Hi everyone, a lot has been going on since my last post.
I am pretty much busy spending most of my time with classroom oriented activities. These include but are not limited to things such as lesson planning, teaching time, creating tests, grading tests, grading writing assignments, creating handouts, teacher meetings, updating rollbooks for attendance and grades, coming up with seating charts, memorizing Ss names-this is painful, coming up with and learning new English oriented games, etc. I am so behind with the grading. With 78 Ss and tons of corrections to make it takes quite a bit of time to return those.
(Wow I can't believe we are already entering week 7 out of 16. The midterm is coming up soon during week 8.)
One particularly stressful day was when we had eater lessons on the nice fry day in march. Some outside issues had developed beforehand so we were a little wary about how it would go. We had stuff to help illustrate key words and such but we didn't know how it would be received. From my perspective it seemed to go pretty well, but due to language barriers not all of it was understood. They did enjoy it when I gave out candy at the end. One class level made those colored bead bracelets. They could use it as a bracelet or cell phone accessory. It is ironic that we can present this stuff here but back home you can get "all fired up" for showing the same stuff.
This past week was cool cause groups of Ss (3 to 5 in each group) had to make up a skit and present it during class. (No lesson planning for us teachers) The winners from each classroom then competed with the winners from the other classrooms in an auditorium. They were fun to watch cause some Ss came up with costumes, props, signs and music-with singing and dancing to go along with their skit. My favorite line from one of the skits was "Her is mine!" Everyone in the audience cracked up when they heard that interesting use of Eng.
I am getting more settled in here. Most of my shopping is done. I just cleaned my bathroom here for the first time since I got here. I will hopefully get the rest cleaned next weekend. Though this place is pretty dusty so I will have to wipe up dust often. Dust bunnies are not uncommon. I'm not sure where they come from since I keep my windows closed and none of the rooms here have ventilation except for a bathroom fan.
I am getting to know the OOzbeck Ss better. Their English is quite good. Their mother tongue is Rushen. They are of K descent but did not grow up speaking K. I'm here to encourage them and help them in their "walk"ing. I have not met up with a Mongol Ss who is part of this group. He speaks no rushen but I think his Eng is good. I'm interested to get to know him soon as well.
My weekly fry day night study with SK Ss seems to be going well. The numbers and faces fluctuate but I think I will have several core members. They are already in t, so I think their main focus is for language learning, accountability, encouragement and to be better equipped to talk to others. To come up with a lesson I meet with my boss and go over what to teach. It goes really fast and I take notes as quickly as I can since we are both usually in a time crunch. I need to find time to regularly meet with my manager cause its pretty stressful to prepare a discussion at the last minute with minimal prep time.
I am looking for next semester prospects to teach "advanced" english to. I can probably take on 1 to 2 people depending on my time. One candidate has shown up on the radar so I will have to wait and see.
I am picking up a little Korean and Chinese language here. I've had to in order to eat or buy something. I just began Korean tutoring so I hope I can learn enough to survive on my own or answer a phone call. It's a language exchange so the Ss I am working with wants to improve their Eng speaking ability. The Korean they speak here sounds very similar to that of NK which to my ear sounds a little like Japanese with its intonations. My tutor says she has an SK accent but has been living here for 10 years or so. So we shall see what I sound like at the end of my lessons here. I'll probably sound like some hybrid cali/sk/nk/chinese speaking person.
I have a lot of pics of food to show. I'll put those up in a separate post. I won't be able to post anything showing phaces but this one is of me in a city called Longjing. We went on a new teacher field trip before classes had begun. The mask is for the cold and for the smog when I'm in the city.
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