A Beautiful Day

I woke up this morning and despite my second cold, it was a beautiful day. Yes, I'm tired and I was worn from Wednesday's disaster of classes, but one thing was different. Yes - the sun was out and it was 45 degrees outside at ten til 8. The birds were chirping. I quickly realized I would not need my huge winter coat and scarf.
I've felt like I live in my coat since coming to Korea. The hallways at school are not heated, actually no hallway anywhere seems to be heated (except maybe in large mall type places). I guess you save on energy and electric bills this way. But I digress.
The high for today was 73. Marvelous. I found this out via smartphone as I walked to my carpool pickup spot. I didn't find it out at home because it seems my building is in a wifi and 3G dead zone. I guess technology is conspiring to keep me outside of my house.

I finished 3 or 4 lesson plans this morning while waiting for the one class I teach on Friday. I teach 4th grade in their classroom about an hour after lunch time. Lovely, rowdy 4th grade. To be honest, I was dreading it after Wednesday's whirlwind of chaos. Sure, I prayed about it, but you know it's hard to get rid of those nagging doubts and anxieties associated with failure. I know the kids' behavior is not in my control, and that does not make me a bad teacher, but I really do want these kids to be able to speak English and do okay with it. I'd like for them to go on to middle school and be joys to their middle school English teachers, and maybe someday they'll get a decent job because they speak a little better than average English. (a linguist can dream, can't she?)

Anyway. It turns out one of the teachers I carpool with - the one I always think of as the "next in line head teacher" (as the principal is the head teacher, the vice principal is just under her, and then there's this lady who i think of as 'next in line') - the one who told me to write their names on the board - turns out she teaches 4th grade or does so often. She showed up at the beginning of the class period and told them to behave and if they misbehaved I would write their names on the board and she'd know about it.

It worked. They sat at their desks pretty much the whole time. A few raised their hands to speak. They all got their books out and had them open on the desks. No one fought. And in fact, they asked me a bunch of questions because the topic this chapter is on is "My Family". I had a short powerpoint of pictures of my family, and after reviewing the book's vocabulary, I showed them my family. They think my sister is beautiful, and were surprised she's married and has 2 kids. They were also surprised my brother is married, and it seems they like his mustache. I successfully explained to them I have a niece and nephew because I now know the Korean word for it. It's one word for both males and females. Strange but true. It turns out Koreans have a ton of family terms.

Then the boys went into some crazy/funny tangent about guns. They were asking if my grandfather had a gun. I told them my brother has a gun (i had totally forgot that dad has a hunting rifle. lol!). I need to learn more Korean to explain to them that not every place in America is full of gun shooting crazy murderers. Where I'm from, we use guns to hunt deer. I can't name every person I know who hunts - for sport and for food. But I'm sure most of you reading know this because chances are you're from my town. lol.
But yes - they wanted to know if we had like bazookas and AK17s. I tell you - these boys know so much English associated with guns, it's funny. Oh, they asked if I had a gun, and I said no. Then they asked if I have a knife. "Um, actually, yes I do." So they wondered if women didn't have guns, just knives. I told them my brother's wife has a gun. I'm pretty sure she does. They were impressed.

Anyway. It was a much much better class. I did have to give out warnings to the boys - who got so excited about the gun talk they were all talking over each other, getting up and down and acting out shooting different kinds of things. (i'm pretty sure guns and knives and things are illegal for civilians in korea? so i guess their curiosity is piqued.) At one point I made the boys raise both their arms and counted down from 10 as a very pathetic punishment for being so disruptive. I didn't completely blame them. I was trying to get them all to line up for a game. Making a line is still difficult. I gave up on the line and they played the game half crowded around the desk. But they played and read and it was good.

But I'm blabbering on without actually getting to what I wanted to post.

My snack I picked up at C n U on the way home. It's a jumbo ham and tuna salad sandwich. It was the only sandwich they had that had both meat and veggies. It had cucumber, lettuce, corn, and carrots. Pretty strange, but the taste is not bad with the ham, mayo and tuna saladness. Actually, it was surprising how non-fishy the tuna was. Definitely not bad for 1,800won. The coffee was a caramel macchiato. It was a very watery facsimile. But that's okay because I can't drink lattes (lactose is evil) so I'm hoping that its being watery errs in my favor for digestion's sake. I must mention - why yes that big blue box is Post cereal. It is Oreo O's in fact. I eat them for breakfast pretty much every morning.

Embedding isn't working for videos, so here's the link. video of my bathroom

This is a video of my bathroom.
It starts out showing the floor and drain in the floor. Then the far wall, toilet, cabinet, mirror and finally shower head and sink. The shower is right over the sink. It's turned on by turning a knob over the faucet. If you turn it on (or forget you left the knob turned and go to wash your hands...) the whole bathroom gets wet. That's why my trash bag is plastic and hangs from the toilet paper holder. Here. A picture of the faucet and knob.