long time

I realized it's been a month and I havent posted anything, which is quite tragic. A lot has happened since then, and I just never think about writing here, which is why theres a long delay. But, some of the highlights of my last month....

Sports Days

The school held a sports festival in which the girls all competed in the homeroom classes in various events stretching over 2 days. There were normal events like basketball, running and cheering competitions. But there were also some crazy event I have never heard of. One was a bike race where the slowest person wins. The goal is to go as slow as possible without stopping or falling off. Every race I saw the winner was basically the last person to not fall off or stop, and no one actually made it to the finish line. A goofy concept, but tricky. Another weird event is what I call the "back races". This is where the girls line up and bend over so their backs are parallel to the ground. One person then runs on top of them, with the help of 2 guiders on the ground. As soon as the girl runs over your back, they stnad up, run to the fornt of the line, and bend over again, repeating this process until the girl running on top reaches the finish line (in this case, about 100m away). Quite the spectacle, and they have it down to a science, holding hands and making a perfectly circular run to the front. Very entertaining. Among the other events were what they call "foot baseball", otherwise known as kickball (where the girls refused to advance more than 1 base at a time for fear of being out), dodgeball, which consists of a small area with people from the other team surrounding the outside as well and on the opposite side of the area, wrestling, relay races, a spirit parade and team jumproping. Truly quite the spectacle, and there are over 200 pictures of the events on picasaweb.

Trip to Seoul

This past weekend I went to Seoul and met up with 2 friends form DC. They were heading to Thailand for work, and had a 27 hr layover in Seoul, so I spent a day playing tour guide. We went out for a nice traditional dinner and Korean fun on Sat night before going back to their govt paid for 5star marriott hotel. In teh morning we headed off to the biggest palace in Korea, and the most famous, Gyeungbokgung, which I had seen the first weekend at orientation. I had missed the changing of the guard, so I made sure to see it this time, and the precision is quite something. The guards stand very still, not moving. People wil go up and touch then, hug them, some even kidd their cheeks, and they do not move, very intense. After touring there we went to the Namsan Tower, which is an observation tower on top of a mountain. It was a cloudy day, so we could not see as far as we wanted to, but the massiveness of the city was very prevolant when all we could see was building and more building until the end of the fog. Truly amazing.

As far as teaching goes, I am getting the hang of it, and enjoying classes more and more. When the girls listen, and pay attention, they have a great time, I enjoy myself, and they learn. I'm sure thats the case with any classroom anywhere in the world, and it's amazing the difference in my attudide after a class when they are good or bad. Teaching is a learning process, and I learn more and more every time. There is no better feeling, though, when the students actually learn something from me, and enjoy themselves while doing it. To hear something I've taught them a week later in normal conversation is definitely a great feeling.
Only 4 weeks left in the semester, and one of those is an exam week, so my work is dwindling down. Time to start looking to travel and plan my summer vacations.

Hopefully I'll have more to post sooner rather than later.