Well, here I am again in the Land of the Morning Calm.
Things continue to be blissful in this job of constant
change. One never knows what is going to happen next.

Today the director took my picture to prepare for the
alien registration card I am going to need to get in
order to open a bank account when I finally get paid.
I must say getting paid once a month is going to be a
huge pain.

I ate at McDonald's today!! How is that for culture? I
came all the way to Korea to eat at McDonalds...kind
of funny if you ask me. Of course the funny part is I
was out with the head teacher learning where I am
going to be paying my bills at, and she bought a plant
for her classroom. I was nice enough to carry it for
her, and she bought me lunch. When we left, we forgot
the plant. We had to go back and ask the people at the
counter if they had it (of course the language barrier
made this interesting). We laughed over this.

This morning two of the five teachers were sick, so I
had to combine my class of kindergardeners with
another. It doesn't sound like a big deal, but when
the two classes are at different levels and are doing
different things, it becomes quite interesting. So,
there I am teaching two different lesson plans at the
same time to 12 6 & 7 year olds. It was an absolute
blast.

For play time we went to the just finished playroom.
It is like the play areas they have at some of the
fast food restaurants you go to: the pen with the
plastic balls, with the slide that goes into it, and a
little hammock under the stairs that lead to the
slide, all connected to a little fenced in trampaline
portion. Of course all of this on a floor that is
padded with what looks like yellow and red puzzle
pieces. It is not meant for 12 students, but they
managed to do alright with it.

During class, one of the students asked me why I had
green eyes. I am not sure if my eyes change color and
looked green, but that really isn't the point. How do
you explain genetics to a 6 year old? I told her that
my Dad's eyes were blue that seemed to satisfy her.

The afternoon was no picknick either. I was supposed
to take 4 students in my 4:30 class. Being game day I
didn't think this would be a problem boy was I
mistaken!! My class tends to be roudy, while the other
students were quite shy they didn't want any part of
my room. Eventually they ended up in the head
teacher's room playing together in their own group.

Then for my 6:00 class I had to take 6 students. Since
I only have 3 of my own at that time, it wasn't tooo
big of a deal. We played UNO with cards that seem to
be older than I am. After that we played Monopoly
which took a lot of explaining when it came to the
properties and the buying of houses. I was not having
the best of time playing, but I did it for the
children.

Now the UNO game was interesting. I though I knew how
to play, but they have some weird rules. Apparently
when you play a 7, everyone has to slap it. The last
one has to take 2 cards. When you play a 0, you can
change cards with any player. The word cards are
picture cards, and they will play the +2 and the +4 on
top of one another. It got pretty crazy: one time I
had to draw 16 cards!!!

I also found out today that one of my favorite
students may not be comming back. Where I teach is a
private school that is in addition to normal school,
and she is in high school now. She said the timing is
a little bad, so today MIGHT be her last day. She
didn't even know for sure.

Today was not game day for my 3:00 class. We retook a
test that they all did really bad on, and most did
really bad again. It wouldn't have upset me quite as
much, but we went over the test yesterday, and I gave
them the answers after telling them we were going to
take it again the following day. I guess you have to
learn that these things happen with 8 y/o.

Well, after I corrected their tests, I proceded to go
over it with them again. While I was doing this, they
tipped back in their chairs. As I am always telling
them to keep thier chairs on 4 legs, I made them
stand. One by one the whole class ended up standing.

So there I am, standing at the white board, marker in
hand, writing down the most commonly misspelled words
on the test. The whole class (6 students)is standing
at attention at the table. We start to recite the
spellings of the words and proceed into plurals (the
-s and are vs. is).

They decided I was a drill sargent and they started
saluting me. It worked, so I used it to my advantage.
When we all sat down we chanted the spelling words
again and again. I am going to be spelling 'chicken'
in my sleep for years to come.

I found lettuce at the store today!! I didn't get any,
but it is apparently not easy to find fresh looking
lettuce. I also had coconut jello. It wasn't too bad,
but not really what I was expecting. It had chuncks of
something in it, but I am not sure what it was: it
wasn't coconut.

I decided that the rule of not eating something that
has ingrediants you can't pronounce can not apply
here. When the ingrediants are listed (which seems
rare) it is in Korean, so I can't understand it
anyway. As of yet I haven't devoted the 2-3 hours to
learning the pronounciation of the Korean Alphabet, so
I can't even pronounce what is there.

Which reminds me, I went to the book store last night.
They have Korean alphabet magnets!!! I am so excited
(it really is the little things). I am going to get
some and put them on my refridgurator. Maybe they can
be a teaching tool for me as well. I guess we will
have to wait and see.

That is all I have to report from my somewhat boring
life :) How are things on that side of the world? All
the news I receive is welcome.