It's all about the kiddies.

Well, I've pretty much covered the social side of my life in Korea so far, but considering that I came all the way here to teach English to some kiddies, I guess it's about time you met them!

So let me introduce you to....

Left: Lynne, Rachel, Amy, Martin, Jeff and Nathan.

This is my one and only Kindy class at the moment.  I teach them for two 40 minute classes a week and it is undoubtedly the hardest 80 minutes of work I do all week!!  I adore them, but they are exhausting!  I'm unfortunate enough to teach them for their last class before home time... and boy do they get ratty! Plus one of them is my boss's daughter which adds a little extra stress to it! 

Last week Martin got a blood nose in class and found it amusing to spray blood on everyone (worse still, they also found it amusing).  In the end I jammed a wad of toilet paper up his nose which, of course, all the others had to copy which, of course, ended in me having to fish chunks of stray paper out of Nathan's nose... colouring in was about all I had the energy for after that!

"Hip-Hip Horray Class" (named after their text book)

Back Left: Kelly, Cindy (or Cindy, Kelly... I'm never sure which one is which), Lina, Sara, Andy.

Front Left: Peter, Glory, Julie, Kevin, Candy.

Playing "What's the time Mr. Wolf?" with Hip-Hip Horray Class

Ah, the Hip-Hip Hooray class... what can I say about them?  They are really smart and so cute sometimes, but the are also incredibly difficult at others (read, almost always)!  Aside from two girls who are absolute angels, there are a lot of bad-eggs in this class .  The boys are particularly bad, although missing from this picture is their ringleader Danny, the cutest, baddest kid in school (who is also one of my favourites... oops, that's not very teacherly!)  When the boys aren't throwing things at the girls and calling them names, they're punching each other and having competitions of who can stand the hardest slap in the face without crying.  I've gotta give it to them though - there are rarely tears!

Sally and Sabrina... I believe you've met them before already though...

"Carnival" Class... (also named after their text book)

Back Left (standing): Adam, Samira (hiding), Love, Anna, Candy.

Front Left (sitting): David, John, Don.

These kids are awesome.  Usually eager to learn and almost always do their homework (some even draw pictures and maps of Australia for me as 'extra homework' I didn't even ask them to do!) In addition to teaching my boss's daughter in kindy class, I also teach my boss's son in Carnival class... but I only found this out last week after teaching him for a month.  Lucky I'm not into favoritism or anything...

"Reading class"

Kevin and Sam.

I love these two boys.  They crack me up non-stop.  I only get to teach them twice a week, but they are definitely one of the better classes to teach.  They are like little sponges who remember how to spell any word I teach them even if they've only seen it written once! While pretty smart, their vocab isn't huge, which means there is a lot of miming and pictionary on my part.  I can' t draw which they think is hilarious... and they now pretend they don't know the meaning of a word just so I'll try to draw it on the board for them while they sit back and laugh hysterically at my wonky stick figures ad crappy animals before coming up and finishing the drawing for me. They also like learning tongue twisters ("How much wood can a woodchuck chuck..." is their favourite) and they bring me lollies all the time, so I like them a lot.

"English Time 3" Class (with Harry hiding under the little pink desk for good measure)

Eric and Harry of E-T3 class

Wendy and Ginny of E-T3 class.

"English-Time" is definitely the best behaved class I have... In fact, they are positively nerdy at times! I think the smaller classes are by far the easiest to teach (except Sally and Sabrina, who are the equivalent of 12 screaming girls)....

Anyway, that's all my classes except one, who tell me they are too old and cool for photos (they're 11 - 13).  Funny kids though.  I really like teaching them - when I can get them talking that is!

I thought I'd also include a few pics of the Kindy Graduation from last week.  Seriously, this graduation ceremony was more impressive than my own uni graduation (which was not at all impressive by the way, but that was uni, and this was kinder!).  It was hilarious.  They all had to make little speeches in English... not in their own words of course, the Korean teachers fed them their lines which they rehearsed for weeks... "our time here at ECC was so so fun! we had many great experiences along the way..."  They wouldn't even know how to say that in Korean!!

  

Yup, they have little robes and hats on!! How cute!

They were singing "So long, Farewell" from the Sound of Music at this point...

My little Amy... a proud graduate.

Jeff (or, Jepuh as the Koreans often say) is one of the best kids at the school. Adorable.  How cute is his little bow-tie and suit!!!

Well, that's all for now.  I have a busy week coming up - a bunch of kindy classes have been hand-balled my way for the next few days and if they're anything like the kindy class I already teach, I think it's going to be a looooong week.