End of the year Blues

End of the year here is rough. I finished up all our classes the week of Christmas and had to say goodbye to so many 6th graders who are graduating and who I've been teaching for nearly two school-years.

 First was my Thursday school who I treated to some choco-pies and calligraphied Goodbye notes during their last class. During the lesson, my deaf student, Junsu, constructed a little paper heart with a goodbye letter and the other kids decided to make a giant poster for me during their break.

They also gave me this pot one of them made as an afterthought. It's meant for kimchi but makes a wonderful pencil holder. 

They made me wait in the classroom after class while they finished it:













Then we took some pictures and I wished them good luck in middle school. 

I should also mention that they suck at taking pictures.

They're not super happy to graduate. Middle school here is really tough with competitive exams and loads more study-time. The kids probably won't have much free-time now that they've finished Elementary school.

After that we've had some fun assemblies:

And I've been whipping out all my best games as a send-off. Like English olympics:

The boys were definitely using bad form, so we had to redo it.

(there were funner challenges but I failed to record any)

The after-school kids did a human alphabet, which I showed them on the last day.

I also gave them all candy and taught them to write their names in English (they were obsessed and a few stayed after to write down every member of their family).


Oh and these kids organized all of my art supplies when they didn't want to play a game so I told them they could play the game or they could clean the classroom. They chose clean and they took their job very seriously.


We had a teacher's Sports Day the last day which involved games like "make a giant half pipe out of newspaper and run to the end to catch a ping-pong ball", flicking traditional shoes across the gym, playing a game of human wack-a-mole (the rules were explained to me by Mr. Hwang passing me a giant inflatable ball, pointing at the principal standing in the middle with his team, and saying "kill him"). Then we had this peg-leg race:

It was fun and hysterical. I rarely get to spend time with the other teachers so it was fun to be included.

The last day at my main school, I had all my kids do scavenger hunts. The younger kids got candy and I managed to record some of their hunt: (I really wish I wasn't always so annoying in the background, sorry!)

5th Grade

4th Grade

Maybe I'm biased but I think my kids are super cute and hilarious and get such a kick out of watching the videos of their struggle.

The 6th graders scavenger hunt involved finding their graduation presents: school supplies and candy with little handwritten notes and their names in calligraphy. They really had a hard time figuring out the scavenger hunt at first but once they got it, they loved it and were pretty stoked about their gifts:



(the boys were too cool for pictures so I had to snap a shot of their dance party in the corner)
The girls were all really sad when I told them we won't have anymore classes and asked for my phone number and invited me to their graduation. I'll still see them around the school up until February so it'll be a very drawn out goodbye.

They're cute. I love my kids. Next up, Winter Camp.

School Festival Season

October is the month of school festivals in Korea. This is when the students and staff put on a market and a variety show to celebrate the school's birthday. It takes months to prepare all the dances, skits, and taekwondo performances and the whole school goes insane the moment October hits. Classes get moved around or cancelled to make room for rehearsals and I get to take a nice break from a few of my regular classes and sit back and watch the buildup.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to see all three schools' festivals but I got to sit in on a lot of the rehearsals. Like this one that I snuck a terrible video of while I (pretended to) help paint the gym floor:

These two boys are hilarious. I didn't believe the girls when they told me Daehan wears an Elsa dress until I looked up and there he was on stage proudly dressed in drag and lip syncing the girl's part of an opera. The whole routine was really fun but I couldn't catch it all because I was supposed to be working. 

The festival was on a Friday but it was after school so I didn't get to see it. But my English center was used as the staging area so I got to see the kids scrambling around getting into costume and stressing about props and supplies they needed. My 1st and 2nd graders were really excited to show me their costumes and came waddling into my office when they saw me, shoving their little costume paws in my face and proclaiming "Sansaengnim! I'm a cat!" "I'm a duck!" "Look, Jihyeon is a dog!" This was in a mix of Korean and whatever English word they happened to know. Sometimes I think they're so much cuter when I'm not teaching them.  

Here's a snapshot of their Snow White skit. 

My Tuesday school, Sangcheon's, fourth graders put on an English play about a Korean folk Tale "Heungbu and Nolbu and the Magic Gourd". I got to watch and record their rehearsal and they did amazing. Here it is (It's 15 minutes long so click at your own discretion). And, yes, Santa and the angels were absolutely a part of the original story.

One of the angel's loves speaking English and comes to me every day with a new question or phrase she's learned in an attempt to converse with me like "Can I clean your glasses for you?" "Your hair look nice!" "Do you like milk?" She's adorable. She tried to get me to guess her costume and I thought she was a witch or a flower and she got really aggravated I couldn't tell she was an angel. Whoops. 

Odong's school festival was yesterday and I actually got to be in one of the performances. My fifth graders were doing the "Cup Song" by Anna Kendrick and when I told them I knew how to do the beat, their teacher immediately made me a part of the routine. I felt a little silly being the only adult but the school staff seemed excited to have the foreign teacher involved. 

The kids actually knew the words better than me and it was usually me messing up the song. Dang prodigies. It helps that their teacher speaks really good English and is constantly teaching them new words outside of English class. She's a lot more interested in co-teaching than the other teachers and is super nice to work with. She's my favorite co-teacher (don't tell the others.) We have similar personalities, I think, so I don't clash with her as much as some other teachers.

I don't have a video of the performance yet but here are some pictures another teacher took and a recording of the kids singing:

I'll replace it with the video when I get my hands on it. 

They might mumble a bit when the song gets to "shiver" because it sounds like the "F" word in Korean. But otherwise they did really well and the performance went without a hitch. 

The day of the festival, the school had a little market. The parents came and students donated their old clothes, toys, and books, to sell to other students, parents, and teachers and all the money went towards scholarships for the kids. My deaf student, Junsu, made a point of explaining all the prices to me and showing me where to get ice cream. I find I relate to Junsu really well - I think because we both have a lot of communication barriers. We manage to talk to each other through gestures, which I do with my other kids anyway. Sue Young, my co-teacher, went to the market with me and we shared a bunch of the food items.

Parents were grilling hot dogs and tteokpokki and serving ice cream, fruit, and homemade jujube tea as well cup ramyun (which the kids spent all their coupons on). I tried some ice cream, jujube tea, fruit, and tteokpokki (which wasn't as melt-your-face-off spicy as usual so I enjoyed it more). It was awkward talking to the parents in Korean with the kids around since I try not to speak Korean around the kids and I'm embarrassed about how poorly I speak. I almost bought a little hanbok at the market for my niece but it was too small for her and too big for her little sister who's on the way. Bummer 'cause it only cost a dollar. 

After the market, the festival started. I suddenly felt awkward and nervous about being on stage. I decided to take my glasses off last minute in case the stage lights made them look weird and that's all anyone would talk to me about after the performance, since I've never taken them off. Not so much the performance itself... but I think it went well. 

At the end of the festival a few parents performed. One guy played some jazz on the saxophone and then a group of parents got up and performed a children's story with musical cues and narration. It was precious.

It's sad to think this is probably the last batch of school festivals I'll get to see but at least there are still winter camps and sports days to look forward to with the kids. Korea knows how to party. 

Here are some miscellaneous videos I snapped during the festival (The quality is horrible, I really regret not bringing a decent camera with me to Korea):

Junsu's Magic Show 

The same story as Sangcheon's 4th graders but in Korean, I only caught part before my memory ran out.

Rehearsal for the mask dance.

1st Grade Warm-ups

I've been a lot busier than normal this semester and haven't had much of a chance to catch up on the blog. But, here's some hidden-camera footage of some of my 1st graders doing their warm-up songs for after-school class. They were surprisingly calm today, but their reactions to some of the songs are still pretty funny. Lucky for everyone, I'm not in the frame while I dance and sing like a friggin' clown.

The part where they all rush the whiteboard is because they spotted a youtube thumbnail of their favorite song "Do You Like Brocolli" (which they just call "Yucky song") and they were insisting I play it. It shows weird combinations of foods (like broccoli ice-cream) and asks if they like it... thus the screaming.

Korean Liberation Day

I was gonna post this with my last entry but it felt like it needed it's own post.

So Korean Liberation Day happened recently. We got a day off from school, which some of us spent being lazy and playing board games.

That Saturday was the big event though. I think I was told this is the 75th anniversary of Korea's Liberation from Japan so it was a big one.

Me and Veronica were supposed to go shopping that day but stumbled into the parade instead. How about a million pictures of that? Okay:

This guy was making confetti angels.

The live band. With their lead guitarist on the roof.

This lady was kind of our buddy during the parade. 

My favorite part was right here when everyone just started booking it down the street shouting and waving flags. 

만세, Korea! 

Korea never fails to impress. When the band started playing we got down to dance with some of the people in the street and had a blast. As we left, people kept asking to take our pictures with the flags we'd been given and an Ajjussi insisted we not leave without fans and windmills as souvenirs. The paper confetti was still everywhere a week later.


Here's a video of the tail-end of the festivities with the live band singing "Arirang" (A really popular Korean folk song). I had Arirang stuck in my head for 2 weeks after this: