Sunday, December 30, 2012

A snow day and a trip to Yeosu

Thursday:
  • Today was my last day of school!  Well, it was supposed to be Friday, but we had a big snow day so Thursday was the last day.  I will certainly miss my students, but I'm looking forward to having a chance for the students and I to recharge over vacation.  However, I am very sad that I will not be teaching my second grade classes anymore.  I really had some great classes with them, but they must move on to third grade and I cannot teach the third graders since they need to focus all of their efforts on preparation for the Suneung, national test.  I am actually a little bit nervous about teaching the first graders since their levels tend to be noticeably lower than the second graders, but perhaps with a switch-up with the teachers and classmates, it'll be fine.  I guess we'll see!
Friday:
  • So my coteacher called me at about 7:20am to tell me that I need to meet the music teacher, Ms. Jin, at 7:42 to hitch a ride with her to school.  I don't know why it was exactly 7:42 but I just go with the flow.  I pretty much have to here haha.  So I scrambled to get my clothes on and I had to run out the door without breakfast and I met up with Ms. Jin, who lives a few blocks away.  We drive through the snow (Suncheon, and from what I hear, the rest of Korea, lacks snowplows and/or salt so it was a bit messy) and we stop in front of my apartment.  I told her it was my apartment and she exclaims in Korean "What? Why didn't you tell me you lived here? Your co-teacher tried to explain, but I didn't understand her directions!" Now mind you, I would never be able to give you an exact translation nor could I ever articulate that myself, but I'm 99.9% sure that's what she was communicating.  Guess I should've told her earlier.  Oops.
  • And coming from my complex about 10 minutes late was the school nurse, who doesn't speak a lick of English and sounds very angry and boisterous when she talks.  She isn't angry, but it just sounds like it.  So we try to make our way to school.  It takes about 20 minutes to go the distance that is normally 5 minutes and we saw several spun out cars on the way.  So we decided that it really wasn't worth it so we turned around and went back home.  My host mother later told me that it took her two hours to get to school when it normally takes a little over 20 minutes.  I wasn't even teaching that day, so it wasn't a huge deal.  
Saturday:
  •  I actually got up relatively early (9:45) to head out early with the host family to see Les Miserables.  They have a ton of Hollywood movies here in Korea and they just have Korean subtitles.  I don't know. I thought it was okay.  I'm not a fan of musicals, but it was definitely really well done.  It's just it was 95% singing and 5% talking which was just odd for me.  I'm sure if I liked musicals I would've thought it was the greatest thing ever, but they just don't appeal to me all that much.
  • Later in the afternoon, it was more family fun time!  We were heading to Yeosu to hang out with my host mother's sister's family.  Yeosu is one of the southernmost cities in Korea (except for Jeju-do of course) and its claim to fame was holding the World Expo last year.  I've been meaning to go for a while, but just never got around to it.  We took the train down got to her apartment.  It was pretty nice.  It was a little smaller than ours in Suncheon, but they have a smaller family.  
  • Once other family members arrived, we headed out to a restaurant for oysters.  I actually really like oysters so I was happy!  They had us sit at a table that had these big covers in the middle of them.  The servers unveiled the covers to reveal about 100 oysters at each of our three tables.  We had about 12 with almost half of them being under the age of 10 people in our party so approximately 300 oysters for 12 people.  We did some major damage, but in the end, we simply could not overcome the challenge. 
  • After dinner, the uncles took me out for screen golf!  I love screen golf!  I only watched this time, but it was still really fun.  We got home and then watched some TV and then turned in for the night.  The family insisted that I take the one cousin's room to myself (he is a super-duper nice 1st or 2nd grader in high school by the way).  Most of the others sprawled out on blankets over the living room floor.  
Sunday:
  • We woke up and had breakfast, which was a huge bowl of soup with some rice and other things.  Then one of the uncles and my host father took me to a nearby sauna.  The water was so hot!  I definitely don't remember the last few saunas being that bad.  Maybe it was because it was so cold out.  It was good, but wasn't quite as relaxing as the other ones I went too.  
  • We reunited and then had some bibimbap for lunch.  I'm not a huge fan of bibimbap, but it wasn't too bad.  Then we headed our separate ways and now I'm here at home typing this up.  It was a great last weekend with the host family before I head to Busan next week!

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

The Last Week and Christmas

It's my last week of school for the year!  I'm doing a Christmas lesson since it was Christmas week.  The students aren't super thrilled about having to write during the lesson, especially since their exams are finished and they start their winter break on Friday, but I can't just sit back and watch a movie again!!  We are watching a little bit of a Simpsons Christmas episode with Korean subtitles so that helps make the writing a little bit easier.

And, of course, it was Christmas!!  Yay!  It actually is not a big deal here in Korea.  Schools are closed on Christmas day and a few other businesses here and there (including CrossFit Suncheon) but that was pretty much the only way I would have noticed it.  No santas in all of the stores or Christmas music being blasted on the radio (at least that I know of since I don't listen to the radio often here), just a nice vacation day.  No one really even exchanges gifts from what I have seen.

For my Christmas pow-wow, I headed over to one of my favorite cities with some of my favorite people, Mokpo!  Sara, Nina, Liam, Ammy, Tracey, Robyn, Lizzie, and myself all just hung out on Christmas Eve/Day and it was great!  We just rented two motel rooms and got to just enjoy being around friends for Christmas.  It does get a little isolated in Suncheon sometimes with no other Fulbrighters being that close, but the one good thing about that is that when I do get to reunite with them, it makes it that much more meaningful.  I really do treasure the moments when I get to see my fellow ETAs and am able to let the "Fulbright English Teaching Assistant and Cultural Ambassador" side relax a bit.  It was certainly an unconventional Christmas, but a great one!

I only have about 10 days left in Suncheon before I head to the big city, Busan!  Still looking around online for things to get involved with and I found a few things I am interested in, including a coffee making class and possibly boxing lessons haha.  I figured since I'm not going to be able to do CrossFit, I need something active!  I would also really be into a climbing gym, but I haven't had much luck with finding that.  I'll think of something!

Hope everyone had a nice Christmas and is enjoying their time off!

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Wrapping Up and 2 Wonderful Dogs

Wednesday: 
  •  The big news Wednesday was the election!  There was no school and some businesses were closed (including CrossFit Suncheon) so people could get out and vote for their new president.  The winner was.....Park Geun-Hye!  The conservative female who many of her critics had named her "The Daughter of a Dictator" due to the negative feelings towards her father, Park Chung-hee, a former President of South Korea who ruled in the 1960's and 1970's.  He is credited with completely transforming Korea's economy (prior to his rise to power, North Korea actually had a stronger economy than South Korea), but he had several human rights abuses, jailing and torturing political opponents and banning things like mini-skirts and rock music.  Many Koreans have very mixed feelings about him and his daughter.  
  • My province/state, Jeollanam-do, does NOT like them.  In fact, a whopping 89% of voters in this state voted against Park Geun-Hye!  I was shocked!  Apparently, I live in the San Fransisco of Korea haha (except I don't think there is any place in Korea that in anywhere near as liberal and radical as SF).  Many of the policies of the two candidates were quite similar actually, which makes it interesting.  I think it was more an election about whether or not people wanted the daughter of Park Chung-hee in power.  It was a close election though.  Here is a table that is from Wikipedia that explains the election results.  My state is South Jeolla.
regions · provinces · cities Park Geun-hye.jpg Moon Jae-in cropped.jpg


Park Geun-hye
Saenuri
Moon Jae-in
DUP
Votes % Votes %
Sudogwon Seoul 3,024,572 48.18% 3,227,639 51.42%
Incheon 852,600 51.58% 794,213 48.04%
Gyeonggi 3,528,915 50.43% 3,442,084 49.19%
Gangwon 562,876 61.97% 340,870 37.53%
Chungcheong Daejeon 450,576 49.95% 448,310 49.70%
North Chungcheong 518,442 56.22% 398,907 43.26%
South Chungcheong 658,928 56.66% 497,630 43.26%
Sejong 33,587 51.91% 30,787 47.58%
Honam
(Jeolla)
Gwangju 69,574 7.76% 823,737 91.97%
North Jeolla 150,315 13.22% 980,322 86.25%
South Jeolla 116,290 10.00% 1,038,347 89.28%
Yeongnam
(Gyeongsang)
Busan 1,324,572 59.82% 882,511 39.87%
Ulsan 413,977 59.78% 275,451 39.78%
Daegu 1,267,789 80.14% 309,034 19.53%
North Gyeongsang 1,375,164 80.82% 316,659 18.61%
South Gyeongsang 1,259,174 63.12% 724,896 36.33%
Jeju 166,184 50.46% 161,235 48.95%       

Thursday:
  • I had school today.  We were doing more apocalypse lessons and I did the Pokemon review game with the 1st graders.  I'm so glad I waited until the end of the year to do it, because I don't think they would do anything else except maybe watch a movie.  
  • I was also helping one of the English teacher, Ms. Choi, with a speech.  She, along with about 30ish other English teachers from Fulbright schools, are heading to Texas for two months to study English and American culture and to teach about Korean culture as well. Ms. Choi was chosen as the leader of the group and she has to write and deliver two speeches on behalf of all of the English teachers.  She was pretty nervous so I helped her out a bit.  I think they'll go over well!
Friday:
  • The big project of the day was finishing up the workbook for Winter Camp.  It is pretty much done and I think it is going to be so good.  It really is a high quality camp and I think the ETAs and the campers will have a blast.  It's in 2 weeks!!  I am really excited for it.  I saw who all was going to go and it's a great group of boys.  We are definitely going to challenge them, but it'll be fun too.
  • We had a free day at CrossFit and it was intense as usual.  I did clean lifts, kettlebell swings (300!!), box jumps, and double unders.  I only have about a week and a half left of it until I head to Busan!  I'm definitely bummed, but it'll be good to see if I can keep up my fitness levels for these two months.
Saturday:
  • Today, we headed to Ms. Choi's house for lunch.  She is also my host father's sister, so the parents and twins and I piled into the car and headed over.  She actually lives in a house, which is a little unusual, especially in a place as big as Suncheon.  Her house is nice though and she has two wonderful little dogs!  They were barking like mad at first because they didn't know who we were, but they were pretty friendly afterwards.  The twins were absolutely terrified of them though.  They refused to go anywhere near them and would run away from them if the dogs even looked at them.  I petted and played with them though.  I tried to play fetch, but they had no clue what it was.  I don't think they are really trained and they just live outside.  It was nice to play a little with animals though!
Okay, I think I'm going to head to The Liz coffee shop to work on a few things for winter camp then I'll just take it easy for the rest of the evening.  I'm making plans for Christmas!  I am going to hang out with my Mokpo friends and we are going to have a little pow-wow in a motel and play board games and stuff.  Should be a fun time!  I'm glad I'll be able to spend Christmas with my friends! 

Have a great weekend and congratulations on surviving the Apocalypse! :)

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

The Apocalypse and more days off

Sunday:
  • I don't even remember what I did Sunday.  I think I just had a sleeping coma for a chunk of the first part of the day and then I went somewhere to work on my lesson plan for Monday.  Can't remember haha.
Monday:
  • Yesterday, I had school.  I only was there for the first half though because they were preparing for the incoming 1st graders.  The Korean school year ends in December so we are getting a whole new group of students in March.  They have to take their placement test first though to see what levels they can be placed in so that is what they did Tuesday.  On Monday, they had to get all of the tests ready and move the classrooms around and all of that.
  • I also taught a new lesson (maybe my last of the year?).  I figured everyone does Christmas lessons and it is a great topic, but, surprise, surprise, I wanted to do something different.  So I hear the world is supposed to end on Friday (though I'm not sure about the time difference) so I figured we would do a lesson about the upcoming Apocalypse!  We watched a few videos (Linkin Park's The Catalyst and the trailer for 2012) and then we looked at some old predictions of the world ending that happened starting way back in the 1000's (though there were many before this).  
  • Then the students had to make their own apocalypse.  Some students were not into this at all, especially since they took their final exam last week and they were just tuned out for this week.  Nevertheless, I had them write their own or with a partner and I got some interesting ones.  One student said that he got so good at the soccer video game FIFA 2012 that everyone just committed suicide because no one could beat him.  Another said that there was a giant Chocopie (a Korean Moonpie) that covered the Sun and everyone on Earth was destroyed.  His friend had a similar story except it was a Chocopie cloud that rained chocolate that destroyed everyone's hair (not quite sure how this counted as an apocalypse, but it's creative!).  I'm doing it Thursday and Friday too so should be interesting to see what they come up with!
  • In the afternoon, I worked out more details of the winter camp like the reward systems, certificates of achievement, shopping lists, and all sorts of other things. It's a lot of work and coordinating, but I think it is going to be worth it.  We have almost everything worked out now and I'm really pumped!  I think it's a really high quality camp and the students will learn a lot and have fun too.
Tuesday:
  • So I had another day off.  All of these things just keep happening at one time and it has resulted in my not working a ton haha.  I didn't really do that much today though.  I just did some laundry and made some food.  I cooked up some Chicken Scallopini for dinner and it was delicious!  Everyone said they liked it too and I'm pretty sure they did since there wasn't too much left over.  Even the grandma was slurping up the pasta noodles.  And I literally mean slurping.  It isn't really considered rude here so most people just slurp their noodles or soup or whatever.  It's not the most appetizing sound, but it could be worse.  
Tomorrow is the big election!  Korea has its presidential election tomorrow.  It's pretty close from what I can tell.  Everyone around my area likes Moon Jay-In.  He's the more liberal candidate.  From what I have seen the conservative candidate, Park Keun-Hey, has a slight edge over Mr. Moon.  She would be the first female president of Korea if she wins.  Should be interesting!  If you are going to look up information about it, you'll have to check the names because my Romanization is definitely not right.  I can write their names in Korean though!  I can't really type it though since my computer doesn't have Korean installed on the keyboard haha.  I guess I did learn a little bit from all of those office hours at Orientation after all haha.

Saturday, December 15, 2012

The Teacher Retreat

Friday & Saturday:
  • I got up relatively early for a day off (9:15 haha) and we weren't leaving until 12:30, but being the devoted little CrossFit fan I am, I actually got up to go do my WOD!  It was pretty difficult.  It was a choice day, but I didn't really like the choices very much haha.  So I did this situp thing for a bit.  It's like a stand so you are elevated about 3 or 4 feet and you are in normal sit up position and have your legs wedged into the one part so they can't move up or down.  This is important because you actually lean all the way back so you can touch the ground and go all the way back up.  It's pretty tricky and I had to switch back to regular situps after a while because it was hurting my lower back for some reason.  I also did some pushups and rowed 2km.
  • Then I headed straight to school to meet up with all of the teachers to head out on our trip!  I met my co-teacher and she told me that she suddenly couldn't go.  She's usually the one I hang out with most so I was a little unsure, but I saw that some of my other pals are going so I was excited about that.  I could hang out and talk with a third grade English teacher, Mr. Yoon, and a few of the younger female teachers that I used to have "tea time" with.  So we all piled on the bus and headed out!
  • Korean tour buses are always decorated in an interesting manner.  This particular bus was decked out in mostly pink and purple and featured rainbow lights.  I headed towards the back with Mr. Yoon and almost immediately other teachers were showering us with snacks.  We got candy, oranges, and a lunch of kimbap.  We also got cans of beer which was interesting.  Never thought we would get that on a bus.  I took mine to be polite but then I just shuffled mine into my backpack and I think it might still be there haha.
  • We went to Bugok, a small city between Changwon and Gimhae for those that know Southern Korea.  For those who don't, it's pretty much a really small town that is basically in the middle of nowhere.  I think it's famous for its hot springs and a mountain.  There were actually a lot of hotels which I was surprised since it seemed like no one else was around.  We all met in an auditorium where there was a performance.  I wasn't really sure what to expect, I'm not sure if anyone did actually haha.  Some cheesy techno music was playing and then out came four dancers, including three women dressed in vegas-style costumes with feather headresses.  There were magic acts and dancing.  The whole time, I kept thinking this was America's Got Talent and I was seeing these untalented acts and I wanted to buzz them off the stage.  I really was not terribly impressed.  There was an interesting act where a guy was switching masks without using his hands, but that was about it.
  • After the performance, we had dinner.  It was Korean BBQ so it was pretty good.  It is pretty traditional for teachers to drink a pretty good amount of alcohol at dinner meetings and that's what what was going on here.  Not all of the teachers, but there were quite a few.  I had a little bit since it is pretty rude to reject another teacher, especially one that is older (which is everyone).  After a while, I headed out with some of the younger teachers who didn't have a whole lot like me.  We went and got some ice cream and just hung out for a bit.  I went with Ms. Nam and Ms. Kim and we ducked and hid around the hotel (we didn't want other teachers to see us and make us go to karaoke) so we found a spot, brought some nachos and hung out and spoke some broken English (and a tiny bit of Korean). 
  • The next day, we headed out and went to the city of Namhae and got to see some wonderful sites.  Here are a couple of pics:
 

 
  • It was really nice.  I'm glad I got to build some jeong (building a stronger relationship) with my fellow teachers.  It got awkward sometimes, but it was worth it!

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Recovery and A Trip to Mokpo (and Gwangju)

Tuesday:
  • I finally began to feel back to 100% from my weekend illness.  I will definitely remember to stay hydrated and take it easy when I need to.  At school, I "taught" my classes with Elf and then I had three days off!  It's been great to relax a bit!
  • On Tuesday, I felt good enough to go to CrossFit again.  It was pretty tough though with a workout that focused on arms, which is pretty much my weakest point.  There were a ton of people there too!  There have been more and more people trickling in since I have been there.  I think the owner has really been stepping up with his marketing because I see his signs all over town in these advertisements.  It's been paying off that's for sure!
Wednesday:
  • I got to sleep in very late again since I had no school.  When I woke up to go shower, I saw my host grandma chatting with two of her pals at the table.  I didn't really want to try to talk them too terribly much since their English is non-existent and my Korean is pretty much not there either.  So I was pretty brief and by the time I wanted to leave, they were all hanging out in her bedroom.
  • When I got out, I went over to Lime, the local sandwich shop.  It was really great!  They have a ton of different sandwiches to choose from and I had a mozzarella, lettuce, and tomato sandwich and a vanilla latte.  It was reallly good.  I just brought my laptop with me and cranked out some work on my winter camp things.  I'll definitely be heading back more often during next semester!
  • Around 2:45, I got on a bus (running to the terminal with about 4 minutes to spare) heading to Mokpo, a city about an1 hour and 20 minutes west of Suncheon and one of the easternmost cities in Korea.  Right on the coast!  There are also 7 of my Fulbright friends there!  I got there around 4:15 and I was able to meet up with Anne and Lizzie in one of the coffee shops.  We were able to catch up a bit and then slowly other Mokpoers came in, Liam, Ammy, and Tracey.  Then we went to get some dinner.  I ended up eating a bunch of dumplings for dinner.  These are usually more an appetizer and the waiter put a plate dumplings on each end of the table.  Nope! Those are both for me haha!  So I had two plates of dumplings in front of me and I was very happy.
  • I had to leave a little earlier than I wanted since I had to go home to Suncheon and the last bus left at 7:40.  I was pushing it a bit with the time, but I thought I could make it.  Several red lights later, I realized I was not making that bus.  Oops.  I was now stuck in a city an hour and twenty minutes away with no bus going back to my city.  Pre-Korea, I probably would have panicked and just worried a lot.  Now, I just thought oh well that's unfortunate.  I wasn't sure what to do for 2 minutes than I thought well I mind as well go to Gwangju (the biggest city in Jelloanam-do, my province) since I think they have a lot of buses going to Suncheon.  So I went to Gwangju and I was right.  They had a bus back to Suncheon in ten minutes. Yay! I actually got back to Suncheon in the same amount of time (maybe a little faster) than if I would have caught the Mokpo bus, since it was the slow bus that stopped at many cities.
Thursday:
  • I slept in. Surprise.  It was nice.  Then I walked up to Lake Park which is a 20 minute walk up the street.  It is a nice lil park, but it's definitely better in the fall.  I had a nice lunch of a chicken sandwich and enjoyed moseying around that part of town since I don't go very often. 
  • I did CrossFit again tonight and it wasn't too bad.  It was toes-to-bar and kettlebell swings.  There was like no one there though!  It was only a class of three today.  But whatever!  I'll see them all soon.  I only have 2 weeks left though :( :(  I'll have to find a gym or something at Busan.  I looked at the Crossfit Busan, but it's like $200.00 a month! Rip off!  So I'll have to look around, maybe ask my students.  
Tomorrow, I am going on the teacher's retreat.  Still not sure what to expect, but hopefully it'll be fun and not too awkward.  I'll be back in Suncheon Saturday!

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Finals Week

Monday:
  • Well, it's finals week!  The students are in a bit of a tizzy with last minute cramming for their final tests of the year.  My part is done so I'm happy about that!  Also, I only have two days this week! Monday and Tuesday!  Whoop whoop!  I'll probably head out of town for a bit and explore so that'll be good.  Might check up on some friends in Mokpo.
  • I hate to admit it, but I really don't have much of a lesson for my students this week, largely due to fact that they have exams and we already did our review game and I certainly don't want to teach any new material right before their tests.  Therefore, I have succumbed to doing something I personally resent.  I am showing a movie.  I loathe showing movies because it makes me feel very lazy and that I am not doing my job but I feel like it was justified here since students are very stressed and otherwise probably would not have retained any more new information.  I am showing part of Elf.  There have been a few technical issues since its an American DVD and it doesn't want to talk to the one Korean computer, but we're making it work!
  • I also skipped CrossFit for the first time in a month or so today.  I was sad to do it, but my body needed a little more recovery time from my being sick this past weekend. So far, I feel 100% today, but I have to wait it out to see if I'll go.

Sunday, December 9, 2012

Snowball Fights and Being Sick

This week I was continuing my review sessions with my class and playing our Pokemon game.  It's a really great game and there were some fantastic rounds with some last minute game-changers.  I was very pleased with how it turned out.

Friday
  • We had a pretty big snow storm on Friday, one of the biggest Gwangyang has had in a long time.  It was probably about an inch or two of snow (not a ton by Ohio standards but big where I am at).  It was enough to cover the ground and make snowmen and snowballs.  Naturally, there were some intense snowball fights that occurred.  At my school, there are 10 minutes between each class where students are free to do literally whatever so most opted to head outside and play in the snow.  I joined them for a bit and got myself wrapped up into a snowball fight.  I was holding my own for a while, but eventually the number of students was too many and I had to retreat inside the school.  Some students brought snowballs into school, but I don't think any were launched.  I know one student in my 4th period class brought a snowball in and I just gave him a weird look.  After 10 minutes of it melting in his hands, he says "Teacher! Can I go to trash?" to throw it away.  Didn't quite understand that one haha.
  • After school, I went to CrossFit and had a pretty intense workout.  I did some double-unders, pull-ups, kettlebell swings, and a particularly tough rowing workout.  It was good, but exhausting!
Weekend
  • Unfortunately, the main highlight of this weekend has been me being sick.  On Friday night it was pretty bad with vomiting and more.  By Saturday morning, I began to hydrate myself a lot better and I got a ton of sleep.  Right now (Sunday afternoon) I feel about 100x better and am only a little bit tired.  I still don't have much of an appetite, but it's better than what it was before!
  • I also have to make my lesson plans for winter camp.  I'm pretty excited about it though.  The theme is decades and I am going to teach about pirates (1700's not really a decade, but whatever), inventions (1890's-1900's), and boy bands and pop music (1990's).  I can't wait to see what my other ETA friends are coming up with.  I heard a few of their ideas and they seem great.  Definitely more academic than mine, but I think that can be a very good thing.  We'll see how it goes!

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

The cold and an epic battle

Tuesday
  • So I have been doing the Pokemon review game with my classes and its a pretty big hit.  There was one particularly memorable class today.  There were three teams and they were going at it and answering the questions and then "Team Top" got a mystery ball slide.  This offers three options/poke balls to the students and they have to pick one. This team picked a ball that revealed a clip about Mewtwo, the most powerful Pokemon (at least back when there were 150).  At the end, it told the students to trade points with one team.  Naturally, Team Top switched with the team that had the most points, which was Team Yes so Team Top was now in the lead.
  • About four slides later, Team No (the students came up with these names) encountered another mystery ball.  They picked one of the three balls and lo and behold it was another Mewtwo.  Of course, they stole from Team Top and they held onto their lead for the rest of the game.
  • The final round was finished and Team Top answered a question to unveil a disappointing Jigglypuff, worth a mere one point.  There was still one question left on the board and the students were interested enough in the game to where they wanted to have it so I decided to let it be a free for all and whoever answered correctly first, got to move to the reward slide.  The question was "What sport is this?" and it had some clip art of a volleyball game.  A student on Team Top shouted "Volleyball!"  He was right.  I clicked on the slide and much to my and everyone else's surprise, there were three mystery balls.  There are 26 questions total and 6 mystery ball answers and I thought they were used up, but I was wrong.  Now came the decision.  Could they have a chance to steal their points back from Team No?  They picked the aqua ball.  The screen faded into black.  A pokemon slowly began to appear.  Who was it?  It was Mewtwo.  Team Top let out piercing screams of victory and pounded on their desks in elation.  I glanced over at the now downcast Team No to see stunned faces.  Team Top stole back all of their points for the win.  I couldn't believe.  This narrative account doesn't really do the whole moment justice, but it was pretty fantastic.  It's going to be hard to beat that one.
  • In other news, it is freezing outside.  Thankfully, there isn't snow, but it did snow up north in the middle of the country.  Hoping it doesn't come down here!  The school is freezing!!  I don't understand, but they frequently leave doors and windows open which naturally makes the building freezing.  I don't know if it's because they are afraid that the all male adolescent student population will cause smells of havoc or what, but it is crazy!  I have to bundle up a lot.  I wore my coat, scarf, and leg warmers (courtesy of my host father) to all of my classes today.  It doesn't really snow much in Gwangyang since we are pretty far south, so hopefully it stays that way!

Monday, December 3, 2012

Pokemon and Busan

Monday
  • I still had to finish speaking tests, but it is much, much better only having to do a few every class.  Some classes have 38 students so it was basically impossible to get all of them in 50 minutes, but it is not a big deal to have them this week.  After the tests, we got started with our review game.  The Pokemon Bomb Game. It is the most amazing PowerPoint I have ever seen.  It has movie-like animations, voice-overs, the original soundtrack from the game, and it's just really fun.  I am glad that I waited until the end of the semester to do it though, since there is no way I can top this.  The guys went wild though and it was really a nice way to review and have fun after a stressful speaking test and the final exam next week.
  • I began writing my syllabus for the class at Pusan National University that I am going to be teaching over winter break.  I am really excited about it!  I'll be teaching very high level students and they will probably be close to my age so it is a completely different dynamic than Gwangyang High School.  I've advertised that I will have "international guest speakers" aka my Fulbright friends and a few have already graciously volunteered to come by for a class so that will be great!  I want to try and keep it fairly casual, but still productive and creative.  Like I said, I am still in the planning stages so we'll see how it goes!

Sunday, December 2, 2012

More Speaking Tests, Tabata, and Naju

Now that speaking tests have (almost) wrapped up, I can have more entries in my blog! Yay!

Thursday-Friday
  • Just more speaking tests.  They went much quicker as I finally got my system down.  It was all a bit stressful but I managed it well enough.  My co-teacher said none of the other ETAs have every done all of them in one week.  I can see why!  But they are almost done so it's fine.  This upcoming week, I am going to do a review lesson for their upcoming exam (which I have a few questions that I am responsible for creating).  Shouldn't be a problem. :)
  • On Friday, I went to CrossFit after school as I usually do and I saw that we had a free day on the board!  Free day means we get to pick one or more of the workouts offered on the board and customize our own workout.  Well this particular free day was focused largely on weight training, something that is definitely not my speciality and I actually prefer more active, cardio workouts out.  5 of the 8 were weights so I looked at the other three. One was 5 rounds of 20 pushups, 15 situps, 10 squats, and 5 burpees.  That was out because I knew I was not going to do a single squat that day since the day before I did 160 of them in addition to running a mile. The next non-weight option was 7 rounds of 20 double unders and 10 situps.  Not bad, but I knew that I could only do maybe a few rounds of the double unders as I am not very coordinated with them (they are when you do the jump rope and the rope goes under you twice rather than the traditional one time).
  • That left me with the last workout, Tabata.  This is the most notorious workout at CrossFit.  It's basically six 4 minute rounds of intensity.  You pick a thing to do, pushups for example, and go really hard for 20 seconds, then rest 10 seconds, and repeat 8x.  Then rest for one song (~3 minutes) and do it again with another thing (situps, box jumps, etc.)  I did this with pushups, situps, box jumps, jump ropes, medicine ball throws, and toes-to-bar.  It was pretty horrendous.  I'm still sore in some parts and it's been two days.  But yeah, that is Tabata.  
Saturday
  • I slept in (of course!) and then I moseyed around the house for bit.  Later in the afternoon, I finally decided to be productive and I went shopping for ingridents for dinner later that night.  I ended up cooking a lovely mushroom and beef macaroni that ended up being too salty.  It was still tasty though and it was good to give my hard-working host mother a break.  
  • I also went to my favorite local coffee shop, The Liz, the work out the schedule for the Winter Camp.  It looks great and I am realllllly excited about it!  It's going to be a great time.  
  • My host parents also took me to a table tennis place where my host mother slaughtered me in ping pong.  It was fun to watch her and my host father duke it out over the table.  It was intense!  Apparently, they both took some lessons a few years ago.  If I was better and not already doing a lot of things, I would totally take the lessons.  Alas, I don't think it was meant to be.
Sunday
  • I got up nice and early to go on a trip to the famous Naju to visit some friends.  I took the train up there.  I love taking the trains.  It's a great way to see the countryside of Korea and to just relax a bit.  It can take longer sometimes, but I think it's worth it.  I just got to sit down and read my book for a bit and I really enjoyed my ride.  
  • So yes, I got to Naju and met up with my pals, Jason, May, Courtney, and Hana.  They were all hanging out in their favorite coffee shop doing some work.  I was there to serve as a wonderful distraction to all of them and I would say I was quite successful.  We ended up getting some lunch (an amazing beef soup who's name escapes me right now) and then back to the coffeeshop to "work" some more.  Well, everyone but me worked haha.  It was so nice to see them!  I absolutely love Suncheon and my school is great, but I am very jealous of the fact that they all have each other so closeby.  Sometimes they get to see each other multiple times a week!  I am usually able to see another Fulbrighter a few times a month.  Oh well.  I suppose no one can have the perfect placement!  Naju is a great place for a little day trip, but I'm very happy to be back in Suncheon.  Naju is just a bit too rural for my liking, after I have been spoiled by the urban living of Suncheon.  Every placement has its pros and cons.
Okay, now I have to find my review activity for tomorrow!  Hope things are good in the States.  Happy December!