Snowfriend - Tuesday Nov. 27, 2007

I woke up at an amazing 8:15AM and had 10 minutes to dress, eat, and get my butt out of the door.

1-6 decided to stage a mutiny and basically ignore anything I had to say. Oh goodness! I felt badly, because their teacher felt badly about them not behaving for me. I hate when the teacher feels bad about it, because she actually helps me try to control them. That doesn't necessarily happen in my other trouble spot class.

I've been feeling exhausted for the past week. I only got about 6 hours of sleep last night, but that has never been a problem for me before; I was pulling off 3 hours of sleep and student teaching last year.

After school, I decided that I was going to build a snowfriend (the PC term for snowman that we came up with last year^^)...out of the main material I absolutely despise, styrofoam. I took big pieces of styrofoam from the second grade office down to the first grade office to work on it. At first I used felt to make a rainbow; 1-5 teacher used this amazing measuring method by using a piece of cardboard as a compass. After that...back to the snowman; I used a pie plate for the head, a drum for the middle circle, and a large clock for the base circle. Using my resources... 1-5 teacher helped me cut them out with an exacto knife. Off and on they made fun of my western style "snowman;" apparently Korean snowman only have two circles (one for the head and one as the body) and they wear straw hats. Whatev. I made a scarf and earmuffs for it out of felt, the face out of black paper with a felt nose, drumsticks for arms, and super cute kid mittens from a give-away pile! I already have two teachers that have dibs on it for next year. Eh, I'll let them fight it out,^^

I headed upstairs, wrapped a box to look present-like for my "Happy Birthday" lesson tomorrow, and finally took off around 6:00PM.

After dinner, we watched Flight Plan as a family; it is a movie about a woman, Jodie Foster, who loses her husband and is flying his body back to the states, her daughter disappears on the flight, and there is an officer that must detain her for the entirety of the flight. It was a good movie, but there was a part that irked me big time. At one point in the movie, Jodie Foster blames a man from the Middle East for her daughter's kidnapping; so as if the ignorant racism and discrimination toward Middle Eastern people isn't enough after 9-11, might as well put some idiotic stunt like that in a movie. The end of the movie slightly redeems the situation of her accusations, but seriously...!

I talked to my host mom a little bit about it afterward; I was pretty frustrated with it. Anyway, my host mom and I sat around talking for a while. I told them that one of my friends is switching homestays, because the living situation is not good. She grabbed my hand and told me that she doesn't want me to leave. She was so cute about it! She knows my friend, so she was a little shocked, but thought that it was a good idea as well. My host father asked me if I want to move homestays, and I asked him if he was trying to get rid of me. He told me that he thinks of me as one of them and that I have the right to make my decision. My host mom grabbed my hand again and said no. She then said that he could leave and I could stay! LOL! LOVE HER! He actually got up and walked away. It's hard to understand if you don't know my host family's sense of humor, but they're pretty darn amazing!