First, another installment of Flatter the Teacher by Writing an Insane Story and Putting Him as the Main Character (same student as Flying Pig, and this one is supposed to be about earthquakes. It's ok, but the ending makes it great, to me.):
Once upon a time, the big forest is state at middle of peaceful country. In the forst, there are small ccloset with dark energy. It's monster closet. Allof monsters are sleep at there. One day magician came and locked there closet's door.
Long time later, big earthquake hit the peaceful country. Country's land is break everywhere. It's terrible accident. The small closet's door is open. Ghosts and monsters are freed. Magician notice it and go t othe big forest again. Road is very difficult to pass, but his magical power is wonderful! When he arrived, monsters are beat with him. Magician locked them in big new closet and throw it to underground. Earthquake crash earth's surface and monster closet is fell to thhere. So we can't see monsters and ghosts today.
This story's reason is earthquake is best way to destroy monster house or bad teachers.
Again, nothing showing that he understood the story or anything.
I went to the beach Saturday with the choir from my church. When we think of going to the beach, we think of swimming, and lying out, and swimming some more. Apparently, when Koreans think of going to the beach, they think of playing dozens of organized games. There wasn't one minute of non-scheduled time. Basically, we played church games. I was on the winning team of one game and got a prize. When I got home I opened it to discover that it was 4 tubes of toothpaste. Oh yeah, Koreans are crazy about their teeth. Recently Korea put out the 3-3-3 campaign. It means brush your teeth 3 times a day, for 3 minutes, and within 3 minutes of eating. 4 tubes is a year's supply, so that's nice, no more buying toothpaste for me.
I also met a really nice, really cute Korean girl who was going to college in Kansas but was home for the summer. She also has a really nice boyfriend. So anyway. The reason I went to the beach with the church choir was that my friend Peter, whose family I do a language exchange with, is in the choir and he invited me. The entire day lots of people were trying to recruit me for their different church activities, which I abviously was having nothing of. Koreans are busy, and I don't know if that's because they like to be busy, or if they're just trained to be busy from childhood, but they tried to make me busy. Also, ah-ja-mahs (older, married Koreans ladies who wear really big sunvisors and/or pollution masks) were sizing me up for their daughters. I got on the bus and within 2 minutes one was already asking if I was married, how old I was, etc.
Peter's oldest daughter came, but his wife and youngest daughter didn't. His wife has sharp pains in her lower neck/upper back, and it sounds like a problem with the discs in her spine. His youngest daughter didn't want to go without mommy, so she stayed home, too. As a result, I got to spend a lot of time with just Peter and his daughter, Diane, who's 13. I don't know if it's just a Korean thing, but it seems she and I feel comfortable sitting right next to each other and not saying anything for a long time, and then talking for a long time. It's kinda weird to call her a good friend, but I do think of her like that, and also a baby sister.
Today I got my list of classes for next semester. I don't teach any of the same classes at all, so it's all new students (with a few possible exceptions due to repeaters and kids changes days, etc). One thing I'm pretty excited about is that I get to teach two mastery classes. These are students whose English is basically fluent. I taught the level just below them, last semester, and now I get to teach them. It could be fun, but I hear that we, as teachers, have a lot of homework because of that class. Also, last semester I had 26 hours but this semester I teach 28. We're getting lots of new students, still, because this will only be the 3rd semester this campus has been in existence. We just hired 2 new Korean teachers and one new foreign teacher, though there are rumors that one of our current Korean teachers will be leaving for health reasons.
I have even more to post, but I'll just send this through and hope to write more later this week.
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