66) “I don’t have to guess…”

On Tuesdays and Thursdays I teach a one on one class with a kindergarten girl named Kelly. This little girl can make even my worst day great. Lately in class she has been insisting that I call her “Kyla” because it is close to “Kyle”. She has also started leaving me little notes and jokes in her homework (because every class before we get started I check her homework). One day one of the questions was “Who is your favorite teacher?” and she wrote “Kyle Teacher”- then I asked her to guess who my favorite student was and she said “Oh- I don’t have to guess, I know it is me!” She is full of cute little things like that.


It is really amazing how smart she is. I have her write a journal for each class, and she comes up with fantastic little stories about animals getting married, or princesses, or me and her. The last two classes when I have given her some free time she has drawn a card on the board for me with a story in it. Both times she mentioned that when she gets older she is going to marry me!


Someone suggested that perhaps her mother is helping her, but she writes me little stories during class too, and for her age they are really impressive. I would say she is about as smart in English as an American child 3 to 5 years older than her- she is learning stuff in our class that is not easy for- I can’t imagine what it must be like for a 6 year old.

65) Snowboarding Hurts

Friday morning my school headed out to LG Ski Resort somewhere Northeast of Seoul. The idea is for the kids to spend the weekend at the resort skiing, having fun, and hopefully learning some English. We had about six two-bedroom condos- the teachers were responsible for the fourteen or so kids in their respective rooms. I guess I forgot how hard it is to get a group of grade school boys to get to sleep. I vaguely remembered how hard it was at the summer camp I used to work at- but last night brought back some clear memories of that. The worst part was the actual sleeping- and I figured it probably would be. All the kids and John teacher slept on the floors, and I had the couch. John started snoring pretty quickly, and at some point in the night I heard whimpers, and then full on moans and cries from one of the rooms in our condo. This continued on sporadically throughout the night, and eventually I had to get up and check it out. I think it was just one of the boys having some bad dreams- I was able to figure out which one it was because he was tossing and turning, but still asleep. It was pretty eerie thing to hear anyways.

The previous day I tried snowboarding for the first time- and it hurts when you are not good at it. I remember being so baffled at how people could just fall down for no apparent reason when learning how to ski or board- but I quickly figured out why that happens. My butt, knees, and wrists took the brunt of the damage- and my pride didn’t make it out undamaged either. Eventually I started getting the hang of it, and could make it down the hill without falling, but then on the next run I would eat it pretty hard- especially if I got a little over confident. My best fall of the day was when a group of my kids saw me from the chair lift and shouted out to me as I was boarding down the hill. I looked up and shouted and waved back, and then took a head over heels spill. I could hear them giggling like crazy!


Probably one of the best parts of the trip was getting to spend more time with and getting to know some of my favorite students better. I love being able to just act like a big kid, and they sure know how to bring it out in me. We played tag in the hallways, had fun on the hill, joked, talked, threw snow and of course I had to toss them up in the air and then catch them. The tossing is something the kids at my old school were crazy about- and somehow or another it transferred over to this school- it is a lot of fun, except when you get the kid who is just a little too heavy for this game. Certainly not all the kids came- I think the total number was under 60- but that was enough. The weather we had was perfect. The first day was sunny and warm, and the second day was a bit cooler- but probably just because we were out in the morning.

64) Surprise…

Surprise TV that is. Surprise TV is a show in Korea that airs on both public and cable TV. The basis of the show is three stories per episode, one or two of them being true and one or two false. The show is written and directed by Koreans, but the actors are Westerners (for the most part), and the dialogs are in English (with Korean subtitles). The reason I am telling you all of this is because yesterday (and today) I was filming as an extra for the show. I had several small parts with lines (such as a chef and a pizza delivery boy), and then was in the background of other shots. It is impossible to tell how much will actually be on TV because they take tons of shots from different angles- but I guess I will find out next week when the show airs.

I got hooked up in this by one of my co-workers from my school. He is only part time at the school, and has a ton of other jobs that he works- he is married to a Korean and has been working here for several years. He has been working with Surprise TV for a couple of years now, and gets some good rolls- he was the lead for the show we just filmed. So yesterday after work he called me up and told me one of the actors dropped out, and they need someone as an extra. Of course I could not pass up that opportunity. It was pretty cool to be on the set of a TV show, and see all of the stuff that goes on. It was also a ton of fun to mess around and see what we could get away with. There were a couple of us with the same stupid sense of humor, so things started to escalate. The guy from my work changed around a couple of his lines. One part where he was supposed to be ordering a bunch of food he threw in “I’ll have the cream of some young man” and also “two servings of man yogurt”. I don’t know how he kept a strait face- all of the Westerners were in tears laughing- but none of the staff understood the joke. He also called someone a “cock jockey” in one scene. We will see if those scenes make the final cut- because they take so many angles, but I think they have a pretty good chance, because so much slang doesn’t get picked up on the radar.

One lady took all of my contact info, and wanted to know if I would be available again. So hopefully I will get to do this again! If not it was still a lot of fun, and I got my face on TV in Korea, and I will still refer to my self in the third person and as an actor on occasion.

63) Photo highlights of 2006

2006 was easily my most traveled year, I saw six different countries in ’06. Below are some photo highlights from this past year. Some of these are pictures that you have seen before, and others will probably be new ones for most of you. The captions are below each picture- not above.


UNITED STATES


After a snowfall in Wisconsin.


Great Smokies, USA.


This was taken in one of Kentucky's many and beautiful caves.


From the Smokies.


Another river picture from the Smokies.


A small stream in the Smokies.


INDIA

A flower from the Himalayas.


From a temple in the foothills of the Himalayas.


Sunrise in the Himalayas.


Taken while we waited for a landslide to be cleared from the road in India.


Taken near a holy site in the Himalayas.


Roof tops in a mountain town.


KOREA

A night shot of a suburb of Seoul.


From my first school- a low level class, but a lot of fun.


Taken from the Seoul Tower.


This was taken in Bundang, Korea.


Same class as pictured above.


JAPAN

The Fukuoka Tower, in Japan.


From a temple in Japan.


Lotus flower taken in Japan at a botanical garden.


Taken at a similar location as the Fukuoka Tower photo.


VIETNAM

This was taken at an ethnic minority village on the Mekong.


On the Mekong River in Vietnam.


On the Mekong delta in Vietnam.


CAMBODIA

Angkor Wat sunrise in Cambodia.


A little Cambodian girl at a remote temple South of Phnom Penh.


A boy in one of the markets near my guesthouse.


A friendly Monk at Angkor Wat as the sun was setting.


At one of the "Killing Fields" in Cambodia.

62) Staying true

The other day I asked one of my older classes what they wanted to be when they grow up. I asked if anyone wanted to be a teacher, they looked at me with a sort of confused horror as to say “of course not”. I remember thinking the same thing when I was their age- when I was done with school the last thing I wanted was to be working at a school. But here I am, teaching, and the funniest part is I am teaching English- my absolute worst subject in school. Very early on in grade school I remember having to go to a special reading class with two other students- and now I am teaching reading!

It is funny how working with kids brings back so many memories of being their age and in school. I remember my old friends, teachers, the stupid things we used to do, and the trouble we got in. Lately I have been thinking about some of my teachers from grade school, and I’ve even had dreams about them on a few occasions. I wonder how they perceived me back then- I wonder what they thought I would amount too. Looking back on those teachers I have a new appreciation for them- especially their tolerance and skill (and for some of them their true love of teaching).

Teaching grade school has also brought back memories of how I perceived I would be living and what I would be doing when I was “older”. Reality, circumstance, and necessity are different than a 10 year old boys mind. But when I stopped to think about it, I have been able to do some of the things that I always longed to do. On more than one occasion I have gone on poorly planned but exciting trips to different states or countries. And right now I am living in a different country (although I would have never imagined it would be Korea when I was young). On occasion I will eat a box of a dozen cupcakes in a day- without even thinking twice about it. Also, I have grown some ridiculous facial hair in the past few years (when I was young I couldn’t wait until I could shave and grow facial hair) and did some pretty neat things with the hair on my head.


So I guess in some respects I have stayed true to childhood dreams. The harder thing is to stay true to how I imagined I would teach a class if I could. I am constantly reminded by my conscience not to be too tough on these kids- but that is balanced by not wanting to cheat any of these kids. This generation could be very important to Korea. This is a country of very rapid change in recent years. When my grandpa was here during the Korean War, he said Seoul was nothing- and now it is an extremely modern city among the top 10 largest in the world. I think almost everyone here my age or older grew up sleeping on the floor because they didn’t have beds. I heard that not all that many years ago passports were virtually unheard of in this country. It was basically only businessmen who traveled outside of the country. There are tons of other things could illustrate the change this country has been through, but it is not really worth me getting into them here or now. The point is that I don’t want to cheat any of these kids from learning English to the best of their ability just because I wanted to have fun in class, or couldn’t figure out a way to teach affectively and have fun at the same time. This is especially important now, when English is becoming such an important language to know throughout the world and in so many respects. So it is a constant challenge to do the best I can.