[K]afeteria talk

If you're curious what I'm talking about between 12:20 and 1pm Monday through Friday, this could almost substitute as a live satellite feed.

Ok, maybe not 100% accurate... but close enough to warrant being exclusively featured in a blog post.

Teaching goes viral.

Tuesday is probably the most dreaded day of the week. Not because it’s the busiest day for me (which it is), but because I face my two toughest audiences of the week in the same day. My second and third period classes on Tuesday are notoriously unenthusiastic. Seriously, it’s brutal. Answers are usually half-hearted inaudible mumbles, and eyes are facing deskward. Nothing I do to boost their morale or capture their attention seems to work, and I'm often left feeling like I'm riding an  elevator with a stranger. Except in this case the elevator ride is 40 minutes long, and once I step off that elevator I have to board a new elevator with an even worse stranger. I have to endure this every week.

But today was different. Today I pulled out something magic, something the kids and I can both relate to. Today I pulled out…. The YouTube viral videos.

For fifth grade we have begun a lesson called “It’s under the table.” It’s exactly as inane as it sounds, and the kids have some difficulty getting into prepositions, despite their importance. Sometimes [read: most of the time] the book’s recommended activity is underwhelming, and it bores the students, and leaves me feeling terrible. I feel like they are insulting to the children’s intelligence. So last night I decided to bust into my ‘favorites’ list on my YouTube account to find something, anything, that I could use from there. Cue bear video.

“Where is the bear?" "He’s in the tree! He’s on the trampoline! He’s on the ground! He’s under the tree! He’s in front of the trampoline!” The kids got it, and laughed their asses off too. The same basic questions were applied to a video of a fat kid on a diving board.

Grade six is beginning a lesson called “Do you like spring?” I opted out of the book’s recommended activity ("Show flash cards while saying true/false statements and have the students guess!" Barf.) Instead, I found four entertaining videos that were seasonally specific enough to get the students answering questions; What season is it in the video? What are they doing? For the summer example, I stuck with the diving board clip. (Seriously, it's a classic.) Winter had an Eskimo being eaten. Fall had a car being crushed by an enormous pumpkin. Spring was my personal favorite, with a cute flower prank.

Browsing YouTube... I never knew work could feel so much like unemployment.

Retina gorging.

Get your Visene ready, because once again it's time to damage your eyes by staring in unblinking amazement at the sixteen latest additions to my Flickr account. Most of these are from my trip with Molly to Kwangyang yesterday to admire the cherry blossoms with my co-teacher, Alison a.k.a. Jeong Sun-Yung. A few others are from a break-dancing competition I stumbled across on the street the other day while shopping.


I also saw a purple-eared puppy at some point. Yeah, for reals. Handle it.

Pillow talk.

I’m writing from my bed. Seven weeks in and it’s finally the comfortable sanctuary it’s intended to be. As I mentioned awhile back, sheets are few and far between out here, and I like me some sheets. I put off looking for them out here, and my procrastination was rewarded on Thursday with the arrival of Chris and Natalie’s care package. Contents? A full set of sheets: grey, wrinkle-free, perfect. In addition to sheets (which, after seeing, I literally hugged to my chest) I received Annie’s shells and cheese, small growing kits for strawberries and tomatoes, play dough, and a shitload of candy. It made my entire day.

This care package comes on the heels of Margaret’s package, which arrived last Saturday. I called Margaret immediately and gave a live narrative of my unwrapping the barrage of goodies she had sent me. Lot’s of “Oh my God!”s soared across the Skype connection as I discovered, among other things, two batches of homemade cookies, and a giant Rice Krispie treat (my staple road trip food.) Nearly everything was devoured within a few days.

So now here I lay, on my freshly sheeted bed with my soft new mattress pad, full on Mac & Cheese, and watching Planet Earth in the upper left hand corner of my computer. David Attenborough is telling me about Angel Falls, “the highest waterfall on planet Earth.”

Soon I will be receiving one more package, which I cannot wait for. (Geez Nick, greedy much? Can’t you just be content with what you’ve already received?) I can and I am… but the next package coming contains the new glasses I ordered! My D&Gs have served me well over the last four years, but it’s time for a new era of facial adornment. The new pair is green and cute and-

OH SHIT A CROCODILE JUST TOOK OUT A WILDABEAST! This footage requires my attention. Ciao! (Or chow if you’re a crocodile. As in down.)