Marisa's blog
Jordan and I are the proud new parents of Faraday Magnuson, a very pretty bunny we adopted from some people who work at Osan Air Base; we plan to call her Farah for short. After a scary (for her) two hour bus ride and shopping trip at Lotte Mart, she is settling into her new home on our balcony. She enjoys eating hay, spinach, carrots and apples, hoping around her new home, spying things in the distance, snoozing in her house, and shedding lots of hair (apparently this is a once a year thing, since it's started getting warm she's started losing her winter hair). Once she adjusts to life on the balcony, we plan to let her hop around the rest of the house when we're home. Bunnies can be trained to use a litter box like a cat. And by train, I mean they do it naturally, you just have to find out where they want to do their business and put the litter box there. She is also one of the softest things I've ever touched. It is very nice to have a very soft bunny on your lap for petting. Farah is still a little nervous around us, but already enjoys hopping around us and getting small pets. We are very happy to have her in the family.
Michael Faraday was a famous physicst, who knew little math, but did amazing conceptual work with electricity. Farah is Arabic for happiness.
Here is a quick video about Faraday's first weekend.
For your enjoyment, I have put together a playlist of popular Korea Pop (K-Pop) songs. This is what we hear in stores, on the bus, and what our students are crazy for. Good for your next dance party.
My Mom always says that if she had a nickel for all the funny things her students said, she'd be rich. Well, I say if I had a nickel for all the funny things Koreans say to me, I'd be rich, and I've only been here for five months. Here are some highlights from this week:
1. We were doing an activity in class that involved the word 'pickle.' One of my students was confused by this word until she said, "Pickle...Pizza?!" Of course, if you are a normal person, pickles and pizza don't really go together, but in Korea you always get a side dish of pickles with your pizza.
2. Speaking of side dishes, one of the teachers in my conversation class asked what side dishes we ate at home. I then received horrified looks when it was discovered that we don't eat side dishes at home.
3. When I get a ride to my country school on Thursday and Friday, we always listen to the Korean radio and every morning they have an English expression that the teach all the listeners (which I think is most of Korea). Last week it was "get off your butt," this week it was "speechless." Now I know why all the Koreans seem to know some strange expression (like Campus Couple, everyone gets really excited when they learn that Jordan and I are a "campus couple." I've never heard this expression before, but all the Koreans use it and are excited about it.)
4. The principal came to observe the new English room at my city school this week. Or course this meant that I had to have an alternate lesson plan which involved using the new and fancy touch screen/tv screen/electronic white board. At the end he said I was the "number 1 teacher," I guess because I smiled through the whole lesson.
5. Yesterday after my students asked me the usual question "do you have babies?" Ms Park started telling me how Korea was a good place to have babies. To try and raise my maternal status after claiming I wasn't having babies for a long time I told her how we were getting a bunny this weekend. This did not impress Ms Park and she explained that "babies and better than bunnies."
People always get nervous when they hear someone else is doing more than they are. And I guess our new President is no different. The following is from the Korean Herald:
U.S. President Barack Obama Tuesday called for the United States to look to South Korea in adopting longer school days and after-school programs for American children to help them survive in an era of keen global competition, according to Yonhap News Agency.
"Our children -- listen to this -- our children spend over a month less in school than children in South Korea every year," Obama told a gathering at the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce here. "That's no way to prepare them for a 21st-century economy."
Obama made his remarks while emphasizing the need for sweeping reform of the U.S. education system for which he earmarked US$41 billion out of the $787 billion stimulus package to cope with the worst recession in decades.
"We can no longer afford an academic calendar designed for when America was a nation of farmers who needed their children at home plowing the land at the end of each day," he said. "That calendar may have once made sense, but today it puts us at a competitive disadvantage."
Let's see what I did in the Korean public schools this week.
I amazed myself by coming up with an exercise that got more than 2 people to participate, and had at least a little educational value. The fact that I got the entire class to do the exercise has not ceased to stun me. However, that was only one lesson. Yesterday I was trying to get my students to fill in a sheet about their favorite things. When I tried to get two boys to participate, they went and hid in the back of the classroom, so I had to kick them out into the hallway. Once, I tried an activity where the students had to get out of their seats. I did that only once since the students destroyed the activity in about two minutes. I was so shocked I just stared at them for another two minutes. I had never seen such chaos. I haven't let my students out of their seats since. So the Koreans may have more school, but they certainly don't have better.
Our actual school day is longer here in Korea than any I ever experienced, but I think that's mostly because we have an hour and twenty minutes for lunch and another thirty minutes for cleaning time. The school year may be longer, but I've never seen people waste time like we do at school. I remember fondly the couple weeks of school we had after exams in which we taught our students nothing, and were expected to teach our students nothing.
All the teachers teach straight from textbooks, often to classes of 40 (unless you're lucky enough to be one of the "country bumpkins" Obama mentions from days gone by and are in a class of 7). The teaching is for the most part so ineffective that any student who cares about their future then has to go to the hogwon all night (many students, middle school students, don't get home until 10pm). And who knows if the hogwons are more effective than the schools. At least the class sizes should be smaller.
The students I've met are mostly incapable of thinking beyond the textbook, unless you sit on them or twist their arm. Most students stare out the window during class, or take a nap because they're so tired from studying the night before, or work on homework for another class. In a class of 40, you'll have about three, if you're lucky, who will participate. It's quite common to get "the stare" when you ask a question. Do they understand, you wonder. Are they confused, you wonder. Are they even alive, you eventually ask.
I think the clear answer to the education dilemma, by observing the Korean schools, or any school, is better education, not more. Have we still not realized that more isn't always better? My students said it best when I asked them if Korea was the best place to live and they said, "No. We have to go to school all the time. In America they are free to do things that are interesting*."
*The interesting things being dancing and singing like in High School Musical
**Thanks to my Dad for sending me the article.
"Why are you so happy?"
"Because it's Friday."
This is the conversation some of students learned this week, with a little modification by me to fit the current context (unlike my students, since I can speak English, I am able to actually use the conversation, instead of only using the examples in the book, in which case I would only be able to say, "Why are you so worried?" "Because my mom is sick."). It has been a long week. I honestly haven't done that much teaching, but with the crazy flip flopping of schools, and the craziest jet lag I've ever had, the weekend couldn't come soon enough. Here at my new school I only have two classes on Friday, but today that seems like two classes too many.
My new school, Okgu Middle School, is a nice place. Unlike many of the country schools, it is big enough that it got one of the new English Rooms that Korea must have used it's entire Education budget on, but small enough that I only have 20 kids in a class (which after teaching 37, is something like a miracle). So I feel like this is the best of both worlds, fancy-pants technology and small classes. Mostly I like the new English rooms because it means I use the same computer for all my classes, which means I can count on it working, and don't have to plan back up lessons for if the computer is on the fritz in some classroom.
My reception at the new school was quite shocking. Unlike my city school, where they still treat me as a mix between a celebrity and an infant, the people here have treated me more or less like a normal person. It was quite unnerving. None of the students had huge screaming fits upon first seeing me (just small, reasonable ones). No one asked if I needed a fork at lunch, or oohed and ahhed at my ability to say 'hello' in Korean (despite the fact that I have said 'anyehaseo' to the vice principal at my other school about 100 times, he still claps and pats my head when I do it. I don't even think parents behave this way when their children start speaking.) Basically I was just like a normal, new person: there was interest, but no craziness, which made it all the more crazy.
The school is about a 20 minute drive from our apartment. I get picked up by a Korean language teacher, whose route must come near our house since he's the one who picks me up. His English is quite limited, but he's very friendly and seems to be a reasonabe driver (which in Korea is important, since most people aren't quite reasonable about it. They've put a new stop light on our corner, but since it didn't use to be there, everyone has decided it's optional and drives through it). There must be about 200 students in the school, with about 20 teachers, half of whom come to the "chit chat class" that I have in the afternoons with them. I find this quite impressive, since at my big school, with about 70 teachers, there are only 3 who come to practice with me. As usual, everyone is very friendly and thinks my pig tails are cute. I've decided the Koreans like me best when I'm wearing pig tails, so it's my new hairstyle of choice.
I was just admiring the picture from Antalya, those days when we were on vacation. It now seems like 5 billion years ago. Those days when I was "working hard." Not much has changed in that respect, I'm currently sitting at my desk (still in the giant office, no private office for me it turns out) with nothing to do because no one has made a schedule for me. It is I guess "the busiest day of the year" or so Ms Park tells me. And Jordan and I have already exchanged comments that we sure were naive to believe we could just walk into this year with no surprises. As if there has ever been a day with no surprises, and I think that even if we stayed in Korea forever, it would never stop surprising us.
So first I walk into school, where I think my new office is, to find Ms Park and she tells me that someone (she actually said "my friend" but I don't know who that is) has decided it's back to the giant office for us. Actually, just for me, since Ms Park used to be in a smaller office. Surprise Number 1. I start to wonder if we'll have class in there or if they'll just use it as a fancy showpiece, when she starts to answer my question, "Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday you have class here" (she points to the room and I assume this means the classroom) "Thursday, Friday you go to new school." Wait, what was that? A new school? Surprise Number 2. No more is said about this issue as Ms Park now starts telling me about how this is the busiest day and I have to pass out papers. So we have a teacher meeting and about 10 new teachers have arrived (at this point I realize both Miss Kim and Miss Doo, my favorite, are missing, likely gone to different schools and replaced by these newcomers, Surprise Number 3). Then we go to a school meeting, where one of my conversation ladies whispers to me that she's heard that I'm going to a school in the country. Surprise Number 4. I try and express that this is all news to me, but this just confuses her (perhaps she thinks I should know where I'm going, this thought has occurred to me, but only briefly, when since I've gotten to Korea have I known what's going on?) At the school meeting the new seventh graders bow to the older students and they all whoop and holler for the new teachers. Ms Park confides to me that since today is so busy, no one has yet made me a schedule, so I can "prepare." (No surprise here) What, however, should I prepare for I wonder. What grades am I teaching, who am I teaching with, what do they want me to do, and perhaps the greatest question, where am I teaching? This feels rather philosophic since I've only been at school for two hours and already I'm questioning the nature of the universe (the Korean school universe that is).
I think you know you've arrived, or perhaps that you've been here too long, when a day like this seems pretty normal. After all, I say to myself, this is Korea, what else do you expect?
We're on the final leg of our Turkey trip. We're currently ensconced at a rather nice hotel on the Mediterranean in Southern Turkey. The hotel offers buffets all day and stunning views of the water, in between which we are doing our web design work.
We finished a two day tour of Cappadocia, an area in central Turkey known for its unusual rock formations and cave dwellings. The scenery was quite fantastic, it's low season since it's cold and often snowy, but snow always lends a magical quality to any scene, and places that are already named after fairies take on an other world feeling. The seemingly carefully eroded Fairy Chimneys of Cappadocia take on various shapes, like rabbits, camels and Napolean's hat. We toured cave dwellings used by early Christians as monasteries, dug into the strange rock formations in order to hide and protect them from their persecutors. The Christians were eventually joined by the Muslims and you can see churches side by side with mosques, all dug into the rock and often painted with frescoes of scenes from the Bible (as our tour guide said, the story of Abraham is in the Koran too, it's just different). We also visited an entire underground city that was dug by hand several stories into the earth. Safe from invaders and cold weather, the people slept, cooked and made wine below the surface. Walking around in this underground city was like experiencing a location right out of a fantasy novel. Driving around Cappadocia was like being in another world; many locals still use the caves for storage, work or living. Everywhere you go you can see doors dug into the rock, including the hotel we stayed in.
Our hotel room was a converted cave, made quite comfortable by beds, heat and running water. We enjoyed spectacular breakfasts (the traditional Turkish breakfast is bread, cheese, tomatoes and cucumbers, a far cry from the Korean breakfast of rice and kimchi) and were amazed by the fact that the cave had wireless. The hotel animals were quite friendly. We were joined by a dog one evening as we sat outside playing backgammon, and a fancy white cat was determined that it should be living in our hotel room and made its way under our beds several times, even meowing loudly outside the door to be let in.
Our picture collections are just about finished, so be sure to check them out. The Istanbul set has had many recent additions.
We have some more pictures up. Check them out.
Click on the picture to see more.
Enjoy this short video, and give a shout out to my Dad and his special skills.
Today I had the pleasure of attending the ninth grade graduation ceremony. This ceremony is the reason we are all in school this week. For some reason they can't graduate at the actual end of the semester and have to come back in the middle of vacation to do it.
After talking to Miss Kim yesterday I thought we had four classes, and then the ceremony would be around 12. However, this morning it turned out that we had no classes (in fact the other grades didn't even come to school) and the ceremony was at 10:30.
So at the proper time we traipsed over to the gym/auditorium for the excitement. I believe ninth grade graduation here is a bigger deal than in the States because school is only mandatory in Korea up through ninth grade. After this the students will go to various high schools, or perhaps none. Some will go to a regular high school to prepare for college, while some will attend trade schools to prepare for life in the real world. This is why there is so much studying even in middle school, because your grades here determine what high school you get accepted to which determines where you go to college which determines how successful you'll be later in life. So unlike in America, where the rumor that a girl once told me that colleges looked at grades from middle school is false, here in Korea it couldn't be more true.
The ceremony didn't have all the pomp or ceremony of the high school graduations we're used to. Some students came in their uniforms, some came in regular street clothes, one boy wore a suit, but that's because he got a special award and gave a speech. There were seats for the students (all 316 of them) while the rest of us (parents, teachers, friends, relatives) milled around in the back. No one listened to the ceremony, there was various chit chat and poses for pictures. The best was the fantastic bouquets of flowers that everyone brought for the graduates. I've never seen anything over the top. They were mostly comprised of a few flowers (or sometimes none at all), voluminous amounts of netted fabric in various bright colors, and various doodads sticking out like candy, little people in witches hats, or giant feathery hearts. I amused myself for most of the ceremony by taking pictures of the best ones as sneakily as I could.
Other highlights included the music teacher conducting a recording whose music was set to a picture slide show of photographs of nature and at the end happy Korean kids (I realized later that he was conducting the audience, we were supposed to sing along, but since no one did, I thought he was just crazy. He came out again later and this time the music was projected onto the screen and I realized we were supposed the sing along. Finally, on the third song, some people joined in.) And outside the auditorium there was a man selling cotton candy.
The Koreans really are the best when it comes to making things fancy and over the top. Why have a bouquet of flowers unless it is wrapped in what looks like a balloon animal? In fact, who even needs the flowers when we have all this other great stuff? I make a jest about the bouquets, but in fact I'm a big fan and wouldn't mind taking home several for myself.
I say purgatory since we are having a week of school in the middle of vacation, but despite the incredible pointlessness of the week, for me at least, the week has been a bit more like heaven than some other stage of the afterlife. At least this is as close as my school gets to resembling heaven.
But first a note on the ridiculousness of the situation. The students have been on vacation since Christmas; that was the end of the last semester. They took their tests and depending on if they passed or failed got confirmation to move into the next grade. This happened a month ago. We said goodbye, we'll see you in March when the new school year begins. However, for unknown reasons we have this random week of school in the middle of our vacation. Not knowing what to expect I showed up bright and early on Monday morning and sat at my desk to try and figure out what was going on. Everyone was bustling around as usual, in fact it looked like we hadn't been gone for a month. So I sit around and try and determine what is going on, when finally the bell rings. Since no one has told me what is going on, I grab my textbook and head to class as if this really is a normal Monday. I meet Miss Doo in that hall and ask if we do indeed have class. She confirms this, but points at the textbook and says, "the students don't have books." The students don't have books? What exactly are we doing here? "We will play a game," Miss Doo tells me. Play a game? No books? What is this, I ask myself. It has not become clear to me. I have been playing games in class and plan to spend the rest of the week watching Sponge Bob with my classes.
The complete absurdity of the situation has made me question this culture we are living in. What kind of people, since this a country-wide mandated by the government sort of thing, sit back and act like this is perfectly reasonable and not some insane, pointless waste of time. No one is learning anything, no one is teaching anything, why are we here? I have consoled myself with the thought that there must be things that are just as insane and pointless. But here there is no outcry. No one seems to complain. They just accept that this is the way it is.
Despite the underlying craziness of the week, the two days I've had so far have been pretty great. Yesterday was perhaps the best day ever. It started with lunch, not normally my favorite part of the day, and yesterday looked to be more of the same weird stuff, until I got to the end of the food line and saw strawberriers and, to my complete astonishment, cheesecake! I don't know where it came from, but it was tasty and everyone seemed to be enjoying it. Since I was in such a good mood from the cake I then went to see Ms Park about a new computer which she said I could have since my old one was so slow a slug moves faster. When we went to find the new one, we took a detour to see the new English room. I knew they were remodling one of the classrooms to be extra fancy, Ms Park had shown me the plans to get my opinion, but I was completely shocked by the fanciness of the room. Especially compared with the rest of the school which has a sort of run down sort of feel. It even has an electronic whiteboard which I have to take a class for on Friday to learn how it works. I've never even seen an electronic whiteboard before. I'm not excactly sure what classes will be held in this new room, all I know is that it is for me and Ms Park to use. But the best part was the small office at the back. When she had shown me the plans, Ms Park had mentioned that there would be an office for the two of us. Not wanting to get my hopes up about something so exciting I didn't think much of it, but when I saw it yesterday I was completely elated. I can't wait to move out of the giant common office I'm in right now, where everyone walks right by my desk and stares at me or my computer screen. Right now I'm just excited about having more space to myself, but it looks like I will have a classroom of my own where I will be able to do more exciting things with various groups of students come the start of school in March.
So now I sit happily typing on my new, fast computer, having come from a lunch where they served curry (the first time I walked into the cafeteria and thought it smelled good) and spaghetti (which we ate with our chopsticks). Of course there were shells with some sort of animal in them (clams, mussels, oysters...) in the soup. I guess I'm not quite out of purgatory yet.
If you want more of our experience in Seoul, check out this video. It's long, but has many exciting parts, like when I film in the electronics market which is apparently illegal and when we get stuck on the elephant cart in the snow. Special memories.
Today marks the first sandal wearing day of the year. It's currently 54 degrees. Toasty!
Our first minutes in Seoul started propitiously. After dropping our bags at the hostel and making our way out to the corner of the street to begin our exploring, we ran into a neighbor from Gunsan. She works at the BBQ chicken restaurant that's around the corner from our house, which we frequent often, much to the enjoyment of the family who owns the place. She was out looking for apartments with her younger sister who will soon be attending university in Seoul. The probability of us running into her on a street corner in Seoul is quite enormous so we looked on it as a good luck charm for our trip.
Our trip revolved mostly around eating food. And I won't lie and tell you that we were sampling the many varieties of Korean food that line the streets of Seoul. Nope. We ate as much American food as we could find and savored every minute. We went to Subway, and TGIFridays, and Outback Steakhouse and found some Mexican food. It was all incredibly tasty, and the hamburger I had at TGIFridays was probably the best I had every had. It was also about the size of my head, but I ate it all. I will dream about it in my kimchi filled days to come. It is incredibly nice to be able to have a quick trip to Seoul to enjoy all this. I remember when we lived in Bolivia and used to spend months dreaming about the food we would eat when we got back to the States.
We also had an adventure buying our Wii at the electronics market. The Yongsan Electronics Market is the largest electronics market in the world. You can find anything you might possibly want. We wanted a Korean Wii (Korean Wiis are cheaper than American ones) that had been modified so that we could play American games. This is of course illegal, and would have been a lot of work to make if we were living elsewhere. But this is no problem here. There was a huge row of guys selling Wiis, all of which could come modified if you so desired. We ended up with a modified Japanese Wii, which was considerably cheaper than any of the other Wiis we looked at. Jordan can tell you all about the good deal we got, all I know is that now we are the proud owners of a really cool Wii.
We toured various Museums around the city, including the National Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Prison Museum. The latter tells the story of prison life during the Japanese Occupation. It was very grim and disturbing with the scenes of torture that were modeled and tours of the actual jail cells. The Museum of Contemporary Art was more amusing, mostly because we had a slightly crazy time trying to find it. We ended up riding an Elephant Cart in freezing snowy weather around in circles for a while before we managed to find the place.
We also took a trip up to Seoul Tower, which is the tallest point in Seoul and from which you can gaze on the beauty of the huge city. We rode the cable car up about an hour before sunset so that we could experience Seoul by day and by night. The day was a little cloudy, so it didn't make for the best view, but we were trying to sieze the moment as the weather forecast was pretty grim about sunlight.
We spent most of our time inside at Museums and shopping malls because the weather was absolutely frigid, perhaps the coldest weekend we have had in Korea so far. We tried to see one of the large palaces in the city, but the freezing wind ended our trip short.
We our glad to be back in our "Sweet Home" (as it is called by Jordan's co-teacher). Our Wii is hooked up, and I'm just waiting for Jordan to get out of the shower so we can give it a spin.
We have more photos in our album.
Here is video proof of the madness we experienced.
Monday morning we left bright and early for the "2009 Winter Guest English Teacher Teaching Improvement Workshop." This means that all the foreign teachers in our province met at a youth hostel for a two day workshop about teaching English in Korean public schools. It was, to say the least, intense. A more accurate description would involve me pulling out my hair and the hair of the person next to me out of boredom that led to madness. The schedule went something like this: We woke up at 7:30 and left for the local bus station to catch a bus to Jeonju (the capital, about an hour away). Despite the fact that we have gone to this bus station many times, it's always a bit of a miracle when we convince the taxi drivers to take us their because despite the fact that the word 'bus' is the same in English and Korean, they can never understand where we want to go. However, we persevered and arrived in time to catch the bus to Jeonju. After the hour long bus ride and a short taxi ride to the Department of Education we got on another bus for an hour and a half ride to the beach and youth hostel where the group was staying. We later found out that this trip was rather redundant since we drove most of the way back to Gunsan and then further south down the coast.
We arrived at the hostel around 12:30 and received our room assignments. I stayed with Carol, a woman from Gunsan who we met through Winter Camp, and another woman from somewhere else who is originally from England. Carol is from New Zealand, so our room had a good representation of the English speaking countries of the world. The hostel was very nice, I would hardly consider it to be a hostel, although it was Korean style, so we slept on the floor with blankets. We were surprised that they didn't even have mats (I believe most Koreans who do sleep on the floor normally have mats of some sort), just thick blankets. It was still pretty comfortable, although at one point in the night I got rather hot since they had the floor heat turned up pretty high.
After we got settled, we had an exciting lunch of fish soup (when you're on the coast, you eat seafood, for dinner we had octopus) and then the excitement began. We started with a two hour lecture by a man from a Korean University and continued for the rest of the day (until 10:30pm) with two hour, or slightly shorter lectures. By the end of the first lecture I was ready to go to bed, by the end of the evening I was ready to pull out my hair. The next morning when we had another three hours of lectures I almost slipped into the realm of craziness from which there is no return. There were some good moments, but they were few and far between and could have filled maybe about two hours, instead of the 12 hours that we had to sit through. By the time we left the hostel everyone was in a sleep-deprived, zombie-like haze.
After the lectures they bused us to a nearby temple for some sightseeing. It was nice to get out and have a walk in the pine trees and remind yourself that there is life beyond the lecture room. We left early since our friend Matt drove to the workshop and offered to give us a ride home. The trip home took about an hour, as opposed to the three hour trip we had getting there.
Today we are still recovering from the two day madness, and we have to keep reminding ourselves that we were only gone for one night, as it feels like we were gone for years. Tonight we are looking forward to some social time. Jordan was invited to go golfing, and since apparently girls aren't allowed in this club, I invited Carol over for a little scrapbooking. Tomorrow we are very excited to leave for a longish trip to Seoul, to shop, eat food not from Korea (do I see hamburgers? is that Mexican food over there?!!!!) and do some sightseeing. The Lunar New Year (a big holiday in Korea) starts on Sunday and lasts for three days, the year of the Ox is upon us, so perhaps we will witness some festivities. Apparently you should start the new year with new clothes, so that will be our first stop. Our hostel has internet, so you can expect to hear from us while we're there.
For more pictures see our album.
When the weather's cold, and the heat can only make you so warm, it's time to hibernate cocoon style.
Jordan Adds: When Marisa says that the "weather's cold" she means that our apartment temperature has dropped below 70 degrees F. The coldest our apartment ever gets--and this is without heating, mind you--is 65 degrees.
This week we had a little change of pace with our English camp. We worked with the 60 best English speaking fifth graders of Gunsan. The kids' English was quite spectacular, they were well behaved and younger than we are used to working with, so it was a fun experience. There were twenty kids to a class with two native English speakers and one Korean teacher, so even if they had wanted to misbehave, they wouldn't have gotten far. Jordan and I were able to work together, and since the Korean teacher we worked with was uber-prepared, We didn't have to do much but read sentences for the kids to practice their pronunciation and listening skills. We did have some time to teach them Heads Up, Seven Up, which was a huge hit, depsite Jordan's doubt that it was a fun game. In fact once we taught them the game, they never wanted to do anything else. Heads Up, Seven Up is apparently a universally loved game by fifth graders. I've never played with my middle schoolers because I figured they would cheat, but the fifth graders are young enough to do what they're told. And they never ceased to be surprised by who put their thumb down. Jordan and I even played a few games, and I must admit that it's still as fun now as when I was in fifth grade.
We also got to have some good bonding time with the other native English speakers since they were also working at the camp. Jordan now has a virtual golf date with some of the guys who apparently play every week and I met a woman who scrapbooks. So we are planning to have a scrapbook party soon, probably when the men are out golfing.
There were two highlights of the camp. The first was when we discovered that the school was right across the street from our apartment. The first day we got into a taxi and showed him the name of the place we wanted to go, and after much gesturing we discovered that the school was back around the corner. So we had a pleasant 5 minute walk to school each morning which was extra nice because there was lots of snow and the roads were icy. The second highlight was that we got free lunch everyday at the nearby Italian restaurant. If only everyday could be a pleasant half day with the smart students and free lunch...
Heads Up, Seven Up from Chasing Donguri on Vimeo.