A new video...

Nothing special, just saying hi!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeW94NFS9Rs

2-3

Anyong!

Some of you have been on my case that it has been quite a while since the last time I wrote home. Like usual, I probably won't cover all the reasons why in this e-mail because I'll surely forget half of the stuff I've done while I'm sitting here trying to remember it. I've been here for about three months now and it's crazy to think that I've already been here that long. That's potentially 25% of the time I'll be here! I feel like there is so much more that I have yet to see and do!

It's been pretty busy here the past few weeks. Last week was level-up testing for our students. Level-up tests are the most dominant statistic going into whether or not a kid moves up to the next level. They can do great in class for 13 weeks, but if they bomb the level up test, they're stuck. For the most part, they went as expected for my students, some doing better than I thought they would while some of my best students froze up and struggled. Neither they nor I will know the results until the end of next week and I'm probably just as anxious to find out as them. I kind of feel like a parent now since I've been around them for so long. I feel personally responsible for advancing their skills and will be happy for them when they move up and feel sad with them if they're stuck in their current level for another term.

The process is pretty much the same for all the students, with everyone being divided into two levels. All of my memory kids are in level one (tera being the highest level) and my listening kids are in level 2. They are tested in reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Reading and listening are filled out by scantron so that is why I don't know how some of them have done. I grade the writing section while they take one or both of those sections and then grade the speaking on the fly. The speaking is the last component and the part where kids most often freeze up just because they are nervous. The teachers switch rooms and we bring them in one by one and ask them a question and they have 15 seconds to write notes, organize thoughts, then 45 seconds to respond. A couple of my par-listening girls didn't answer the question asked so even though they gave decent answers, probably won't level up because of it. I felt bad but I had to grade them the way we are told to.

We had last Monday and Tuesday off as part of a 4-day weekend for the Lunar New Year which most Asian countries go by as opposed to the Solar New Year you all celebrated while being hungover and watching bowl games back home. The lunar calender is shorter thus Koreans have different ages than us. Here in Korea, I'm 26 going on 27 this September instead of 24 going on 25. I thought about traveling around someplace but didn't really iron out plans with anyone so I spent the entire weekend in Cheonan catching up on rest. I failed in finding the motivation to send out this update last weekend. That weekend will be the most time I have off at once before my week long vacation this summer. I've narrowed my choices to spend that vacation to Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, and Australia (probably in that order). They have some traditional stuff and the New Year is definitely a family holiday that involves lots of eating...I hear 9 AM, noon, 3 PM, 6 PM are all just about full meals while the males start gravitating towards more and more soju as the day goes on. They have some traditional games they play and then a signature rice-pattie cake/soup they 'have to' eat in order to actually get a year older.

Anyway, I spent most of my weekend watching tv and movies. I went to see a couple of movies, Valkyrie (staff event for work) and Changling. You can probably guess, but the movies are in English with Korean subtitles. Part of Valkyrie actually had two sets of subtitles on the screen, German at the bottom and Korean on the right hand side. It was my first time in a Korean cinema and I'll probably start going more often on weekends.

One thing I really don't like about the way CDI does things is their holiday policy. We don't really get holidays off because we have to make them up with weekend hours. So, I had to teach the 4 classes I missed last Monday/Tuesday this past Saturday. So, I went into work at 9:30 and taught from 10:30-10:30. It was every bit as brutal as it sounds and I was pretty much brain dead the last few hours. The worst part was just having one day of recovery before getting right back at it yesterday. As a reward for staying quiet and working hard on level up tests, the teachers throw a pizza party for their students the last week of class. So, I will be buying pizza for about 60 kids here in a few weeks for the last hour or so of class while we watch a movie instead of the usual work. I really don't mind it as I've grown attached to these kids. I'll have to profile some of my favorites and not-so-favorites here soon before I get new students in a few weeks.

Another reason I've been busy lately is because of progress reports that we have to type up for each kid. It's just a paragraph or so for each student that discusses their grades, effort, attitude in class, etc. I'm about 4/5 of the way through mine, I have to finish it before Friday of this week. I'll probably finish up tomorrow evening during my time off. It has gotten pretty monotonous as sometimes it's like I'm typing the same thing over and over again.

As far as classes go, like I say each time, they get better all the time. The tera kids I have each Tuesday night had their best class with me tonight. It's so hard to get them to talk and participate, but we had our most relaxed and talkative class tonight. I finally found a little trick to get them to volunteer instead of having me just call on them throughout class. I'm going to test my method in the other tough class, bridge listening, on Thursday. What is it, you might wonder? Well, I jokingly said that if I had to call on one more person randomly, that person would have to get up and dance for 5 seconds before answering the question. I wouldn't have actually followed through on it though I gave my own example of a dance for them...they laughed and then all I had to do was act like I was about to call on someone for the last hour and a half of class before someone would volunteer!

I had a pretty long day today as I went up to Seoul this morning for a training meeting with my head instructor and another teacher. It was really only a head instructor/head instructor in training meeting, but they asked if I wanted to tag along since it was on the new memory format for next term and I've kind of become the go to memory English instructor here. I figured it'd look good to my bosses if I did so...I did. That meant getting up at 6:30 and taking a bus to Seoul (the KTX doesn't start running that early) for a meeting at 10. We had a 2.5 hour meeting and then we ducked out, grabbed Subway in Itaewon, and then took the KTX back to Cheonan in time to prep and start teaching tonight. It was another full day of CDI for me by the time I got off at 10:30. I am excited for the new format, though, I like it a lot more than the current model. It is a but frustrating, however, that I trained in a few levels just 3 months ago and now EVERYTHING is changing. The bright side is everyone is going to have to be re-trained so I'll probably pick up a few more levels that I otherwise would not have taught. I'm pretty comfortable in the middle levels right now but I'll welcome a new challenge of higher or lower level students.

I was partially delaying sending this update until I recorded another video to link and send home, but I have been lazy in doing that as well. I figure I'll give a video tour of my apartment and such here in Cheonan since I'm not sure when I'll next get to Seoul or other places around Korea. I was also waiting until I got a kitten so I could send pictures, but I still haven't picked him up yet. I've been so busy that I haven't been able to get away to Suwon to pick him up from my friend. So, instead of playing with a kitten, I've spent some free time playing a PS2 that one of my co-workers gave me since he's leaving here in a few weeks.

Aside from work, though, things are going well. I'm still getting more comfortable here in town and can find my way around a bit better. We went out for a co-workers birthday this past weekend and it was a pretty fun night. I beat an English couple in darts and watched a juggling bottle fire show thing. I'm also starting to befriend a few locals to help me with language and pointing out things to do. The owner of one bar, Metro, in Yawoori where foreigners like to congregate is nice and is now on name basis with me. I've only been in there a few times, but he has a good memory I guess. It's still nice to see a familiar face that remembers me when I go someplace, makes this place seem a little less foreign to me and every bit helps there.

We went out for a few drinks after work one night last week and while sitting there, a drunken older Korean guy came up to our table and bought us another round of beer and basically just said hi as that was about as far as his English went. Then a little bit later, a couple of other guys came over to chat with us for a while. While I have heard that will happen sometimes when Koreans want to practice their English, it was really the first time I'd experienced it.

My sleep patterns fluctuated a lot over the past few weeks. Two weeks ago, I went to bed anywhere from 5:30-8 AM on Sunday-Thursday nights and then at 9 AM Friday, Saturday, Sunday nights. Following that week, though, I was exhausted and fell back into a more regular pattern of ~ 2 AM bed times. I of course say that as it's approaching 4 AM tonight and I'm typing this out. I'll be going to bed as soon as I click send.

Speaking of clicking send and going to bed, that sounds like an awesome idea right now so I'm going to do that. I'm pakimchi right now.

Hope everyone has been doing well, don't forget to update me on your lives! If you don't hear from me before then, have a Happy Valentine's Day!