A Vacation within a Vacation

Hello world!  This marks the first week of my vacation within my vacation, which means I have a 2 week break from my winter internship!  It's pretty exciting but I'm a little sad at the same time since I really enjoy having the classes and getting to know the students and Korean culture as a whole.  But it is nice to wake up and have the freedom to just do whatever I want with no obligations. 

So what have I been doing?  Well on Tuesday I ventured out to the CrossFit facility that I recently discovered to see what it was about.  Apparently it is really new and there aren't a ton of members yet.  I might even be the first non-Korean member!  I don't really know for sure since I haven't gone during all the different hours but it could be a possibility.  Anyways I walked in and a couple of guys greeted me and started telling me about the gym.  It's a half Jiu-Jitsu half CrossFit gym that's owned and ran by an MMA fighter who is probably the most ripped Korean I have ever seen.  He looks really young too so I was pretty surprised to learn that he was the owner of the gym, but then again most Koreans look pretty young to me. 

So I signed up and went to the 7:00 class that night.  Unfortunately, there isn't a little uniform they provide like the gym in Suncheon so I have to bring my own clothes and then do my own laundry and all that, but it's not a biggie.  The gym itself is actually pretty empty too.  Just some medicine balls, kettlebells, and some stretching equipment.  It's pretty much just a big open space which is a lot different than the gym in Suncheon.  There you have some weights and benches and a rowing machine and a few other things so I was a little surprised but whatever.

Then we get to the warm up.  There's only 3 of us in the particular class I am in and we go in full force right away.  He has us run about 1/2 mile, do a bunch of bear crawls, some crab walks, jumping things and a few other things I haven't done at Suncheon.  It was a much longer warm up than I have ever done.  Then we did the workout.  We had to do 50 up downs/burpees, 100 push-ups, and 150 squats.  Ugh.  In Sucheon, the owner divides the workout into 4 or 5 levels and you pick the one that works best for you.  Not here!  It's the hardest level for everyone!  Yesterday's workout was even worse, especially the "warm-up."  And it focused largely on arms which made for a difficult workout for me since my arms aren't really all that strong.  He had us do burpees, kettlebell swings (with 20kg kbs...I usually only use 12kg!), and pull-ups.  And to "strech" at the end, he made us hang from the pullup bars for 30, 20, and 10 seconds.  I couldn't even go today because my triceps felt completely shot.  It was a struggle to even lift my arms above my head haha.  I was in my dorm room and I was going to try to do a thing where you drop down to the ground and do a push-up but I knew that just was not going to end well so I relented and I gave myself a rest today.  It's definitely going to be an intense month, but I think it'll be good.

Tomorrow I move into the goshiwon!  I think I'm excited for it.  I'm definitely going to miss having a bathroom in my room, but it'll be nice to have my own space.  It'll be a hall bathroom that I share with the other students in my hall.  But yeah I'm thinking I will like it.  I know a few of my friends are already in their goshiwons in Seoul and they seem to like it.  And I'll get to sleep with the fan on!  My roomate doesn't like to and always turns it off if I have it on so that'll be nice.

Today I got a haircut!  I was so overdue for one.  It was getting all curly and nasty at the ends and I've been meaning to for a while, but just never got around to it.  So I downloaded a pic of myself on my phone that had my hair at a length that I desired and just showed it to the barber and he did his work.  I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.  But really, most anything was an improvement over what I had haha.  And it's only like 5 dollars for a cut so I can't complain!

I'm also trying to plan for my next 3 week class.  I'm thinking of different ideas and things to do with them outside of the class.  I have a little syllabus made, but I don't really have anything planned out day by day or any of that yet so I think I'll do that next week.  Also I have to go on my recruiting spree to get guest speakers for my class!  I'm also going to experiment and see if I can get a Skype thing going so I can recruit my stateside pals to join us, but I'll have to see about that. 

I suppose that is about it.  I only have like 5 and a half months left here in Korea.  Hard to believe last year at this time I learned that I was a finalist in the Fulbright competition.  I'm still surprised that I got it haha. Okay well I'll try to keep the posting more regular and I'll catch you all later. 

Have a good one.

PNU Class Update Part 4! Finally all caught up!

Yay! Final update!  Now I can tell you the whole reason as to why I came to the lovely city of Busan, home of 3.4 million people which makes it the second largest city in Korea and easily the biggest city I have ever lived in.  So way back in October, the lovely crew at the Fulbright Korea office in Seoul  gave us a big list of various internship opportunities that were made available to all of us fantastic Fulbrighters.  At this time, I had no plans whatsoever for my 2 month vaca from school so I figured I should start making some and I contacted a couple of the people that were listed on the website, one of those being Professor Pore of Pusan National University(PNU)!

So after I sent out my resume to him, he emailed me to set up an interview to talk about what I would do.  I traveled to Busan on Wednesday afternoon (the only time that would work out between my school schedule and his university schedule).  Surprise, surprise, I got lost on my way to meet him and ended up being about 45 minutes late.  After several apologetic emails and explanations of how this is only my first time really visiting the city (the only time prior was spent in the bus terminal after the Fall Conference frantically trying to locate my wallet that basically contained my life. If you didn’t catch that gem of a story, it’s somewhere in the archives of this blog), we sat down to discuss what the responsibilities of the internship was.

Essentially, I was going to become a visiting instructor teaching an English conversation class and extra-curricular class where we can go around the city and experience the culture of Busan.  I wouldn’t get paid since Fulbright and our visa strictly prohibits any sort of payment outside of our assigned schools, but that’s okay since Fulbright is paying us during vacation anyways!  We both seemed happy with the situation so we agreed that I would come to PNU and teach a class or two to some university students.  I was pretty stoked about this since PNU is one of the best universities outside of Seoul and the students generally have a very high level of English so it would really be a great learning experience for me in terms of being able to communicate with Koreans about Korean culture in a language I can understand.

As you saw from my misadventures last post, I finally arrived here the second week of January and have been here ever since!  It’s a great city and I’m a little jealous of the Fulbrighters who get teach here.  Maybe I should have requested an urban setting after all!  But I actually really like living in Suncheon and I love the school I’m at, but still Busan is pretty neat.  Anyways, I discovered that 18 students signed up for my class and it was for 2 hours, 10-12 on Monday-Friday.

So first day of class, we just did the introductions and everything.  I wrote a syllabus so we went over it.  I even had a class name!  It was “Merging Language and Culture: A Global Studies Enrichment.”  Doesn’t that sound nice and fancy?!  So yeah I had about 15 students the first day and we did introductions aka played Trainwreck.  If you don’t know that game or remember my description, I went into detail about it on Update #1 so you can check it out there!  They all liked that and then afterwards, I made them take me on an English tour of the campus because I totally got lost on the way over the building where the class was held (in my defense, it is pretty isolated from the rest of campus!!).  But it seemed like a good first class so I was happy.

Ever since then, we pretty much just have discussions about current events or issues or just how our day is.  We had a lot of talks about comparing the Korean and American education systems but we covered everything from societal views of beauty (particularly Korea’s huge amount of plastic surgery and child beauty pageants in the US) to the student’s upcoming trip to Australia.  And we played a few games here and there like Price is Right and Scattergories which was always pretty fun.  They were really surprised by some of the prices of things in America compared to Korea.  They generally guessed everything being way, way over which disqualified them of course (after a few tries, they started using the whole 0.99 cent pricing but no one just did the whole one dollar tactic that many scheming Price is Righters do..). 

But the class has been great.  It’s been cool to get their perspective on a variety of issues and really be able to get a Korean viewpoint on things.  Up to this point, I haven’t really been able to, except with my co-teacher.  I would ask my students, but their levels aren’t really all that high and I’d probably only be able go a little deeper into issues with the top 15 or so students and that’s if they aren’t feeling shy or tired and it’s a similar situation with my homestay family (plus the children are still pretty young).  So I’m actually probably learning more than they are. 

And I’ve had a few guest speakers some in!  They have been fantastic!!  My Fulbright friends Ammy and Brittany have both come over lead discussions and participate in the class and the students all really liked them.  It’s good to have a fresh perspective from a variety of people since I obviously don’t represent all of America’s ideas and opinions.  One student, Su, even hosted Ammy at her apartment since Ammy doesn’t teach or live in Busan.  I hope to have even more Fulbrighters come in now that most of them are returning to the country from their international travels.  But a lot of them are going to hang out in Seoul and take language classes or do internships up there so we’ll see!

I don’t know what else to write about for the class.  I think that’s pretty much it.  I could go into certain discussions I suppose, but it would be pretty long and I don’t remember 100% of everything that we talked about.  Well, I’m going to do another class in two weeks and actually there’s going to be two sections, a morning one and an afternoon one since the professors anticipate a bigger crowd with new students entering the program so hopefully I’ll have big, full classes!  Well, not too big, but I wouldn’t mind more than the usual 9-10 that generally came.  But a lot of them work or like I said were going to Australia and this is a class that’s free to them so I can understand their not coming.  But it would be nice to have a more consistent crowd!

I don’t want to leave this warm coffee shop and go out into the cold.  It’s actually not too terrible.  It’s like 30 degrees.  It’s actually one of the warmest parts of Korea, but I’m always cold so it’s usually not warm enough haha.  At least there’s no snow!  That’s one of the perks of living in Busan to Seoul is the lack of snow!  My students keep telling me that the only reason Busan has so many people in it, is that all the old people come here.  Maybe it’s the Florida of Korea?  Sunny, warm and a relatively high senior population.  But, I don’t really see it since I live in the University area.  There’s lots of young people here but most of them still don’t talk to me haha.  But I’ve really only interacted with my students since I’m not taking any classes myself or doing the gym(until now..hopefully) but whatever.  Now that I have more time, maybe I’ll be able to meet a few more people.  I’ve talked to a couple around the university, but since it’s winter break, most students aren’t here so it’s a little empty.  But I’m enjoying the downtime so I’m not complaining!

I get to sleep really late tomorrow since I don’t have class.  I’m also checking out the CrossFit gym that I FINALLY found!  I’m soooooo stoked!  It’s like a ten minute walk from my dorm/will be goshiwon!!!  I think the reason why I didn’t see it is that it has a big Jui Jitsu sign on the front and there’s a small Crossfit sign over on the side.  I’m so annoyed it’s taken me this long to find it.  I learned about it the first day of class and three weeks later I finally found it.  No one really knew about it so I couldn’t ask them.   The one guy told me about it but he only knew about it through a friend and then he only showed up the first day of class and I’ve never seen him since.  Brittany is actually friends with him and she thinks he might be prepping for his upcoming military service.  But I’m going to investigate it tomorrow.  I hope it’s CrossFit not Jui Jitsu.  I’m a little concerned that they’re going to completely kick my butt, especially since I haven’t had a really solid beating since CrossFit Suncheon, 4 weeks ago.  But as the famous and wise Mrs. Shim/Jim McFadden once said “If you’re comfortable, you’re not growing!”  Apparently that’s a google search term that people used to find this blog haha. 

Okay, I’ve put it off long enough.  I have to brave the cold and head out.  See you later blogging world!!

Camp is Over and I'm in Busan! Update Part III

So I’m back again after another hiatus.  I don’t know why I didn’t write this time, but I think I was just being lazy haha.  I have been working on revamping my cover letter and resume and things like that lately so I guess I didn’t want to write more.  Writing cover letters are hard!  But I got a few sent out so we’ll see what happens!

Anyways, last day of camp.  So the students were woken up early in the morning again, courtesy of Cameron and a drum that he found (I was actually really impressed by the beat he just came up with but then again we all know I am musically challenged).  We never actually woke up the students in a super obnoxious way that is stereotypical of other camps.  We never banged on pots or screamed or did airhorns or anything.  The drum was a bit loud, but it definitely wasn’t obnoxious, especially since they could hear it coming.  And the drum had really nice tone to it!  Also, Ms. Jeon came out into the hallway, probably to see what was going on and she always proceeded to help us wake the sleepy students up.

We had our last set of classes.  I actually didn’t have a class so I just hung out in my room and took a nice long shower.  After their last class, we had to start our closing ceremony.  The principal was there and he gave a nice little speech in English.  He used to be a German/English teacher so I don’t think it was too big of a deal for him.  Then we gave out some awards that we talked about the night before(and a few extra I noticed).  Then all of the teachers gave some final words to all of the students.  It was a little sad since I won’t teach the 2^nd graders anymore, but I’ll still see them around school so that’s good.  To wrap things up, Kathy’s dance class gave a performance that was super good.  Basically all Koreans are great dancers so I guess it’s no surprise haha.

After the ceremony, we all piled on the bus and headed back to GHS.  We saw the students and Cameron off(most of them just walked back home or to the bus stop).  The teachers minus Cameron and plus the vice principal went to a traditional Korean restaurant.  Basically they just gave us a bajillion side dishes.  Here’s a pic if I remembered to insert it:

All of the food.  Notice the waitress is trying to cram even more on the table.

It was really tasty, but it made Kathy sick!  I guess she felt really ill that night and a couple days after.  It was those darn Suncheon raw oysters!  Luckily, she got better and hopefully it didn’t scare her off from coming back in the future haha.

So I got back to Suncheon and then the next day I left for Busan.  It was a busy week.  I packed all my stuff then left in the afternoon.  It takes a little over 2 hours to go to Busan from Suncheon so I was able to catch up on a little sleep.  I was completely and utterly sleep deprived all of camp so it was very nice to be able to rest a bit.  I got to Busan and hopped on the subway with my huge heavy suitcase and my overstuffed backpack that turned me into Quasimodo.  Thankfully, the Nopo bus terminal is pretty close to Pusan National University(PNU) where I was going to live and teach.  I got off the subway at the right stop, gave the machine my stupid little yellow ticket, then strutted my way to the dorm.  Well, as much as I could at least since it’s pretty hard to strut with a 40lb suitcase and a huge backpack. 

I figured I would just hoof it over to the dorm rather than pay for a taxi since I’ve walked from the University to the subway station when I initially went to PNU.  Terrible decision.  I somehow failed to take into account that I was not carrying all this luggage when I walked the first time.  So I was lugging all my things through the neon lit streets of the area and managed to find my way to the main entrance.  Now, I had to find my dorm.  When I came to PNU the first time, I didn’t go the dorms because I was just meeting the professor really quick to get acquainted with him and learn more about the internship so I essentially had no idea where this place was.  I looked at a campus map that was sent to me beforehand and I had a fairly good idea of where it was in respect to the rest of the campus (yay visual learner!).  What I didn’t realize was how large the campus was and how the further you go into campus, the more hills you encounter.  Those hills were just awful!  After living here for three weeks now, I really don’t mind them that much, but that night with all that luggage, it was just wretched.  It didn’t help either that it was dark out and I couldn’t see the building names or numbers very well.  I was heavily depending upon google maps and the gps in my phone.  I would just go to the google maps app and wait until it located me and put an arrow where I was then I would know how close or far off I was.  Once again, a smartphone helped me again!  If you are going to Korea or another foreign country, I highly, highly recommend getting one, especially if you struggle with the language like I do.

I continued my trek through campus, braving the steep hills and trying not to look like a fool who was kind of lost/should have taken a taxi.  To make matters worse, the bottom of my suitcase started to get loud.   Like really loud.  I tried a bunch of different angles of dragging it behind me in a feeble attempt to quiet it, but nothing worked.  I think the bottom was just starting to wear or something, but whenever I moved it even a little it was just like this huge noise of something being scrapped on the asphalt.  Ugh.

Finally, after a 20 minute not so fun adventure, I encountered my building.  Naturally, all the doors were locked and there wasn’t anyone at the reception area where I could.  I was a little annoyed, but whatever.  I just calmly called a lovely lady who goes by May and she tried to direct me to the area where I need to be.  I found the area, but again, the doors were locked and all that.  So first, I just wanted to get in but I was just so tired of dragging/listening to that bag I had with me so I left it near the door when I slipped in with another dorm resident.  I didn’t see anyone in the building so I turned to go out and ponder what to do.  I grab the door and pull and it doesn’t open!  What?!  Why isn’t it opening!? I guess this dorm locks from the inside and outside.  So I just semi-casually waited by the door until another unsuspecting student was heading out and I quickly followed him and reclaimed me dreaded bag.  Still don’t have my key!

So I figure I have a better chance of getting my key by being in the building rather than out.  After pacing the building one more time, scouring every side in a futile search for an open door, I once again get into the building by following a student inside.  Alas, I finally found a worker.  By this time, May is starting to call me again (on my phone that has about 5% battery left) wondering if I am in the building since I said I would call her once I did (like 30 minutes ago).  I basically just said yeah and handed the phone to the worker saying “한국어” which means “Korean language” since I knew my Korean skills were just not going to cut it in this situation.  After 4 or 5 minutes and several silent pleas that my battery wouldn’t die during their conversation, I received my key and my dorm card.  Victory!

With all of this excitement, I basically just threw down my stuff on my bed and headed out again, because I was hungry!  I think I just hit up a convenience store or a bakery, I can’t remember.  Either way, I successfully fed myself and then wandered back into campus in an attempt to find a more efficient way to get to my dorm.  When I found it and entered it with my brand new card, I went to my room and tried to open the door.  I guess I was putting the key in wrong or something, but it was taking a few tries.  Finally, a man comes up and says something in Korean and takes out a key and opens the door.  I guess this is my roommate!

On the first night, he didn’t speak any English to me so I was a little concerned.  He seemed like a grad student or a professor because he was a bit older.  The next day, he started speaking to me in English and told me that he was a research professor who just started here and his family is going to move down here in February.  I was pretty surprised that he was speaking English!  I suspect that he had no idea that his roommate would be a non-Korean and I imagined he was just too surprised to speak English.  But since he is a professor, I basically never see him because he is always working.  He gets in at about 12:30am and leaves at 8:30am and doesn’t come back at all in between.  He also goes back home to Seoul every weekend.  So I haven’t really had the chance to chat with him after that, but he seems like a nice guy!

Wow big update!  Alrighty, I’m almost caught up.  I just have to write about my class now.  We actually just finished the first 3 week so now I have a 2 week break and then we are heading back.  I’ll also be moving again in about a week to a goshiwon.  A goshiwon is a little smaller than a dorm room, but a little bigger than a jail cell.  It’s basically just a room with a bed (or without if you are feeling really thrifty) and a desk and an internet connection.  There was one that even had a min-fridge that tempted me, but it was like 30,000 won more(~$30) and I didn’t really need it so I opted out of it.  I’ll take a pic of it when move in next week.  It’s actually kind of nice and the lady who owns it seems really kind.  She even gave me a little discount with the help of May.  It’s going to be about 170,000 won (~$160.00) for one month so it seems like a good deal to me!  I’m definitely looking forward to it!

So since I don’t have class for these next two weeks, I’ll probably just try and send out some more resumes and things for next year and I would realllly like to try and plan out my upcoming semester for Gwangyang, but realistically I probably won’t.  I’m also toying with the idea of joining CrossFit Busan, but it’s so far away and it’s pretty expensive.  However, I had a pretty nice paycheck thanks to winter camp and stuff and it’s not like I’m spending a ton of money, since I’m not going abroad like most of my Fulbright buddies so I have to do a little research and I might join it for the month.  I really wanted to take a latte art class, which is like making cool designs and art with coffee, but I’m not sure if that will work.  One of my awesome students called a place I found, but they said it probably wouldn’t work out since I don’t speak very good Korean.  I was bummed, but she said she might try one more place so there’s still hope! J

Okay.  Now I really do only have my class to write about then I will be all updated!  Wow I can’t believe it.  Then I can write small posts again instead of novels so that’ll be nice to not have to spend 30 minutes reading my ramblings.  Alright, take it easy America.  Enjoy some chicken pot pie for me!  That’s the food that I definitely miss the most haha. 

Huge Update Part II

Day 2

I’ll try to be a little more succinct in my summary so as to not have like 50 parts.  Today, we started the day by Cameron and I waking up at 6:50 in order to rouse the students from their sleep to go on our morning exercise.  It really wasn’t a huge exercise.  Basically walk half a mile around the camp.  I jogged to see if that could inspire them to move quickly, but I think we were lucky that they were even up and moving.

After exercise and breakfast, we more classes.  I was teaching about inventions as the decades was supposed to be 1860’s thru 1920’s or so.  Basically we played hangman with a few different inventors (including my dad which stumped a couple of classes haha), listed a few important inventions, ranked them in order, and then we made our inventions.  That part was fairly entertaining as I brought in some play-dough for them to form and shape into their invention.  I got everything from a GPS that you put on your glasses to ear plugs that clean your ears.  And, of course, they had to write about their invention and then present it to the class.  It allowed them to be fairly creative but still have to use English to describe and innovate. 

After classes we ate lunch.  Then came a little hike.  I thought we’d go to the woods or something, but we just walked around the neighborhood and ended up by a stream where they pushed a bunch of almost snowmen into the stream.  Some of them were also trying to speak Korean still and since Ms. Jeon was very, very adamant that they speak English, we had to enforce it on the hike.  I chose to enforce it by throwing snowballs at them if I heard them speak Korean haha.

When they finished hiking and their soccer break, they had another class or two.  I wasn’t teaching this time so I zonked out for a bit.  Got to catch up on some sleep!  Then we had journal time where they wrote more of their body paragraphs and then dinner.  Tonight in club class, we made lasagna and salad!  Again, we had to improvise quite a bit due to the unavailability of an oven, but we made it work.  Sort of.  We had to put the lasagna in individual foil pans and then put those pans into one very large cauldron on top of the range.  And we had to add water to the bottom of the cauldron so the lasagna wouldn’t burn.  It was really strange, but it kind of worked.  It had the same taste as lasagna (minus ricotta cheese since I don’t think there is any in Suncheon) but there wasn’t the normal crunch to it.  And then Cameron and his football team invaded!  They came and shared all of the food.  My club didn’t mind, but I was annoyed.  But I guess if they don’t care, I shouldn’t haha. 

After the club activities, there was time for the students to rehearse their final performances.  Each class was responsible for having a final performance for the last night so they were working away at them that night.  They were trying to finish up since the presentation was tomorrow.  After the hour (or more depending on the group!) of practicing, they had time to do whatever and the teachers did too!  So I got to hang out with Kathy, Cameron, and Dianna so that was cool.

Day 3

Getting the students up was a little bit rougher this time.  They were really dragging.  Even Cameron overslept a little today.  Nevertheless, we went for our walk and had our stretch and breakfast.  I taught my last class today.  It was about the 1990’s boy bands and how it is somewhat similar to the K-pop frenzy of today, though most of my students don’t really seem to like k-pop, at least not the boy bands of it.  But that’s okay because they went ahead and made their own bands!  They had to form a group and choose different personas (The punk member, the heartthrob, the bad boy, etc.) and then write part of their first song.  It was some nice comical relief with some of their songs (such as We are Handsome and Hunt the Dinosaur) and a nice way to wrap up my session with them.  It was the last lesson that I had with my second graders!!  They are moving onto the third grade and I do not teach them then since they have to devote all of their time to the suneung, the college entrance exam.  I am going to be very sad to see them go!  But I get to welcome a new bunch of first graders from the middle schools so hopefully that will go over well.  I’ll meet them in March.

The next major activity was the Camp Olympics/Dutch Auction.  Basically there were three teams of students and one team of Fulbright teachers and we competed in a variety of events ranging from singing a song in the others language (which Dianna rocked for Team Fulbright!!!) to the most push-ups performed in one minute.  It was good, but it got a little tricky at the end because there were some issues with translations haha. 

Then we had our last journal class and the students finished up their essays (or a few even started second essays!).  I was so impressed by how they did.  They don’t really teach writing very much in the normal English classes so to produce these great 5 paragraph essays was just wonderful.  Some of them were actually better than some of my American students.  I was really, really happy with how all of them turned out.

Then we had dinner and introduced Capture the Flag (or Ben’s brightly colored T-shirt in this particular case).  None of them have ever played before, but they all really got into it and loved the game.  How can’t you after all?  It’s Capture the Flag!!  Super awesome game.  Afterwards, we had a campfire where we cooked hotdogs minus the bun since those don’t really exist in Suncheon and marshmallows.  The only marshmallows that were there were jelly-filled so it was kind of strange.  I didn’t have any.

Oh before that, we had the performances which were all pretty good.  One group, which ended up being the best performance, did a video parody of Starcraft in English.  I didn’t really get it since I don’t play the game, but Cameron plays and he was thoroughly enjoying himself.  I liked it because it was just silly and funny but I wish I could have gotten their jokes!  Another group did a song and dance and translated the Korean lyrics into English.  The dance turned out really well!  I was impressed.  The last group did a mash-up of different movie parodies ranging from LOTR to Terminator.  They were good too.  The teachers and I were undecided as to who was better between the dance and the movie parody, but I don’t think it mattered in the long run.

After all of that was finished, the ETAs and the Korean teachers met one final time to decide who should get awards.  The academic awards were pretty easy to decide since we based it off of their essays.  The only one that was difficult was a case where Dianna and I were torn between two essays.  We both had to agree since we team-taught the class, but neither of us were really budging.  One essay was really well written but Dianna felt that it used the typical phrases memorized from a textbook whereas the other essay was a bit more creative and had a more genuine feeling, but I felt that it was not written as well as the other one.  So Cameron had to break the tie for us.  Then we had to sort out some of the other awards like leadership, character, etc.  I was surprised at how many we gave out, but I guess it’s good for the students and their college applications and stuff.

Ugh. Too much!  I’ll finish winter camp tomorrow or Saturday and then dive into my move to Busan!  So far behind!!  I’m getting there though!