An hour away from a six day weekend. Tomorrow is the school's birthday, Friday is May day, then comes the weekend where a picnic is is the plans (weather permitting) and Monday's classes got forfeited for an extra day off before Children's Day is celebrated on Tuesday. This is a holiday I desperately need before the final three months on my contract.
Last Thursday we had a field trip to a Space museum out on the main island off of Incheon (the name escapes me now). It took just over an hour and a half to get there and we stopped off at a fortress to have a potty break for the kids which they used by buying more snacks and toys from the convenient store. 
The space museum is privately owned and they did a great job. 
There were three floors of rides and information all about space. The older kids were a tad bored but the young ones seemed to love it. 
Luckily it was a one of the few sunny days of the month and we were able to eat outside. 
First graders taking a break from rolling down a grassy hill. 
Fifth grade girls before security yelled at them for climbing on stuff. 
Sixth grade boys trying to convince me that the prawns they were eating were actually chicken. 
More first graders. 
Water fights helping in the digestion process. 
Kindergartners doing their thing and looking cute. 
After lunch we wandered around the outside gardens. Here is Robot land. 
A couple of the moving dinosaurs in Dino Ville. 
Ending the day with tube rides down the hill. Good fun and much better than teaching.
I download the Best of YouTube podcast to my iPod each week and loved last week's clip. Somebody should have been policing Saejin when he decided to spend some money at Soho and ordered a bottle of Vodka at nearly 3am.
My co-teacher has been grinding on my nerves for the past couple of months and today after her incompetence in class yet again I finally called her on it and we had a blow out. Here are the top ten reasons I hate working with her:
1. She doesn't listen. If I ask her something I get a blank expression from her. If students call out flashcards many times they are saying the wrong answers and she doesn't catch the mistakes.
2. She runs everywhere in a panic.
3. She runs everywhere in a panic in high heeled slippers.
4. She sees the younger kids as cute and talks to them in a fake baby voice instead of as a teacher talking to students.
5. She walks around while the students are doing worksheets or working in pairs and instead of helping them she asks them important distracting questions about their pencils cases or what they like to eat.
6. She reapplies make-up for lunch.
7. She told me once that boys are more important than girls in Korea so we should help them more with English.
8. She teaches to the same high leveled students everyday instead of forcing the poor ones to be involved in class.
9. She doesn't listen. I've asked her to teach the flashcards a certain way so that they will be prepared for a later test (making them translate Korean into English) and she refuses because she thinks the class should be all in English. I also agree it should be all in English but the test is set up for them to translate and I can't help them here. Without practice the kids fail the test as we learnt last year.
10. She is useless. I want Betty teacher back.
The playoffs are currently going strong on the computer this morning. I know things look bad for the Flames but I want to believe they will beat Chicago. (They won't but I will still watch.) My predictions are Boston, Washington, Carolina and Philly out of the East in the first round. Anaheim, Detroit, St.Louis and Chicago in the West. I will also pick the final right now as Carolina vs Detroit with Detroit repeating as the Champions.
Some day's work is hard (I'll post a top ten reasons why I hate working with my co-teacher soon) but usually it's a breeze and today was a great Chinook of a day. Ten minutes down the highway from our school is another teeny tiny school like ours and so when things get planned for extra curricular activities our schools join forces to cover the costs. Today was a sports day. Today was also the first rainy day of the season. I have to admit I hoped the whole thing would of been put off until next week but I wasn't so lucky. Come three o'clock we were told to head downstairs for a barbecue. It worked out because they popped open the tents, set up tables and the best part was that there was home made makoli along with a box of soju to go round. With the rain pouring down it looked like the volleyball game was off.
As the first floor filled with the smoke from the fried pork and drinks were consumed the rain slowed to a drizzle. The planned game was suddenly back on. The winning school would have a dinner paid for out of the other school's funds so the pressure was on. It didn't look good for us when the other school brought along their four army workers along to play. (These guys work in public school's instead of going to the army for several different reasons including well connected parents.) We had three teachers play, the head of the PTA joined us and our head teacher (the only woman brave enough to take on the acid rain). It was five vs eight. It was also muddy, fun and we came out on top.
My favorite part was when the two principals joined their respective teams and then all rules left the game. They both were like children playing a board game against a parent and when they touched the ball no matter what happened the respective Principal's team got points. I was definitely confused but when all the others agreed with the call I just went along.
With spring there is nothing better than airing out the house with every possible window wide open and creating a breeze. The one problem with this is the screens in Korea don't always shut as tightly as they should, inviting the mosquitoes in for their nightly meal. Last night I killed my first hungry mosquito at 3:00 am. No more airing out the house after dark and time to reload on the mosquito pads that are sold here.
It's spring so that means I start actually jogging instead of talking about it and it also means it's time to post pictures of the flowers. Here goes:
Around School:
Around the neighbourhood:
Boramae Park:
In defense of the North Koreans testing out their missiles last week, Friday was rocket day at school. Kids build and launch their own rockets to protect the ROK (Republic of Korea for those not in the know). We do this every year and it's a day the kids get all excited for and as an innocent bystander I love to watch it. It's basically an afternoon where the kids build rockets out of old pop bottles. The bottom half is half full (half empty?) of water and you then connect the rocket to the air pump where it's pressurized and once ready you release the rocket by the hand held bicycle brake. Winners in each grade then get to compete city wide of the title of best rocket. 
Here, Jung Hui and Tae Hoon wager money on the winning rocket. 
The fourth grade class missed our after school English class for this. (I'm not complaining.) 
My favorite class in the school are the sixth graders and their teacher had me take a million pictures of them. They have a special yearbook made up at the end of the year and need pictures of everything they did in them. 
Third grade students looking cute but minutes earlier they held my phone and camera hostage after I passed it on to them while I beat up a kid who tried to "dongshim" (stick his fingers up my bum) me. The only way to get it back was to promise to take their photo. They are on the right path to becoming Korean women who never pass the opportunity to have their picture taken.
Yesterday there was an election in my province so school was cancelled. To celebrate I put on shorts and a T-shirt and showed off my pasty white skin to all lucky enough to see me walking about the neighbourhood.
The idea of getting nekkid with a bunch of strangers, showering before sweating in hot tubs then putting on provided gym shorts and T-shirts to head to a second floor (where Koreans sit around eating hard boiled eggs while watching bad Korean television) in between bouts of sweating in dry saunas isn't exactly how I would choose to spend a Sunday but it is what I did. It was super relaxing.
Near our place is a great jjimjilbang. The upstairs dry sauna's are amazing. The first room we went into is a salt room where you lie down on hot dry salt stones and drain yourself of water. To replenish we then bought huge crafts of ice tea and stuck our feet in bags to tackle the foot massage machine. After ten minutes of torture we sat on the massage chairs that work over your whole body for just one dollar. Saejin wanted more chair time so I went back to have my feet worked over. We ended the day heading to an outside section where there is a clay oven you crawl into to cook yourself in. It was my favorite. There are about three other rooms (including an ice room) but we skipped them.
That night I had the best sleep I have had in ages. I may have to go back again this weekend.
It's been a long time since I have been excited about a movie to come out. This is one of my all time favorite books and from the trailer it looks like it should be a great flick.
Growing up whenever we saw the bookmobile in the local strip mall's parking lot was always an excuse to stop the car. It was a converted RV that brought the library to your area and I loved when we got to enter to borrow books for the week. I usually had to be rushed into making my final pick as I could have spent hours searching the bookcases. Starting out young and having parents who read made it easy for me to pick up the hobby that I still continue to do.
Today I saw my first Korean version of this pull up into the school's playground. The kids seemed excited to see it and when I went out to check it out the kindergarten class was busily searching for the right book. I love the fact that Korean kids read so much. Each day the first twenty minutes before class the kids have to go into the library, take out a book before returning to class to read it. The principal made this rule a year and a half ago after the school did poorly on a standardised test. He said his son was an avid reader and he is now a dentist so he wants our students to fall in love with literature so they too will tackle plague and gingivitis. Not sure how well it worked but Tuesday the kids took another nationwide test so we will see if his theory worked its magic when results come back to school later.
Saejin had a crappy birthday yesterday but this weekend will be an all out effort to make up for it. It's been awhile since I did a midweek countdown for the weekend and I can't wait for Saturday. My co-teacher is officially a bitch but I think we have moved onto the stage of agreeing to disagree on everything.
I have been slowly weening myself off of TV. I spend way too much time downloading crap and watching crap. I have given up on Prison Break which used to be a favorite of mine because this year and last turned out to be ridiculous. I stopped watching almost all reality TV (except the Amazing Race) when I found myself distracted by how dumb people are and how poorly they speak English seeing as it's their first language. Now I wish I used my extra time on useful stuff but I have just finally made the effort to catch up on the movies I buy but never get around to watching.
Cheap DVDs are everywhere in Seoul and if you find a good reliable source you can catch almost any major movie released. Of course they are illegal but they are so popular here that major American studios after years of trying to get the market cleaned up finally gave up and closed down their DVD departments and left. The guy I go to once a month has recently been carrying a few Canadian movies. 
I just watched The Rocket: The Maurice Richard Story, and loved seeing the legend he is come to life. You can see why all of Quebec loved this giant of a player. He never backed down and helped change the way the French were treated by the NHL. Other movies I want to recommend:
Slumdog Millionaire, just because anything about India is good in my mind.
Doubt, I didn't want to see this at all and then I started to hear great things about it. I put it in one night predicting to fall asleep in front of but the story and acting are amazing.
The Visitor, if you are alive you will definitely feel something watching this one.
The Wrestler, see above comment and it applies to this movie too. I still think it is the best movie from last year by far and I hate Wrestling.
