Posting is so much harder...

Posting is so much harder than it used to be... I am now pretty busy in life.

Wednesday October 16th.
Pretty average day. Nothing big happened with my Kindergartners. No drama, no tears.
Louise had to come into my 3rd grade class (my Greece class) to give a student some paperwork. I was working with the kids on the L sound and the V and Z sounds. She made an off handed comment that she needs to take my class. I did not take the bus home today like I like doing. Why? There was a guy selling 3 suits off of craigslist. I went down to Bucheon to try them on. The guy was pretty much my size... But he lost a lot of weight. He was never as fat as I am now. But he was a big guy. The suits were just a little small in the mid-section (which I am slowly trying to reduce).  The arm length was perfect (rare). So I got them! I just need to loose a little of my stomach fat and I will have 3 nice suits. As cheesy as it sounds, suits may be one of the best motivators for me. I really love wearing suits. Even though I am always hot... I just love it. Everything is good except for the stomach sizes....
After I got home. I worked on my Korean homework.  It is tough to do that. I copied all of my vocab words and worked on memorizing and all of the other homework... hence no update. I honestly forgot how bad homework is. I hate it and love it. I can finally say that I appreciate it.

Thursday, October 17th
Good day. Gym day. I graded my kindergartners diary's and journals. We had a vocab test with my 4th graders... so not much happened in that class.
 I attempted to memorize more of my memorization as it was homework.
Went to hagwon after school. I am still behind....Me and one other girl are behind... it is tough with people that are fast, but it forces me learn. I definitely need to practice more. We are having a test on Tuesday of next week.
After Hagwon, Rob, Yufei and I ate Gusto Tacos, then walked around Hongdae and Hapjong a little. I came home and went to bed.

Friday, October 18th.
School was good. John from Denmark cried. Why? Well... Reginas mom brought cupcakes for halloween. She was supposed to take picures to send to the moms... well Soo was taken out of class right after lunch (unbeknownst to me) so she could take a practice test. So we did not get to take pictures after lunch. We did a class, we worked on the grammar book. Then in the last period for the last 20 minutes we got to share cupcakes and take pictures. But there were only 2 of each cupcakes... and John did not get the cupcake he wanted. So... he cried. Having Reginas mom in class was okay... but I did not feel I could control the class as I wanted... And she spoke a lot of Korean to them. Feeling like you are being judged. Normally I would let John have cried. Shawn and John did not share, so normally I would just take the cupcake away. But since Reginas mom was there I couldnt just do that. So I ended up letting John cry for a while, then cut 2 cupcakes in half and giving each 2 halves. Actually, if Reginas mom was not there, I would have taken everyone's cupcakes away and put them in the refrigerator and had them eat Monday. It still amazes me that a kid will start crying (Korean 7, I know he is an older US 6) because the color of the icing he got was blue (with an oreo) instead of yellow (with a piece of chocolate).
Later in the day, Christina, my co teacher told me that parents were not supposed to take pictures in the classroom. News to me. Oh well. I have no problem letting a parent do that. Especially Reginas mom. She was taking them and sending them to the other kids moms. Anything to help Regina. If Reginas mom is accepted by the other kids moms, then maybe they will invite Regina over to play with their daughters.
Ronnie observed my 3rd grade Greece class. One of the moms has been complaining about one of the other students in the class. Roy, whom I have talked about before is not a great student... smart, but he is super socially awkward. Well, Tomy complains about Roy to his mother. Mother complains to school.
I am no professional, but Roy shows some classic signs of being on the Autism spectrum. His mannerisms, outbursts, work... since it is Korea he will never be diagnosed. He is smart, but he is unable to communicate with other students and build relationships with them. He is nice, but he does not know how to express anything to me or the other students or even to me as the teacher. It is difficult.
James, from Daegu was in town. We went out for dinner. Had Gonnys burgers (delicious) and then walked around Hongdae. We got a few drinks. James went home as did Rob and Yuri. Hudson, Sam, Carrie and I all went bar hopping. We went to all new places and it was great. We got to Bobo, had a few drinks and then went to bed. It was a night that was a lot later and more expensive than I was planning.

Saturday October 19th.
Went to Hudson's room in the morning. Last night, we (Hudson Sam and I) decided to drink mimosas and watch 80's-90's movies. We watched Waynes World. Great movie that I had not seen in a long time. After the movie we went to the park by our apartment and had a few drinks just basking in the wonderful weather. We then came home. I took a nap, because we were planning on having a late night with James. I meet the crew in Hongdae. Its okay. We get a few drinks, we go to a bar that is just opening... one of the promoters went to Cornell and I knew some people that he also knew. We then wandered around Hongdae, none of us really feeling anything exciting. We all went our separate ways, not going all out as we had planned. Not bad, because we did have fun... and it was also good for my wallet.

Sunday October 20th.
I slept in as much as the sun would allow, which sadly is not much. I woke up and went to the bathroom. As I was in, the intercom system in my apartment started talking. Not necessarily what you want to hear in the john. Especially when you have no idea what it is saying. Anyway..there is a light in my room with no switch. It turned on and the power went out. The power was out for about 40 minutes. It came on later. Rob and I went to Yongsan Electronics Market. We wanted to find Super Smash Brothers (a nintendo gamecube game) We could not. We also looked at Wii's. An American Wii cost nearly 100 bucks. Rob is a big gamer and he is thinking about getting one.
That night, Yuri, Rob, Scott and I watched Gravity. In all a pretty good flick. I would watch it again, but some of the science being off bothered me. But... without skewing the science, the movie could not happen. For what it was, it is worth the several bucks to watch it.
Scott Rob and I tried to play Settlers. It got to a point where Scott just called the game (quit) so Rob and I quit as well. Pretty good Sunday.

Monday October 21st.
2 Things really stick out about my Kindy classes. One. Juliet from France class did not have her colored pencils, and she did not cry!!! She has matured so much! I love it. If it were several months ago, she would have cried.
Second thing... it gets its own story. I have a general rule in my Denmark class (since I have them right before we go home). If a kid has to go to the bathroom with 15 minutes left of class, they cannot go (this is because the last 15 minutes are finishing the lesson, packing up and getting ready for home. Erica asked me with 15 minutes left of class and I told her just to hold it for 15 more minutes. With less than 10 minutes left, she says she has to go again... and says "Hurry." Well she does this nearly every time she has to go to the bathroom. It got so bad, all of my students started saying the same thing, because for a while it got them out of class with no questions.... Some teachers get in trouble because the let the kids go too much... others get in trouble if they let kids out of class that close to class being over (because parents can be there, and they do not like seeing an unsupervised kids walking through the hall. Yes they are 7, so that is 6 western, which is a firstgrader. Well after she says hurry, is say not right now. She looks at me and says 'really hurry' so I let her go. She comes back 2 minutes later, and has a small wet spot on the back thigh of her dress. The floors of the bathrooms are always wet. Boy and girls bathrooms. I figured she just got some water on it. Heck, when the kids use the sinks, they have spray nozzles, and I often have kids that soaked their pants or shirts.
Well, Erica says nothing. Last time she wet herself, she told me and we got her new clothes. She did not say anything this time... so I figured it was all good. After I dropped the kids off at the gym to go home... I got a feeling... just that feeling you get sometime. I told Christina the story.
Welp, about 15 minutes later Christina tells me that Erica's mom called and she is pissed off (not actually those words, but similar feeling). She tells Christina that Ericas clothes were soaked with urine. She is livid, and she talks to Ronnie teacher and threatens to come down to school. Not good. Christina asks me again what happened, and I say the same thing.
I am teaching my Afternoon 3rd graders (the ones right before I go home) and Christina knocks on the door. Bad sign. She says they have reviewed the whole 2 hours of CCTV footage (each class is recorded) and Erica never leaves the classroom. I stand by my story and say that I will watch the whole thing. I once again tell Christina that Erica left between 5 and 10 minutes left of class. I spend the rest of that class freaked out a little. I knew I sent her to the bathroom, and I had no idea why the CCTV would not show her leaving the classroom.
After Class I find Christina, ready to spend the rest of the night watching CCTV. She tells me that they found it. She left my class at 2:23. 7 Minutes before class was let go. She gets back, and they cannot see evidence of an incident. They also check Ericas shoes, which when a kid pees themselves, are usually wet (urine flowing down the leg...) which hers were not. They tell the mom this, and she is not happy but calmed down a little. As I understand, the way the mom understood it was that Erica had to sit in her own pee for 2 hours because I would not let her go to the bathroom or change. We are not exactly sure what happened, maybe she went when she was walking to the bathroom, maybe she got the urge to go again on the bus home... no idea. I talked to Christina... Erica has done the same thing in her class. She waits until the last minute... literally the last minute. Christina said she would have a talk with her in Korean telling her to let us know a while before she is going to have an accident.

So that was a little more adventure that what normally happens. The CCTV in my class never has bothered me, because I believe what I am doing is good, and that there is very little that the CCTV could show being questionable about how I teach.
The rest of my classes, were pretty okay... nothing big.
After school, Rob, Scott, Carrie and myself met Yufei and we went to costco where we met up with Sam. We had a costco dinner. We looked around. Yufei is the one that wanted to go so he could get Halloween Candy to pass out. The rest of us just grazed.
We got back. Scott, Hudson, Rob and I played a game of Settlers, and we played it to completion.

Tuesday October 22nd
Average day.   France class is actually acting really good for me. I talked to Sam. David is ostensibly being really bad for him. Same with Christine. Me... Over the last several weeks I have made a lot of progress with him. He does not act up much at all in my class. Occasionally, but so do all of the other. For Sam and Christina he runs around and causes trouble (like he used to with me). I started treating him more like an adult. Instead of giving him a reaction when he does something bad, I ignore it. When he does the little things bad (like taking off shoes in class) I scold him. I praise him when he does good. I will praise students that work well. I will praise him when he works well. I will make passive comments not about him, but about things he does... like if he tries to throw something like his shoe across the classroom, I will just get it and give it back to him, and then 10 minutes later, I talk about how often the 5 year olds take of their shoes and throw them, and how I am happy that this class acts live 7 year olds. When you punish him... it gives him the attention which he craves. I give him more attention when he does good things rather than the bad things. He wants the attention, so he does more good things. The other things I call him out on embarrass him (taking shoes off in class or speaking Korean like a 5 year old). He does not like that attention. It is really just recently that I have started doing this, and it is already working wonders. One other thing I do, is just give him a look that says I am not amused and that I am disappointed... or tell him that I know he can be a better student than that.
All of the rest of my classes went okay. Nothing really big went down.
During my break, I worked on my Korean homework. I have progress reports that I was just given today, due on Thursday. I also have to go through like a hundred books and classify them for grade levels.
Korean class was good. I got a 100% on my test/quiz... I need a lot of work. I am getting it partially. My listening and speaking ability is pretty poor. So is my writing ability. But mix them all together with my ability to memorize, its not that bad. I wish I had more time to really just commit to it. But there is so much other stuff going on (I could give up on social life, but honestly it is important to me), I just cannot give as much brain power and energy to it. But slowly I am progressing. After Hagwon, Yufei, Rob, Sarah (shes back) and  were going to get Jamaican food. They were closed. We went to another cafe... A superhero bar/cafe. It was okay. What we thought was dinner was more of just a snack. It would be a much better drinking establishment than eating.
After that, Rob and I cabbed back to Bobo.