Today was seriously just a gem of a day. It began with this outrageous comment made by my co-teacher as I walked into work. At first, I couldn’t even understand what he said, and then I could hardly hold back my laughter. I mean, honestly. Good-lookingest is probably the best phrase I’ve ever heard! I feel bad making fun of it, because it was a nice little compliment, but…well, life is boring here in the countryside. I look for fun where I can find it. It must have something to do with the language, too. I find myself laughing uproariously at comments that I would hardly have smiled at before, simply because it’s a relief to understand what’s going on!
Anyway, I had some stellar lessons with some of my favorite classes today. I’ll be honest and say that I do have a favorite class—first grade. They have some of the cutest kids, including the boy who stole my heart, and they are so enthusiastic! They come into class and are seriously bubbling over with joy. Every last kid. Many of them imitate every word I say—not out of malice, but because they are so excited to learn English from me! Their memories are amazing. They already say “Very good” after everything they do well (because I always say that), and after being told the words for “teacher” and “thank you” only a few times, some of them already use them regularly. Today we were working on the alphabet (we’re only up to M/monkey and N/nut) and they were almost shouting out the letters and words as we went through them. And when I was showing them how to write M and N (because they kept writing them backwards), they clapped their hands after each letter and shouted, “Very good!” Oh, I could go on forever about the cuteness that is Hongsan’s first grade, but I’m already going overboard. The first grade teacher, Kyoung He Sam, is my favorite teacher. She’s probably the most helpful with classes and gets the most involved (though, of course, it doesn’t take that much for her. Certainly all the teachers are familiar with the alphabet!). I think she is a really excellent teacher, though, and I could learn a lot from her about classroom management. When the kids get too excited, they do this funny little cheer that calms them down. I thought it was in Korean, but it’s really just in nonsense. She explained it to me today. Basically, you do the hand motions and sound of something frying twice, then clap twice, something boiling twice, clap twice…well, it sounds weird written out. It’s awesome to see a classroom full of first graders do it in fast motion! You’ll have to take my word on that.
The rest of my lessons were good, but unremarkable. The funny thing about today was the amount of little gifts I got from the students. Sometimes they will insist that I eat some of their snacks (which is fun for me…I get a nibble of everything!) but today, several students presented gifts to me that they’d brought specifically from home. A third grade girl gave me some chestnuts, and a fifth grade girl gave me a muffin her mother had made. It was so nice! And I was bombarded by the usual little extras. This one sixth grade boy gives me cookies and/or candy EVERY SINGLE DAY!!! Maybe he has a little crush. Too bad I’m not a couple years younger…he’s pretty cute! Just kidding!
I had lunch today with some third-graders. My usual third-grade friend, Ee bin, was mad at me ‘cause I didn’t sit with her, but hopefully she’ll get over it. I had another packed lunch today. My host mother has taken to collecting her own copy of the week’s menu, so she can prepare my lunches when “needed.” I really think I can afford to skimp on one meal per day every once in a while, but instead I am overly stuffed for that meal. And I always forget to bring home the leftovers! Oops.
This afternoon was great, too, because I got all my lessons planned through Thursday afternoon. I knew lesson planning would go more quickly once I got used to it, and it has. This afternoon, though, I spent a while making some games to go with my lessons, and that took more time. I am satisfied that from here on, I will not have to bring work home. At least, not very often. That makes me very happy…I like to go home knowing I’m DONE for the day. Wednesdays and Thursdays are so busy for me that I was worried, but hopefully I’ll still manage. Overall, I feel very accomplished for the day, and there’s no better feeling than that, in my opinion!
Kim Eun Soon and maybe some other teachers have offered to take me to the Baekche Cultural Festival in Buyeo next week, and that should be fun. It’ll be a really big deal, I think, since Buyeo was the capital at that time and Koreans are really into their history, and I should learn a lot. I’m looking forward to it.
I mentioned I was going next week to the engineering guys in my conversation class (it met again tonight), and they offered to take me, but I already had a date. We actually had a really good lesson tonight. I made them give introductory speeches and talk to me about themselves. Basically, what I planned to do last week, but was too frightened by the prospect of teaching actual adults to do. I learned that they actually live in a building behind the office during the week, and only see their families during the weekends. That must be really hard! I think they are keen to make friends with me, if only for the diversion in this small town (and the English help I can provide, of course!). It makes much more sense now that they don’t mind having our lessons in the evenings. I had felt bad earlier that I was keeping them from their families, but I’m really just keeping them from boredom. Why not learn English, when you are stuck in a small town and have nothing else to do? This one guy who is very talkative and opinionated wants to meet with me separately, even, to practice! We’ll see about that…I think they’ll have to entice me with promises of food and beverage. I have to say this for them, though…they always do come through with good food at every meeting. This time, it was Asian pears, grapes, and peaches (maybe? It’s hard to tell without the peel, honestly. I’ve found that here, NO ONE eats fruit with peels—it’s basically forbidden!) But now there is talk of taking me out drinking, which I fully support. I had been dreading this class all day and thinking I should try to wiggle my way out of one class per week, so I was really glad it went well.