Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Is 6:00 pm too early for bed?

I feel like a wimp! Teaching English for 7 hours a day is exhausting! We have had an all-girls middle school this week and their level of comprehension is much lower than we all expected. It is definitely lower than the elementary school we had last week. It makes teaching that much harder. Getting a 13-year old girl to pretend she is interested is hard enough. Then, to get her to actively participate in something she doesn't understand is that much harder. Anyway, on the bright side, discipline has not been a problem.
This week, I have been teaching American culture and computers. Today I did 6 American culture lessons in a row. (phew) It is only 50 minutes, so I can't tell them everything their is to know. What I do is show them pictures of my state, city, house, family, dogs, friends, etc. Then, I show them about 20 US landmarks. Then we discuss landmarks and they create their own for their newly discovered country. I have had some really interesting countries such as: ice cream land, roller coaster land and make-up land. My computer lesson involves searching for information on IMDB. (Internet Movie Database) They get to look up movies currently at the box office as well as searching for older movies and their gross profits. They seem to like it.
Tomorrow, (5/22) is our official grand opening day. We are expecting about 200 visitors to come. This group will include the superintendent of education for Korea, mayors, council persons, etc. As you can imagine, the staff has been under a great deal of stress preparing every last detail. I thought things were mostly completed last week, but they have done even more this week. I will have to send home a whole new round of pictures of the school.
I wanted to share the website for the school: www.seec.go.kr. Of course the site is all in Korean, but there is a promotional video there where you can see me and the other teachers. Also, my room is featured (it's the one with the butterflies).
Hope you are all well and thinking about the next email you are going to send me!! :)
cheers- molly

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