Sunday, October 11, 2009

Preparing for Halloween

This past week was very uneventful. We have started to get ready for Halloween. The Korean staff ordered us all costumes, mine is Wonder Woman. We were also told about all of the holiday festivities that we need to prepare. We have to start to decorate our rooms. I have been coloring, cutting and making ghosts, pumpkins, bat and spiders for days! I have not a very artsy person so I am trying to be creative. Right now I am working on writing each of my kinder students names in black and orange on ghosts that I made. I also had the kids make jack-o-lantern pictures for my bulletin board.

We found out that on the 29th we are going to stay after school for about 2 hrs to decorate the rest of the school. The school is going to buy us pizza and beer. We have to turn the big gym into a game room, one room into a snack room, one into a face painting room and we have to make the play gym become a haunted house. Along with all of this, we are having a costume parade, a song competition (each class must learn one song. Mine is learning "Orange Pumpkins.") and we are going trick-or-treating from room to room. In order for the kids to get candy they must sing another song! I have been busy trying to teach my kids these songs so we don't have another "Lion Sleeps Tonight" disaster!

The week flew by overall! I found out that starting in a few weeks I am going to be teaching another class. It will be on Tuesday and Thursdays from 5-6. It is an upper level social studies and writing class. I am excited to teach it. I have this class now however it is a lower level so it will be fun to teach both. I am a little worried about the extra essays. I already grade about 20 a week and now I will have another class. It will be interesting! Once this starts, I will have my prep time from 6-7 so I will be working 2 more hours each week.

On Friday after school all of the girls got together at Gina's for drinks. It was a lot of fun to relax with everyone. A few of Gina's friends from the Jukjeon (the city right next to us, where the subway station is) LCI came over also.

On Saturday I went with Christine and Britney and joined a gym near our apartments. After I worked out I could really feel how much strength I am still missing in my knee. I hope that I can get it stronger now that I can do my physical therapy things at the gym. Later in the evening the 3 of us headed 3 subway stops into Seoul to Jeongja. We had dinner at a great Thai place that I had been to once. I think the girls were excited to have Thai also! Today has been a low key day.

I am very proud to say that my new (she isn't really new anymore, she has been at LCI for over a month) kinder student Jasmin can read. When she started my class I had to say each word and point to it and she would repeat me. Now if I say, "Jasmin, read number 3," she can do it! I am so proud of her! I have spoken to her mom a few times about her improvement and she is extremely happy. She wrote me a note one day and told me that she thinks my teaching is the best and she is so thankful that Jasmin is in my class! I was so thrilled and proud to read this and show my supervisor! I saw Jasmin and her mom at Lotte, the grocery store, one day and her mom told me that she also speaks Japanese. I told Jasmin that she is very smart because she knows 3 languages, and she said, "No teacher. No English!" I am so proud to say that she can now read!


Jasmin and I last week when we celebrated Chuseok. The picture below shows the flower that Jasmin made me. I now have it next to my desk!

No comments:

Post a Comment