Kindergarten And Market Day

I am enjoying a nice cloudy day and thought I would go ahead and get this blog out of the way before the sun comes out (fingers crossed it is hopefully soon) and Ryan and I head out to explore the folk village (one of my favorite places from last years trip).

Ok so I might as well go ahead and knock both of these out at the same time, because well I don't really have to much to say about either.  Let's start with kindergarten this week and wrap up with a few quick words and photos of Market Day.

Monday was P.E. and well as always it was fun to watch the kids as they danced, laughed, and learned how to do different things.  This week they worked on balance again with some (more or less) build it yourself kind of balance beam, or well what we were using as one.  Most of the kids had a good time but yet again we had problems with one boy who felt the need to go around and push people off or cry when he could not get his way.  I was impressed because the P.E. teacher did not give in to him as he cried and pitched a temper tantrum like all of the other teachers (besides Ryan and I do).

We were told that we didn't have to work until 1 on Tuesday and that we would just be doing science classes  because they were going on a field trip but we got a call around 11:30 Monday night saying that the trip had been canceled and we needed to go in at our normal hours.  I showed up at 12:30 to teach my two sciences only to find out that the science kits had not come in yet so it was a movie day and I was not needed.  I was not too happy about this news seeing as how my next class was no until 3:20.  Lucky for Ryan we just happened to have an art project back  up plain for him to use instead of his one science class for the day.

Color, cut and paste flowers!

Wednesday was Market Day and yet again the kids were supposed to go on a trip but it got canceled.   Ryan and I went in at 11:30 to help get ready for the day ahead only to find out that we were now in charge of just watching the kindergartners as they ran wild through the school.  This was sadly not that much fun seeing as how they wanted to play our basketball and golf game that Ryan and I were setting up and well our kids really do not like to go by the rules, but some of them had a good time and were cute.  We finally got them all grouped together to watch a movie so we could finish working on what we needed to get ready for the day.

So what is a Market Day you ask?  Well very simply our kids get stickers for days they are good in class, do their homework, do well on a test and so on and so forth and a certain amount of stickers will get you a JC Dollar to use on Market Day.  They then can buy food, toys, or play games at different stations set up in the school.  Sadly a lot of our kids didn't have a whole lot of stickers and even some of our better, brighter students didn't have many.  Most of the bad kids are all in the same classes and all have the same teacher and they all some how ended up getting TONS of JC Dollars from Kevin teacher as he tried to bribe them. 

Grace and I got put in charge of the Beauty Salon doing tattoos and nails down on the sidewalk.  We felt bad for all the kids going buy that don't go to our school so we ended up doing a lot of "free" tattoos.  Even with the crazy pollen that has been going on by us I think Grace and I were the lucky ones because the school was such a mad house with kids running around everywhere. 

Ryan had to head out at 6 to teach his City Hall class, we worked on shutting everything down, packing up and cleaning.  The school was a mess, we had waffles with chocolate meaning that there was a sticky brown coating on everything, we also had chicken wings so there were bones and half eating chicken bits all over the school, and just trash everywhere.  Oddly Korean kids or well people in general really don't ever seem to think about the mess they leave behind them.  I headed home to pack, meet up with Ryan, eat some Korean Barbecue, and then meet up with Grace and Jasmine for some drinks. 

I am happy to say that was our week thanks to Children's Day on Thursday there were no classes and next Tuesday is Buddha's 2,555 Birthday so yet again no classes!  We took off Friday and Monday and are missing some of our kids but I am sure we will be alright. 

Some photos from the Market Party:

Some of the students chilling with Ryan watching a movie

Kelly showing off her new nails

Edward working on his golf swing

Albert working on his golf swing

The main market area

Cute little Hanna waiting for me to spin her around some more

What Grace and I spent the day doing

By the end of the day he had 1 tattoo on each hand, and 3 more on his face.

You know you want some nails like this!

And I am happy to say that now the sun is out so it is time to hop on over to the folk village and enjoy the afternoon!  Blogs to come later about our trip.  I hope everyone is having a great weekend.

2010/2011 Winter Intensive Speech Class

Ok I guess if I am going to do this blog I need to go ahead and do it!  Before our trip home for Christmas there had been rumors here and there about a "Winter Intensive Classes" I just more or less blew it off thinking it would be much like the "Summer Classes" we offered for the kids when they were out of public school to help give them an extra class to work on their English and well for most of the parents to help give their kids something to do all day.  Korean parents really hate to let their kids just sit around....ever! 

Well after our trip home we got a call at 12:10 on Monday from a coworker who seemed to just want to make small talk.  We were sadly still sleeping trying to catch up our jet lag and were not in the mood for random conversation.  Well when Ryan finally asked what they wanted we were informed that we had a class at 12:30 (not the 2:30 when we thought we had to be in), well sadly Ryan hung up the phone without even saying good bye so we could jump up and start to get ready.  We showed up at school about 12:45 and I was informed that I had a "Speech and Interview" class waiting for me, made up of 8 sixth grade students.  I was not to happy to say the least once I found out there were not any lesson plains for this class and it was going to meet everyday for an hour until January 1st.  My students, some of mine and Ryan's favorite, were not to happy to say the least either.  Oh boy this was going to be fun, some of our smartest kids, who are also our laziest kids, who don't want to be here, unless there is food, a movie, or a game being played. 

Anyways I racked my brain for ideas on what to do with this class.  Most of them have pretty good vocabulary and can do free talk pretty well; however, two of my sweet girls were not quite up to the level of the rest of the class and decided to try to use this to their advantage to get out of doing any work.  Sadly for them it didn't work but did lead for a lot of extra work and explaining on my part, but hey I am the teacher that is my job! So for the first two weeks of class we did just random questions that might get asked in a speech contest (I have never been to a Korean speech contest so I was just winging it)  and it went pretty good.  Korean kids don't always have the best imagination so some of the questions I asked forced them to try to think outside of the box, those were my favorites but they hated them and mostly used my examples as their answers. 

Here is a peek at the questions I asked them.  We would do a warm up for about half the class where I would write 2-3 questions on the board and I would ask them to answer them (in complete sentences) and then I would ask them to ask or interview a friend in the class the same questions.  For the most part they would answer the questions about themselves and then look at their friends page and just copy the answers they wrote down, enn I guess at least they did it. 

As I look back at these questions I start to think that it maybe a little hard for me to answer these.  I think I might have to give it a try later.

Questions For Winter Intensive Speech Class:


Tuesday January 4th:

1. Do you think doing homework is good or bad for you? Why?
2. Do you think that watching cartoons all day is good or bad for you? Why?
3. What is your favorite animal? Why do you like this animal?
4. What is your least favorite animal (animal you do not like at all)? Why do you not like this animal?
5. Do have a pet? What kind of pet is it? Is it a girl or a boy? What color is it? What does it eat?

Wednesday January 5th:

1. What do you think the best thing about school is? Why?
2. What do you think the worst thing about school is? Why?
3. What are two things you would do to make school better?
4. What is your favorite school subject? Why do you like this subject?
5. What school subject do you not like? Why do you not like this school subject?

Thursday January 6th:

1. Who is someone you respect and look to for advice (information) and support? Why do you look up to this person?
2. If you could have one super power what would it be? Why would you want this super power and what would you do with it?
3. What is your favorite thing to do outside? Why do you like to do this?
4. Do you like having to wear a school uniform? Why or why not?
5. If you didn’t have to wear a school uniform what would you wear to school?

Friday January 7th:

1. Do you think it is ok to litter (throw trash on the ground)? Why or why not?
2. What are two ways you think would help people stop littering?
3. Do you think it is good recycle? Why or why not? Do you recycle?
4. If you didn’t have to wear a school uniform what would you wear to school?
5. What Disney character would you like to be? Why?

Monday January 10th:

1. Who is your favorite family member? Why do you like this person?
2. What you think really happened to the dinosaurs?
3. What are three things that make you a good friend?
4. What would be your plan to get rich fast?
5. What would you do with all your money once you were rich?

Tuesday January 11th:

1. You are in jail, what did you do to get there?
2. What are 2 good excuses for missing English class?
3. You are a monster, tell me what kind of monster you are, what you look like, what you eat, and where you live.
4. What are 2 things you have learned so far in life?
5. What are 2 things you hope to learn in life?

Wednesday January 12th:

1. What is one bad thing that has happened to you?
2. What is one good thing that has happened to you?
3. If you could be any animal for a day what animal would you be? Why did you pick this animal? What does this animal look like? What color is this animal? What does this animal eat? Where does this animal live?
4. What are 2 different animals you can see at the zoo? What do these animals look like? What do they eat? Where do they live?
5. What are 3 things you are thankful for?

Thursday January 13th:

1. What is your favorite holiday? Why do you like this holiday?
2. What is another planet you would like to visit? Why do you want to visit this planet? What do you think it would be like?
3. Do you believe in aliens and UFOs?
4. What do you think it would be like to be kidnapped by aliens?
5. If you were invisible for a day what would you do?

Friday January 14th:

1. Do you have a hand phone?
2. Do you think it is ok for students to use their hand phones in class? Why or why not?
3. What are your goals in life?
4. What will you do to reach these goals?
5. Do you ever feel like it is ok to tell a small lie? Why or why not?

And then I, and well they, got sick of that plain so we started to work on one big main speech and well countries seemed like the best thing to write about.  So here are the questions they all had to find on the Internet and then write into their speeches (with the help of Ryan and I).  Following the questions are the speeches I still have saved from my students.  Sorry I know they are full of errors. 

Country Speeches:


1. What country are you doing?
2. What is the capital city of your country?
3. What colors are the flag?
4. Does the flag have anything special on it?
5. What is the national animal?
6. What is the national flower?
7. What sports do they play in this county?
8. What language do they speak?
9. What religions do they practice?
10. What holidays do they celebrate?
11. What kind of money do they use?
12. What kinds of food do they eat?
13. Where is this country located?


Crystal's:

Hi my name is Crystal. Today, I am going to tell you about France. The capital city of France is Paris. The colors of the flag are red, blue and white. The flag has red, blue and white rectangles. The national animal is the Gallic Rooster. The national flowers the fluer-de-lys, lily and iris. They play a lot of different sports in France like football, soccer, baseball and basketball. In France they speak mainly French. The main religion practiced in France is Catholic. In France they celebrate many different holidays like Good Friday, White Monday, and Labor Day. The money they use in France is called the Euro. They eat many different types of food in France like bread, cheeses, and fresh vegetables. France is located in Europe. Thank you for listening.

Ploby's

Hi my name is Ploby.

Today I am going to tell about Switzerland.
The capital city of Switzerland is Bern.
The colors of the flag are red, and white.
The flag is a red rectangle with a white cross.
Switzerland has no national animal.
The national flower is the Edelweiss
The play a lot of different sports in Switzerland like Ice- hockey, volley-ball, hand-ball.
In Switzerland they speak, German,French, Italian, Romanian and many more.
The main religion practiced in Switzerland is catholic.
In Switzerland they celebrate many Holidays like New Years Day, Labor Day, and Christmas.
The money they use in Switzerland is the Swiss franc.
They eat many different types of food in Switzerland like potatoes, cheese, and chocolate.
Switzerland is located in west central Europe.
Thank you for listening. 

Ben's
Hi my name is Ben.
oday I am going to tell you about France.
The capital city of France is Paris.
The colors of the flag are red, blue and white.
The national animal is the Gallic rooster.
The national flower is a lily and Iris.
They play a lot of different sports in France like soccer, basketball, baseball and short track.
In France they speak mainly French.
The main religion practice in France is Catholic.
In France they celebrate many different holidays like Labor day, Victoniaday and Christ day.
The money they use in France is called the Euro.
They eat many different types of food in France like cheeses, fresh salads, and breads.
France is located in Western Europe.

Alex's
Hi my name is Alex.
I today I am going to tell you about Russia.
The capital city of Russia is Moscow. The flag has white, blue, and red stripes.
The national animal is the brown bear.
The national flower is chamomile.
They play a lot of different sports in Russia like boxing. In Russia they speak mainly Russian.
In Russia they celebrate many different holidays like Christmas and Christmas is on January 7th.
The money they use in Russia is called the ruble.
They eat many different types of food in Russian like Potatoes, bread, eggs, meat, beef and butter.
Russia is located above China and Mongolia.
Thank you for listening.


Crisy's
Hi my name is Crisy. Today I’m going to tell you about France.
The capital city of France is Paris.
The colors of the flag are blue, white and red.
The flag has one blue, one white and one red stripe.
The national animal is the Gallic rooster. The flower is an iris and a lily.
The play a lot of different sports in France like foot ball, basket ball, and tennis. ln France they speak mainly French.
The main religion practiced in France is Catholic.
ln France they celebrate many different holidays like new year’s day, Labor day, and Bastille day.
The money they use in France is called the Euro.
They eat many different types of food in France like Baguettes (a long Thin loaf of bread) and crepes (thin pancakes).
France is located in Europe.
Thank you for listening.

John's
Hello my name is John. Today I am going to tell you about Portugal.
The capitol city of Portugal is Lisbon. The flag colors are red, green, yellow, white, and blue.
The flag has a red square, a green rectangle, a yellow circle, and a blue cross in the middle.
The national animal is the cock and the wolf. The national flower is lavender.
They play a lot of different sports like soccer, basketball, and auto racing.
They speak mainly Portuguese. The national religion is Roman Catholic.
They celebrate many holidays like Carnival which is in February.
In Portugal they use the Euro as their official money. They eat many different types of food in Portugal like fresh fish, lobster, crabs, and oysters. Portugal is located in South Western Europe in the Western part of the Iberian Peninsula. Thank you for listening.

Dean's

Hi my name is Dean.  I am going to tell you about Brazil.  The capital city of Brazil is Brasilia.  The colors of the flag are green, blue, white and yellow.  The flag has blue, yellow, green, and white stripes.  The national animal is the Macau, and Jaguar.  The national flower is the orchid.  They play a lot of different sports in Brazil like Basketball, Auto racing, volleyball, and soccer.  In Brazil they speak Portuguese.  The main religion practiced in Brazil Roman catholic.  In Brazil they celebrate many national holidays such as Corpus Christi day and Independence Day.  The money they use in Brazil is called the Real.  They eat many different types of food in Brazil such as root vegetables, yams, and peanuts.  Brazil is located in South America, next to Paraguay, Bolivia, and Peru.  Thank you for listening to my speech about Brazil.

Esther's

 Hi. My name is Esther. Today I’m going to tell you about Germany.

The capital city of Germany is Berlin. The colors of the flag are black, red and yellow. The flag has a straight pattern. The national animal is the Black Eagle. The national flower is the knapweed. They play a lot of different sports in Germany like soccer, and ice hockey. In Germany they speak mainly German, however you can also find English, French, Spanish and etc. The main religion practiced in Germany is Protestant. In Germany they celebrate many different holidays like Christmas, Easter and New Year’s Day. The money they use in Germany is called the Euro. They eat many different kinds of food in Germany like White Bean Soup, Sausage, Potato Dumplings, Fresh Asparagus and Apple Pan cakes. Germany is located in the center of Europe. It is by Belgium, France, Switzerland and Poland. Thanks for listening.

The kids took about 2 weeks worth of classes to memorize these. It started out with them just performing their speeches in front of Ryan and I, but then somehow someone wanted to turn it into a video to send home to the parents. Well this said teacher makes all my kids really uncomfortable so they didn't do too well. The next day they were having a snack and movie party; however this teacher thought that Ryan and I should take it away and make them present again, this didn't go over to well and none of them knew their speeches anymore. Ryan and I had to print them in very large print so they could read them off for the camera; however this didn't seem to help to many of them. Sadly they were angry and I can't blame them.


Anyways that was speech class and boy oh boy and I, and the students, thankful it is finally over!

English Camp 2011

January 25-26

This week Ryan and I got to go to our first ever English Camp! I feel a little bit bad saying it was not as much fun as I thought it would be and well I was shocked at the lack of English spoken.  I have many complaints about how camp went, the lack of fun activities, and the fact that the plain was a poorly thought out one to say the least however I mainly want to try to use this blog to share some of the photos I got and some of the poorly planed and dull events.

Ryan and I started our day out by heading in to school at 10 where we were greeted with tons and tons of invitations to fold, label, and stuff.  Around 10:30 we had a nice little assembly line working with some of our students when we were informed it was time to assign teams, and room assignments.  We only had on bus so half the kids went ahead to get their name tags and what not at came as we did the others in the lobby of the school.  By 11:30 kids were overly excited to go and when the bus showed back up at 12 they were bouncing off the walls.  They were short on seats on the bus so I got to sit in a special set by the front door that folded out of the wall and Ryan got to sit on the steps as we talked to the bus driver and found out one of his suns was in one of the middle school classes that had just moved up to high school.

The ride took us about 20-45 minutes and as we headed through the mountains we passed a nice big lake that was frozen and covered with snow where we could see people ice fishing.  The snow on the tress and in the mountains was quite a breath taking view and I could almost picture myself back home in the Smokey Mountains.  We arrived at the teaching facility to find the other half of the students waiting in a large room waiting for lunch.  Ryan gave a quick speech welcoming everyone to camp before we headed up to the main rooms for the teams and brook up for lunch. 

Ryan giving the opening speech:

After lunch we headed back down to the main area to start the "Mission Complete Challenges".  I was in charge of a mummy activity, and a pictionary game where a Korea teacher would sit behind me and show the kids the name of an animal and they would have one minute to act out as many as they could and have me correctly guess.  In order for them to move on to the next activity I had to correctly guess 7 animals in one minute.  Sadly this didn't go over to well seeing as how someone had added in animals like ostrich, mosquito, camel and so forth and I could not look over the list of animals before hand to even begging to have the slightest idea. 

Here are some very funny photos I got of the kids wrapping each other in toilet paper to make mummies:

Getting them all to stand still was not easy

Please note this mummy's super cool shoes, Ryan calls them pimp shoes

Time for the first group of kids to bust out of their mummy wraps

I really don't know what is going on here

This little boy was worried he wouldn't be able to breath

I think this team needed a little help

I think most of the students liked the mummy game the best.

Ryan was in charge of a game called "Word Search" where he gave each group a sheet of paper with words on it, and then a packet of paper, scissors, and glue and they had to cut out the letters they needed to make the words (sadly we had 10 teams with about 9 people on each team and only 10 pairs of scissors and Ryan had up to 4 or 5 teams at his station at some points). As Ryan ran this game he also had to run a "Tongue Twister Game" where the students had 30 seconds to get the tongue twister right before they had to start over and pick another one.

Some of the teams at Ryan's challenge.

The other teachers had games like "find the hidden scroll and translate it", "guess the capitals", "where's waldo", "rock, paper, scissors", and "catch the word" and well sadly most kids didn't find any of these games appealing or too exciting.

A photo of the winning team.  Some of my favorite students were on that team so I couldn't help but be happy for them when they came running up to me shouting that they had won.

Once we were done with all the challenges (about 5:00) we started the cooking contest back up in the team rooms.  I offered to help Anne teacher with her team that was making ham and cheese sandwiches.  Well the sandwiches didn't take long at all so once they were done the kids were now board and really hungry.  Dinner was not until 6 so I tried to entertain them with Home Alone 4 (a mix between Home Alone and Richy Rich).  Finally at about 6:30 I gave in and let my kids eat as I went to meet up with Ryan and a few other teachers to judge the food contest.  Sadly what the team made is what they were eating for dinner and some teams messed up their meal so we had a lot of hungry kids. 

Photos of my kids amazing sandwich making skills:

Giving everyone something to do when there are too many kids and only so many things to do to a sandwich turned out to be a challenge.  So one kid ripped lettuce, one kid washed it, one kid cut (or well finally chopped) the cheese (and ate most of it), one kid cut the meet, one put on the pickles and so on and so forth.

You can't really tell but Dean is over there "handing out with the coats"

Some of the other dishes the teams made.

After dinner the kids had about an hour (from 7-8) to write an essay about what they had been doing at camp and what they had learned.  Some of them were really great and others needed a little work but in all fairness our ages ranged from 8-12 so most of the little kids just drew us pictures.  Sadly I hate to admit but Ryan, I and a few other teachers were all about in tears over this one little boys drawing who is in a phonics level class, meaning he is still learning letter sounds, words, and well is very new to English so all in all we were quite proud he spelled everything right.  And well let me be honest, if I had to go to Spanish camp right now I couldn't do anything other than draw a photo and put together random words I know.

Working on their essays.

Next each team was given some blocks and an hour to make something and then write a short speech about why they made it.  Some teams came up with some pretty creative speeches. 

It's a windmill

Shopping cart

Another windmill.  This team did a good speech on how their team was like a windmill and that when they worked together they were a powerhouse....and sadly as good as it was I cannot fully remember all of it. 

All the projects

Then it was time for light out, but because Korea was playing Japan in soccer at 10:30 that really didn't happen.  Also because so many kids were still hungry our boss went out and got some mondu for all the teachers to fry up for them as a late night snack as we all got suckered in to a teachers meeting where a certain someone rambled for over an hour in Korean, accomplished nothing, and turned off the soccer game....I keep leaving to go check on the students.  A few girls were upset they couldn't hang out with me because they thought that was what English Camp was, and many boys were also upset because they wanted to watch the soccer game with Ryan. 

Photos of the kids before bed and as they watch the game:

Grace Teacher and some of her girls

Two of my favorite students

Andy going crazy watching the Japan VS. Korea game



Teacher what's wrong with my flag??



Sadly the next morning all the kids were upset because Korea lost after a great game.  Ryan and I popped up to pack up and get ready for the day ahead around 6.  We had some bacon and sausage delivered to us at 7:30 to cook up for the kids.  Around 8:30 Ryan and I were "summoned" down to the main room for the "early bird photo challenge" which turned out to be just us with each team getting our photo taken.  Some of the smarter kids quickly put together that it was not a challenge and there would not be a winning team and were not to happy. 

Breakfast:

Jasmine had her teams all sitting in a circle, passing the food around, and behaving.  It was quite a sight to see.

After about 1000 photos of us and the 10 teams were taken I could only find these to show for it, I really wonder what happened to the other ones. 

And then it was time for the award ceremony. Every student got a certificate for completing the 2011 Winter English Camp. For some reason the names on the certificates were in Korea and Ryan got to call all the kids up to the stage one at a time team by team. Sadly after only getting through one team Jasmine came up and called out the names and Ryan just got to congratulate the whole team as a whole for completing the camp. We also gave out awards for the best leader on the team to one girl and one boy, best essay (which somehow got messed up and the poor little girl that got first somehow got third and the winner was someone we didn’t even pick) and an award to the overall first place team.

Ruby getting her certificate of completion from our owner.

Some of the teams with their certificates.

Ester won the best teammate award for the girls.

Dean the winner for the boys of the best teammate

Sweet little Clara the winner of the essay constest.

Around 11 we loaded the first group of kids on the bus to head back to school.  Ryan and I were left behind with our boss and a few other teachers to wait for the next bus.  We were told to play "rock, paper, scissors" in hopes to amuse the kids but sadly that only worked for maybe 20 minutes before the kids got board and started running around like crazy. 

Here are some photos of the fun we got to have with some of the kids before loading up the last bus back to school. 

Ryan loved his pink earmuffs.....

And then the rightful owner wanted them back

And here are some photos of the snowy mountains. 

And last but not least a few photos of how they had the rooms set up.  There are no "western beds" rather traditional Korean style beds. 

Every room was set up for 4 people with floor mats, blankets and pillows in the closets.  There was a huge open area with a small T.V., then a small kitchen with a fridge, stove, and sink, and then of course the bathroom. 

Well I guess that is camp, for now at least.  This blog still needs a little work with some touching up here and there.  I am sure I will continue to remember things and add them later and I am still trying to think of how to describe somethings that happened but for now I guess this is a start.