let's get one thing straight right now...

...i did not cry!

ok, now that we've cleared up that misunderstanding, we can talk about my teaching job! for those of you who didn't know, this was my first week of actual teaching. thankfully it has been a fairly easy week because the kindergartners (who i'll mainly be teaching) are on spring break and so i only have a class of 1st graders on monday and wednesday and a class of 6th graders on tuesday and thursday to deal with. i don't get to just hang out because i don't have classes though...i'm basically stuck in the teacher's office, writing lesson plans feverishly and acting like i know what i'm doing.

my first grade class has 6 kids in it and they're fairly smart kids. they know their colors, most of their numbers up to 20, and they understand english pretty well and can even speak it, within reason. there are a few super shrill, loud ones that make me want to pull my hair out but most of them are actually pretty well-behaved. in our first class i had them draw pictures of monsters and most of them ended up drawing things resembling the ghosts in pacman...i thought that was funny. i was like "this is the scariest monster you can think of? really?" although one girl drew a girl who looked like samara from the ring and it made me a little scared-ish. well played, 6 year old.

my 6th grade class is something else. those kids are smart. i can actually have real english conversations with them, which is so cool. let me just point out that the class consists of just two boys...identical twin boys, to be exact. identical twin boys whose mother still dresses them exactly the same, down to their backpacks and pencil cases. there is no way i'm gonna be able to tell these kids apart. anyway, back to the topic at hand - these boys are really good at english. and funny too, it turns out. i had them answer some questions on the first day of class, just to see what their english level was and to find out a little about them. i'm going to post some of their answers here (one in blue, one in green) along with some comments from the peanut gallery for your reading pleasure:

1. What would you do if you had one million won (about $650)?

- i would buy many things i want..like a car. good luck kiddo!
-in order to make a fortune, you have to put it in a bank. i could buy anything i want, but i would put it in the bank. obviously brian got to him...

2. If you could be any animal what would you be and why?

-i want to be a turtle because turtles live more than 100 years. touche...
-i could be a rabbit but that's too small and weak. that's why i want to be an eagle. an eagle is strong enough to defend himself, isn't it. indeed.

3. If you were a superhero, what super powers would you have?

-i would have a jumping power because i could go anywhere faster than before.
-i would be like superman and be able to lift a car. his brother's car, perhaps?

4. Where would you like to go on vacation? Why?

- i want to go to france because i want to taste france food. consequently, he has no idea what 'france food' really is...i asked!
-i want to go to germany because germany is a cool place. brian thinks it's funny the brothers would have been supporting opposite sides in the world wars

those are just a few highlights...there were several more questions and i found out that one brother loves super mario (and is awesome at it...his words, not mine) and that the other is terrible at soccer. they both want to be scientists when they grow up and love the disney channel, but not as much as nickelodeon. some fun facts.

so that's basically what i've been doing with my life recently. next week will be total mayhem when the kindergarten kids arrive, so i'm trying to enjoy my relatively easy week. i'll keep you posted!



this is brian now. had i written earlier, i would have written about how our heating got fixed today and everything was working perfectly. but literally as i was handed the computer to write my section, it stopped working again. so apparently the only way for it to stay working is for it to shriek at us while it's on.

another exciting discovery was made today, by none other than myself! i spotted only the 2nd non-hyundai/kia car we've seen this whole time, another bmw. except this one had a flat tire, so i'm wondering if your tires get slashed around these parts if you dare buy a non-korean manufactured car. it was funny because this korean lady was driving it and i pointed to the tire as she passed me and she smiled and waved in acknowledgement that she was driving around on 3 wheels.

the other day i had an extremely rare moment of thoughtfulness. normally i don't think about things too much, but when you're in a foreign country you notice things much more because you're constantly absorbing information from your new surroundings. katie and i were walking along the water to get to a sculpture park and i noticed a fisherman on a boat. he had his rod and reel (two actually) and he was just sitting there holding his lines to feel for bites i guess. he was just an average guy and normally nothing about him would have stood out to me, but i noticed that he was listening to an ipod. and i began to think about a dave matthews song, in which dave points out that "everyday things change, but basically they stay the same." i thought it was so true for this man. he probably has ancestors going way back, all fisherman. and here he is centuries later, still fishing... but now with an ipod :D how times have changed!

tuesday night i decided instead of walking katie home from work, i would have a feast waiting for her when she got home from work. the only problem... i got the time wrong and had the meal ready an hour too early. after heating it up about 3 times in anticipation of her arrival, i gave up and surfed the net until she got back. so needless to say, the dinner wasn't very good after the 4th reheating session when she got home. also, she got much much more attention from the korean men/boys on her way home when i wasn't beside her. so i think i might be picking her up from now on lol.