Black Balloon

I know I'd been updating every two or three days, but it might start to be more like every four to five days now. This semester, I have extra classes after school on Monday and Wednesday-Friday. So that extra two hours I'd had previously to just dick around on the internet is now gone. :( Plus, I've been trying to go to bed early (since it's making a huge difference), so that majorly cuts down on my internet time. I felt really stressed on Sunday and last night due to my lesson plan for my first year students. Since they did Lesson 2 last week, I got to plan a "fun" lesson for them this week. They had to have a worksheet-based activity, since the last time we had a "fun" day, they just played a game. But all the worksheets I found were either too easy (they'd finish them in 5 minutes) or they were WAY too advanced. All last night I kept fretting about what to do wtih them. I had a million worksheets saved and combinations of them, too. My dreams were these short little things flitting with papers and students. Really terrible stuff. In the end, I sucked it up and tried a worksheet on rhyming words. To my relief, it actually went really, really well and took up just the right amount of time. So for the rest of the day, I was in a great mood.

On Friday night, we all went out to celebrate Dean's birthday! It was a good time--Hongdae, the usual, with the usual suspects, as well. The nights honestly just blur together. All I know is that I had a good time and that we danced a lot. I spilled my drink on myself. Kirsten dropped hers. I ran into a girl who works in my district and we complained about the lack of toilet paper in a bathroom with purplish/blue lights. We came back pretty early, around 3:30 AM.

I'm trying to save more money. Somehow, I managed to blow a LOT more than I should have this month. Plus, I just paid for a 3 night, 4 day trip to Jeju Island with my friends and Dean during Children's Day. I'm SO excited to go to Jeju! I'll probably take a million pictures,

Oh...and on another note, the "Baby, One More Time" craze has hit Korea so hard. "Tell Me" has gone out the window, and it's all about the new Jewelry song. My kids have been singing it nonstop. I like the Wonder Girls more. Despite being babies, they are less annoying to me than Jewelry and that chick's crazy high wasted blue pants.

Roommate and I at Boom Boom's. This bar gives free drinks away to foreigners between 12-1 AM. It's FANTASTICO.

My friends like wearing Chuck's.

shoes

This is the Sillim Market. It's close to the subway at Sillim and within walking distance from my apartment. They have tons of fish, meat, and vegetable stalls. It's really, really, really long.

market

Just some store that's close to the Sillim Market. I liked the lanterns.

lantern

Finally, here's a pic of some students cleaning my classroom. One class is assigned to clean my classroom each year. The kids are really sweet that do it this year, but man...kids are crap cleaners. The room always smells like dirty, metallic water afterwards and I have to open up all the windows to air it out. They all just use filthy mops and already murky water to do the cleaning. Yuck.

clean

This title is Black Balloon by the Goo Goo Dolls.

I'll become

what you became

to me.

A DSLR is a great investment--I mean, you're getting the top notch versions of your memories! I love mine so, so much. Even if you just like taking pictures, I would get one, since you can easily learn the basic techniques that will get you great shots.

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by: the real ginger

Apr 09, 2008 8:49pm

Those are some awsome pictures of the market...you are seriously sooo inspiring. All the sudden I wanna get a DSLR too....But I don't have half the talent you do. So exciting...Jeju Island. Yes take LOTS of pitures... If I come to Korea thats where I would want to go first before Seoul.

by: memeu

Apr 09, 2008 12:03pm

It depends. The street clothes are really cheap, but since brands aren't that big here for middle class people, the brands are pretty expensive. There are some "cheap" brands, but they're not super super cheap and they're not even that popular. It's strange.

Apr 06, 2008 1:14am

your life looks so amazing and interesting! are the clothes in korea pretty cheap compare to the united states'?

----Lastly Her

by: lazlyher

Apr 03, 2008 5:49am

I'm not really into the Jewelry song--it's just not as catchy for me. Tell Me was super overplayed, but I'd still rather hear that than Baby, One More Time.

Apr 02, 2008 11:25pm

The craze is pretty bad. Every store was playing Tell Me for a good month or two. I would hear it dozens of times while out shopping. People had it as their cellphone ring, even my 40 year old coworkers! The kids would sing it in class. They would dance to it in class. They would play the music video on their cellphones and show me. It was INSANE. Even the boys knew the dance!!

Apr 02, 2008 11:24pm

I'll still try! I'm just trying to adjust to this new schedule. :(

Apr 02, 2008 11:23pm

Ah, you probably went to Hallasan! We're actually going to do the islands around Jeju, so I'm not sure if we're going to the main Jeju island. But I'm looking forward to that weekend with ridiculous amounts of positivity. If it rains, I'll be so upset.

Apr 02, 2008 11:22pm

Oh, I'm getting double the original amount. ;) It's mighty, mighty sweet and it's totally worth it, since I just make one lesson plan to use for both of the classes. I've been doing a lot of extra spending lately, so I'm definitely in need of this.

My school provides the book--that's it. They'll pay for other materials, but it's a longer process that involves me going, finding the book/name/publisher/date/etc, then getting back to them, then they buy it. So if I'm out and see a resource that looks good, I'm more prone to buy it than just wait it out. But overall, I use materials I find on the internet and then adapt them for my classes.

I try to steer away from hangman, but I definitely play an ESL version of Taboo with them. I write a word like "sea" above a student's head (a student volunteers to sit in front of the blackboard and gains an extra credit point), then write two words below, such as "water" and "ocean." I cross them out. The rest of the kids then raise their hands to give clues. "Fishy home!", "go for vacation", "swim!" are the types of things the kids use as hints. They can come up with some really creative ways of explaining a word or phrase, and they get a huge kick out of it. I also do some creative writing activities but only with my extra classes. I have students in my regular classes that don't even know the alphabet. But yeah, Taboo is what I use for the last 10 minutes or so of class if there is extra time. On the "fun days", we do powerpoints on Western culture followed up by team quiz games, or I arrange some other form of game/activity/worksheet.

Yeah...*sigh* The kids do such a crap job. They just talk and goof off. The other rooms aren't that much better than mine.

Apr 02, 2008 11:14pm

Way to plan ahead! I was always jealous of the people who knew exactly what they wanted to do from such an early age. I never had that conviction, other than that I didn't want an office job.

Apr 02, 2008 10:57pm

Noone can get over Tell Me. lol

Yeh i like that Jewellery son, but it will never take away WonderGirl's signature dance.. lol. The song already saids thier soo young and childish. Have yet to be a fan. :/

Hahaha.. the kids sound soo lazy so they clean softly.. Man, they clean crossways? how is the floor gonna be clean!? O_o lol

Hey do take those pics.. I wanna see more of Korea.. =)

by: lil_buddha_gal

Apr 02, 2008 3:15pm

I really dislike the song "Tell Me", and I'm sure I don't want to know what "Baby, One More Time" is. How bad are these crazes? The crazes in Korea aren't probably like our Soulja Boy dance craze, right?

by: Cooler als Penn...

Apr 02, 2008 10:38am

I've heard about jeju so many times... hope you enjoy your trip. less internet hours? huhuhu... that's sad... hope you still update/write blogs regularly....

God bless! :)

by: barbiegrace

Apr 02, 2008 4:29am

aw! jeju island! you'll have a great time~ i went there with my family the last time i was in korea. are you going on one of those tour things? when i went we went hiking to this big mountain (i think) and it was absolutely beautiful. and the black sand beaches were cool. it was fun exploring the caves there. oh and they have those funny little stone statues everywhere (the ones with the guy wearing a hat, hands on his belly, laughing). hope you have a great time when you go! and beautiful pictures, as always. :)

by: klx13

Apr 01, 2008 8:00pm

Hopefully you're getting a little extra for taking on the additional classes.

Is a majority of your curriculum provided by the school or are you responsible for 100% of the material covered? I imagine since you work for SMOE (or was it GEPIK?) they would at least provide you with some activity sheets, but I could be wrong.

Update your blog as often as you wish. We're just hooked on your fascinating story, considering more and more people are considering working and living abroad these days. We can't help but want to hear all of your stories (the good ones and the bad ones).

Have you tried (and this will sound silly) games like word bingo, various forms of hangman, creative writing games (similar to your sentence exercise (the students create a short story based on sentences they come up with, think a mutated form of ad-lib)) as "fun activities" yet?

I never understood why they require the kids to clean the classrooms, especially when they know that most if not all of the kids will do a half-assed job. They (the school) could easily hire an ajumma or two to clean things up properly (especially the bathrooms).

Enjoy your little trip. We expect to see a lot of exciting photos.

by: semi-fly

Apr 01, 2008 7:10pm

Don't mind the title I was bored.

But I'm glad you are posting again. You really make me worry less, I plan to teach English as a foreign language in Korea and I'm only 15! But that's not the point, it's just that I worry so damn much about things that won't happen for a while!

by: koncettina

Apr 01, 2008 10:21am

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