I was not really looking forward to heading back for another week of work today, but it was actually a really good day. I did miss my kindergarteners, though…they were gone during our regular class time. I’m not really sure why. No one tells me anything around here. I offered to make up the class today or tomorrow, but they didn’t take me up on it. I was kinda sad. Now that I know what I’m doing with teaching this alphabet nonsense and have prepared most everything I need, it’s really not a bother to teach it, but I guess they didn’t want to overburden me or something. I will miss teaching them this week—they’re great kids! It was nice to have the extra time, though, because I had to revamp my lesson for fifth grade. They took my projector on Thursday afternoon, and it’s still not back yet! It means I can’t use the books, which is okay, but I also can’t use any other multimedia and that sucks. It’s hard to be inventive! Plus, I’m at the stage in their lesson called “Listen and Repeat.” There are supposed to be these dialogues they listen to that are maybe not all that useless. I mean, I’m not about to act out a silly contrived English dialogue involving the phrase “What a tall tower!” I’d rather let the CD do it. So we just skipped that today. We’ll see how they picked it up on Friday, when I see them again. I only ended up teaching that one lesson today…a nice turn of events.
In the afternoon, I was visited again by my little friend. I think she actually understands my English okay. I was thinking about this today. Maybe because she’s a little slow, she’s not used to completely comprehending language and can read bodies better or something. At any rate, I told her I needed to work and she actually looked at her book on her own and was relatively quiet for a while. Then, being the mean person I am, I decided I might as well help her study her English, so I had her copy my ABC chart!!! Ha ha ha! A through Z, upper- and lowercase, and then she copied the words that went with each! She was supposed to draw the pictures, too, but she either didn’t understand what I asked her to do or was beginning to see through my evil plot. She left me shortly afterwards. But the end result was that I finished my lesson plans for tomorrow, including the SK convo class, as well as three others for later this week, all by 3:30! I think I’m becoming a lot faster at lesson planning, just as I suspected in the beginning would happen. I am so glad I don’t have to come home and lesson-plan!
I went to the post office after work to mail off the last of my letters to the Oakmont kids. (I sure hope they write me back, ‘cause I’m not writing to all of them again without some reciprocated love!) As I was leaving, this lady stopped me to chat. At first I thought she just knew a few key phrases—where are you from and what is your name—but I quickly realized she is the best English speaker I’ve encountered in the last two weeks (since I saw Bianca, who is obviously better). I guess she’s lived in the U.S. before and has studied in Europe (in English, of course). We chatted for a bit, and then she walked me home. I guess maybe we’re going to hang out some so she can practice her English before she goes back to Hungary to study in a month. Too bad she’s so much older than me—she must be in her late 40s, at least. Not really a potential friend. But it would be nice to just talk to someone, especially someone who really knows Hongsan. I guess she actually graduated from my elementary school and is back here visiting her mother. I bet she’ll be able to tell me some cool stuff about the area.
On the way home, she asked me if I’d ever tasted pam (chestnut). These trees are seriously everywhere around here. Maybe they’re a specialty of the area? I don’t know. I definitely thought my co-teacher was joking when he said these trees had fruit on them, though. They look like spiky green balls. But I guess there’s a chestnut inside. I actually hadn’t eaten a chestnut before (only in some bread we had the other day) and she mentioned this to my host mother when we met her outside. So of course, we had about 10 tons of pam tonight. They’re pretty good, but a lot of work—there are a couple of layers you have to peel off the outside, even once you get past the spiky green outside, and they’re really soft, so they fall apart easily. I guess we have some chestnut trees on our farm, maybe? I couldn’t really follow their conversation at all.
And now I’m chillaxin. It’s raining again (stupid typhoon!), but I already got my walk in so it’s cool. Here’s hoping tomorrow brings me that promised box of vegetables!