Life at Nambu

I have been teaching at Nambu for nearly 6 months. Its been a massive change from teaching the ever naughty high schoolers - although I do see them around town often. An old student offered me one of his cigarettes at the bus stop the other day. Which I suppose was kind in a backward way because he's probably a broke teenager secretly buying smokes without his parents approval. I was almost honored. He said he had heard that western woman smoke sometimes.

I said, Thanks but no thanks. He shrugged his shoulder and lit up anyway, 6 months ago he would have hidden and runaway for fear of punishment. But hey today I wasn't his teacher, so he wasn't remotely bothered. 

The 4th graders in the English class. 

A view from my office window in the winter time.

Its snowing at school!

My experience at elementary school has been hugely different. Everything is bright, colourful and optimistic. Nobody has pimples or hormonal mood swings. Little ones are easier to impress. When I see students on the street or in the grocery store, they come running up to me and eagerly point me out to their parents. Very different from the awkward nod and immediate change of direction away from the teacher that I so often experience previously.

Teaching the 4th graders

Some of my best moments of the last couple of month have been witnessing the cuteness and enthusiasm of my kiddies. One of my favourite days was doing a optional English camp in the vacation with the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th  grade students. On a particularly cold and snowy day we made pancakes with the students. 

It was carnage. Complete carnage. 

The students were throwing pancake batter around and kept dropping eggs all over the floor. When they left it looked like a fierce battle had taken place in the Science room.  I saw a perfectly normal grade 4 go nuts after he tilted his head back and squeezed 3/4 of a bottle of syrup into his mouth. My co teacher and I just smiled and sent him on his way, his sugar high could be his mothers problem. Either way making pancakes was a great success. We had a pancake stack competition and the principal picked the best stack. 

The pancake stack teams.

pancake making.

"Give me Sugar!!!"

One of the best parts of my job is going to Kindergarten on a Wednesday. I've had a lot of fun teaching the kindies basic things like, fruit, weather and moods.  The particular class that I've loved to teach over the last semester was the three year old's. Because at 3, they are still learning their own language, never mind mine. Basically the 8 of them would sit together and try and figure out what they hell I was saying. I couldn't understand any of their debate but I would see one of the 3 year old's take charge and make announcement to the group. This dominant little character had obviously made a class decision about what they needed to do. This often resulted in everyone getting up and running to the back when I had actually asked them to put their hands on their heads. I normally have no choice but to just laugh and say "Good job".

The Kindies

Nambu's annual sports day was pretty interesting. They hired out the local city stadium and had a bunch games. It was very unlike any of the of sports day I have seen at home. One game that I found hilarious to watch was where the kids had to stuff blown up balloons in a giant clear bag and get it to stand up straight. The first team to do this was the winners. I have never seen so many little voices screaming and grabbing at balloons. Even at 10 - it is a fight to the death to get all the balloons in.

The blue team and the white team.. races to stuff and collect all the balls. 

I can quite happily say that the move to elementary school was a good decision. Here's to my last 6 months of teaching in Korea. May it go smoothly!