boom boom two people is die

Further update on the unfolding geo-political situation in the Korean peninsula:

Marie: "teacher, bukhan yesterday boom boom two people is die. very poor"
me: eleoquent
Marie: I thought so.
me: "teacher, kim jong il is bad man. very mean."
Marie: lol Clearly we need to post these eloquent explanations of yesterday's events.
me: I think so
Marie: Dear friends and family, in case you're wondering exactly what went on yesterday please read the following summary.
me: kids explaining complex political situations say the darndest things

Speaking of things kids say, here are the Konglish highlights from the test the 6th graders took today. The question was What do you want to do?. The answer was obviously I want to play the violin, but one girl mixed up her verbs and wrote I want to be a violin. The last question on the test was a picture of the lad on the right. The question was I'm sick. I _______________. The answer was (I) have a stomachache, but the kids struggled with it. A bunch of students answered I have a stomach which, while technically correct, isn't the answer I was looking for. Many of the kids who did answer stomachache misspelled it. Many of the students just didn't answer the question and a few went completely off the reservation for their answers. I have flowers and I high many homework, sorry were both answers.

SOSing

Monday's Frustrations:
The 5th graders started Lesson 14: Is Peter There? this week. It's all about phone numbers and phone conversations so, of course, I played "867-5309/Jenny" and told the kids to listen for the phone number and write it down. While the students enjoyed the song, the activity was a complete failure. I showed a live performance of the song from YouTube, and the sound quality was less than steller. Even I was having trouble making out the lyrics, and I already knew what they were. After the first two classes, I scrapped the idea and spent the last five minutes of class reviewing Step & Jump.

Monday's Konglish:
Cheating (or as it's called in Konglish, cunning) is rampant in Korean classrooms, far more than I remember from when I was in school, and it's not uncommon to see half the class blatantly cheating during textbook activities. During the "Let's Write" textbook activity today, I saw a boy leaning over for a look at his friend's textbook.

"No cunning," I told them.

"'Teacher," the first boy protested. "I'm no cunning. I'm ... SOSing."

It's a touch depressing that he couldn't think of help, which is basic vocabulary, but I am amused that he substitued it for the Morse code signal for help.

I Have a Raining Nose

This week appears to be dedicated to talking about school, and who am I to buck the trend on Friday?

I finished giving the 6th graders their speaking test today. (I have two sixth grade classes on Wednesday and the other four on Friday.) The first class did brilliantly. Out of the super specific grading system (Δ = bad, O = OK, OO = great), only two students got Δs and half of them got OOs. During the class change, I commented to Michelle that the test seemed too easy. Then 6-4 (these guys) showed up and did terribly. Half the kids got Δs and only six students got OOs. Serves me right for being optimistic.

The best 6-4 student was a boy who happened to have a cold. He came into the back room, sat down next to me and sighed, "Teacher, I have a bad cold."

"That's too bad," I told him.

"Yes, Teacher. I have a sore throat and runny nose and cough."

"Oh no! You can go back to your desk and take a rest."

"But Teacher," he protested, "test."

Kid, that was the test.

The best Konglish moment came from a 6-1 girl who couldn't remember how to say runny nose and told me I have a raining nose. In Korean, runny nose is 콧물 (ko mul), which literally translates to nose water, so raining nose was both phonetically similar and made some logical sense.

I'll end with the conversation I had with the 4th graders who clean my classroom during lunch:

Me: Guys, smile for the camera.
Boys: *Asian pose*
Girl: Teacher, why picture?
Me: Because you are ADORABLE.

Can You Find Santa?

The 3rd graders started Lesson 13: Merry Christmas today. For Christ's sake, it's only mid-November! Granted, I'm a bit ahead of schedule since, for some reason, my school has scheduled final exams on December 8th, even though winter break doesn't begin until December 31st, and I'm trying to cover as much of the textbook as I can before the exam. Don't ask me why exams are so early OR what I'm going to be doing the few weeks of the semester. However, while we are ahead, we're ahead by like, a week, so in no way is it seasonally appropriate for Santa to appear on screen, granting Christmas wishes. It could be worse, though. The 4th graders studied their Christmas themed chapter (Chapter 11: How Much Is It?) at the beginning of October.

The lesson's key expressions are Can you find ______? and Yes, I can/No I can't find ______, but the kids were having trouble pronouncing the word find. Can you fly Santa? Can you like Santa? My favorite was Yes, I can fight Santa. Three classes in, I finally realized the problem was I have a cold and my nose is so stuffy, I wasn't pronouncing find clearly, so the kids were just substituting any word they already knew that sounded close in place of find.

I am made of win this week.

Five Things Making Me Happy

It's been a crappy week. Not enough sleep, misbehaving students (a third grader called my co-teacher a bitch today), canceled plans, computer troubles at school, computer troubles at home and just general melancholy. In an attempt to cheep up, five things that made me happy this week:

1. My 5th graders are doing really well! On Monday we studied countable nouns vs. uncountable nouns in the guise of Do you want some ________? versus Do you want a ________? and they did *so* well. By the end of class, I had a decent number of students who could not only chose the correct modifier, but also explain to me IN ENGLISH why it was the correct choice. One pizza - singular object - Do you want a pizza?; slice of pizza - part of a whole - Do you want some pizza?; two pizzas - plural - Do you want some pizzas? Hey Teacher, I'm hungry. Give me some pizza! I'm so proud of them!


2. The third graders are studying Lesson 11 - It's Cold. They're learning about the weather (It's snowing, It's cold, It's raining, etc.) and weather appropriate clothes (Put on your coat, put on your gloves, put on your sweater, etc.). I was reviewing clothing with 3-2 class and showed them a picture of a pair of blue jeans.
   
   "It's cold," I prompted. "Put..."
   
   One boy, completely innocently, blurted out, "Put on your panties!"


3. My goofball 3rd & 4th graders. Both grades played a game called Pass the Ball this week. The students passed a plush ball and dice around the classroom while a song played. When the song stopped, I showed the class a picture and they the students holding the ball and the dice had to answer a question. The 4th graders are studying a unit about shopping and I showed them a picture of an object and a price. The student holding the dice said I want a ________. and the student holding the ball said It's ________ won. I think I had as much fun watching the game as the students had playing it. I especially liked when a group of students would get so flustered trying to get rid of the ball or dice that they would created a möbius loop and the dice would become stuck circulate the same three or four students while the rest of the class howled with laughter.
   
   


4. The girls in the broadcasting club have been coming by my classroom to practice during lunch and after school and after practice, they like stay and talk with me. In my six month round-up I lamented the lack of students comfortable enough with English to go beyond the set phrases they learn in class and actually try to communicate. At the beginning of the month, the girls would barely speak English beyond their reports and now they won't stop talking. They'll talk about anything, from their favorite TV dramas to the 6th grade gossip to their thoughts on private academies (fuck hogwons!) (I was torn between chastising them for swearing in English and complimenting their excellent pronunciation of the 'f'). Yesterday, we talked about North Korea. (Kim Jong Il is bad man and North Korea people are very hungry. South Korea give North Korea people rice and cows, but not now. North Korea people are sad. And poor.) On Wednesday, there's no class after lunch and the girls stayed for an hour after practice. When I pointed out they could, you know, go home any time now, they said they wanted to stay and talk. And then they demanded to see pictures of my family.


5. I was mobbed by 3-3 class on my way to lunch today. It's hard to feel sad when you have five tiny girls clinging to you demanding hugs.

Ajumma Hair

An ajumma (아줌마) is a Korean woman of a certain age. Your stereotypical ajumma is a ~feisty~ older woman with aggressively permed hair, purple pants and other questionable sartorial choices, a giant sun visor and a willingness to elbow you in the sternum to get in front of you in line. I read an awesome (and sadly no longer online) article awhile back about an ajumma living in Chicago. Her dry-cleaners was robbed and the old woman chased the robber down, caught him and held him until the police arrived. This didn't surprise me at all since, true story, I was once choked by an ajumma on the subway. I know better than to mess with an ajumma.

Anyway, a few weeks ago I got my hair cut and my hair went from being wavy to genuinely curly. This was right after summer break started, so this week was the first time most of my students have seen me since I got my hair cut. You can imagine how thrilled I was when my first class of 5th graders walked into the classroom today and one boy shouted, "Hey Teacher! You ajumma perm!"

"No!" I told him. "It's not a perm. I have curly hair. Natural."

"Right," the kid, who has no concept of non-permed curly hair, said. "You perm, very good."

This scene was repeated in every single 5th grade class. *facepalm*

Speaking of my 5th graders, one of my 5-2 boys has started addressing me as you girl. As in "Hey you girl, come here." I let it slide the first time, but the second time I corrected him.

"Who am I?" I asked. "Not girl."

"Right Teacher," he said. "Sorry. Hey you woman, come here."

... I cannot fault that logic.

영어 캠프 - Week Two

(I promise this is the last post about English camp until I start to plan for the winter camps in December.)


6th graders posing on the last day of camp.
During week two, the 3rd & 4th graders studied body parts and animals. Both units were covered in the regular lessons, but review is always good, and I used the opportunity to teach extra vocabulary and grammar. During the body parts unit, I put the students into pairs and had one student trace their partner's body on a sheet of butcher paper. Once they were done, they drew in additional features (such as the face) and labeled the body parts. Their favorite part about the activity was how they didn't have to sit at their desks. My favorite part was how few students actually sat on the ground when tracing their friends; half of them chose to Asian squat and do a funny squatting waddle as they made their way around their partner's body.


During the animal unit we read Brown Bear Brown Bear, What Do You See?. Well, I read Brown Bear Brown Bear, What Do You See? and the students listened to me and looked at the pictures. The first time, they just listened to the story. The second time, they made their own copy of the book. I gave the kids pictures of the different animals (bear, bird, duck, cat, etc.) and as we read the story, they colored the pictures the appropriate colors and wrote descriptions of the animals (brown bear, red bird, yellow duck, purple cat, etc.) Or at least they tried too. One boy had some trouble.


Whoops.
On Wednesday afternoon, 안 수빈 and 신 다해, two 4th graders who aren't in English camp, saw me in the hallway and followed me back to my classroom to play. We colored the animal flashcards from camp and they entertained themselves for a while by writing things like cat and ice cream and I love you Teacher on the whiteboard. Then they gave themselves eye tests. 다해 wrote an eye chart on the board and 수빈 sat on a desk a couple of rows back, covered one eye with a fuzzy plush ball and called out the letters. Apparently this was fun, although they did get into an argument when 다해 told 수빈 her eyesight wasn't very good. The eye chart reminded me of the eye test I had during a medical exam my first year in Korea. I had only been in the country for a few days, the only Korean I knew was hello, kimchi and I love you very much, and all the eye charts at the hospital were entirely in Korean letters. Eventually, the nurse found an eye chart used for very young children that had pictures instead of letters, and I had to identify the pictures in English while my co-teacher translated my answers into Korean.


They also wrote out the Korean alphabet and, with some help, transliterated it into the Latin alphabet.
My mom and sister arrived in Korea on Thursday and I brought them to school with me on Friday. They made quite an impression on my students. Fourth Grade, Chapter 7 is titled Who Is She? and it was a gratifying moment when every single one of my 4th graders looked at my family and asked, "Teacher, who are they?" Yes, retention! My students were also the only people we met during Mom and Leah's trip who accepted that my sister, who was adopted from Korea as an infant, was American without question. I guess I'm so firmly linked with America in their minds that despite looking like a Korea person, my sister must be American. While they didn't question her nationality, they did seem a bit fuzzy on her age. My 5th & 6th grade class objected to me calling Leah my 여동생 (Korean for younger sister, as opposed to 언니, older sister), so I asked them how old they thought Leah was. "Is she 30?" one girl asked. For the record, my sister is fifteen. I'm twenty-five. While I'm routinely mistaken as my 21-year-old brother's younger sister, this is the first time someone has ever asked if I'm younger than Leah.


Leah is on the left. Does that child look 30?!?
At the beginning of camp, I divided the 3rd and 4th grade classes into three teams and told the students that group with the most points at the end of camp would get a special prize from America. Teams could get points for winning a game, volunteering to speak in class or having the first person to finish an activity. On the last day of camp, I brought in Silly Bandz my mother had brought me from the US and gave them to the winning teams. Despite the fact that I guarantee you that none of my students have ever seen a Silly Bandz in their life, they loved them. I gave the older students Reese's Peanut Butter Cups (also from America) and my kids, who have only ever had Korean candy, were throughly impressed. "Teacher," they told me, "VERY GOOD CANDY!" I know kids, I know.

All the photos from English Camp are here. I'm so glad it's over!

this is now my new favorite phrase

My school's playground serves as the unofficial community center for the neighborhood, probably because it's the only flat area in the neighborhood. There's a playground, soccer goals and a section cornered off by bushes with a small amphitheater and a few benches shaded by a canopy of ginkgo trees. In the afternoons, mothers bring their young children to play on the playground, my students hang around long after I leave to go home and there are always a half dozen older men sitting under the trees, smoking and talking. All this is very quint and picturesque, but it also means there's a lot of trash piling up around my school. Public trash cans are rare in Korea, and food wrappers, cigarette butts and liquor bottles all get thrown on the ground. Students are responsible for keeping the school clean, and in the mornings, a teacher stands in front of the school with a trash bag and kids pick up the garbage as they walk to school.

This morning, a fifth grade boy holding a not-quite-empty bottle of soju waved hello to me. "Look, Teacher!" he shouted, waving the bottle in the air, the swills swishing about, "I'm drunking!"

Kid, that is the best. Konglish. ever.

Konglish Signs in Gangnam

One of the unexpected pluses to living in Korea is the Konglish. From the completely nonsensical to the funny to the just plain unfortunate, it's always fun to walk around around a corner or read someone's shirt and go, "... what?" (My favorite sign *ever* will always be this one in Itaewon, but I don't have my own picture of it. But no seriously, follow that link. IT IS WORTH IT!)


Look closely at the name of the waffle set. I would not eat that waffle set.
This is the terrible unfortunate sign advertising Espresso Public, the cafe where the Sunday Gangnam SnB meets. I'm pretty sure this one isn't actually a Konglish mistake since, if you look closely, you can see there's a space for an 'l' between the 'b' and the 'i'. Most likely some (drunk) foreigner stumbled upon the sign and couldn't help himself. It's been like this for weeks and all anyone has done about it is take a bunch of photos and laugh a lot.


Butterfinger Pancakes is not the TARDIS. This door only travels through space and NOT time.
We tried to go to Butterfinger Pancakes after SnB, but the powers of 소녀시대 (a super popular Kpop girl group; the link goes to a YouTube video of their latest single, which I can not stop listening to. Don't judge me, I use to have both taste in music and a sense of shame, I swear) who was possible waiting in a van outside the restaurant next door caused a rift in the space-time continuum and Butterfingers was temporally closed. Instead we ate at California Pizza Kitchen.


On the walk back to the subway, we passed the Joo Bar. The general consensus was that this is pronounced Jew Bar, which reminds me of my students last year. There is no 'z' sound in Korean, so my students when confronted with the word zoo, told me they wanted to go to the Jew to see the lions.

Sit Down?

SCENE: The English classroom, during class change between second and third period. Most of my 6-5 class is already in the classroom, huddled in groups playing 공기, running in and out of the classroom and shouting at their friends - generally acting like children who just took a two hour test and are ready to have some fun, however briefly. Class hasn't started yet, so as long as they're not hitting each other or destroying my classroom, I don't care what they do.

RELEVANT LINGUISTIC INFORMATION: In Korean, if a ㅅ (/s/ - equivalent of an English 's') is followed by a 이 (/i/ or /i:/ - romanized as an 'i' and the equivalent of the 'ee' in meek), the 's' sound becomes a 'sh' (/ɕ/). For example, the Silla dynasty is pronounced Shilla. Some of you have probably already guessed where this story is going.

So, one of my sixth grade boys who isn't the brightest kid, but is hilarious and outgoing and good at expressing himself regardless of linguistic barriers and, just to complete the mental picture, super tiny and wearing a bright pink hoodie, walks into class, sees his classmates going crazy around me and decides to restore order.

"SIT DOWN!" he yells, a command my students have heard me say plenty of times, only what he actually says is, "SHIT DOWN!"

"SHIT DOWN, SHIT DOWN, SHIT DOWN!" he shouts at each group of students milling about, while I stand at the front of the class and bite my lip so hard I can still feel the teeth marks hours later in an attempt not to laugh.

Some days, I really love being a teacher!

SPRINGFAIL!

March 20th is the start of spring, which means that March 22nd is the logical time for a freak snow storm. SPRINGFAIL!
It started snowing ten minutes before my last class ended (which, of course, led to TEACHINGFAIL!) and kept snowing all afternoon. Before long, I couldn't see beyond the school yard (compared to my normal view here). It was eerily beautiful leaving the school with the snow still falling - everything still and shrouded in the silence you get only when any possible sound is muffled by snowfall. On the flip side, my walk home was less of a walk and more of a controlled downhill fall, and I get to walk back up the ice hill tomorrow. Overall, I am unimpressed.

I am also unimpressed with the 황사 (Hwangsa, or Yellow Dust), which I had managed to forget about in the past year. Hwangsa starts as dust storms in the Gobi Desert, which are then carried east by the winds, picking up pollutants as they goes, and pass over China, the Korean peninsula and Japan. Yellow dust storms usually just make things look hazy, but during bad episodes everything looks yellow. Here's a picture of Seoul on Saturday. It wasn't quite as bad in my town, but at noon, my apartment was as dark as it is when my alarm goes off at 6:45 in the morning.

Last year, during a particularly bad Hwangsa, I asked my 6th graders what the weather was like. I had taught them the phrase yellow dust the week before and one boy, after thinking it over, looked at me and said brightly, "Teacher, today it's Yellow Dusty!" Aces, kid, aces!

One of these things is not like the other....

Actualfax conversation I had with Marie today. (Relevant info: Today was Open House at my school and I had to go downstairs to bow to the parents. That's pretty much exactly what it sounds like. I stood in front of an assembly of my students' parents and bowed while they clapped politely. I got to do the same thing to the student body on my first day of school. It's Korea: you bow. Fact of life.)

Cait: awesome! was just introduced to the parents as Native Teacher Gate
Marie: HAHAHA! so they don't realize it's pronounced with the ㅋ sound not the ㄱ sound. (ㅋ is romanized as 'k' and is a hard 'k' sound, such as in my name. ㄱ is more of a 'g' sound and at the start of a syllable is romanized as a 'g', but at the end of a syllable it's romanized as 'k'. This leads of all sorts of fun confusion.)
Cait: my principal doesn't. My co-teachers have told him, but he just keeps on calling me Gate.
Marie: LOL I will start calling you Gate. I'm contemplating changing your name in my phone
Cait: ahahaha I'm still being called Cake by some of the students.
Marie: hmm, that's really a hard decision. Gate, or Cake in the phone. You need to make a powerpoint.
C-A-K-E Cake (picture of Cake)
C-A-I-T Cait (picture of Cait)
Cait: there are just so many fun ways to mangle my name.
Marie: maybe your students were hungry?
Cait: I did meet the 6th graders right before lunch....


One of these things is a delicious treat. The other is no longer amused.

영어 캠프! (Vignettes from English Camp)

On the last day of English Camp, as a review, I gave the kids a bunch of letter posters (I printed PowerPoint slides with the letters of the alphabet in different fonts) and let them decorate them.
Sarah arrived on Friday, but my vacation didn't start until Tuesday. On Monday, I had to go into school and teach my last day of English Camp. My first English camp was with the first and second graders and we studied the alphabet. I'm not sure how effective it was; half the kids clearly already knew the alphabet from their hogwons and the other half were floundering because trying to cover the entire alphabet is a lot for one week. Due to construction (all the classrooms are getting new floors, hopefully ones that don't give people splinters) class was held in the library. It's a nice library, very modern, but it was also full of crazy Korean robot children who spend their summer vacation studying in the school library. Every time I did something that was even remotely noisy, like play a game or speak in a slightly raised voice, I would have an instant audience of forty or fifty kids, only half of whom were my camp students.


I had some alphabet letters that had originally been bought for the English room. They were meant to be used on a felt board, but we just glued then on the letter posters.
I gave all the students English names on the first day of camp. I wasn't planning on it, but everyone seemed to assume they would get English names out of the deal and it certainly did make it easier to learn the kids' names. Coming up with a list of English names off the top of your head is surprisingly hard, so I used a website that randomly selected three popular English names and let the kids pick which one they liked best. The list was based on the most popular names in America for 2007 and wow, people name their kids some weird and gender-ambiguous names. There were a few traditional names like Jack and Amy, but there was also an Ashlyn, a Brayden, a Riley (boy) and a Kennedy (girl).


The idea was that the kids were suppose to decorate the posters with things that started with the letter. Some kids did better than others. Steven glued random letters onto his R poster. It ended up spelling ROJ.
To make each class a little more fun, I found a bunch of alphabet clips from Sesame Street and played them as we started. The kids loved them, and a few of the more outgoing boys would come up to the stage and dance to the music. My mother (of four children) always swore that Sesame Street was a really fun show, but I never believed her until now. I ended up spending a lot of time going through the archives on the Sesame Street website and wow, there are some really funny skits and some really talented musical guests, like Anderson Cooper reporting live from GNN or Tilly and the Wall singing the ABCs.


Audrey just drew some flowers and a heart around her (upside-down) Ss. I didn't have the heart to tell her the poster was upside-down.
I taught the kids to fist bump me when they did a good job or finished an assignment and they loved it. My siblings and I have been fist bumping each other and shouting, "Pound it!" for years, so it only seemed right to teach my students to do it too. The kiddos were *very* enthusiastic about the fist bumps and I spent the rest of the week nursing sore knuckles.


Caroline, on the other hand, did very well. Not only did she draw a glass (one of the examples from the textbook) and grapes (not one of the examples, she's just that smart), she wrote both words out phonetically in Hangul. She also wrote out G phonetically in Hangul (지 = gee). Gee is the name of a popular Kpop song that came out this spring. When we learned the letter G, half my students immediately started singing the song. I always appreciate it when Kpop helps with my lessons.
Sarah came with me to school on Monday and sat in on the class. The principal quickly learned that there were two - count them, two - foreigners in the building and came to the library to meet Sarah. The first time he stopped by we were in the middle of class so, after some mutual bowing, he left, but the second time he came by during a break, so I was able to introduce Sarah, my 미국인 친구 (American friend). Then he came back a third time, this time with a camera, and took a few pictures of me and Sarah. I imagine the photos will show up on the school website soon. What a great promotional picture to show the parents - look! we have TWO American teachers at our school, at least for a day. My kids were also fascinated by Sarah. When they first saw her, they hid behind me and asked, "Teacher! Who dat?" One of my second graders, Audrey, likes to tell me what color things are. "Teacher," she says, pointing at my shirt, "green! Brown (my skirt), red (my glasses), pink (her dress), blue (another student's shirt)." On Monday, she marched right up to me and Sarah and started telling me the colors. "Teacher, green (my pants), black (my shirt), purple (my glasses), red (Sarah's shirt)." Then she pointed at Sarah's blonde hair and said, "Teacher, yellow hair!" "Yes," I told her, "that is yellow hair." Sarah and I laughed about it for the rest of the trip.


It was a good activity, even if most of the kids didn't really grasp the whole point. Happy students are happy!

a whole new school year

Today was my first full day of classes since December 19th and, to be honest, I've missed it. My kids are precious and adorable and I really do have a lot of fun with them, even if teaching the same lesson five times in a row gets a bit old. (Like, seriously, I have such a weakness for tiny Asian children. I just think they are adorable and want to squish their cheeks a lot, and I KNOW it's because of the baby sister and, while none of them actually look like her, I see traces of her in my students and it makes my heart clinch because, seriously, I love that child so much and I can't help but be endeared towards anyone who reminds me of her.)

Also, I don't know if it's just general enthusiasm because it's the beginning of a new school year or because my new co-teacher won't let the kids get away with a fraction of the crap my last co-teacher let slide, but class went better than normal today. One of my constant struggles is to get the kids of use complete sentences. Yes kids, I understand what you mean by "play computer games!", but the point of me asking "What did you do yesterday?" was to get you to use the past tense, not to actually find out what you did. Today I was able to get them to answer my questions using subject, object AND verb.

The sixth graders are studying different countries and I showed them pictures of some famous monuments.

Me: This is Buckingham Palace.
6th grader: Teacher, did you say FUCKingham?

No, kid, I did not say Fuckingham Palace, thank you very much. I'm pretty sure the queen does not live in Fuckingham Palace. Although, as Marie said, wouldn't it be better if she did

Me:*showing a picture of the White House* What is this called?
A different 6th grader: It's Obama's house.
Me: It's the White House. It's where Obama lives.
6th grader: Yes, Obama's house.

Obama Nation

Today's post (and political humor) comes courtesy of one of my sixth graders. Today before class, he asked me where I was from, and I told him America. He conferred with his friend (sixth graders only travel in packs), and asked, "USA?" I told him yes, and he nodded and said, "Oh, you are from Obama!" I explained that yes, Obama was the new president of America. He nodded and said, "Yes, yes, you are from Obama," and left.

Welcome to the English Zone

My classroom, sans students! This photo was taken standing behind the desk in the front of the classroom. My co-teacher and I need to redecorate the classroom before the open lesson in a few weeks. At the very least, I need to get rid of all the Konglish. Yes, the bulletin board does say My English Boom. I really should change that.

Overheard in English Class

[Scene: Going over the new vocabulary for Chapter 13: That's Too Bad. The word is dizzy. To demonstrate the meaning, I spun around in a circle in the front of class and then staggered about. Soju is a rice liquor similar to vodka.]

Me: *staggering about, trying not to fall on the front row of students* I'm dizzy.
Most of the students: I'm dizzy.
Wise-ass student: Oh, too much soju!
Me: Well... yes. That too.

Honest to God, these kids crack me up somethings. Today at English camp, we made salads. The teacher in charge of preparing the ingredients, who didn't really understand the concept of salads, brought both vegetables and fruit. I was just going to have them make a fruit salad and a regular salad, but the kids just tossed everything (cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce, carrots, persimmons, tangerines, kiwi, apples and bananas), dumped strawberry yogurt and mayonnaise on top, and ate it while I gagged quietly in my soul.