Wanderer: Pepero Day!

Teaching my little kindergarteners is getting so entertaining. My director has put strict rules in place now that they can’t speak Korean at all in our school so their English has improved tremendously over the past month. I honestly feel bad for the kids at times. Being 5 years old and not being able to speak your own language in school for 5.5 hours would be awful. Some of the things my kids say now are so hilarious. Here are a couple examples of things I wrote down (keep in mind these kids went from knowing a few words to now starting to make sentences):

-Scott: “Dylan, wait for Scott!” Dylan: “Scott you need to hurry up. Dylan is finished!” … then Dylan proceeded to count to ten.

- Dylan: “Julie Teacher, I’m as hot as a fox” … haha I couldn’t help but laugh so hard when Dylan said that.

- Scott: “Scott’s Christmas tree is VERY big. Wonderland big!” Dylan: “Then you can’t sleep in the house. You need to sleep outside because it’s tooooo big”

- Kyle: “Julie Teacher, I’m finished” Me: “Ok, hold on Kyle” …two minutes later… Kyle (In an exasperated voice): “COME ON Julie Teacher!”

Kyle, one of my 7 year olds is way too smart for his own good. He’s always asking me questions like “Julie Teacher, what does this mean?” and is very curious to learn more. He is a lot smarter than all of his classmates so every time that I have the kids sit down and work on pages in their workbook, I sit next to Kyle because I know he will be the first one done. When he finishes, I usually will have blank pages for him and I make him do things like spell out words or solve random problems like writing out “we’re =” and he’ll have to write down the answers. I like to do sentence problems a lot where I’ll write down a sentence in the wrong order and he’ll have to unscramble the words to make the sentence. Lately, He’s been wanting to make sentences for me too so we switch off making them for each other. I love playing with this kid; he’s so funny.

This is an example of what I do with Kyle. The first time I wrote the sentence down for him to unscramble, Kyle looked at it and said, “Julie Teacher, Why two words with big (capital) letters? Why no dot (period)?” I couldn’t believe it; the damn kid was correcting me!

This is a page from my "Welcome to America" book that I teach in one of my Elementary after school classes. I was so pumped to talk about this particular page... :)

Two weeks ago we took a field trip to the mountain once again. It was fun as always. I love being outside! Anyways, we went on a little hike with the kids and the leader dude was telling the kids to walk like agimas “Old lady’s” and it’s easier to walk up this mountain… Sharon told me this and after I stopped laughing I took a picture of everyone. There was also a stray dog wondering the area with us. Sally Teacher was deathly afraid of him and hid behind me so that I would protect her. It was funny. He was harmless. Later Sharon told me she thought it may be the gas station owner’s dog that was down the street a bit.

Adam and Sharon walking like little old agimas.

This little area had a ton of Birch trees. They aren't nature to Korea, they were imported from somewhere. It was really pretty seeing all of them around though.

Jessica and the dog that was stalking us!

Maya playing on the swing.

Jessica and Sally Teacher

They were playing some Korean yard game.

A couple weeks ago was also Pepero Day. It’s a day that the guys working at the candy factory for Pepero decided to make a huge profit and declare one day a year in Korea as Pepero day so that all of the children will buy a crap ton of their products on that day and give it to their friends. But, I’m not complaining because the kids also bought Pepero for their teachers as well aka me! During my Kindergarten classes that day we made Pepero in my classes. It was really fun! I have some pictures with the 7 year olds. Maya, one of my students, took these pictures for me!

Kyle and Jason

The mid-day success. And yes, that implies that I got more...

I have come to really appreciate this town and the random people that live in it. There is a selective group of foreigners here so you’re stuck with what you get. The foreigners aren’t people I would seek out as friends at home but I kinda like that I’m stuck with them because they are so different from me and it’s fun getting to know them. Last week was Dan’s (the guy from MN that I go boxing with) Birthday. A group of us met up at WaBar for some drinks to celebrate his birthday. It was a fun Thursday night.