AROUND THE OFFICE

That previous weather report was false, blog,

It was sunny and humid today, would have been a beautiful day to be out and about but I was doing the ol' 9-5, u know how it goes. Anyway this a sort of bummer week because one co-teacher is going back to the states for the next month this weekend, but on the other hand next week we are also getting a new co-teacher! I haven't met them yet, but I am wondering if they'll notice some of the stuff we have stashed around the workplace. Most of/all of it is American culture stuff so the Korean teachers must think we are real strange but so it goes. Here are some fun we've had around the office to spice up the daily grind:

Here's Bobby DeNiro reminding people to clean up after themselves. 

: /

CHECK OUT THESE CAKES.

Spoiler title huh?

The Big Boss got us (the teachers) these cakes for the several teacher birthdays during May and June.

The strawberry one was a strawberry ice cream cake with the thinly sliced strawberries on the outside, and the fresh-fruit-topped one in the back was white cake on the inside. These are AWESOME cakes right? Here's the thing, they are everywhere. Super fancy sweets are really popular here (unlike Americans they haven't abused the sweets privilege) and over the top cakes can be found in coffee houses, Dunkin, etc. These two were from a coffee house called A Twosome Place. OH also I forget if I included this pic on the blog but this was taken from my birthday, and that cake was from the same place:

ps it's raining so hard here, but it's too hot and humid to wear a jacket or a hoodie. I might have to actually buy an umbrella. Missing So.Cal!

PICTURE TIME, DANCE TIME, ALL THE TIME

Great day to have a camera phone, blog

Today during 'Science' classes we talked about cameras, which gave me some excuse to take some pictures for to show off, and we'll finish with a celebratory Kindergarten dance! Also this past weekend I heard that Maggie Porter likes checking out the pictures on the blog - and if Maggie Porter wants to see pictures, she'll get pictures!

WOAH BEEN A MINUTE

Sup blog!

Elephant in the room, I've been ignoring you. It's not you, it's def society's fault! Anyway been pretty low-key the last little while, but I have some time tonight so I'll just fill you in on what's been up at work lately!

Work has been pretty routine, well for me. First off this week was 'Open Classes' which is where each of the five homerooms give one class and the parents come in to watch. I don't have a homeroom so I was saved from the mayhem. The Open Classes are 20 min per teacher but it's a huge deal that requires weeks of prep for the teachers and a lot of added stress for them because apparently the parents enrollment decision could largely be based of off what they see. Teacher use elaborate props, costumes, iPads, basically pull out all the stops. I think it's sort of awful because it (has to be right?) is so painfully obvious that the teachers are going all out and that there is no possible way that we could give that much effort into every class (the 6 year olds will gladly inform their parents that '______ Teacher's class is usually boring but today it was so fun!' So why the circus?? Just how it goes.

Now that I've updated all those dying to know the inner workings of a small private Korean Kindergarten let's get to some pics yeah!? Here's what's been in my phone/camera last little bit:

Every Wednesday I come in early and help out with morning snack time. That day they were eating some strange spongy break muffin. 

Oh also on Wednesday (it's a long, long day) I do the library during lunch. This was taken on Thursday during lunch, but on Wednesday all the students finish their lunch then pile into this library -- wait, man this is bad picture, the wall on the left is STACK full of books -- with red bags and check out five books each week. I 'help them' or just keep them on task. 

Okay these last two I didn't take, but they were up on one of the walls and I thought they were cute. Top is Aiden (bossin out in the bow tie) and Melody (4 years old) during a birthday party, and bottom is Michelle who is 6 making rice balls. 

Lastly, this is what I did with my one-on-one class. She's 13 and has a VERY high reading ability, so we finished early and we made this out of the stickers I give to the little kids as rewards. That's GD which stands for G-Dragon, a singer in the outlandishly popular K-pop band Big Bang. She has GD written on her pencil case and backpack and stuff. AH, to be 13.

FIELD TRIP !

Here's the thing, blog,

I have Thursday mornings off. Awesome? Yeah. But after a few months, I have to be serious when I say that I really (really) don't do much. I probably catch a few innings of a baseball game, go to the batting cages and eat out for lunch but nothing it's not like I'm being real productive.

Keeping that in mind there was a planned field trip today to an ancient temple (or something along those lines) and I wasn't on the list of teachers that had to go. I said to myself, not only am I pretty (110%) sure I won't be up to much at home, I am also pretty (75%) sure I'll not make it out to this temple on my own time so I decided to give up my morning off to work and go see something historic and beautiful with my time off!

Then it rained. It rained last night and it rained today. So the trip to the temple was canceled and we went to the indoor playground Gymboree instead!

INSADONG DAY OFF

Happy Memorial Day, blog!

The Korean Memorial Day is a week after the US one, so we had no school on Monday and for dinner I decided to walk around a neighborhood called Insadong. I've been there once before, and I sort of accidentally went back but this time (I thought I'd pick a new place to look around but I forgot and got off at Insadong's stop instead), so I walked the opposite direction of the all the shops and here are some pics of what I found.

 Below is a long ally of restaurants I found, that one would never otherwise know was there. And that's also what I don't really understand is that it seems like in Korea there are dozens of the same style restaurants in the area, and some will be packed and others won't be. I don't see the difference yet!

This was also a nice surprise. It looks like what it is, a small river with a pretty nice walk way on either side:

CLOSER INSPECTION.

Day off today! Only because May has 31 days! So to balance out MWF and T TH schedules so that one doesn't have more classes then they should. Anyway, not much of note lately.

So here's what we did in science class on Tuesday: magnifying glasses were the project, and I tried my best to teach them how to use it properly, but this is what happened each time: