Office Pic
Hello everyone and thanks for reading my first blog of the new semester.
I very much appreciate my time here and now that I have the first year behind me, each day feels like a huge blessing to be here. I am very grateful to be here for one last semester and will do my best to make the most of it.
Over January and February we had winter break and I was able to take a much needed vacation. I spent the first couple of weeks in Yanji and cleaned up house in my office and dorm room. I briefly helped teach English Corner as well. English Corner is a bi-weekly event where anyone can come to our class on campus and spend a couple hours of learning English and playing games. We get all ages from elementary kids to seniors coming. On the off days we offer a bi-weekly b-study to those who come to English Corner. The OP & co. here never take a break.
After spending a couple of weeks in Yanji, I spent 5 weeks in SE Asia and went to Cambodia to visit my family and see the kids. It was fun. I did a little homeschool teaching as well. I also spent a couple of weeks traveling by myself while I was there and saw Vietnam, Laos and Thailand. It was a little awkard to hear the other side of the story about the war in Vietnam while I was in Ho Chi Minh City, but it was very interesting. I was impressed during my journey with the number of people who could speak English, tourists and locals included. On the second day of this semester, I used the pictures from my travels to present a slideshow to my current students. I told them the locals, as well as the foreigners had to use English to communicate with eachother. I wanted to encourage them to study English hard to become part of the global community.
This semester I gratefully have just two classes to teach at the Intermediate level. Except that the first week+, I had to sub for a teacher who came late in the semester. I have more freedom to do other things now. What do I have time to do now? Here's my list:
1. I changed the SK B study to a thursday night, now that I have fridays off, and this has helped with attendance. We have met 4 times now and we're getting pretty consistent numbers of about 8 students. I have a new teaching partner now, a old YUST vet who came back for 1 semester, and she's doing great in helping out. I am going to need yarper to make new study material because it looks like they'll be coming out consistently every week. The last two semesters, we had some off weeks when no one came and so I was able to save the teaching material for the following week. I got most of my teaching material from my team leader, from whom I took copious notes of everything he had to say line by line, not to mention the handouts he created. I basically regurgitated everything he had to say. I am not trained or educated enough to make b studies so yarp I can come up with sound material with enought time to review it with my team leader for consistency. I also play one song on the guitar which I hope helps them learn English as well. Right now everyone who comes is a believer but my aim is to help them learn the material well enough so that they can eventually share the material with others in English.
2. I am spending more time with students from my classes. I gave an open invitation to anyone who wanted to spend lunch or dinner with me to practice English conversation. As of right now I am meeting 8 students, in pairs, for a meal at the cafeteria. We just casually talk, as my students hope to improve their conversation ability. They are all girls so far, but I hope some guys will take part in my hope that they would be interested in a study with me in the summer.
3. An old student of mine, from my first semester here, came back from his exchange program in SK last semester. (I mentioned in a previous post that I did some one on one teaching with him during the summer.) I caught up with him over dinner in my room and we had a good conversation. He was very generous and bought me dinner and a gift of animal shaped magnets. I offered to have a weekly study with him and he accepted. We will be having some one on one lessons soon and I hope he learns a lot. I was a little worried since I had no material to teach but I just received some books from which to plan some lessons. Thank G for that and I hope I'll make time to do a good job preparing the material.
4. I'm taking an evening Korean language class twice a week, it's four times a week but I only have time to go twice, and I seem to be progressing slowly. I packed in with a bunch of Chinese college students at the beginner level.
5 I'm finally working out a little. That's nice.
I'm also still meeting one on one with the Russian speaking students. They just voted in a whole new leadership team from the presidency, vice presidency, etc., so I hope the change in personal works out well for them in creating harmony in the group.
Well, please continue to yarp for me. My support for the new semester is not as much as the previous semesters, but it's ok. Much thanks for the new and continued support in these tough times. You can also yarp for the $ status of our school. With the Korean won going down and overall less backing they are going to lay off a good number of paid staff here. Also the job prospects for our seniors is way down. There's a feeling of uncertainty in the air. May we always be leaning on Ya Way for guidance and strength.
Peace,
Eugene
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