UMW Abroad

A LOT has happened so I’ll update you in bullet form and expand in blog entries later.

Recent wins:

• Woke up at 5 am yesterday to go with underclassmen to cheer for the 3rd graders (high school seniors) taking the 수능 (Suneung), which is a test that students start preparing for in elementary school. If you don’t do well on this test you can’t go to the college you want (or even college at all in some cases). Most of my students in the academic track stay at school until 10 pm or later every day doing self-study… pretty much just for the Suneung, and even the kids that are not in the academic track stay late and study. I was there before any of the teachers (got there at 6, most teachers got there at 7:30/8) and got to hang out with my students in the freezing cold. Apparently foreign teachers never go and cheer for the suneung so my school was really shocked (and very happy) that I went, and since I went with my host sister and not a teacher apparently they didn’t even know I was coming.
• Almost finished with book 2 of piano, going on to book 3 in a few days.
• FINALLY figured out how to do a dora chaugi kick in hapkido (watch the video, he does one at 0:24).
• Went to the hapkido night class one day instead of my usual afternoon class and saw one of my trouble maker students. This kid is about 6’4″ and has to weigh at least 250 pounds, he’s massive. We had to practice blocking practice and I was paired with him and I completely took him out. I can now say I beat up one of my students.
• I’ve been practicing with a core group of 7 students for the English competition (we have to sing a pop song) that’s coming up and today we finally nailed the difficult harmonies in the chorus. My students were so happy!
• I taught a lesson on Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along-Blog to my advanced kids.
• I bought some sweaters so I won’t die!
• Discovered a duck pond in my “downtown”
• Went to Daegu/Busan with friends last weekend and built a sand-castle.
• Tomorrow I’m going to the United States ambassador to Korea’s house for a Thanksgiving dinner with most of the first-year F*bright English Teaching Assistants.

Loses:

• I’ve been sick.
• I lost my VOICE which is absolutely awful if you’re an English conversation teacher.
• Korean vocabulary has recently been stagnating and grammar is definitely getting worse.
• I STILL don’t know what I’m doing for Winter Break.
• I feel like I’ve hit a wall in my relationship with teachers at school due to the language barrier and I really want to build deeper relationships but I don’t know how/I’m too tired to keep trying.
• I have had 5 times as many spam comments as actual comments on my blog. Hint hint.

More later, I promise. As well as actual pictures eventually.