victories all around!

In the battle of Katrina v. The World, it would appear that Katrina is winning.

Woooo! Today, my after-school kids conversation class was amazing! These kids, who are all different levels (and all different grades) REFUSED to speak in English, the first few weeks of the class. I dreaded Tuesdays and Thursdays because of this class. But I have somehow happened upon a method of tricking them into actually speaking English, and speaking TO EACH OTHER. Not just their friends, but to everyone! We played two card-based games today, both from www.mes-english.com (big town and yes/no) and they were both smashing successes. I'm actually planning to use big town a couple more times, building upon the basic game that we played today- and perhaps I'll even get the kids into designing their own card-based game. It's so great to be excited by my classes like this!

The language is getting so much easier, too. Things are just starting to click. Words that I've heard only a couple of times are starting to seep into my vocabulary. It's a great, great thing. I'm still not able to eavesdrop on conversations, but sometimes now, when people speak Korean to me, I can kind of, a little bit, understand the general idea of what they're saying. It's a big thing - it's frustrating to live in isolation sometimes, and I don't want to be one of those expats who comes abroad and hangs out with only expats. Especially when Koreans are (all) so so nice and friendly.

It was explained to me on Saturday night (by some Koreans that we met at the WA Bar, but that's another story) that the underpinnings of Korean society are the seven themes of Confucian thought. (as a sidenote, there is a Confucian school in Gimhae, which is labelled on the map as the "confusion" school. ha ha ha!) Anyways. I've been doing some research on this, it really does help to figure out how people (and the language) work. I'll write more about the concepts once I've got a greater understanding.

Will post more (with photos) soon - tomorrow we're going to Ulsan Park, but I'm going with the Grade 2's (who I don't teach) so I'm not going to know too many of the kids very well...