First, during Morning English, Chan Yang asked me what we do in America to stay warm when the weather starts to get cold . I was a little stumped. After a lot of thinking, I said that we wear warm clothes. Not exciting, I know, but I seriously couldn't think of anything out of the ordinary that we do to stay warm in the winter. Then, I decided to explain drinking hot chocolate as a child and how that always warmed me up after spending some time outside in the cold. He seemed unimpressed with that, so I added that we put marshmallows in the hot chocolate too. On air, I was trying to explain marshmallows because they don't sell them in bags here like they do at home. Suddenly, Chan Yang had an epiphany (that's for you, Dave!), and the following exchange happened:
Chan Yang: "Is that like the filling of choco pies?" (Choco pies are a Korean dessert exactly like Hostess Moon Pies.)
Me: "YES! Exactly like choco pies!"
Chan Yang took a moment to consider this and translate it into Korean. Then,...
Chan Yang: "Excuse me, but I think that is a bit unbelievable."
Who knew that putting marshmallows in our hot chocolate was such a crazy concept!
During my teacher class today, I was working on common classroom expressions. I was going over different ways to praise the students and one of the examples I gave was to say, "Well done!" The principal looked at me and said, "Yes. Well done. Same way I like my beef." It took me a little while to catch her joke, but you can imagine how hard I laughed when it finally clicked! She is so dang funny! Later this afternoon, Hyunjoo treated the entire staff to fried chicken because her choir won the gold prize (which, I think is second place, but I'm not sure...) in a competition last week. I was in my classroom because I don't come to staff meetings anymore since they are conducted in all Korean. Suddenly, Dionne arrived in my classroom to tell me I had to come downstairs to the meeting because they had chicken and they didn't want me to miss out on it. When I got downstairs, the principal had hoarded the better part of one of the boxes and saved it for me. She said, "One box. Four teachers. But, you my teacher, so you get own box!" I felt like such a fatty and I only ate three of the ten pieces she saved for me, but I felt very special that she would save me so much!
This week, with the second year students, I am doing an activity based on an MTV show called The Buried Life in which four Canadian guys travel around North America in a bus completing their list of 100 things they want to do before they die. Along the way, they help the random strangers they meet on the street complete their own life goals. It's a really inspiring show and I am a proud advocate and fan. So, for this class activity, after some introduction and explanation of the concept, I have them create a list of five things they want to do before they die and then they share them with the class. I hear many girls say they want to go to certain K-Pop groups' concerts or meet Korean celebrities. Many have said they want to help the poor and honor their parents and grandparents. A few have said they want to attend a good university and almost everybody has said they want to travel the world. One girl in particular sparked my attention when she said she wants to rob a bank. Uh oh.
Since my classes' exams are given in the next couple of weeks, I have started reviewing what will be on the exam. I have devised a game for reviewing that is quite popular among native teachers here. It's a powerpoint game where the students choose a shape, letter or number from the screen. Each shape, letter or number is linked to a question. They have to correctly answer the question or complete the task. Once they have done so, a picture appears on the screen. The picture could be a point value, or it could be one of the following four things with these consequences: a water gun (wipes out that team's accumulated points), a bomb (wipes out every team's points), a bandit (allows the team to steal 15 points from another team) or a recycle sign (allows that team to switch points with any other team). Today, I played the game with two teams. One team had 30 points and the other team had 15. The losing team answered their question and the recycle sign appeared. One of the girls was so excited to see that sign that she started singing "Jesus Loves Me" at the top of her lungs. I started laughing so hard that I had to take a few moments to compose myself (and write myself a note to remember to include this in my upcoming blog post :) ) before I could move on with the game.
Never a dull moment, that's for sure.
No comments:
Post a Comment