11 AM: Good stuff.
Minjoonie tells me that my name in hanja--Chinese characters--means "carp" as in fish; 잉어. Nice.
My 2nd-graders with SG this morning were great. They were calmer than yesterday and they looooved the new soccer video. I'm introducing them to one player, one country, and one vocab term per video and it was amazing. Dongha outshone everybody this time around. He just knew answers to everything.
Seungyeop taught me a Korean phrase meaning "I can't stand it" and when I said that he was my Korean language teacher, he said that he deserved chocolate. When I asked him why he was happy today, he said it was because he was by Sangpil's side, which was pretty hilarious.
I got my hard-to-reach boys really giggling this morning. I made Quiet-Minjong smile a lot and I got Gunwoo dying laughing over my insistence that we had to do a elementary-style double-high-five after his speaking practice. That little bit of cuteness killed Woohyuk too--sometimes absurdity cuts right through their defenses and makes them giggle-buckets.
And learning about soccer was sooo the right decision. Yeonghan wants to talk about teams and they all feel knowledgeable about geography etc, which are related to knowing international sports. It's so fun to share something with them. Yeonghan's my baby, too. He's back to being a happy kid, with squishy pink cheeks and the world's brightest smile--I thought he'd lost it after last year, but no.
Gave speaking test to 3rd-graders. They were awesome. Jinyeong, a kid from last year's nightmare of an afterschool, made a favorable impression on me with his fun answers. He's my kid, now. Seongmo's favorite memory of the past was learning English with me, he said. And I got a lot of the others laughing by calling their names in a weird, growly monster-voice. Today has just been fun, period.
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