Life As Usual

School is going well. I'm finished tutoring both of my individual students now, so I'm just teaching kindergarten these days. I miss my individual students. They are great kids and were a lot of fun to work with. The boy is going back to high school this week. I had a two-hour lesson with him every weekday during his entire summer vacation, and I assigned a lot of homework. My other student has a week of vacation before returning to her home in Germany. I wonder where life will take them. I hope I get to find out someday.

My kindergarten students are exceptionally cute. I have one class of 6 girls that I call my "princess class" because they are all just too adorable and frequently come to school wearing pink sundresses and pink bows in their hair. Little girls here really, really, really like pink. I have never seen so much pink in all my life as I have here! My fairy princesses haven't figured out that I don't understand Korean. One fairy princess especially loves to tell me stories. I look at her and ask "Really?"

"Yes!" she answers.

"Are you sure?" I ask.

"Yes!" again. At least she's consistent.

Another kindergarten class has only two students, both boys. One of the boys is very bright and is catching on quickly. The other day, he came to school early and was looking at the globe in the classroom. "Teacher, where Korea?" he asked. I showed him. "Where America?" he asked, followed by "Canada?" "Poland?" "Nigeria?" "Ghana?" "Switzerland?" "Netherlands?" I was floored. This kid is 5 years old and came up with all those countries' names himself. He then went on to name all the continents, minus Antarctica, in English. Unfortunately (for me), his family is moving, so I'll be losing him at the end of the week. The other little boy will move into the princess class. He's a real handful. He tried to use the globe as a soccer ball. Watch out, princesses!

My other two kindergarten classes are just fine. One has three boys and one girl, and the other has three girls and two boys. It's so much fun to have small classes!

The weather has cooled down considerably. When I'm done with school, I go hiking in the mountains, though I haven't done anything as adventurous as my Tuesday trek. On Saturday, a friend and I spent the whole day in Seoul. We went to the fashion and textile district, ate lunch, walked to the top of Namsan mountain, saw a bird's eye view of the city, and then sat in a coffee shop and chatted. It was a great day. On Sunday, I went to church in the afternoon and then went for a walk through a very trendy part of Seoul since it was such a nice evening. Everything is fine at the church. The children's Sunday school class is a lot of fun. The middle/high school class is an icy wall of silence. The Korean pastor told me he has heard that I'm a "dynamic teacher." He apparently didn't hear that from the middle/high school class. The congregation is still impressed that I can read the announcements printed in the bulletin in my native language. That's what I call talent.