My Student and Her Family Kidnapped Me!

Well, not really...

It all started on the Saturday before Christmas. I was heading to Chuncheon to do some last-minute Christmas shopping. Usually, on Saturdays, the buses are sold out for like an hour or two and I usually end up hanging out near the bus terminal for a bit because of that. I fully intended on doing just that.

When I arrived at the terminal, I went up to the ticket machine and waited behind a family getting their tickets. They then moved away from the machine. I noticed one of my 6th-grade girls. She was there with her mom and her sister. I noticed they didn't buy any tickets, so I tried to indicate that they weren't finished and ask if I could use it.

The mom started to ask me where I was going, and I told her, and suddenly my student grabbed my hand and they said let's go together. We went outside to her car and we headed to Chuncheon.

Thus far, everything that was said was in Korean, so it was a very quiet car ride to the city. Once we got there, I thought that I would thank them for the ride and then we would part ways, but they found out I wasn't meeting anyone and they insisted on me joining them for lunch. During the lunch the mom and I had a conversation (through Papago) about how she envied the freedom foreigners have and that Koreans can't just be on their own, especially not eating meals. This was why she wanted me to stay with them. She didn't want me to be on my own.

Then we went shopping together. While it felt restricting having them with me when I was shopping it was also really sweet that she wanted to take care of me. After a few hours, I found myself in the car again heading back to Hwacheon. I never expected something like this to happen but I will always remember this student and her mom and little sister for being so kind and welcoming me into their day.

Christmas Cookies!

One of my favorite things to do during the holidays is the Christmas baking. Last year, I wasn't able to bake, so I made fudge with the kids instead.

This year, my host mom and I decided that we wanted to try our hand at baking with the toaster oven that she has. I bought some box mix (sadly) and a chocolate project and we and the kids had a blast making a mess of the kitchen and eating a lot of chocolate while with baked.

We made two different types of cookies and tried our best at decorations without cookie cutters or anything other than sprinkles. While those were in the oven, the kids covered everything in chocolate.

I had bought this box kit with little biscuit sticks and melting chocolate. I melted that down and decorated all the sticks. The kids weren't done there. We then decided to make the chocolate that we melted for the cookies and dipped strawberries and marshmallows on them. It was a messy and delicious evening. And the snacks lasted a whole day and a half in our house of chocoholics.

Korean Folk Painting

My favorite co-teacher is leaving at the end of the school year and something she promised she would teach me is called Minhwa. This is a type of Korean fold painting. It's really beautiful and Songsil is really good at it. She has been painting it for years. So she decided to teach us how to paint it by making Christmas cards this year.

The first thing I find interesting is that it doesn't really use paint the way you might think. It more like watercolor in a way because it's just dried down loose pigment that is wet.

We first outlined the pattern we wanted to paint with a brush onto this paper that Songsil dyed herself.

After that, she showed us how to pick the colors and each step to painting each part.

I'm actually really shocked by how it all turned out. I would love to do it again. It was so relaxing for a Friday afternoon. I wanted to spend forever just painting, and I usually find painting tedious and get impatient with it after too long. I didn't even realize until it was time to go that we had actually spent two hours working on these things. One thing I know for sure. I am not giving this Christmas card to anyone. It is going to stay mine as a treasured memory and to remind me of my co-teacher.

Superhero Thematic Unit

This fall, I had the chance to teach a six-week class of advanced English for 9 fourth and fifth graders. I got complete control over the class's curriculum with no requirements. So I designed a "create your own superhero" unit. It's not the most original idea but it is definitely something I thought the students would enjoy.

So I first set out to divide them into three groups. I have four girls and five boys so I knew it wasn't going to be even. The students split up with a group of four girls, a group of three boys and a group of two boys.

My first few days were introducing the three characters they were making: hero, villain, and sidekick. They created their stories, alter-egos, powers, characteristics, and relationships. We spent a whole class on a completely English website creating their costumes.

In the last two classes, I had them create the comic. THey first made out a rough draft to plan the story, and then I gave them comic paper to draw out the whole story. Some went really in-depth with the drawings, others with the stories. They didn't all have a plot, but that is okay because they did it in English and they tried really hard.

In the last few minutes of the class, I had the student introduce their characters and stories to the rest of the class.

I'm really proud of them and their creations.