Winter Camp Day 1 - Wednesday Dec. 26, 2007

I set my alarm to 7:00AM, so I could get up and plan a little bit for the classes today. Remember me saying that I can't actually get up to an alarm if I go to sleep after 2:00AM? Luckily, whatever occasionally malfunctioning sorry excuse for an internal alarm clock came through for me today. I woke up at 8:00AM, got dressed, and my host father drove me to school. It was so nice of him to drive me to school! Before I rode with him, because he was taking his children anyway.

I hurried up and finished my powerpoints before the winter camp orientation began. I was introduced to the students much more intensely than the other teachers; I'm not entirely sure why, but I assume it has something to do with me being a foreigner who speaks English. That's usually the way it goes around here.

My first class was 3rd graders. I actually really enjoyed teaching them. That's how the first day of Winter Camp went. I really enjoyed teaching the kids. I think, in part, it's because they were classes of half the students I usually have to teach; it's much more personal. Plus, the class was fun. I've realized that I'm not going to teach something that's not fun for me to teach, because I figure if it's fun for me to teach, the students will have fun learning it. The opposite is true as well; if I am bored teaching something, then the students are probably going to be bored. I believe this is partially because I think and act like a kid in a lot of ways still., which I'm completely okay with.

We started by playing knots and using English directions; the third graders had a hard time with it, the fourth graders caught on pretty well, and the fifth graders were quite good at it. I actually only taught my 5th graders for 20 minutes, because the teacher before them lost track of time. It's okay, because I teach them 4 times instead of 3.

After playing knots, I introduced some household objects vocabulary, and we discussed the different rooms of a house. I then showed a powerpoint of "Homes of the Future." They were really random house designs that looked really cool. Then I told the students that they were to get in pairs, think of their dream home, and draw it. I'm going to pick the top three and have the students vote for the best house on the last day during our party; the winner will get a prize.

After the awesome day of classes; I went out to eat with the head English teacher, Seok teacher, 2-4 teacher who organized the camp, another teacher, Hae Yeon, and the two vice principals. We went to the same restaurant that my host family went to on Monday; never had I been to that restaurant before this week, and now I have been there twice in one week!^^ It's super tasty, so I was psyched to go. I think tomorrow we are going to KalGuksu. It was mildy frustrating that the entire lunch, the head English teacher, Seok, and 2-4 teacher were talking about my diet. The head English teacher doesn't think I eat enough, Seok kept telling me to eat more and got offended when I didn't eat the soup because I was full, and they were comparing the way I eat to the way the last ETA ate. GAH! One of the most frustrating things is that I actually eat more than the head English teacher who is saying I should eat more.

Seok dropped me off at home, while the rest of the teachers went back to school. All teachers are still at school through today. In the car on the way home, a teacher looked at me and said, "You look bad" with a smile on her face. Haha! What she meant to say was, "Are you sick?" Cracks me up! Koreans flat out tell you what they think, especially when it comes to appearances.

I watched a few episodes of Scrubs and took a nap until dinner. After dinner, my host sister came into my room and started counting all of the penguins in my room.^^ CUTE!! My mom sent me about a billion penguin things for Christmas! Super excited! Amongst everything, is a dancing penguin who sings "I'm Singing in the Snow." My host sister came in and asked if we could dance with it, so we did!^^ I gave her a penguin snow globe pen that my mom sent me. I'm slowly passing on my penguin obsession!!