No Rest for the Weary

Camp finished this week!!!!!!! Woohooooooooooooo!


Too bad school starts again today. Boooooooooooo.

I also had a bottle of makgeolli (Korean rice wine) tumble out of my fridge and break, so my apartment smells kind of nice but also it's really sticky no matter how much I wash the spot. Sigh.



Anyway, it was a fairly eventful week for my kidlets as camp came to a close. We had our cooking day, which was super fun but also drove me and So Jung nuts trying to prepare for.

We made the wonkiest quesadillas this side of the world, but it was fun!

The process: put tomato sauce on tortilla. So Jung and I didn't feel like cutting up a million tomatoes for the kids to use, so we used tomato sauce.

Put mozzarella cheese on tortilla. Mozzarella cheese for a quesadilla because Korea. When we were ordering stuff online from the place we got approved by the school to buy from, this was the only kind of cheese they had in a manageable quantity for our budget. So far, it was like making pizza.

Put ham, corn, and onions on one half of the tortilla. These were "Mexican" quesadillas sooooo whatever. Now our classroom smells like onions.

Now we get to cook them. Put one quesadilla in the frying pan, supervised by the teacher. Then when the cheese gets melty, fold it in half, again supervised by the teachers.

Take out of pan. Enjoy!

So Jung said it worked infinitely better than the ice cream they tried to make during summer camp, and it was actually fairly easy to clean up. The kids had to bring their own plates and utensils, and I provided the frying pans (thanks, Lauren and Tina for lending me your pans!!) but since we were just browning tortillas there wasn't much to clean up. We used disposable bowls for the ingredients, and it worked out quite well.

The first three days of the week tried my patience, but the cooking day and final day made me remember why I love these little nuggets.

My fifth grade girls graciously helped the third graders, who were very happy to work with their eonnis (older sister if you're a girl)

my other mix of third and 5th grade angel nuggets

I took care of the girl groups and So Jung worked with the boys. Matthew and Max in the front of the picture were particularly fond of the food.

My older boys. They kept eating the sauce and asked us where we got it. Apparently they really liked it.

Again, my girls were adorable. 

Can't even stop chowing down for a picture.

Again So Jung worked with more of the boys while I handled the other groups.

Me and my girls.

Me and my boys.

trying to stretch the cheese

Small Korean Harry Potter was good at it.

Sauce all over the face. Satisfaction.

On Friday we had market day where the kids traded in the stickers they earned (for coming each day, doing a worksheet, group winning something, etc.) for "money" to buy prizes.

The watches were really popular.

Stuff for everyone!

So many cute things.

YOU WERE SO CLOSE, ENGLISH NOTEBOOK.

Camp finally came to a close, and while some of it was difficult, it was a little bit of fun and we got some good reviews. Sometimes they're a lot to handle, but man do I love my kids. It was really nice to have So Jung back to teach with too. We just work really well together, probably because we know each other's styles by now and we like working with one another. It was tough, but we managed. All's well that ends well.



Over the weekend I finally got to hang out with some of my friends from my intake. Since we all had different camps, everyone was on vacations at all different times and it's hard to plan around that.

On Friday we hung out at my friend Christian's apartment, which is incidentally right below Tina's. I found out he lived there when he posted a picture of his apartment and I texted him "Hey where do you live? The layout is really similar to my sister's" to which he replied "I live below your sister!" Small world syndrome at it's finest.

So a bunch of us grabbed dinner in Hongdae and headed over. We played games, I dominated in Cards Against Humanity (not sure what that says about me) and found out it's oddly American-specific. I've never played with Aussies, Canadians, Americans, and Koreans before, so it was funny to see which cards tripped people up. It was a lot of fun to just hang out and chill, but everyone had to leave kind of early because they live on the other side of Seoul.

On Saturday Tina and I had a lazy day of watching a new show, Hyde, Jekyll, Me, which is a Kdrama employing Dissociative Identity Disorder as a main plot point. It tries to turn the traditional Jekyll and Hyde story around by having the mean personality in control, so it seems. I don't buy it for a second. His inner personality "Robin," has so far literally just saved people and been really nice, but everyone freaks out if he's mentioned, busts out tasers, he can do wildly inhuman acrobatics, and he was born out of the main characters guilt about an as-of-yet unrevealed incident. Sounds suspicious to me.

The one with the glasses is the main guy, the one on the left is his other personality.

It looks to be a highly entertaining drama.

We went to Hongdae for some errands before making our way across town to Gangnam to hang out with the internationals again. People brought snacks from their home countires: Tim-Tams and vegemite from Australia, Ketchup and "All Dressed" chips from Canada, brownies and doughnuts as American cuisine, and various other snacks. It was fun! It's always nice to be around a group of foreigners and share our experiences and food before returning to Korean schools and classes and whatnot. It was the Hongdae crowd's turn to leave early since we live on the opposite side of the city, and for the first time ever I had someone literally fall onto the floor/my leg on the subway. It was amusing. We got home safe and cuddled up.

The next day was Sunday so we lazed around, got some thai food for lunch, then prepared for the next day by doing absolutely nothing.

All in all, not a bad way to end camp and start school again.

Since our lesson for 6th grade is stupid "What do you know about Tom Sawyer?" My coteacher and I altered our lesson to be more accessible by basically changing it to "What do you know about Super Junior?" or "What do you know about Kim Woo Bin?" since our students know that I love SuJu and So Jung loves Woo-binnie.

What do I know about Kim Woo Bin? Far less than I would like to. Like how his eyebrow game is so strong.

This way, we can use it as a gateway for them to talk about other things they would know. What do you know about EXO? What do you know about Harry Potter? What do you think about Guardians of the Galaxy?

We don't want to scare them off with Tom Sawyer, who I can't even tell you a ton about. Instead we will scare them with my obsession with SuJu.

So as a throwback to my favorite group, here's Mamacita, which I am compelled to listen to every time it comes on my ipod:

Mamacita is one of the best songs on the best albums ever. 

For other music this week, I have been playing the same Beast songs from my previous blogs, plus a couple of extras.

2PM's "Go Crazy" is so much fun. Their fandom name is "Hottest" and I thought it was because, like Beast, 2PM just assembled the hottest humans on the planet to form a band. I was recently informed that fans of 2PM are called Hottest because 2PM is the hottest part of the day.

And "Trap" by Henry from Super Junior M (the SuJu subgroup) featuring Kyuhyun (also from SuJu) and Taemin (from SHINee). Henry is Canadian and awesome at violin and such, and Kyuhyun and Taemin are some of my favorite SM artists. I'm not gonna lie, part of me loves this song because Kyuhyun doing hop-hoppy things instead of ballads really gets me.


Back to the grind of school, but this weekend I'm going to see the Mr. Show again with So Jung and Su Hyeon, and it's only 19 days until I'm in Japan! Things are looking bright on this side of the world! Stay warm, friends!

Short and Sweet (like me!!)

Hello all!


I didn't really do much adventuring this week, since most of us still had camp and Tina had to study for her TOPIK (test of proficiency in Korean) that she took earlier today (and I'm sure she passed and did fine TINA FIGHTIIIIIIIIING!!!!) and whatnot.



Camp is fun, but it's exhausting. My first class is mostly third graders, and they are still at that age where they listen to what I say and desperately try to get me to like them by participating, which is awesome. My second group is a lot of older (4th and 5th) who kind of don't care about camp. Sometimes I feel more like I'm a babysitter than a teacher.


Most things went well this week, with some hiccups. One of my students has some special needs, and he doesn't really speak English like at all. So he tries to say things to me in Korean or ask me for help or I have no idea what, and he gets rather upset when I don't understand or don't know what he's asking, or I don't do what he wants me to do. It's frustrating for me to have a bunch of kids talking in Korean and then one of them says something that upsets him and I can't do anything about it. Thankfully my temporary coteacher was awesome and really patient and helpful with it.

Things escalated on sports day. We had an "Olympics" where I had them do various games. We had a race, a figure skating/gymnastics flexibility contest, "curling" (I had them slide erasers towards me and whoever was closest won), a javelin throw, and a chopsticks skills contest. After my one special student won a round in curling, one of the other kids said something to him and all of the sudden when I turned around they were like trying to claw each other's faces off. I ran over, yelling, to stop them, and my co ran over and we were able to separate them, but it's really hard to come back from that and everyone was like whaaaaaat for the next game. It's exhausting to be in charge of something like this and have the language barrier. My co had to take them both out for a while so I was left with my class trying to explain a game in English to mostly 3rd graders. Thankfully my fifth grade girls are angels and helped me translate to the ones who couldn't keep up.

It's really annoying to have the language barrier and have 15 kids who clearly have better things to do than be at camp. I would explain something and then if necessary it would be translated, but then 2 seconds in someone would be like "I don't know what we're doing" then the other kids would scold them since I just explained, demonstrated, translated, and demonstrated again. I think they're getting tired and I am too. One of my kids started crying because I needed even groups and she lost rock paper scissors and had to move seats for one game. Sigh.


Anyway, Friday was craft day, and we made panda candles!

http://item2.gmarket.co.kr/English/detailview/item.aspx?goodscode=434517925


This is my attempt at the candle.

Shut up it's adorable. 

Here are some of my angel babies making the panda candle.

My Co had to try to convince my second class to make the god damn panda not make other things, but in the end we gave up and let them make what they wanted.

The girls were much more game for making the cute panda.

Small Korean Harry Potter decided to make Slenderman out of his candle instead of a panda, and I have no idea what goes on in his head or why he likes Slenderman so much. Sigh. He's one of my best English speakers though, and I do love to hear his take on things.

Anyway, for most of the week I just chilled.

I had a really bad start to my week Monday and Tuesday, but got cheered up Tuesday evening by going to Korean class, which most of you know is one of my main sources of anxiety and grief because I think I should be better than I am at Korean. I got an 89 on our test on the first 16 units, and an 82 on the listening test (I did not understand like the entire last section, and neither did anyone else, so I thought I had failed) so I was pretty pleased. Annoyed at some easy mistakes (using the wrong number system, forgetting some particles), but pleased. I'm starting to learn actual useful phrases now and I am starting to recognize some phrases in the kdramas I'm watching, so it's starting to actually feel useful.


I kept the good mood even through the rest of camp, and on Friday we went to celebrate since most people's camps ended. Mine's the only one this week, but I still went for tacos and drinks. It was really fun, and exactly what I needed to sustain my mood.

I hung out and watched TV at Tina's on Saturday while she studied for her test. I'm becoming more aware of how much I need my alone time but also how much positive human contact is necessary in my life. Monday and Tuesday I only saw my students and my substitute coteacher, and it wasn't enough for me. I think that didn't help my mood. So when I got to Tuesday and saw Tina, Lauren, and my classmates and had fun being idiots in Korean class, it lifted me up and I was able to carry it on for the week. So even if I plan on watching TV all weekend, I feel better if someone is with me.

On Sunday after Tina's test we did the same thing. I'm almost done with I Hear Your Voice, the kdrama I'm watching with Lee Jong Sook:

Ugh he's so adorable

I also just finished, Pinocchio, also with Lee Jong Suk and one of the actresses I like, Park Shin Hye:

Also adorable.

Instead of doing normal adult things and going to bed early, I stayed up late watching Korean variety shows, which are hilarious and awesome.

I'm obsessed with Beast lately, so I was watching a lot with them. This one features Gi Kwang from Beast (fighting to be my bias with literally every other member of Beast because they literally assembled 6 of the most attractive humans to be this group) and Lee Joon from MBLAQ (my bias... sigh) in a strange danceoff. The best is that Gi Kwang pulls out all the stops and the producers of the show have to stop Lee Joon from trying to do a backflip. It's worth a watch.

In other obsessions with Beast, I have officially, according to my itunes, listened to this song 1000 times, so I think you can spare one listen.

Beautiful Night by Beast.

This other song has been stuck in my head for like ever, so here's another.

Good Luck by Beast

And one more for good measure, even though I might be repeating songs:

12:30 by Beast

I get on kicks where I only listen to like 3 songs on repeat, so there ya go.


It's my last week of camp yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy! So Jung comes back to teach with me tomorrow too yayyyyyyyyyyyyyy!

I'll be in Japan in a month yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!

Do you hear me, Kurt Vonnegut? I'm noticing when I'm happy. If this isn't nice, I don't know what is,

Let's hope I can keep up this mood.

I leave you with this:

Again in the adventures of Small Korean Harry Potter, I asked them to make an animal and he made some kind of dragon man thing that is scary but people can't look at his face because it's too bright and appears to have no face. He has one eagle wing and one made out of bones I think. Seen here, he is walking/flying down the street against the people who cannot see him clearly but are scared. I was impressed with his creativity.


Peace!

And when despair tears me in two, who can I turn to but you?

Don't worry about the title of this post. I'm not sad nor being torn apart. I'll explain later.

So this week was my first week of Winter Camp. It's kind of stressful but also kind of fun. I get to bond with some of my students more, but they are a bit wild since it's vacation and 80 minutes is a long time to focus on English. I try to play lots of fun games and do exciting things, but I have never done a camp before so I'm all like whhhhhaaaaaat do I do?

This week's craft consisted of coloring and making flags. Next week we are making panda candles and doing an Olympics day, so it will be fun but exhausting, as camp has been so far. I get more freedom since it's literally aaaaaaaaaaaaaall my plan despite having a coteacher, which is fun but also stressful.

I also had a coteacher switch from my normal one to a new teacher who has never cotaught or taught English, so it makes me feel a lot of pressure to be awesome. So I'm trying my best to just do good activities and not let my anxiety boil over.

Anyway, here are some of my kidlets making their own flags and the English-speaking country banner we made for my Around the World camp:

My third grade girls are my everything. They're so freaking cute.

My fifth grade girls are also awesome! They're so chill and game to help me with things!

Pretty! 

Matthew was so proud to show me mine that he demanded a picture, so that's when I started taking them of the other students.

So pretty! I have no art skills so everything they did I was like whoa.

My babies. 

My A class. 

My B class is mostly 4th grade, and I love them too. These two girls (Eun Ji and Min Ji) are so good at English!

Sometime around 4th grade is when they stop wanting me to take their picture, but not these gems.

This is my Little Korean Harry Potter (his English name is Harry because he looks like HP) is obsessed with Slenderman and I think it's both cool and weird. He's great at English though, so  I try encourage his wandering creativity...

Class B (One of them insisted that France had to be in the lineup...)

Camp is fun but tiring. I only teach til noon but I have to stay til my normal time of 4:30, but I like it a lot. I like being alone in school and only having one thing to focus on. It's a nice change from 4 grades and like 10 lesson plans a week. But it is reeeeeally tiring and sometimes the kids are impossible to corral. But we manage. And we have fun.

I also insisted on putting up the flag banner myself. We'll see if it's still up on Monday.

This is my classroom from the back!

You can tell which countries were the favorites by how many flags were colored.

A lot of the younger kids wanted USA because "Francesca teacher!" 

These are the window blinds we have.

I think they're cool.

My view from the front sans children.

My classroom is reeeeeeeeeeeally nice. My school is small but is in a more wealthy part of the city, so we have a lot of new stuff. And it's relatively clean compared to other schools, from what I understand. Nice school, great coworkers, and awesome students? I'm spoiled.

Speaking of awesome coworkers, one of the 5th grade teachers brought me back a guide book and a green tea cake from Japan because she knows I'm going in February. How nice!

After a tiring week of camp, I did nothing on Friday and it was awesome.


On Saturday I did a lot. I went to the National Museum of Korea with Janell, Lauren, Sarah, and Tina and we spent a few hours perusing old artifacts and whatnot. It's cool to see how countries independently develop similar tools (and how different some things are too!) and other things in history, especially since I'm much more familiar with western things. Like some of the Buddha paintings reminded me a lot of the saints and stuff you see in Italy.


I can't really say much more than we looked at a lot of old things and it was interesting. It was a museum, and I'm sure you can imagine what it was like.


Afterwards, Tina and I left to meet other friend Janelle to go see Jekyll & Hyde!!


OMG IT WAS SOOOOOO GOOD!


It was all in Korean, but I am really familiar with the show and music since I love the English version, plus the source material is from my wheelhouse (nudges glasses up nose nerdily) of literature. The musical is really popular in Korea. This was the 10 year anniversary I think.

The story does a much better job of transitioning from Gothic Victorian Horror story to stage Gothic Victorian Horror Love story than Dracula did, mostly because the character motivations make since in act two based on what we saw in act 1. It's a bit long for me, (Act 1 is 85 minutes and Act 2 is 65 with 20 minutes of intermission) and there are some storylines that just don't get fleshed out enough, but overall it's awesome.

Here are some of the costumes from the show!

Emma's dress

Jekyll's outfit. I wish men still dressed like this. I love Victorian style clothing.

Hyde's fur coat.

Lucy's dress.

Stage!

Park Eun Tae, our Jekyll/Hyde, was amazing. Yeah, the same guy is both Jekyll and Hyde, so it must be really fun and challenging to play. His voice changes between the characters were spot on. Jekyll is right-handed and Hyde is left-handed, which is fun to watch when they're on stage.


I don't know what else to say besides it was awesome. The main characters, J/H, his (Victorian representation of proper woman and supportive and in my opinion not entirely necessary but I like her anyway) fiance Emma, and (Victorian representation of bad woman who is good person but a prostitute so guess if she survives) and the surprise love interest Lucy were all spot on. They were such a great cast.

Our incredible cast!

I think the Jekyll/Emma and Hyde/Lucy pairing is important for upholding the Victorian standards and whatnot, but it's hard to develop both stories enough along with allllllllllll the other things going on (Jekyll getting redemption for his father, trying and failing to convince corrupt people about his experiment, trying to prove himself worthy by using it on himself, murdering the corrupt officials, Jekyll and Hyde's increasing fight for control) in the show. And I think the fact the Jekyll is so protective of Lucy but also kisses her and shows interest in her that is not in line with societal expectations is a good point to the source in that Jekyll is not entirely a good person. The Jekyll/good Hyde/evil dichotomy is too black and white. Jekyll's motivations in the Strange Cas of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Robert Louis Stevenson novella are not as pure as in the show (in the novella he wants to be able to enjoy all the vices which would destroy his social position without actually having to answer for it, so he invents the serum to detach all of his terrible qualities into Hyde so he can avoid detection rather than the show's redemption of Father/victory of science/proving the haterz wrong plot) and I think the show does some good things to show that good and evil aren't so simple.


I cannot stop saying the show was amazing. The theatre was sooooooooooo freaking hot though. I wish David Hasselhoff  hadn't sullied it with his presence and I wish it was better received in America. While I'm in Korea I might have a chance to see it again, since it's popular!

Here is my favorite song, Confrontation, when Jekyll and Hyde are finally on stage together and you see the back and forth. Hyde is left handed and wears his hair down, and Jekyll looks a little more kept. So you get to see the differences in manner, voice, and character in this song:

I actually prefer the song to be a bit slower, as it is on the original soundtrack, but whatever. In our Korean version, the last NOOOOOOO started out as Hyde then changed into Jekyll mid-note, which was flawless and fabulous.

One of my other favorite songs, Dangerous Game, is between Lucy and Hyde.

In English first, then watch the Korean because it's awesome.

Korean staging is awesome. 

And last but not least, Take Me as I Am, the love song between the proper couple:

They sing such wonderful songs before bad things happen.  This song contains my single favorite lyric in the show (it happens before the transformation and everything goes to shit):

And when despair tears me in two, who can I turn to but you?

SO CLEVER.

It was such a good show and I will be listening to the soundtrack for like ever.


Okay here's another observation: Korea tends to cast way more attractive people in their roles. Remember Dracula?

It's so much more believable when Dracula is younger and really handsome.

Which I think really helps. Henry Jekyll is crazy. How could two awesome women characters fall in love with him?

WELL IT HELPS THAT HE LOOKS LIKE THIS

Not like this.

And now on to Korean music, because I'm all about that life too.

I am BEYOND obsessed with this song. It's called "Shadow" by Beast and it is awesome. I love Beast. Definitely one of my Top 3 Kpop Groups (Super Junior, Big Bang, Beast). I don't normally like/watch music videos too much, since I think they never make any sense or I get distracted by watching, but I really like this video. Beast isn't an SM Entertainment group, so they actually get to do more than just dance in a box for their videos. I really love this one and the song. 

Incidentally, my bias from Beast (Hyunseong) was almost a member of Big Bang.

Speaking of Big Bang, here is another song I'm obsessed with from Taeyang, one of the members of Big Bang. 

 

I like the dance video better than the music video, but just hearing the song is cool too.

Wish me luck on my second week of camp! Fighting!