November

Ok, so being as it’s already the end of November, I imagine that I should update my blog a little bit. Wow, already the end of November?! Time is really flying by!

I can’t say that there have been many super exciting events going on this month, however, I have been incredibly busy, which wasn’t helped by the fact that I ended up catching a cold for a couple of weeks.

The month started off with me teaching a number of supplementary classes, and that has continued on throughout all but this past week in November. Also at school, we recently had an English contest where a number of students from grades four through six participated. This contest turned out to be a significant amount of extra work for me because I was required to create the slideshows for it as well as come up a bunch of extra riddles (which didn’t actually get used, but that’s a story for another time). The kids seemed to enjoy the contest, and that was the most important thing to me.

Also at school this month, it has gotten to the point in some of my classes where I am teaching the entire thing on my own without any help from my co-teachers. I rarely ever see my grade 3 co-teacher during class now, as she spends most of it in my office or out doing other things. There were even a couple of times where she completely forgot that we had class together and I didn’t see her until it was completely over and the students were gone. I guess that means that they trust me to teach the kids now? Another event that was kind of a back-handed compliment was getting called up to the teacher’s room to talk with my fellow English teachers, only to get told that parents of our grade 4s and 5s had called in to complain. Their complaint was that those students weren’t getting as much time with me as the siblings in grades 3 and 6 (my co-teacher for grades 4 and 5 liked to run the show herself).

In Korea, November 11 is 'Peppero Day', so the Koreans give each Peppero, which you may have tried the Japanese version of (Pocky).  Basically they are little cookie sticks that are dipped in chocolate.  I received a number of boxes from my students that I saw on that day -- but especially from the grade 3 class I taught that day - I ended up with a GIANT pile of Peppero on my desk within the first 5 minutes of class. So nice to be loved! ;)

 

I have also had to go to a couple of different open classes at other schools with my co-teachers. Now, according to them, these classes were supposed to have been taught in English with their native English teachers, however on both occasions, the classes were taught in mostly Korean, and there were no other native teachers anywhere in sight, making me stand out like an eyesore. I must have been a huge distraction, because the students all wanted to keep sneaking looks at me. The last open class event that I visited with my teachers, I later found out that there wasn’t even a native teacher to teach at that school, which had me questioning why exactly they had brought me along, since I clearly wouldn’t be able to understand the majority of what the Korean teachers were saying to their students. In my opinion, I was a kind of escape card because since I was there, the teachers didn’t want to ‘drag’ me into listening to all of the other Korean teachers discuss the lessons, so we left early. Hmmm….. Well anyway, it was kind of interesting to see how Korean teachers teach their classes though, and in one of the classes the teacher had dressed up like Jack Sparrow – makeup, clothes, everything – and he did indeed make a fairly good Jack, so….

Our school has also acquired a new family which has been adopted by pretty much everyone. That is probably because they are absolutely adorable. Allow me to explain – a mother cat recently gave birth to 4 beautiful little kittens and they have taken up residence just below the window next to my desk in my English classroom. They attract all different kinds of visitors throughout the day, and there’s no way that they’ll ever go hungry as the students and teachers are always bringing them more food and water. My only issue with them is that they can sometimes be quite loud (or the students coming to visit them are) and it can disrupt the class that I’m teaching. Other than that, they’re great.

The leaves on the trees finally started changing colors about the second week into November, and although some of them have already lost their leaves, there are still a large number of them that are still quite green, which to me, is absolutely amazing! The weather has also started to get rather cool this month as well. Since Koreans have a strange habit of keeping the doors and some of the windows open even though the temperature has been around 10 or a bit cooler, it definitely makes for a bit of a chilly day inside (which is probably why I ended up getting sick, if I think about it…), but hopefully it won’t get too much colder. Oh! And it snowed for the first time today (Nov 28) – not the kind of snow that sticks around, but still snow nonetheless – I was beginning to wonder if it would snow here at all – but apparently it can.

Let me see, what else has happened – outside of school – I have gone out hiking a couple of times, took a few fall pictures, and did a bit of Christmas shopping.

This past weekend, a friend of mine invited myself and two other girls to go listen to the Teacher’s Orchestra, as she had acquired some free tickets through her school. It was a very nice afternoon/evening, which we followed up with dinner and going out for tea and dessert. One of the amusing parts of that particular day was however, before I even got to where we were going to watch the orchestra perform. What happened was as follows: I originally meant to go there by bus; however, my transfer bus didn’t come fast enough, so I ended up taking a taxi for the last part of the trip out there. When I first got into the taxi, the driver was playing some Korean pop dance track, but as we started driving along, he decided to change the song (he was listening through his iPod). Anyway, after a few false choices, he finally settled on a song. Celine Dion’s “The Power of Love”. Now, I’m not sure if he decided on that song because he had a foreigner in the car or what, but all I can say is for me, it was a little bit amusing, if mildly uncomfortable, and I almost wish he had kept it on the Korean music. But there you have it. I don’t think the reactions that Koreans have towards seeing me for the first time will ever get old.

And that my friends, has been the majority of my November.

To see my November pictures click here.