Kimchee!!

Well, it's Sunday evening. I just finished putting the finishing touches on my lessons for this next week's classes. As this is the last week before final exams, I'm doing a review game with both my 1st and 3rd year students. I have a powerpoint with a bunch of sentences that either have a wrong word or are missing a word, and have something to do with all the stuff we've learned this semester. And each table gets a turn to pick a number, then I give them that sentence, and they have one minute to write the full sentence on the board. If they get it right, they get 2 points. If they get it wrong, the next table gets a chance to do it for 1 point. Furthermore, there are Jackpot and Ka-boom slides. If they pick a Jackpot slide, they get however many points are written on there; if they pick a Ka-boom slide, they lose however many points are written on it. Team with the most points gets a great treat (which I just remembered I need to go get at the store tonight. Bummer!). Should be fun.

This past week was my best week of teaching by far! It was awesome and I just had a blast everyday. I really enjoyed the students and I was confident and able to just be a goof at times and have fun with them. We all laughed a lot. I am learning how to engage the students more and getting more confident in teaching. I also started writing in Korean on the board this past week, which really got their attention. I got an ovation every time I did it. That was my favorite part each class. I'd have them give me a translation of a word that we were working on, and then I'd write it in Roman letters, and then attempt to write it in Hangul(Korean), which is possible because Hangul is phonetic. But the main reason last week went so well was that I got kicked out of my classroom and had to go around to the student homerooms, as most of the other teachers have to do. The thing is, in my English classroom, there are 6 tables with 6 chairs around each table; a set-up that lets the students sit next to their friends and encourages lots of chatting. In the homerooms, they are sitting in individual desks and have assigned seats. I had their attention 10 times more. It was so great. I hardly got frustrated at all. I was tired at the end of the week from putting so much energy out to make each class fun, but it was worth it. So, on Friday I told Mrs. Kwon that this week had been so great and that teaching in the homerooms was the major reason, and asked her if I could continue to teach in the homerooms. And she said it was up to me. Sweet!!! Mrs. Kwon is amazing. She is so understanding and takes care of me so well. So grateful. I need to get her a great Christmas present. So, whenever I'm doing a game or activity, I'm going to use my English room since it works best for team stuff, but otherwise, I'm going to keep going around to the student's rooms.

Watched two bad movies this weekend. District 9 and 2012. Not worth your time.

Today at church, I played a song for special music. Me and my Nigerian friend Badejo played my arrangement of Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee. I played guitar and sang, Badejo sung some sweet harmony, and a girl played piano with us. It was a lot of fun. And people really liked it. And I guess that the church is gonna have a concert thing around Christmas time and they asked if I'd be willing to play some songs. "Umm...Yes!" So, I'm excited about that.

This next week is Thanksgiving, and I am going to a big Thanksgiving feast at the US military base in Seoul with my friends Amanda and Anlee on Sunday. It's kinda pricey but I'm thinking it's going to be well worth it. And Saturday, one of the teachers from school is getting married about 4 hours away, and the school is renting bus to take all of us over there. I'm pretty interested to see a Korean wedding. I'll bring my camera.

Speaking of camera's, it's Kimchee making season here, and all the grocery stores are flooded with cabbage to be destroyed, I mean prepared, into Kimchee (picture above). How it works is that families buy like 100 heads of cabbage and prepare Kimchee to last for the entire year. They actually have a special "Kimchee Refrigerator" to store this stuff. According to Wikipedia, this appliance is the "most wanted household item in Korea!!" What the $%#? Seriously?!!? So, you don't see a need for an oven, but you make sure to clear a space for a refrigerator to keep fermented cabbage "fresh." Why not just leave it under the couch or something. Then, you could "enjoy" the smell of it all year long. Okay, I am being too harsh. Sorry. I actually do eat the stuff a couple of times a week. But on the other hand, I did see a bunch of cabbage leaves spread neatly across a big electical box outside this one restaurant. They were out there for like a week. A week that included rain. Note to self-don't eat Kimchee at that restaurant. And Anlee said that she saw some Kimchee being "prepared" by a guy walking on top of the leaves with shoes on. That explains some of the scent of Kimchee. Hmm...Nothing against Korea. I just don't understand the obsession behind this stuff. I'm going to list the Korean food that I do like just to counteract my previous words. Bulgogi, Dongas, Mandu, Kimbap, the seafood pancake thing, meet buffet, duck buffet, shrimp fried rice. That's all I can think of. There are some good eats here.

Okay, time for bed. An yeong he gae sae yo (goodbye in Korean).

P.S. It's cold here. I wear 5 layers to walk to school.