Back in Korea: January 26th - February 5th 2013

After an awesome ski trip to Japan, we are back in Korea and back to our work life here. It is weird to think we have now been here for over five months, meaning we are almost half-way through our contracts. Returning to Incheon did feel like coming home. So here is what we have been up to since being back in Korea.

This past week I led an English camp at my school for students in grade 5/6. We met for three hours in the morning Monday through Friday, and although the turn out wasn't what I was expecting (only 5/10 students showed up), we had a great week! Since the students are older, I decided to make it a Harry Potter themed camp. Not all of them had read all seven books, but they had all seen the movies. Here is a brief summary of the highlights of my week at Harry Potter Camp.

On the first day, we learnt about the main characters, had a sorting hat ceremony to sort the students into the four houses, they made profiles of themselves in the workbooks I made for them, and we made magic wands. Each day we also wrote owl post letters to each other. I collected these letters and handed them out the next morning. At the end of the day, we watched 20-30 minutes of the 4th Harry Potter movie as a reward.

After the first introductory day, each day was a different Harry Potter themed class, such as Herbology (study of plants), Potions, Care of Magical Creatures, and Defense Against the Dark Arts. Some of the activities I planned were planting our own seeds in a pot, making potions, designing our own magical plants and creatures, attempting to make origami dragons, dueling with English vocabulary, and various other games focused on English speaking, reading, writing, and vocabulary. At the end of the week, we had a mini Hogwarts graduation.

Here are some pictures from my camp :)

Harry Potter workbook and a few of the wands the students made.

Owl Post - students wrote letters to each other.

Herbology Class - the students planted lavender seeds.

All of our wands

Ingredients for potion class.

Students making the Dragon Potion, aka baking soda, vinegar and food colouring.  They really liked this one, so we made the potion twice.

This is their reaction to the Dragon Potion. There was a lot of ohhhhs and ahhhhs.

Care of Magical Creatures Class we made origami dragons and unicorns. 

Potions Class - the students made a Fire Breathing Potion, meaning dropping a fish eye into snake venom, aka dropping a mentos into a bottle of diet coke. I had actually never done this experiment before, but I was told there was suppose to be a mini explosion as the coke shoots out of the bottle. Sadly, our reaction wasn't that spectacular. When we dropped the mentos, the coke only bubbled over in a matter of seconds even if we dropped the whole packet. Oh well... the students were still very excited. They had their phones out and were even filming it. 

More from the Dragon Breathing Potion (coke + mentos)

Care of Magical Creatures Class - designing their own magical creature. 

Designing their own magical creature. It was great seeing all the students show their creativity. I was talking with the boy who designed Umbrella Monster, trying to convince him that the monster must eat something. He simply replied "But teacha, Umbrella Monster has no mouth."  

This is the work of a girl in grade 5 when we were in Herbology Class. Each student designed their own magical plant. 

Hogwarts graduation day! These are their diplomas.

On the last day, one of the girls ran up to me after we finished camp and handed me this envelope. She was smiling and proudly said "Teacha, I write in English for you!"  

This is the letter the girl wrote me. This letter really may not make much sense, but I was so happy reading it! It was her first time writing a letter like this in English, and I can tell she is really trying. It was a great way to finish the camp :)

It was great getting to know some of my students better, and when I saw them again today they all ran up to say hello. Besides camp, last week mainly consisted of desk warming in the afternoons (aka reading, drinking tea, surfing the web).

This past weekend we had a very relaxing weekend, as I am feeling a bit under the weather. Friday night we trekked into Seoul to go shopping at Costco. I never thought I would be going there this often in my life, but that is the only place where we can buy cheese at a reasonable price, buy peanut butter in bulk (we eat a lot of peanut butter here), tomato sauce that is not extremely sweet (Korean tomato sauce is very sweet), and normal bagels. The way we look at it these food items are all worth the trek to the craziness of Costco.

On Saturday afternoon, I went shopping with a few girlfriends in a new area of Seoul I had yet to explore. It was near Ewha Women's University, and it had so many cool alleyways filled with little shops. I definitely want to go back when the weather is warmer. Despite me feeling a bit under the weather, that night, Ian and I ended up going out with friends in Seoul near Sinchon station. This was also another area I hadn't seen yet. We go to Seoul quite frequently on weekends, but yet there is still so much we haven't seen! Saturday was a fun night at a Western pub called Mike's Cabin.

This week, our students are back at school for 1 week in Ian's case and 2 weeks for me, before they go on a two week spring break. In March, the students graduate to the next grade. Ian and I both don't fully understand why the students come back for such a short time...but I guess that's just the way the school year is. I saw this meme today on a blog on life for foreign English teachers in Korea called kikinitinkorea.tumblr.com. I think it pretty much sums up our situation.

When I found out that I have to teach for two random weeks in February…

I was just like…

Here are some pictures from the week I took on my phone while walking around :)

This is just to show how underground the subway system is in Seoul. We often have to take several escalators this size to reach the subway.

 

I am liking the bands in Korea! We stumbled upon this poster  while walking around Bupyeong. It's too bad we missed the concert.

I mentioned before that spam is considered a gourmet food in Korea. Giving spam as a gift is very common. A few friends of mine were giving a set of 10 spam cans for Christmas from their principal. I saw this woman while I was walking to work one morning, carrying a spam gift set.