Halloween in the Classroom

As excited as I was to spend Halloween with my host siblings, I was even more excited to teach my students about Halloween. Since they have had three previous ETAs at my school, I figured they didn't need a full-on history of Halloween. Instead, I decided to do a lesson all about monsters and talking about the different monsters in English. Where they lived, what they did, what they looked like, etc. 

So, I did a PowerPoint with different monsters like vampires, mummies, zombies, Big Foot, etc. So we spent about 20 minutes going through each monster and had a big discussion about them in English. I was really surprised how fantastic they were about coming up with the information about them. 

After we finished the PowerPoint, I had each of the students create their own monster. The monsters that the students created were so fun and awesome. They were very creative. Some of the monsters were cute, some were scary, some were real monsters, and some were completely out of their own minds. 

I also wore my own costume that day, and the kids absolutely loved it.

Fall Conference in Gyeongju

So as part of the Fulbright experience, every year there is a Fall conference and a Spring conference. The Fall conference held just before Halloween is in Gyeongju. Gyeongju is a beautiful city that used to be the capital of the Silla dynasty. It's because of this that the city has so much history and sites to visit. It was also nice because fall was in full swing up in Hwacheon, but as I went further south, it was like going back in time, it was warmer and the trees were greener.

The bus ride down was long and boring, though I did get to ride with two other Fulbrighters from my area, so it was nice not being the only one. It was especially nice when we left the bus terminal in Chuncheon and the three of us were the only people on the bus.

Once we arrived and joined the rest of the fulbrighters everything went crazy. After all, the majority of us haven't seen each other since orientation. That, coupled with the renewees reuniting, lead to one very energetic and crazy weekend.

The point of the fall conference is for all of us to attend workshops problem solve any issues we are having either in the classroom or at home. We had large group presentations and small group talks, all lead by other fulbrighters, that were very informative and helpful. We also had two presentations by educators in the field, who had tips and strategies for helping us reach all of our students. They also placed us in groups by our demographics to bounce ideas off of one another.

Outside of scheduling was just a party. We had huge meals in the restaurant of the hotel that we were staying in. We hung out after programming, catching up. There were a beautiful lake and a walking path outside of the hotel that I went for a walk one night, and ended up walking around for about two hours (mostly because I turned thinking it was a shortcut for the way back. It wasn't). We also had a trivia night, that was really fun, but my team lost. Not terribly, but we lost.

To complete the trip, they took us on a tour of some of the historical sights in the city, including the observatory, museums, temples and a tomb. The tombs in Korea look like giant lumps of land. It was so fascinating learning more about Korea's history. It was fantastic.