Guys, I've gotten so much more confident.

Last Thursday we had a school picnic, and Friday was Buddha's birthday, so no school.

Here is my weekly schedule at school:

During my free time on Monday mornings, I make worksheets and make final edits for the week's regular lesson plans (2 hours of lesson plans, 1 for 1st graders and 1 for 3rd graders). On Tuesdays, I use my free time to prepare for Tuesday's after school class (2 hours), and the same goes for Wednesdays. Which means I usually use my free time on Thursdays and Fridays to prepare for the upcoming week.

Which means I haven't prepared for the upcoming week. I'm preparing now. But oddly, what I'm preparing isn't the lessons for the upcoming week - it's the lesson for my observed class on June 7 (as part of my application to renew) that I want to talk over and edit with Shin-Jung this week.

I don't know what exactly I'll do in my 1st grade classes this week, I just know it will involve "family." I don't know what exactly I'll do with my 3rd grade classes after they finish their speaking tests this week, I just know it will be some kind of game that has to do with "going to the doctor" vocabulary. But tomorrow (Monday) I have two free periods before I have to teach, and that's plenty of time to pin up my hair, check my twitter, have tea with Young-Gyung, have coffee with Kyung-Hwa, listen to a little bit of K-Pop, and then make the worksheets/game materials that I will need.

That may not sound like a big deal to you, but understand that this is not at all where I've been in the "lesson planning" process, ever. Usually it would take me a good few hours just to decide on a lesson topic, and I spent heinous amounts of time making worksheets and powerpoints. I think I would estimate that for every 1 hour lesson plan I prepared, it took me about 5 hours of preparation.

I don't know why it took me so long before (maybe because I didn't have any practice and didn't know where to find outside resources or how to use them?), but it takes me a leisurely hour now, or two hours if I'm making an extraordinary number of powerpoints/worksheets/laminated game cards. And it's not nearly as stressful as it was before. Maybe this is all an after-effect of having my weekly needed lesson plans increase from 2 to 6 with the after school classes - while spending 10 hours on lesson planning may have been feasible last semester, spending 30 hours on lesson planning is definitely not feasible this semester. I guess I adapted.

Say good-bye to dirty
unhygienic finger nails Please
pardon the dirty chronically
dirty nails

dirty dirty dirty There's a
cicada on my dirty nails

Those are not my dirty nails.

those damn dirty
lions Please
pardon the dirty nails.

I am just a dirty boy.

shall I specialize in awkward (but accurate) translations

of Korean --> English?

You see, sometimes there isn't a verb. Sometimes there are only adjectives.

알았어요.

Reading and writing skills have always been my strong points in foreign-language-study. Written expression has almost always come more naturally to me than vocal expression.

But on my Korean final exam, my listening score was perfect. I lost 0.2 points out of 30 on the speaking part. My writing score was 29.5/30, and my reading score was the worst: 18.5/20.

I blame the fact that I'm actually living in the language I'm learning this time. I blame all the K-dramas I've been watching.

can you feel my heartbeat?

it's beating for you.

did you know that I sometimes call Young-Gyung "언니"? did you know that she asked me to? do you know what it means?

did you know that I really wanted 9th grade to be the last time I played dodgeball?

did you know that I cheered for Robot Electronics the whole time, just because of 신철?

did you know that I stood and put my right hand over my heart like all the other teachers when they played Korea's national anthem?

did you know that all my favorite students fell down?

did you know that I only like 2PM when my students are dancing to them? did you know that I still only know one of the names of the students in dance club, even though I love them all? did you know that it's the "okay"/"I love you" student? did you know that his name is 마승호? did you know that I still don't know how exactly I should react when he (ridiculously, in very broken English) attempts to flirt with me and convince me to go on a date?

did you know that all my favorite students fell down?

did you know that all my mother hens kick ass at dodgeball?

did you know how frightening some of my students' mothers are when they've formed a circle around you, and they have a ball?

did you know it was cold that day, and none of us bothered to catch students smoking in the bathrooms?

did you know that they encourage me to drink alcohol at any/all school functions?

did you know that that's probably me screaming in the background? did you know that I've started the process of making my application to renew my contract?

pop music profile #12

Super Junior is back,



but they've done something terrible to Heechul's


HAIR.

Magic Hole

That cute but that so smell

How can I explain to you the way in which death threats are ridiculously common in Korea? If you don't make a death threat every time you tell someone about something you don't want them to do, then you must not really mean it.

I don't really expect you to know that these are Linkin' Park lyrics. There's a kid in my after-school class that loves Linkin' Park, and his English is good enough that I think he actually understands most of the lyrics. Okay, okay, it's Linkin' Park. But I like this kid, okay?

Mother, I can not give birth, he uleusyeotda milk. Thy breath, gained a good man like his mother, breaking my back against one another also said saleura. The doors of the pub at the docks or in the nails grow maebaltop naegeolrin humble town beside the lamp has been flowing into. The dead lice glued eyes in my sleep like my mother, bitch, until the morning feeling woosinda sobbing. Cool pittol my heart, rotten sound of flowing water. I live out in the depths of nails dig deeper into the grave. Wohae chireugi a life if you have a share of the armed stand in front of the stone throwing to live life the shares ... Kkeumulgeorinda jeondeungbul seemed dim off.

my voice that cannot call the names of my students

because even if I know their names, can write them, recognize them when said by Korean-speakers, find them quickly in the gradebook - they can't recognize their own names when I call them, my American-English tongue that can't wrap itself around the syllables fast enough.

I'm still floundering without a home computer, still teetering on the edge of deciding to buy a MacBook. Be patient with me, I don't know what to write here these days.