11:00 AM (from yesterday's non-post): Must say before I forget...I saw Secret-Daeho last week! He goes to the high school next door and he waved at me from the window. :-) It's been 4 months since I saw that one.
It was B-Teacher's birthday today, so we got him a cake and candles and sang to him and got an office picture, which he hated. It's so funny, watching him try to be a good sport about all the fuss. I, on the other hand, love being fussed over. B-Teacher was telling me, burthdays are hard because everyone wants to spend time with him and force him to be merry and celebrate, when he'd rather just relax and chill. I'm proud of his kindness to everybody, though.
First class of 2nd-graders with H-Sol went well. Half the boys did a beautiful job with their dialogues. My little Governor Yunho breezed through his with no issues at all, and every time the boys do well with their dialogues, H-Sol and I "ooh" and "ahh" over them. We really become their cheerleaders, encouraging and nudging them in their learning. She and I have a similar level of joy over their successes.
There's such a rush in hearing the lower-level ones really get it. Today, so many of the low-levels did excellently and it was great.
Plus, I got to talk lots more with H-Sol. She and I have always gotten along, but now I'm taking the time to really ask her questions and connect. She said that she started taking English class when she was 10, but she didn't have a native speaking teacher until high school. But in high school, she said she was too shy to say a single word to her native teacher.
I told her I was trying to be as friendly with the kids and possible because I don't want them to be afraid of foreigners, and I want them to be at ease. She told me that she knows I try really hard and that the kids like me. She said the students tell her all the time that I'm so pretty. Which is really sweet. I told her I'd rather just be good at my job, but some days it's just good enough to try hard and to care about the students a lot.
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2 PM: Showed a movie to the before-noon 2nd-graders and none of them killed each other. Daehwan did accidentally cut the power to the computer, so we had to restart the whole computer program. I spent the whole class period sitting in the back, talking with NG-Teacher. He's easy to talk to, now. It was so much fun, it made me wish there were more occasions to play movies for the 2nd-graders, but there aren't, because they don't have midterms or finals.
After lunch, I went walking with the other ladies and the Ee-ban(class 2) 3rd-grade teacher, a sweet, beautiful, classy lady just 3 years older than me, talked with me in mostly-English for half an hour. We've never spoken before, so I was delighted to have the surprising new friendship. She teaches my Yeongchang, so we chatted about favorite students quite a bit.
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3:40 PM About to get off work in a bit. Going to exercise, then plan my Saturday lesson.
My last class of 1st-graders went fine. I didn't have Mr. B in there, but we managed okay. My little Jeongmook tried to sleep through class because he's genuinely sick. Poor baby. But he wasn't too sick to hide in the vestibule and scare me as I walked into class. He's been trying to scare me for weeks, so it was fun that he finally succeeded.
Jongmin and Bin are the academic stars of that class. I did manage to get Dongjoon and Jinhyuk to participate in all the stuff, so I felt like that was an accomplishment. They're not bad boys, just unfocused. And my boy Jiyoon really shone. I've yet to find anything he enjoys, but during the game he aced the writing portion. He singlehandedly won the game for his team, because he can write clear English sentence 5 seconds faster than the next-fastest kid.
It made the game boring because Jiyoon maintained his team's lead so easily, but I was happy to see his joy. After class, when he crowded in to get his chocolate, he beamed and said "thank you!" and bowed. Jiyoon bowed. Oh, little chicken, you don't know how hard I've worked to make things good for you or how much it warms my heart to see you actually living well.
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