oh, hey!

back to school!

we started school this week, so things have suddenly picked up again. some new students, and getting to see all the students again was fantastic. but getting back to planning and five classes a day was surprisingly exhausting. as well as moving to a new apartment yesterday. i now have an oven! amazing. there seem to be very few around here.

what the moment #1-5: they tore down part of the building next to our school (it was a restaurant) and are now constructing at all hours of the day. this whole week, in the middle of class, i would be talking about something and i would hear the D-D-D-D-D-DRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE of the drill from outside. wow.

we have a (surprise) day off tomorrow!

sometimes-i-do-things-to-watch-my-students-faces #1: i taught about Russia in geography this week and capped off the last class with an abridged version of Bear Gryll's Man vs. Wild in Siberia. if you haven't seen this show (which i actually hadn't until i came here and watched one on youtube - they're all on there), this guy, bear, uses his survival skills to show you how to survive in the most extreme situations. in this particular episode, he drank fresh yak blood and ate yak eyeball. they also got to see him ride a self-made deerskin toboggan and jump onto a moving freight train. it was fantastic to see and hear their reactions.

famous-by-association #1: about two weeks ago i discovered that a very famous k-pop star is the same kid i went to elementary school with and some of my students FREAKED out when they found out. they take their celebrities very seriously here.

and that's about it. really.

if you had any doubt it your mind that YOU SHOULD GO SEE JONSI ON APRIL 9TH OR 10TH...this is what the show is going to be like...

Jónsi live show by 59 Productions from Jónsi on Vimeo.

miss you. ride my bike for me, will you? it's lonely in my garage!

if you could have one superpower...

new student camp week!

last thursday we were informed that we were to teach prospective new students this week. lucky for me, i got conversation class (while other unfortunate souls were stuck with the likes of science and math), so i got to play pictionary and 20 questions and talk with my students all week. not a bad deal.

a LOT better than sitting at a desk for eight hours doing "lesson plans" like last week.

a friend took me to get a guitar last week and so i'm spending some free time after work learning to play! i like having the creative outlet and its a good break from the everyday piano-hymns at school.

today in class, i had them ask and answer "what if" questions and the most interesting was

"if you could have one superpower, what would it be?"

the most common answer: "invisibility". if that doesn't give an accurate social commentary on the average korean high school student, i don't know what does.

best meeting ever #1: the weekly friday afternoon meeting is lost on most teachers. as the final stepping stone to the weekend, hardly anyone actually pays attention. today was more amusing than usual. we actually have assigned seats but today a few of us rebels chose to sit in the very back pew (against the back wall) just for fun, at least ten rows behind everybody else. text messages and teary-eyed laughter are all i fondly remember of the meeting.

quote of the week: "aww you're such a good student!" "good teacher makes a good student" :)

and definitely the song of the week, can't stop listening. boy lilikoi - first release from jónsi's (yep, from sigur rós) solo project to be released april 5th (and he's playing the the showbox sodo april 9th AND 10th...you should go because i can't!)...and he sings in english...a soaring and majestically epic song...



great is thy faithfulness.