Reports from Nina Teacher

So I finished my second day of teaching!  This means that I have officially met all of my students, since we are on a MWF/ TR schedule.  It wasn't bad at all. The kids are cute and pretty well behaved.  I have a few rascals but I was strict the first day so that that the bad behavior doesn't worsen.  The ages of my students vary and I have 3 different levels.  I have "seedbed 1" which is the very beginners.  They're still just learning the letters and sounds.  Fortunately, I only have one of those classes... it's like pulling teeth at times.  You'll repeat "the cat is cute" a million times as a class, and then ask one person to do it by themselves and they are completely dumbfounded.  The other two levels that I have are "Seed 2" and "Sprout 1."  They have similar curriculums and class structures but the material for Sprout 1 is a bit more difficult.  In today's class, Seed 2's theme was "Friends and Family" and Sprout 1's was "The Horse Cart."  It is nice that I only have 3 preps, but it gets a bit dull doing the same thing over and over again.  I am starting to get the hang of it though, so that's good!  I even grade papers, like a real teacher.  It's funny because for one of the answers, the kids had to write "The father gave the balloon to his daughter."  But almost every single kid wrote "The father gave his daughter to the balloon."  Just picture that!

One of the best parts of teaching so far:   I was splitting the kids up into teams for a game, and asked what team names they wanted.  Of course, one was the "Golden Tigers," one was "The Flying Unicorn Snakes" and when I got to the third group, the boy said he wanted his team name to be "Penis." 

Today was not the best day.  I had to go to the immigration office to get my alien registration card... it was a ZOO.  Possibly worse than the area of Secaucus that houses both Wal-Mart and Sam's club (If you've never been there.. use your imagination).  I got there at 10:30 am thinking I'd have plenty of time to get my papers processed.  NOPE.  I waited until 1 pm and there were still almost 100 people waiting ahead in line of me.  I had to leave to get to work... so I'm getting my sleeping bag out and camping in front of the doors of the immigration office to be there when they open tomorrow morning. 

As for this past weekend, MJ came in to Seoul again, thank god!  We had a blast.  She got here Saturday, early in the afternoon.  We had lunch with my co-workers then stopped at e-mart, picked up a bottle of wine ("Long Neck"-- South Africa's answer to Yellow Tail, I guess) and sat down by the river all afternoon enjoying the beautiful weather of early fall.  Since it was the weekend, they had the fountain going- orchestrated to music.  It was fantastic.

Here's the water show!  One Korean guy even got up at one point to pretend he was conducting the whole thing.

Here is my fabulous friend MJ!

After a lovely afternoon, we headed to Itaewon to meet up with some of MJ's friends.  They were fabulous and I had a great time.  One was a Kiwi, one was a South African, and the third from hawaii.

That's all that is new with me.  I NEED to get my shit together and start learning Korean.  It's getting embarrassing.  

PS- How is the Mark, Tom and Travis Show STILL as funny as it was when we were 13??