It's hard to believe but in a few weeks I'll have been in Korea for three whole months! I'm settled in and I've stopped noticing how Asian everyone is and how much I stand out. I haven't really gotten homesick yet (although, like I said in a previous entry, I've been getting "people sick"). Overall things have been going really well. I have finished writing all my grad school essays and now it's just time to edit them. I promise that when they are all sent out that this blog will not turn into me complaining about having to play the waiting game.
Last night I made my new favorite dinner again (beef, mushroom, garlic in balsamic vinaigrette over pasta) only this time I made it with Hanwoo, Korean style beef, instead of imported American beef. It was fantastic. The other night I figured out how to work my shiny new rice cooker and made some shrimp scampi over rice. Also delicious. If you hadn't guessed, I'm enjoying cooking for myself. I also plan on kicking the baking up a notch, I also found a coffee shop that sells European style hot chocolate, the thick creamy delicious kind like I drank in Russia. It was a fantastic find.
Speaking of Russia: A new girl name Lala has joined our Korean class! She is from Azerbaijan but speaks a little bit of Russian, which means after a refresher course I should have someone to practice with! Korean class is going well, we're learning how to tell time, and we all know that analog clocks are the bane of my existence. I really appreciate Korean class not just because it's helping me learn Korean but because the more I know about the language the easier it is for me to empathize with my students (I'm constantly reminded just how hard learning a new language is) and it also allows me to see why they make some of the grammatical mistakes that they do. I feel like I'm more patient and better at explaining their mistakes when I know why they're making them.
In other food news, I have found the foreign food mart, as well as a great little restaurant called 'The First Alleyway' which serves American/British food and is run by English-speaking foreigners. It's delicious! I also received an amazing care package from my cousin Jessica filled with all sorts of American foods I've been missing. As much as I love cooking, some nights I just want comfort foods. When I finish this post it's off to make some banana bread (with a recipe I found online... we'll see how this goes!)
The past two weeks have been a little rough for me, and one of the main issues has been the crazyness that became my schedule. Each day has six 45 minute periods, and we have an A Week and a B Week. My A Week used to be: recording, 4th grade, recording, 6th grade, 7th grade, recording. My B Week used to be: 3rd Grade, 6th Grade, 5th Grade, 6th Grade, 7th Grade, recording. B Week has always been somewhat hellish for me just because the classes are so packed together, leaving me little to no time to make photocopies, print things, grab a snack. On top of that B Week is the week with my worst classes. I love my 3rd Graders dearly, but they're a handful, my two 6th grade classes have tons of behavior issues (they're all so insubordinate!). My 5th graders and 7th graders are both calm and well behaved. My B Week classes all had between 18-21 (except the 3rd graders).
A Week was my favorite weekend. I was close with three smaller classes filled with great kids. I had fantastic relationships with all of my students and it was just fantastic.
Weds of last week I found out that my 4th and 6th grade classes on A Week were being dissolved. I was getting a new 4th grade, a new 6th grade, I was getting a 5th grade class that was a composite of my old 5th grade class and new 5th graders. I had been warned by Lori that my schedule could change at a moments notice, but that did surprisingly little to prepare me for the upheaval of it actually happening. It was very hard to loose all but my 7th graders and get my happy small sized classes replaced with more classes of 18-20 kids. Two of my best students from my A Week 6th grade class were moved to my worst B Week class. It's hard to deal with now, I've lost a lot of the footing I had, and also lost my place in many of my classes because the addition of so many new students has made things difficult. The larger classes also have more behavior problems across the board. Needless to say I was not happy about the change.
So I just finished B Week, which is always depressing and discouraging. I really hate my 6th grade classes this week. Especially my second 6th grade class... the one they moved my good students to. There are a lot of behavior issues in that class, but there are three boys who make teaching the class impossible. They are loud, rude, and insubordinate. They throw things. They verbally harass the other students, and apparently they have taken to the habit of calling me vulgar names in Korean. Nothing seems to work for disciplining these kids. It affects the other students abilities to learn, and they can tell that I've just giving up. I spend so much time yelling, taking minus points, trying to get them to just behave and it doesn't work. The first day in that class the two transplanted students had looks of shock and horror. I had never yelled at them, never had any of the behavior problems I did in that class, and we had such a great relationship all together. I actually had to speak to the Korean teacher about the problems in that class. I hate it.
Some fun news though! I have employed Dinosaur comics in my teaching. I printed out a comic, whited out the dialogue, and then made photocopies. My students had to create a story for the comics and describe what was happening using emotion vocabulary. In this weeks 7th grade class we've been having a lot of fun. I've had between 9 and 5 students, with the average being 4 students this week. Many have been absent because they need to study for the big exams they all have this week. So I've had the students who have come creating dinosaur comics, writing stories, and the past two days we played a fantastic bastardization of scrabble. Not only was it fun, but I think it helped get these newer students used to me. The class is usually 20 students, so it's nice to interact with some of them one and one and now we all know each other better. I've also done penpals with some of my more advanced classes. They're writing letters to students at the school where my mom works. I got the first batch of American letters yesterday and it was so much fun to read through all of them. I can't wait to give them to the students!
There's a big festival tomorrow in Sangmu which Lyn and I will probably attend, so you will probably get an update about that soon.
The title of this post has to do with my name. In the three languages I know how to write my name (English, Russian, and Korean) there is always a character that looks like an H! In English it is of course the H, in Russian the N, and in Korean it's the A. If I can ever figure out how to type in Hangul I'll show you.
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