School Days

Hi Everyone,

I leave class these days at 6 PM. It is dark. It had to happen sooner or later. The days get shorter and the nights get longer, but still it is strange going into a classroom during the day at 4 PM, still during the day by most anyone's account, and walking out of the classroom to the cool night air and moonlight sky.

These days I guess my life has been sneaking up on me like the nighttime darkness. Everyday it seems like before I know it the night has come, and every week before I know it the weekend has come. I can't remember even when the last time I have written a letter to everyone, but it seems like now the semester is almost over and I haven't even written to tell anyone what is going on.

I have been busy. It all has been fun, but very busy. I started teaching extra classes this semester. I am still teaching my normal first year English conversation classes. I have really come into my own with these classes and have developed them well. My students seem happy and are improving their English skills. These are the bulk of my classes and I am satisified when teaching them.

I am also teaching a conversation class for a business class. It is interesting, but I don't know much about business, and don't try to even fake my way through it. I usually come up with different exercises for them to do. I started off with 10 students. I maybe have 3 now. Hahahahaha. I guess you don't win them all.

The third course I teach is a class teaching the history of religion. I have always wanted to do this. It has kind of been a dream of mine for at least 10 years. I am having a lot of fun with this class, but it takes up so much of my time. I ordered books for the class. They never came. (Well, one did later. I use it too.) Like I said there are no books and no readings for the students so I teach off of powerpoint. This means no work for the students except listening to me talk, talk, talk, and talk. Easy and fun for them, (I am an energetic and goofy teacher) but it is a lot of work for me. Take this week for instance. I have prepped for about 10 hours making a powerpoint for 3 hours of lecture. I don't really get paid extra for this. I just do it for the "experience." My experience is sometimes high, but sometimes low. My students are usually happy, usually laughing, and usually there, but also sometimes none of these. :-) It doesn't help that the class meets at 9 AM. An afternoon class would have gone over a lot better.

Well, that is a little bit about my job and what has been going on here in Korea. I am including a couple of pics. One is of me with my students in class. Another is of one of my (cute) students that I nominated to an English presentation contest, which I later on ended up hosting. Unfortunately, she didn't win.