A few Fridays ago (why always Friday?) we took part in the Samcheok Lifelong Learning Fair. Thursday evening we set the booth up (about 30 people were put on that task). On Friday we showed up to be the token English teachers!

The Guendoek Booth

This booth was packed with things the students have done. It is also peppered with English Village themed things like a poster of the English teachers! Guendoek is one of the few school that has an English Village so it puts a lot into showing off the facilities.

Above is our good friend Mark in his booth. Definitely the coolest booth! It was all Halloween themed and there were even costumes to try on!

Blue Bobo

Spicy Mexican

This is a complicated tug of war game. I don’t really know much about it. I know that the tug of war rope looks like a pretzel and that the game is very old and a big tradition.

Apparently the pretzel knot is a great place for relaxation after a drum performance.

Chad, Kate, Principle (Kyo Chang Songsamniem), Vice Principal (Kyo Kom Songsamniem), Kumo (A secratary?), and the Special Ed (Slash Art?) Teacher.

This picture was taken right after all of the Education Big Fish came through in their suits. We kind of think that they are the biggest reason that this Fair happened. To show the Big Guys (And Gals) what the schools are doing. It seemed like a lot of money to pour into 10 seconds of bowing and handshakes per school. At least there were fun things for the kids to do at the fair like making soap and mini-books and little creatures made of bark and twigs.

There was also this,

Chad will have to correct me but I think this is like a harness for para-sailing? It was fun and we got some funny pictures of Chad. A newspaper even took pictures and interviewed him about his experience. According to Teacher Kim they wanted to talk to Chad about his experience in this contraption because he looks happy and Koreans don’t show emotion. Yes, that is what she said.

After Chad and I had checked out all of the booths Teacher Kim arrived at the Fair and had us go around with her. It was fun and we actually did some of the activities with her.

A stop back by at Mark’s booth.

An obligatory cute Korean child picture.

Well, that all the new on Lake Woebegon. More to come. As usual I am behind with posting. We have been preoccupied with planning our winter vacation. All of our computer time has been sucked into that. We do have our tickets booked now, so thats exciting!

I just made muffins. The muffin tin was too big for our petite oven so I had to double up the paper cups and bake the muffins on a cookie sheet. We’ll see how they turn out. Oh, that reminds me. . .

Last Sunday Chad made peanut butter cookies. They were fabulous, I just polished the last one off yesterday. We brought a large portion of the cookies to school thinking we would share them with the teachers during our 10:40 snack time/teachers meeting. We put them out on the communal table and they were gone before school started at 9:20. Amazing. I love the teachers we work with.

Have a great week!

K

I’m writing this at my Friday school Kongcheun Elementary 공촌초교. Kate is sitting next to me after an unexpected trip here from her Friday school Jangho Elementary 장호초교. How did we arrive at this pleasant surprise? The story, I will tell…

This morning early, at about 8:20, Kate and I were picked up by Stephane (pronounced – [Stef-awn] – A 40 something single Korean man who enjoys going to singles night at his christian church. His nick-name is Stephane from the time he spent working as a missionary in a French speaking country. We drive the 25 minutes to my school Kongcheun listening to Korean Christian ballads and not really talking much at all. This is all part of the Friday Routine (if you can call it that). I get out at my school and walk up to find many extra cars in the parking lot. (No longer are we on a normal schedule – from here on out it gets more and more random). I walk in to find Principals from other schools, VP’s from other schools and other high up administrators from the ministry of education in Samcheok. This was somewhat expected because today I was teaching in a Demonstration Co-teaching class. We practiced for this last week so that students were well rehearsed. I walked around a met some of the “powerful people” and then we practiced a bit before the class at 10:10. The back of our classroom filled up with observers and we taught a most perfectly rehearsed class. Even the Korean teacher, who doesn’t speak much English, said most of her English directions without having to look at her script. We were all pleased. Then they started to move desks in for some bigger meeting, so I left and went back downstairs. One of the supervisors for Elementary Ed in Samcheok (who has introduced himself to me now, 3 – 5 times, he drinks a lot and already smelled of soju at 9am this morning) came into the office and asked me to come upstairs to discuss our lesson. I obliged and went to sit in on an hour meeting (ALL IN KOREAN) about my co-teacher’s and my class. It was very exciting. Then I waited another hour doing nothing but chatting with Kate on gmail about how confused we both were, then ate lunch – a sprawling traditional Korean meal (made by the school cafeteria) including raw octopus, wheh (raw fish), snails, Noodle soup with beef (all I ate) and of course – rice and kimchi. Everyone ate and was merry for 15 minutes and then left. Seriously, it was that fast.
After everyone left, I sat and started to write this post. Then I hear “Chad? ” Whoa it’s Kate!!

Kate’s day was less surprising in the morning. No large crowds of important people or raw Octopus. But, because her principal was at MY school, they had a very relaxed day and decided to out to eat and go fishing. Fishing however is MAN’s Activity, so she was banished to the joy of Kongcheun. Stephane wanted Kate to come fishing, but no one else did So they all went out to eat, then drove her to my school and said “Go find your boyfriend”. Then, “Hitting Bong” (seriously, that’s his nick name – his last name is bong) came in and told us we are going to dinner with him and his principal. Then we find out it’s the whole school in celebration of the morning. Now everyone is cleaning up the school, and we are sitting here bored and slightly confused. This is the tale of pretty much every Friday… It’s always an Adventure.

If anything else crazy happens we’ll be sure to update this post. But for now, wish us luck!

Today was not only our first days teaching but alsp our first days at our Friday schools! Big Day! My school has about 30 students and I am only teaching 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th. My biggest class had 6 students. Amazing.

The third grade class was wonderful, 5 little girls who were amazing at English speaking. After class they dragged me to the floor with them to play a dice game (pictured above). You throw a dice up and grab others from the floor while the dice is in mid air. There are levels of each throwing and grabbing seqence. . . They are really good at it and I am not. It was nice to just play with the students. At our other school there are many more students (a whopping 120) so there is less playtime with the teachers. I loved it. I had friends at lunch. Friends that do things like count to three and chant “Teacher is beautiful.” I need to train Chad to do that.

After the 3rd grade girl crew I had the 4th grade boys. They requested English names and due to their giggly manner I found it appropriate to name them after my Dad and his brothers. Tom, Bob, Dave and Jim. There was a problem with my Dad’s name. . . “Bob” sounds like “Bap” which means rice in Korean. So, the kid felt like he was the staple food group instead of a strapping young Korroch. Robert sounded too much like robot so we settled on John. I call him John Bob.

Finally I got semi-ditched by my co-teacher for my last class. I am training the 5th grade on Peter Piper. They actually liked it. I hope to get lots of tounge twisters into them.

Happy Weekend!

K