Well, another week come and gone! The days are going by so fast here! Everybody said time would fly by but I never realized it until now. You know how time goes by fast when you are looking forward to something? I feel like our weeks are so busy and hectic that I look forward to the weekends to be with friends and relax. Can’t believe were already on our fourth week here, it’s almost been a month!
The Brown kids graduated on Wednesday of last week. Even though I only taught them every once in a while it was so cute to see them up on the stage for graduation! I was amazed at all the things the kids had to prepare for the ceremony. They had to memorize speeches, story books, and songs. It is so adorable to hear them recite their speeches, and also amazing at how creative they are! For one of the classes the speech prompt was “If I had three wishes they would be…” and one little boy, Brian, said one of his wishes would be to get all the clouds in the sky, make them into bread, and eat the bread so he could fly high in the sky. Who thinks of that?! Haha they are really funny to listen to. The other prompt was “If I could be a superhero with one superpower I would be…”. A lot of the kids talk about how they would want to be invisible so they could beat their friends at tag and other games or how they would want to be really strong to beat Kevin Teacher at arm wrestling. So cute!! On top of those speeches, each student memorized an entire storybook and 2 different songs! Pretty amazing. I don’t remember the last time I had to memorize that much information for a performance and these kids are only 6 or so! It was really cool to see all the parents there also and to see them clap for their kids and congratulate them after the ceremony was over. The kids here are pushed extremely hard from a very young age and I took special notice of how proud a lot of the parents looked. Once they get to high school, most of them are at their schools from like 8 or 9 in the morning to even midnight at the latest. They’re not necessarily in classes the whole time but they make the students stay at school and study. I was chatting with a few of the Korean teachers and one of them had school from 9 am to 11 at night and had to switch schools halfway through the year just because of how unbelievably stressful your life gets. Makes me thankful for our 7am to 2pm high school schedules! Also makes me really appreciate how hard these kids work.
So after graduation there were only the elementary classes in the afternoon for Thursday and Friday. I don’t teach any of those so I pretty much just spent the rest of the week in my classroom decorating. I’m not finished yet but I can’t wait to take pictures and put them up so everyone can see! I can’t believe I’ve actually decorated an entire classroom, I really feel like a teacher. I had to make things like a welcome sign, a birthday board, a calendar, etc. It was kind of fun and I forgot how artsy I can be! We also had another orientation on Thursday where more parents of LCI students came to get detailed information about the curriculum. It was about an hour and a half long and all in Korean. Those types of things are pretty boring anyway but imagine not even being able to understand what they were saying!
Another teacher got here last Saturday. His name’s Andrew and he’s from Canada, there are so many Canadians here! He is living on the same floor as us in the apartment so he’s been hanging out with us a lot. We took him to Pyeongtaek this weekend to meet Katelan, Chris and Chase (our other friends from WSU who live like 30 minutes away, I think I’ve mentioned them before) especially so he could make friends with a couple guys! I feel kind of bad for him, he is literally the only guy here. Our teacher’s room is filled with like 8 Korean teachers and 5 of us, all girls. Poor guy :). He is really cool though and really easy to get along with so he’s a good addition!
So we spent the whole weekend in Pyeongtaek with the other half of the WSU crew. It’s still kind of weird to be hanging out with everyone but in Korea instead of Pullman! I love being able to get together with them and have them show us their city but I’ve been thinking a lot about trying to be a little more independent and meet people on my own. The fact that Katie, Bri and I came here at the same time and were already friends means we do a lot of things together and its usually the 3 of us doing whatever on the weekends which is great and everything but I don’t want to spend a whole year here and realize I didn’t try to branch out of my comfort zone at all in that area. I like the other girls at our school a lot and am glad to be able to spend time with them also! All of us came from pretty different places and backgrounds so I think it’s really interesting to talk to them and hear different stories! We have been hanging out with a couple Korean teachers also and I love hearing them talk about their lives. Some of the things they’ve experienced are so different and it’s especially interesting to hear what they think about our country. I feel kind of like a USA ambassador sometimes trying to explain things and correct them on some common misconceptions they have about the United States! Hopefully the three of us girls are a good representation of the positive and informed population of the US. Speaking of, another thing I’ve noticed is how weird it is to be here and not see newspapers and headlines of the things going on back home. I mean just living day to day at home, even if you’re just glancing at the newspapers or flipping through the news, you can’t help but keep informed about things. I realized last week that the only thing I was hearing about was the Olympics so I have been getting online to SeattleTimes.com and NYTimes.com to keep up on things. Just read this morning about the tsunami scare in Hawaii, thank goodness it was a false alarm!
We have another short week! It is Monday evening right now and we had the day off of school for Korean Independence holiday. No fireworks or barbeques here though! They celebrate most holidays with food and family and quiet time.
I will put a few pictures up of the kids on graduation, they were so cute all dressed up! They also had to change into these hilarious outfits for some of their speeches. I don’t know where in the world they got these outfits or what they are supposed to be but it was pretty hilarious. I will also put up pictures soon of my classroom, I’m pretty proud of it!
Miss everyone like always, I can’t believe it’s almost been a month without everyone. I think about you guys everyday, seriously!
PS. Somebody wasn’t cheering loud enough for the Cougars this weekend, saw the score from the Cougar vs. Huskies basketball game. A disappointing end to an otherwise fun weekend! :)
-Tia Teacher
