Pension - Thursday June 5, 2008

Did I mention that I can't believe it is June?!

2nd grade classes are fun this week. We're playing a game where the students ask me "How old are you?" and when I answer, they have to take that many steps forward toward me. They continue asking until they get really close to me. When my answer is, "Top Secret," they have to turn and run away because if I catch one of them, he/she is the new birthday boy/girl. We are playing inside the English Village.

I knew prior to today that someone would be coming to observe my class today...I didn't quite realize WHO would be coming to observe one of my classes today. EVERY female principal in my province (Gangwondo)!! Props for producing the female principals, Korea, but damn I had no idea how many there are. There were probably 20 PRINCIPALS observing one of my 2nd grade classes. Remember the game we are playing this week? Haha! Luckily everything went well and the principals seemed to enjoy it. I found out later that apparently the female principal of my school has been selected to be the leader of all female principals in Gangwondo; hence, why I had 20 female principals in my classroom Ha!

After school, I came home to take a quick shower before heading to a pension in the woods. Do you know what a pension is? Yah...me too...a sum of money you receive after retirement. Did you also know that it is a log cabin in the woods? Haha! Koreans call these houses "pensions" because many people buy them after they have retired with...uh huh...their pension money. I went to this pension with my host mom, host brother, host sister, the three other 6th grade boys in my host brothers math group, the three moms of the three other boys, a younger daughter of a mother, and a younger son of one of the mothers. 7 children, 4 parents, and me! Haha! The day just keeps getting more and more interesting. I'm not going to lie...at first I was wondering how I was going to make it through the night, but it was such an incredible experience! The younger boy is one of my 2nd grade students and he was super excited that I was there, my host sister and I got to spend time together which was wonderful, and I got to talk to the mothers about different subjects. OH! And we got a concert! One of the boys in the math group is a very talented piano player, so one of the other moms brought a key board for the boy to play on. Another boy was learning to play clarinet (ah...memories), so he played for us as well. We grilled outside for dinner. The group, minus me, had samgyapsal (pork). We also had kimchi jjigae (sooo good), rice, mushrooms, onions, and leaves. I just wrapped mushrooms, rice, and onions with gochuchang (spicy sauce) in the leaves whereas most people put the sauce and meat in the leaves.

Later at night, we had cup ramen as a snack and I played a game outside with the kids. It was so foggy that we couldn't go far from the pension, but it was a really nice night. The rain had started immediately after dinner, but stopped after only a short time.

We all slept on the floor at night; I got a room to myself. It was hard to sleep because I got too hot with the uldung (under ground heating). The boys came in around 3AM from the tent that they had set up on the front porch. It was quite cold outside and I figured they might not be able to make it through the night, but they had fun playing in the tent during the day.^^