', and then using the correct quantifier (I'd simplified it down to only much, many, and a lot of). The whole rest of the class, by the end of the lesson, were free forming correct sentences from a picture I put on the OHP. They were saying things like "There are many trees", "there are many children", "there is a lot of trash", etc. They were even getting the 'is/are' difference correct. Just this one kid, the one Chloe was next to, could only look at the picture and burst out with "trees!", or "people!". He looked so proud of himself for these words. And he can totally almost do the worksheets if Chloe helps him in Korean, he just can't speak or respond to questions from me.

So, the boss is telling me to dumb it down, but in my opinion that's ruining it for 5/6 students. I'm not too sure what to do. Luckily (or maybe unluckily because I actually don't get a chance to solve the problem) I have only two more lessons with them left anyway. Come next year, they will be new students in that class, so I actually will have to dumb it down to basics. I'm looking at some new textbooks that might help me do this. With higher level learners, you've got a bit more leeway, but I feel lower level students need language to be covered in a really systematic way so they can kind of get 'building blocks' to work with. Being such a new teacher, I don't have much idea of how to go about this, so a beginner text book would be good. I do have some at school to work with, but they seriously lack a speaking component. Some of them have no speaking at all! That's fine though, I can obviously just design my own speaking activities. Ideally, I'd like a book not made here in Korea though, I am not particularly impressed with them so far.

Ok, enough about work. It's almost lunch time - woohoo!

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Wow, ok, lunch sucked! Stale-ish bread roll with a small amount of chobbled lettuce-mayo salad and some kind of meat cut into 1cm square bits and sprinkled 5 to a roll; a tiny pro-biotic yoghurt drink; kimchi; spicy octopus salad; and an incredibly bland, incredibly thick chicken rice soup. It wasn't bad tasting, so much as no-tasting. Ah well, that pretty much sums up my feeling about today so far. It's pouring with rain and has been all day. Which mirrors my mood pretty well. I had bad dreams all night and woke up this morning a bit down and a bit homesick. It's not that I actually want to go home, but I miss it.

*sigh*

Only four hours till home time.

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Well, after school class went really well, and it's made my day much better :)

And now I've got a hot chocolate... perfect.

100th post Monday!

Ok, the end of the day is nearly here. Well, the school day, anyway. This is my first 'official' day of preparing for my two weeks of Christmas lessons and winter camp. I've worked really hard today, and time has flown by! Seriously, the day has gone so quickly. The only problem is, that now all I have left to do is to photocopy and slightly modify some workbook pages so they suit my purpose and teaching style better, and then I'm done. Like, fully done. Maybe I will plan a second winter camp? I was just going to use modified versions of the same stuff for all three grades, and I probably still will, but making a new camp will fill in my time some more. Look, I have enough time to make my worksheets pretty! This is one of the sheets I made today. I didn't actually make any of the art or anything, it's basically just a collage with my own worksheet material arranged on it.

Just this morning I found out, through Facebook, not through my job or anything (!), about a ESL Korea conference for my area on in Suwon this Saturday. There are some speakers talking about things like teaching techniques, classroom motivation and interesting sounding stuff like that. And it's only $15 to go, and we get dinner. So, I've signed up to go to that on Saturday. I'm really looking forward to it, I missing some of the academic type stimulation I've gotten so used to! And it's being held at Suwon university, so I get to go and check out a Korean university too! I am a bit of a nerd, huh? Oh well.

Then there's another ice-hockey game on Sunday that I am going to go to. Laura's going to that too, and probably bringing some friends, so that should be nice. I actually have stuff planned every weekend from now until Christmas. Not that that is actually that many weekends away!

I've not done much today other than lesson plan, eat lunch, and travel on the bus :) My after school class is soon, and hopefully that goes well! It's the class that can either be really sweet, or devils from hell, so I never know how's it's going to go :) MMmmm... left over pizza for dinner :)

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Ok, after school class went well. We were still working on quantifiers, and really started to make some progress. Slight change of plans with the pizza for dinner though. Courtney messaged me and wanted to know if I wanted to do another Korean BBQ with her as she had a craving. Of course I do! So, now I have to stay up until 10pm before I can have dinner. Normally, I wouldn't do that on a Monday night, but seeing as I have bugger all to do at work this week, I feel ok about it. Plus I was reading that the best way to make friends is to almost never say no to an invite (unless you don't want them as a friend, of course), so I'm going with that :)

And here's a couple more photos from the zoo that I stole of Laura:

Christmas dolphins!

I didn't buy my hat, but Laura did!

Christmas dolphin posing.

Woooo! And this is my 100th blog post! Well done me :)

Custard Chickens Sunday

Today was my trip to the zoo with Laura. We had a great day!

Well, first things first, I made my second attempt at Pa-Jeon this morning, and the came out great! They are my breakfast for the next few days. Then I went to the subway station and caught the train an hour into Seoul to the Zoo. Laura had a bit of trouble getting there, ad was a little late, but it was actually a good thing because as I sat waiting, I noticed this shop in the subway station selling bird shaped pastries. After watching for a minute, I decided to try some and just pray there was no red bean paste hiding in wait. I was in luck! They were delicious little birds filled with custard. They were the perfect size to eat in two bites, which gave me the luxury of first biting off their tasty custard head. Who doesn't love a headless chicken?

Making Pa-Jeon.

It tastes better than it looks!

Custard chicken shop

Mmmm, custard chicken.

Anyway, when I finished my snack, an old Korean guy sat next to me and shoved something in my face. He was giving me some tteok, or rice cake, to eat. Oh, the horrors! Not only do I dislike rice cakes, but this was an extra special read bean variety! I was trying to be polite, so I took it and started to eat it. Then, the old guy on the other side of me (not to be out done by the first guy) gave me a mandarin. I chatted to them for a minute, and then pretended I had to go to the bathroom, but secretly I was ditching the red bean rice cake :-D. Luckily, Laura showed up just then, so we went to the zoo.

Ew. Red bean tteok.

It was a bit of an overcast day today, but pretty warm compared to some of the days this past weeks, so that was nice. It did rain on us later in the day, but we got a good walk around the zoo in before that. We took the chairlift to the zoo entrance, which was really nice, and we discovered we are both scared of getting on and off chair lifts :-D Once we got to the zoo, we just explored, watched the seal and dolphin show, saw a hippo do the most epic hippo poo in history (seriously, it wagged its tail REALLY fast and flung poo everywhere!! It was like a poo propeller). And we took photos and Laura bought a winter hat that is a tiger's head. Korea must be getting to me because this seemed totally normal, and she didn't even look weird or stand out wearing it. I tried these tiny ice cream ball things that weren't that great, and some BBQ squid, which was also not great.

Chair lift ride.

I'm being an otter.

THE hippo

This elephant gave every impression of dancing to the music that was playing. It was weird.

Ice cream balls.

Beaver!

Creepy sloth.

Mmmm, BBQ tentacles.

About 3pm we decided to call it a day, and I caught the train home. I had a really good time! On the way home I decided I wanted to splash out and get a pizza for tonight and tomorrow night's dinner, so I did. Luckily, the Korean for 'peperoni pizza' is 'bepaloni bi-ja', so that's what I got :-D Yum!

Cute pizza box. They give you gherkins with pizza here.

Mmmmm, pizza.

Not too much Sun Saturday

So, the plan was to go outside to get some sun today - but there is not a ray to be seen. It is super overcast, and quite dark and grey. I gave it a go though and went for a walk through some Osan streets I haven't been down before. There wasn't really anything there except for more fried chicken and beer joints, but it was fun looking.

Then I made my way to E-Mart to do next week's shopping. I got an ice cream, mint choc-chip, and bought my groceries. I didn't have any food for lunch, and the selection of ready-meals caught my eye. At home I pretty much wouldn't be caught dead eating one of these things, but for $4 this curry and naan wasn't too bad! The naan was a bit bready, but it all tasted good, and was very fast to microwave :)

In the interest of cutting down on my massive Korean snacking habit I've stocked up my fruit bowl. The bananas have a 'Merry Christmas' sticker on them.

Thrilling fruit bowl.

So far, I've been having a wonderful time today. I really love living alone! I'm not sure why, but I do. I can just do whatever I want, when I want, how I want, with no real worries. If I want to cook pancakes in my undies while dancing to 'Mr Saxobeat' I totally can. Ummm, not that I do that... *cough*.

No Teaching Friday

I've been lesson planning hard out today! I have not had any teaching at all, and as a result have pretty much finished planning two whole weeks worth of Christmas lessons. The lessons I have the next two weeks off teaching to plan. I'm pretty Christmas-ed out now, actually. I've listened to carols to make work sheets, copied a hunderd different pitures of Santa, reindeer, turkeys, christmas trees, and presents for all my powerpoints, and I've watched 'Merry Christmas Mr Bean', 'Shrek the Halls' and 'Spongebob's Christmas Special' and make vocab sheets, worksheets, and discussion exercises for all of them. Thank goodness Christmas stuff is pretty much non-existant outside of my lesson planning, I'd go insane(er). I think I have seen one small mention of Christmas in one shop's window, and one display of Christmas trees in E-Mart. So far, that's it, and with only one month till the big day, that is an epic absence of Christmas Crap! I must say, I am not missing it at all. Many of the people I've met with say how they think they'l feel crappy on Christmas being away from their families, but it's just a day right? Our family was kind of already going off the whole thing before I left, so them and I both will probably all but ignore it this year :) Though, I do like any excuse for a celebration and am planning on buying myself the Sim's Pets expansion pack, and a big banana split from Baskin Robbins. That sounds just right!

So, dinner with Courtney and Jen on Wednesday night was great. It had stopped 'snowing' by the time I went out at 10, but was bitterly cold. The BBQ place was toasty warm, though. We got pork cheek to BBQ, and it was a great cut of  meat. Just enough fat to keep it flavourful, and really tender. I'd look for it again. The girls were good company, and Courtney told us about a buffet place in Suwon that sounds amazing, so we will hopefully plan a trip there maybe next weekend.

As for this weekend, I've cancelled my Saturday plans. I was going on a big walking tour, but after looking at the subway website, it going to take me two hours to get there (so two home again as well), and I just don't feel like it. So, I'm going to have a home day, and hopefully go for a walk and get some sun. I've been feeing a bit crappy these last few days, and I think it's because I don't get outside much during daylight. I get on the bus when the sun is low, spend all day inside school, and by the time I get out, it's dusk. So, sun outside for the weekend, and I'm trying to hang out outside during lunch as much as I can, even if it's freezing. Literally, freezing - all the puddles froze solid yesterday. They'ce defrosted now, but it's only a matter of time untill they stay that way :s

On Sunday, hopefully, Laura and I are going to go to the zoo. That reminds me, I'd better facebook her to confirm. That should be fun, and I bought some snazzy (fake) leather gloves yesterday, which should help keep my hands warm :)

My after school class has been cancelled AGAIN. Wihtout notice. Well, ok, an hour's notice. So, now I have to sit here for two more hours. The reason, I have no idea. I'd just finished my photocopying, and Mr beak told me I had no class. So, no class at all today. And did I tell you I've moved desks? I think I mentioned it last post, but now it is a reality. I have to sit in the English classroom all day instead of the teacher's room... for no apparent reason. If I want to print of photocopy, I have to bring my laptop down to my old desk and print from there. So, I have to work while Mr Beak is teaching all the classes, and then sit alone in an empty classroom while he;s not. Or he comes and works in there too, because he prefers it, but there's only one desk, which he leaves fo me, so he sits at the kids table and works there. It's really not ideal for anyone, but from what I gather, if the vice-principal wants it, you just do it and ask how high. Or something like that. Weird, but luckily, it's only a little annoying. In terms of crappy work stuff, it is very mild. At least the English rom is well heated. And I actually think my chair in there is better for my back. I have this reccuring shoulder pain, and it happens at my teacher's office desk, but not in the English classroom. So, maybe moving is actually a good thing.

Um, in other news, I have made a nice lot of nachoes for the next few days, which are very yummy. I'm planing on attempting to make some biscuits tomorrow to take to the zoo on Sunday, and I want to re-attempt the savoury Korean pancakes I kind of failed at two weeks ago. I have read that the packet mixes of batter are actually really good and yeild better and more consistent results that making your own from dry ingrdients, so I'm going to try that. The packet mixes are cheap, and very available, and I'll buy some marinanra mix to add. I will photograph and report the results next week.