Lia Teacher and Brendan Teacher

Our first week/semi week of teaching (snow days, remember?) is coming to a close and everything feels pretty solid. Our school isn' big so we get to have smaller classes with more one on one attention to the students, which is super helpful becasue of the whole Korean vs. English thing :) Our kids are really cute...some are pretty rowdy and others are very sweet, especially the little girls. I don't think we mentioned this before but Koreans are younger in American years than Korean Years. For example, Koreans are already 1 when they are born, and everyone turns a year older on New Years..everyone. But then they celebrate their actual Birthdays on their true date of birth as well, they just don't get older. Kind of confusing I know. So, we have 5 and 6 year olds, but they are acually only 3 1/2 to 5 in American years. Soooo little! Oh and all of our students have American names, one of our kids is named Elvis, another is Prince, you get the idea. If we get some new kids we might get to name them, or they'll pick themselves.

Yesterday, I had a class of only two little girls, one of them cried before class even started and another peed her pants 2 inces from the toilet and proceeded to cry, loudly. Don't worry, everything was fine once she changed and we finished class with storytime.
There is a lot more to teaching than going to a class and talking in front of a bunch of kids...along with class time goes a good amount of preparing, copying and lesson planning. This month, our lesson plans were made for us but after this month we're on our own.

Well, so far so good. Oh fun tidbit of the day...we went out to dinner tonight with Jenn (one of our co-teachers) and her friend. In Korea, they do not give you the bill to pay from your table..all restaurants work like a diner or Coney Island restaurant and you pay at the register. When we went to pay, we did it separately...and the old lady (aka Ahjumma) which is not a nice word...was apparently super pissed we payed separately and proceeded to slam her palm on the cash register very very loudly and hard when she went to open it. Yep. Sometimes Korean people are not very subtle with us from the good old U S of A.

Below are pictures of some of my kids, couldn't get everyone today. Will add more soon. Enjoy their Korean cuteness...

love love love love love