No class today!

Monday was a typical day. I went to dance and it felt great! I think my "ballet muscles" are returning -- they always take awhile to re-train. I'm sure they're not back yet in full, but class did seem easier and I was dancing better than I had been the past couple weeks.

So I had been told last week that today I would not have class until 2pm, as the students would be testing all morning. That meant I'd only have one class in the afternoon. I decided I would come to school at the regular time and work on lesson planning. When I got to school, Mrs. Song informed me that in fact I wouldn't be having any classes today! OK by me! :-D So I worked on my Halloween lesson all day -- the lesson plan, worksheet, and power point. I hope the students enjoy it, because I think it looks like fun!

This morning I had a meeting with the 4 students who want to do the hip hop dance with me. See the previous blog entry for more about that...

I finally left school at 3. I decided, since I had so much energy from not having to teach today, that I'd do some shopping. I bought another gynormous bag of candy for my Halloween classes, since I doubt the first one will really have enough. I also got 3 sweaters! One for about $20, and the other 2 were only $3 each! There was some massive sale going on! Yay!

Today's soup at school lunch was amazing! When I saw it, I was less than thrilled, however. It was an olive green color, very thick, and lumpy -- it had ddeok (Korean rice cake) balls about the size of mid-sized marbles in it. Well, I found out it is squash and red bean soup with ddeok, and it was DELISHIOUS! They eat it traditionally on the shortest day of the year, Dec 22. They also spread it around the entrance to their homes to ward off bad spirits. I told them we just use garlic! :-P Unfortunately dinner tonight was not great. It was whole baby octopus. I didn't eat too many of those... :-P At dinner I had a long conversation with my host parents about the education system here. Basically my host dad thinks that students should have to pay for their own college expenses, while my host mom and I thought differently. He thinks parents' responsibility is to teach their children independence (which I agree) but by means of making them do everything on their own. Students here are at school from 8am-10pm, how could they possibly earn enough money to pay for college expenses? Granted, college is still cheaper than in the US, but it is still very expensive for them. Anyway, it was an interesting discussion. Sometimes I think my host father has a closed mind and thinks things are black and white. My goal for this year is to try to get him to think about thinks differently, and realize that real life is more complicated than "right and wrong." I think it's slowly working....

Finally, I got this email from some Korean person this afternoon. NO idea what it means or even who it is. Thought you might get a kick out of it. Oh, my life as an English teacher in Korea...

hello
The now is trial period
Is tired too and the eye does not come open
In this weekend the [me] the case song which will do??