Fourth of July

Again we're going with a song in English today, this time Simon and Garfunkel's America.

On the fourth I only woke up 7 minutes before my alarm instead of an hour before because of noise, so I was in a great mood. The kids were super cute in the morning too and not whiny which made the whole morning just a thousand times better. Not to mention that girl's night with the Bachelorette and wine were waiting in the evening. I also bought a super adorbs shirt for under 6,000 won, so the day as a whole was pretty great.

I've discovered that one of my phonics students really doesn't know the letters and sounds very well, she's just been saying things a half-second after the other students so that it sounds like she knows them. She also has been writing the pronunciation of the English words in her book in Hangul, which I'm not really sure is a bad thing or not. I need to get some advice with this class, because I'm also not sure how well they are supposed to know the spelling of the example words for the letter sounds, because some of them are really big, like Octopus or Elephant, and they don't actually know all of the letters that are in those words yet.
Today in activity day I had to have one of the girls make her name card because she wasn't here when the others made theirs. To keep the other girls busy, I told them that today was birthday of the Fox puppet I made for helping teach dialogue, so they could make him a birthday card. Busy work, I know, but they did a really good job! It was adorable.

The former Phonics 2 is now a Blue 1 class. I need to just come up with a class name for each time slot since they will change levels every month. This class should be named something like...Beauties and the Beasts because the girls are really good, and the boys can be so obnoxious. As soon as we moved to blue, the other boy in the class started acting up as much as Haram, so now I have two badly behaved kids to deal with. Yesterday I felt so bad because the girls were so eager to read the storybook and talk about it, and the boys held up the class so much because of not doing what I asked. I need some serious patience for that class. Even during activity day which should be the easiest of all days, they were just totally out of control. I finish every class with them feeling so incompetent. At least Yellow class comes right after and they are the cat's meow so I always get a pick me up.

I recently added a new student to my Yellow class: Shiyeon, or Cindy. She was actually already a student at Connexus, she just wanted to switch to a class with some girls. She is very quiet and speaks slowly, but she has really good grammar and vocabulary. Jack was pretty sad that our last slot in the class was filled with another girl, but he is such a sport that he wasn't going to really complain. He just kind of takes everything even if he doesn't really like it; such a great kid. Today I played on his team in Dutch Blitz so that he could win because I feel bad. I am such a pushover with that class.

I'm also a pushover with my Blue 7 class...they are so darn cute, except when they get too competitive, but even then they don't really push my buttons, I'm just incredulous that they make such a big deal about stuff. The youngest in the class especially is precious, Seokhee. (Yes, his name does kind of sound like 'Socky'). He has the roundest little forehead and listens so seriously all the time.

This evening I'm spending time at home because I'll be gone all day tomorrow doing fun things in Insadong again with the teachers. The host siblings were being super whiny earlier which almost made me regret my choice to do so, but they got better after eating dinner. We all watched the Charlie Chaplin movie The Kid together and it was really nice. The great thing about silent movies is that you don't really need to speak the same language to enjoy them together :-)

In other news, I'm pretty sure I am signing up to take the TOPIK exam this October, so I have something to make me study! I'm only aiming for getting the first level, so there isn't too much pressure, but enough to keep me from being lazy.

Thanks for reading!
-Abby