Amy teacher!

I have a pretty amazing class of 12 year olds here at the Jeollanamdo English Camp in Damyang, South Korea. Here is who I have:

Jason-super smart and adorable
Roger-cutest kid ever. So tiny and fiesty and funny.
Transformer-trouble maker
Bumblebee-partner in crime to the above....
Soap-pretty quiet guy but so cute!
Sarah-sweet and smart and good sense of humor.
Kate-very smart girl!
Anne-suuuuper quiet and shy and scared at first, but now she's having more fun!
Nero-is disabled in some way (has a back brace) and the kids are mean to her :(
Hot Dog-ATTITUDE!
Sophia-tiiiiny little adorable girl
Jane-quiet, but apparently quite a complainer in Korean

My homeroom class enjoying their ham and cheese sandwiches!

My co-teacher, Yunhee (Diana is her English name), is amazing. She speaks English nearly perfectly, is so sweet and works hard. Some co-teachers don't want to do anything so don't really help teach at all. But Yunhee is always coming up with ideas and helping lead the class and steps in whenever she needs to. We work quite well together! And we make some dang good banana pancakes.

So we teach six 40-minute classes per day. There are 12 classes total, and they rotate through our room. We have three lessons, so every two days we teach a new lesson. My class is cooking, so the first lesson was ham and cheese sandwiches. Next up was banana pancakes, and tomorrow the cookies begin. The lessons are technically already planned for us, but we try to make it a little more interactive and interesting. So we came up with some games for the sandwich lesson (a race to put the recipe in the correct order-nine different steps). The banana pancakes take a little longer, so there isn't much time for games. But we did introduce some new vocabulary that the book didn't mention. Things like eggshell, banana peel, pour, crack (asking a class of twelve year olds to repeat the word "crack" over and over just seemed wrong....but they just know it in reference to eggs!). The cookie lesson tomorrow will have to be modified as well I'm sure, but we kind of just do it as we go and figure it out. The first few classes don't get as fun of lessons for that reason, but they still get yummy food!

The kids here are so great. They love our cooking class, which makes me happy! And they just have so much fun. I fell in love with a little girl from another class named Lolly. She sat next to me during the soccer game we watched the other night, and talked nonstop. Most kids avoid speaking in English whenever they can. So when I find a kid who actually wants to practice their English and who isn't afraid to make mistakes, I get so excited! She told her homeroom teacher after the game all about her conversation with me and now makes sure to talk to me whenever she sees me.

There is another girl named U-jin who I'm pretty sure speaks better English than I do. I don't know where she learned it or how she speaks so perfectly, but its quite impressive. She doesn't even have an accent! English is quite different from Korean, if you weren't aware. The kids have a really hard time distinguishing between "L" and "R" and also between "P" and "F." So the word "pour" might come out "four" and the word "stir" might sound like "still." My co-teacher is really good about catching that and making them say it right. But they only have one symbol for those letters, and it gets pronounced differently depending on where it falls in a word. They don't have words that end in an "r" sound, it would always be pronounced "l." So they have a hard time with that!

Besides the six classes we teach each day, there are multiple meetings with our homeroom class to just hang out, to write journals, to practice for their skit at the end of camp (my kids are singing "Summer Nights" from Grease. That's what they get for not picking a song on their own. I am SO EXCITED! They might not share that feeling...), or to give instructions for the day. We have our meal times where we eat with the kids. Then there are the evening activities. My class won the scavenger hunt last night, which I was super excited about. And I may have questioned another team's score and double checked it (resulting in two less points for them) in order to win.....but the kids were so happy!

The kids call me "teacher" or "Amy teacher" or "Amy." They live for stickers. Will choose a sticker over candy EVERY time if given the choice. I love it when they forget I am a silly American teacher and they bow to me in greeting. This is something they would have to do to a normal teacher, but sometimes out of habit they just do it to us. They have crazy long days and must be even more exhausted than me, but still have such good attitudes for the most part and just power through no matter what. They are fascinated with my height. Even more fascinated than American kids. They looove rock-paper-scissors (kai-bai-bo or something in Korean), but their version is quite violent and sometimes causes tears to be shed. And they are just adorable and so smart and goofy!

I think I'm more tired than I ever have been in my life! And talking to Ben makes me miss him a whole lot. And videos from my amazing roommate Megan make me miss my apartment and my roommates. And pictures of Sierra and the family make me miss everyone else! I am preeetttty ready to be back home. There are four more days of camp. Then 5 days of traveling. Then home sweet home! Nine days never seemed so long...

I am having a good time and am glad I had this opportunity! But five weeks is a long time to be working 13 hour days and be away from a boyfriend and missing things back home! I will come away from this trip with lots of memories and having learned a lot. But I will also come away with it ready to stay home for a while :) But can I bring home a dozen or so 12 year old Koren kids with me?