KPOP, dancing teachers and rulers

Hard to believe it's already the end of week 3! I really want to find an international church around here and was going to go last Sunday to a church in Gimhae. They start at 3:30 and are international, though they are mostly Vietnamese, Filipino, etc...not many Americans. That's ok I wanted to go and Jennifer helped me find the bus I needed to take to get there (her friend goes) so I was excited. But Sunday rolled around and the closer it got to when I needed to leave, the more afraid I became of trying out the bus thing!! All I knew was the bus number, I didn't know schedules, prices, return schedules, and a few more important tid bits. I hate to admit it, but I was too scared for that adventure so soon! There are a couple churches I want to visit though so I am just going to have to toughen up and get on a bus! We'll see what happens tomorrow:-) You can probably expect a ridiculous travel story in next week's blog!

This was a little bit of a rough week, mostly because it was GRAY, foggy and rainy all week. The sun forgot to come out for 4 days straight and even though it really attempted an appearance yesterday, it failed. I also had to be early all week because we had to teach extra classes for the kindergarten. The classes were for the same kids that we went to Gyeongju with, so it was fun to spend a little more time with them. We're really hoping most of them sign up for MBC OSS! Tuesday and Wednesday were to be cooking and music class days, then Thursday and Friday Joey and I were to co-teach storytelling. At first they said Joey would be running the cooking class but then Monday things changed (of course) and I was supposed to teach cooking class. Guess what we were cooking...ddukbokkie, a popular Korean dish. Then I heard we were going to be dividing the 2 classes into 4 teams, so that means 4 cooking classes back to back, each one lasting only 20 minutes!! I obviously wasn't teaching this alone, Jennifer teacher and I co-taught. It was a mess. 20 minutes is just not enough time! On top of that, these were all 7 and 8 year olds and they wanted them to be able to cut everything themselves! So we are rushing the lesson anyways and then it comes time for them to use the knives and we've got 7 year olds passing knives across the table and throwing things into the pot so the sauce is splattering. These kids didn't speak English for the most part so Jennifer would do most of the stuff then I would do a simple/quick version in English. The poor kids didn't even have time to eat their creations, we had to shuffle them out (trying to get their chef jackets and hats off took long enough by itself!) and try to clean up and set up for the next class that was already lined up at the door putting on the chef outfits! CHAOS!! We did that 4 times Tuesday and Wednesday. The storytelling classes were much easier because we didn't have to split them up and we still just had 20 minutes. We did the Ten Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed and I had a lot of fun with that:-)

Funny stories that make rainy days better:
Like I said, it was a bit of a rough week. I was a little down and moody but these few things gave me the laughs I really needed!
-The first day of cooking classes, Jennifer was trying to tell the kids to take off their cooking jackets but couldn't quite think of the words. Instead, she told a class of kindergartners, "Everybody take off your clothes!" I just busted out laughing so hard and she realized what she said and we laughed. The kids and their Korean teacher didn't understand what was so funny, but throughout the rest of the day/week we would think of that and laugh so hard! I guess she told Hannah (head teacher) because once when she was in there helping us out and it came to the point to get their jackets off, Jennifer and I looked at each other and started laughing, then Hannah laughed and said she heard the story etc... and we all laughed about that AGAIN. Maybe you just had to be there....but it was hilarious!
-In the middle of the week, I had a rough class with Fred and Aidan. Fred, who...whom?... I love dearly was being just plain bad. He refused to do any work and it was frustrating. I think a lot of it is because he just doesn't understand it. So I focused on Aidan and introduced a new word; ruler. Let me stop and say that I'm sure plenty of Koreans can say this word fantastically! But if you just think of all the letters in the word RULER that are jumbled in such a way, it's hard for Koreans! Maybe I'm a horrible person, but I laughed so hard when I heard they way he was saying it. Then he kept saying it over and over and over and I kept laughing! It was adorable! Don't worry, I was encouraging him through the laughter:-) And then, I took a video...I am AWFUL! I've watched this video over and over and even tried to send it out to a bunch of people. I guess it didn't work but I will post it right here, right now! In the video, he actually says it better than he had before. This was with great effort and concentration. Not sure why it cuts out the beginning, he's just saying, "It's a ruler." Enjoy:-) **I just watched it another 5 times and am in tears laughing. What a classic. I hope you love this as much as I do!!!**



-There's a kid named Denny who cracks me up. He's a little chubby in the tummy with almost a mullet and he's a bit of an instigator. He speaks alright English. He's also hilarious. They love computer games around here and this kid will come up behind you, make a sound like he's cocking a gun and then "shoots" and says, "HEADUH SHOT!!" (aka, head shot) It kills me (ohh a pun!)!
-I found a website called eatyourkimchi.com and they had this really funny video of them doing all the popular Korean dance moves. I liked the music so I spent one whole night youtubing Korean pop songs AND loving them. The next day at work, Joey was trying to find songs to teach for the music class and they kept suggesting American songs that were popular over here (ya know the song The Rose by Westlife? The one on Napoleon Dynamite? They love that one haha "Some say love, is like a river...") and he asked me to help him find some songs. He's not the best at Youtube and Google....yeah. So we were watching the video and Jennifer and Alice were also standing there and when Hannah heard the song, she came over too (guess it was a slow day haha). She wanted us to look up a Jennifer Lopez song so we rocked out to that for a little bit hah. I think I asked if they liked Super Junior (my new fave) and Hannah THE HEAD TEACHER starts doing the dance and singing Sorry Sorry. I was so uplifted by the next 20 minutes that the gloominess faded away each dance move she busted out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAWqnA8PdcY PLEASE WATCH THIS!! You must see the dance move to understand how hilarious it was when we all broke out in song and dance in the middle of the lobby. Joey is no fun so he walked away and let us have the computer and we continued to youtube every popular kpop song while Jennifer was laughing so hard she was in tears ON the floor. I thought she might pass out! Hannah said we should go clubbing soon and I think it was decided we at least have to do karaoke together! I definitely love these teachers!
-It was a good week for making Jennifer cry from laughing so hard. Apparently, they had a flawed placement system. The kids take a placement test and they decided that all the kids that put any lines for the matching section would be the second level class. (No markings on test=first level. Writing on test=third) They discovered on Wednesday, I believe it was, that the kids they placed in the level 2 class because of the lines on their test are actually way more suited for level 1! I guess a few of them had drawn lines from the word "apple" to the picture of a dog and other things that were completely wrong! Some had drawn lines from the actual written question to all the pictures! It was a pretty funny discovery and garnered some more needed laughs.

Well those were some of the stories that kept me laughing all week. As I mentioned earlier, Fred was uncooperative one day and that bummed me out a bit. I was trying to decide how to get him to do his work, still have fun and actually learn English. However, the next day he was completely different and he and Aidan were both proving they had remembered everything I've taught so far! We had a really, really good class that day and I was so pleased with Fred! They are extremely hyper boys who have to sit in countless classrooms all day long, but I'm glad they're learning English and are sometimes able to sit still, while also enjoying themselves and making it a little easier on me:-)

I thought Friday would be a slow and easy day because we were combining the classes and doing a cooking class and music class. 2 each and both at 40 minutes. It was definitely a slow morning but the older kids made SUCH a mess and were way too playful with the knives. Jennifer and I co-taught those cooking classes as well and she made my day when she held a knife to an older boy's throat and repeated what she had already told him to do like 3 times. Good thing it's the end of the week :-D (No children were seriously harmed during the cooking classes or the posting of this blog)

This weekend is the lunar New Years and a big holiday in Korea. I got chocolates and a pound cake from various teachers AND a 50 000 won bonus from Monica! The teachers were very grateful to her for that:-) It's Saturday and I haven't done a single thing yet today so I think I'm going to go outside and try to find something to do! The sun is finally out! I may be going to Busan tomorrow with some westerners I met so that should be fun.

The next update will be on my one month anniversary! I've already been here 3 weeks. It's just so weird! And I STILL haven't been able to use my brand new Keurig coffee maker...what a shame!!

Ah I know I'm forgetting something so I may add a couple smaller updates before the end of next week. Hopefully I'll be able to put up some videos I made but they've all been too big :-/ Oh and I left my camera at the school so I won't have any pictures of Busan! Oh well, next time!

Thanks for reading and don't forget to youtube some kpop and get lost in a world of boy bands!
A tired teacher

*Check out these guys for a laugh BUT also a catchy song haha
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0PD3I1N1oE