Monday, March 8, 2010

National Test=Desk Warming in South Korea...

Apparently there is some sort of national testing going on today in school. I have no idea what it actually is, all I know is that it means I'm desk warming for the day.  At least I actually have some paperwork to do.  I feel guilty but I'm assigning my kids homework this year. No assignment should take longer than 5-10 minutes and it needs to be important, not busy work. Basically, I'm trying to make fun worksheets that review the lesson material.  For the end of lesson for grade 6, I have all of the key sentences they were supposed to learn coded. Each letter is a picture (think of the wingdings font) and they use the decoder key to decode the sentences. I tried it out during winter camp and the kids had fun with it. My co-teacher claimed it will be too hard but if I did it with 4th, 5th and 6th graders so I doubt the 6th grade class will have any trouble with it. Make a boring writing exercise into a puzzle and voila--it's not work anymore.

On the personal front: I have yet another cold.  I am taking multivitamins and even managed to go to sleep early last night to give my body a better chance to fight it off. I think this is my 3rd or 4th cold in the 3 months since I came back to Korea.

Dear Students,
Please keep your germs to yourself.
Love,
Miss Karpen

Every time a teacher comes over and touches stuff on my desk I cringe because I know that in general, Koreans aren't as fastidious about washing their hands and while their immune systems might be able to handle the Korean cold germs, mine can't. I need to buy Lysol wipes or something for my desk. Something tells me that a bilingual sign saying 'keep your germs to yourself' might garner laughs from the students but would create a general feeling of annoyance from my co-workers.

Other news:
1. I discovered that I can't study Korean and listen to French music at the same time.
2. I have been eating my birthday chocolate Every Single Day instead of saving it for special occasions. This does not bode well for it lasting very long. Whatever, I deserve it. I'll slow down with the eating once the novelty wears off again.
3. My school is actually scheduling my summer vacation NOW...not 3 weeks before it happens. Score one for my school!
4. I'm turning 24 soon (March 21st)...which means I'm already 25 Korean age. When my brother turned 25 I left messages on all 3 of his numbers (back in the days when people still regularly had land lines and cells) about how he was SO OLD being a quarter of a century and all of that. I'm a great sister, aren't I?  I don't feel old; I like my 20s. I just feel strange...time keeps speeding up. By the time I hit 30 I might have whiplash from life.

5 comments:

Mr. Awesomecool said...

Is that why no one is showing up for my classes? I was wondering about that.

Alex said...

Hahahahahahaha. Yes. Your school just earned an official "Communication Fail" from me. :-p

Danielle said...

My school told me, but failed to give me the "You can go home early." So, It was a total fail.

Nevermind. I wasted the day reading blog and surfing. It was time well spent.

Alex said...

Hee hee. I took this afternoon to make my monthly trip to the bank and deal with bills and fix my bank card which mysteriously stopped working.

Josh said...

I had ALMOST forgotten about that birthday "love"...... I am so gonna have to get you back.... somehow... but how shall i accomplish such a devious mission against the evil future-dwelling midget?!?!?!? LOL