The Wonders of the Human Mind

Since this morning's church website meeting was cancelled, I spent a couple of hours on this webpage. I think I made it searchable by web robots, but am not sure if I still have to submit it to the search engines or if they'll eventually find me. I enabled public viewing on blogger, and added my site to the Korean Blog List. I'm trying to get a bigger readership!

It seems as if Unipeak is now blocked in Korea. I learned from My Resonating Life how to access a regular (is that what it's called?) proxy server. How it works is that you set Internet Explorer to go through a proxy server located in another country. The one I'm currently on is in the USA somewhere. When I'm going to normal sites I turn it off, but then for the blocked sites I turn it on. It's a lot slower than my normal speed, but still faster than the dial-up speed I used to deal with at home. After all, the request for the webpage has to travel to the USA, then to that webpage, and then back to me. Or something like that; I don't completely understand how it works. I'm afraid a lot of people won't know how to do this, so will stop reading/writing blogs. This is a unique form of expression!! It must continue!!!! I considered switching to a different site, but I haven't been on this one long, and am just getting the page how I like it. There's also no guarantee that the government wouldn't block that site, too.

Work was pretty typical. The day flew by. After preparing for classes I did cut and paste for the adult class. That's old-fashioned cut and paste, using actual scissors and glue. Copy a page from the book, cut out a picture, paste it on the test paper, etc. The test has 10 listening questions, 25 other questions, and 1 essay question. I gave them 3 choices on the essay part. I'm not quite sure how I'll score the test, especially since some of the 25 questions have more than one _____ to fill in or more than one (choice/choices) of answers. Between classes I copied and stapled the pages of the test together. Matt thought the test looked too long for 50 minutes. I don't think they should have a problem. I hope not, anyway. It really isn't that difficult! After dinner I found the listening test tape (left over from session test). I'm 100% ready for tomorrow!

I've been thinking about the topic for the special once-a-week class I have to teach over the kids' summer vacation. Should I do it about Florida again, or legends, or some other topic? Tonight the topic suddenly popped into my head while I was doing something completely unrelated to it. (I think I may have been straightening my desk!) I have to let my subconscious mind work on it a bit more, but my working title is "How to Write an English Diary" OR "How to Write a Better English Diary." I'm leaning towards the first one because it's more positive; the second one implies that what they're writing now isn't very good. Well . . . cough, cough . . . hmmm . . . there's always room for improvement, right? I'm thinking I'll do the first week on choosing a SINGLE topic for one entry (since they have no idea what paragraphs are, and rarely write enough to warrant having more than one paragraph), the second week on how to write a sentence (remember, children, VERBS are important!), the third on capitalization and punctuation (is that too much for one week?), and the last on how to improve spelling and vocabulary??

As I said, I have to think about it some more, but I think it could be very valuable to them, and help them get some of their homework done during class when they'll have my help, and hopefully they'll begin to write a little better. I would prefer to teach kids studying the Impact Intro book or higher because they've been writing a diary for awhile and already have a good idea of what's expected. I think I could help them improve more, while kids at the Pink 1~Best Friends 3 levels (roughly a year's worth of study lower than Impact Intro) haven't been writing as long. I'll probably end up doing the Pink 1 and up, hoping that enough advanced kids will come that I can perhaps pair up the stronger and weaker students to help both improve. The stronger students can show the weaker ones how to write, and thus learn even more.

The big event of the day occurred in my 7 PM class (Miro's). I was teaching, they were doing well at following the English-only rule (only 3 kids in the corner tonight!), and things were going smoothly. Suddenly several kids pointed at the ground near my feet and shouted, "Teacher! Teacher! Teacher!" WHAT already?! "Uh, uh, uh . . . " Now I appreciate that they wanted to follow my rule. HOWEVER, sometimes it's OK to break a rule! If they would have said the Korean word for what was VERY near my foot, I would have known what it was immediately. Instead a kid (maybe Brad) said, "Disgusting! Teacher! Disgusting!" and they all started chorusing after him, "DISGUSTING! TEACHER! OH NO! DISGUSTING!!!" I'm looking down at the floor--What? What's disgusting? What is it? What's wrong? What are you yelling about?

Sidenote: Koreans in general think different things are disgusting than Americans do. The first time I stood in a chair to reach something, I had my shoes on, which was was labeled "disgusting." Now when I need to reach something up high, I take my shoes off before stepping into the chair.

Well, this is one point that I agree with them, it WAS disgusting. When I saw the rat-sized cockroach just inches from my foot, I jumped, which sent the roach scurrying under the desk. I jumped up, nearly knocking my chair over in the process, and hopped around, hoping to keep my sandal-clad feet away from the monster. It certainly wasn't the biggest bug I've ever seen (palmetto bugs beat anything else) but it was well-fed by all the trash at the Lotteria fast food restaurant downstairs. The kids saw me mildly freaking out, which made them freak out more. The girls AND boys were jumping into their chairs (with their shoes on, I might add--"disgusting!"). Paul stayed to help me fight the horrid creature. He grabbed the small trash can and tried to squish the roach. (Somehow it's "disgusting" or "dirty" or something like that to squish a bug with your shoes. I wasn't about to try with my sandals, for fear that it would wrap around the side of my shoes and touch me with its feelers.) My summer-camp training came back into my mind, "Stay calm! The kids will mirror your response to what's happening." I took a deep breath and used the trash can (which Paul gladly relinquished) to kill the bug, then used some tissue to pick it up and put it in the trash can. The kids calmed down fairly quickly, and despite the interruption, we even had time for a game at the end of class.

Before I went home I reminded Matt and Tanya about the special class summary due tomorrow, and the paper/meeting on Friday. I tried to say it nicely, yet making sure they knew that both were important to get done on time. I think I got a good balance of "I'm in charge, listen to me," and "You're an important part of this school, let's work together."