So let me just start with a quick re-cap of the everything since last post.
I went to Busan for Chuseok, had a great 4 days there seeing the sights and playing on the beaches with Amber my college friend. It was a nice relaxing week.
I came back to Ansan to start the new quarter and was very lucky to have a class with only 3 students in it, and the best part is the 2 of them were my best students from Summer quarter; Emily and Rachel. So for the past two months I have been getting to play with them for 6 hours a week as I teach them English (and Rachel some Spanish) as they try teaching me Korean.
Which leads me to another endeavor: I have been meeting with Ethan's fiancé's sister (Yes one more bit of news Ethan and Mandy are getting married in February and I am going to be their photographer!) to attempt learning Korean. I have gotten farther than I thought and quicker, too. I am now able to sound out most of the things I see even if i do not understand their meaning at all. It mainly helps me when trying to order food and even being able to pronounce the names of food and the names of people in Korean. I now form them in my mind in Korean rather than trying to write them down in English.
This quarter I had the pleasure of teaching one of our highest level classes here (Albatross Plus). 7 kids in the class of 6th 7th and 8th graders. And all of them are so fricken intelligent. We discussed in depth Plato's Allegory of the Cave (one of my favorites from college philosophy), Racism, Truth, Morality and Ethics, Gaining Knowledge etc. The textbook we use for this class is a college textbook called Critical Thinking which is not intended for use as an English textbook for second language students, it is simply a book for a critical thinking class. This means it is full of idioms that I teach the class daily and full of tough real world topics like terrorism, torture, rape, abortion, gun control, birth control, etc. pretty intense stuff especially for the sixth grade girls in my class. Usually it is not so bad though, I enjoy just talking to them about normal everyday stuff and we always get sidetracked on other topics in class. I can speak as fast as I want with these kids and use whatever words I want, they will either know the words or easily be able to learn them in context. They do a lot better job on a lot of the tests than I think I could at times.
As far as this week goes its been a little stressful. I got sick with the normal throat, cough, runny nose crud, and school testing just got over and the new quarter will start here in just a couple more weeks. I am sad to see the kids go but I have great faith in what the new quarter will bring. I'm sure I will be seeing some of the kids I taught from the first term again, too!
I feel like there is more to tell about the people here in Ansan, I am still hanging out with John quite a bit and have gotten into Korean's national pastime of Starcraft. I've also been hanging out with one of the new Korean counselors. He is really cool and has been showing me some of the more traditional Korean hangouts. There are also a couple other new teachers here in the past two weeks. Jay and Carly; Carly is the new teacher and her boyfriend Jay who is looking for work and without a college degree is having a bit of a hard time. Both are extremely cool and fun to hang out with. Also Anna Lei who I only met once for about three minutes but she will be coming to work on our floor at the new term.
More later, I will try to be more regular.
