sweet honesty

meet karen c. she's the first to come into class each morning. after she hangs up her coat and backpack, she takes her seat and then we usually just chat for 5-10 minutes before the rest of the kids start rolling in. she tells me how she's feeling, or something funny her brother did the day before, and then i tell her how i'm feeling and something funny i thought of, etc. karen c. is full of character. a big jokester, always making funny faces and voices. she's smart....does her work super fast so that she can get some free time to read or draw or do origami. she loves to make everyone laugh, but absolutely cannot stand it if someone picks on her even the least bit. everyone seems to piss her off, someway or somehow, and i always catch her arguing w/ the other students in korean. she's sensitive, i guess and she's all about revenge. so i've been riding her all year about being nice...don't let them get to you.....just be nice to everyone and they will be nice to you... and...being mean to someone won't make them be nice to you, etc, etc. yesterday, before i left them alone for playtime, i asked karen c. to promise me that she would be nice and not fight w/ anyone. and she just looked at me w/ a painful face and refused my pinky swear. she said that she couldn't promise that.... because david always makes her so, so mad. haha. so i just told her to do her best and kill him w/ kindness.


today she gave me a note, wrapped in sparkly pink paper that said, to: Miss from: Karen C. [heart] on the outside. she told me it was a secret and not to read it in the classroom or to show it to the other students. this is her little note. she's too cute.

kids, man. <3


(if you can't read it, it says: "I'm very sorry to so not being good in dram[a] class. I want to being good but I can't because I don't know how, so in Orion class too, and my best teacher or friend is you Miss Aimee teacher. And also I want to be a good gril. I will love you ever. love, Karen C.")

rainy halloween

well, halloween has come and gone and i'm trying to remember what actually happened. ...not that i had such a wild night that i blacked out or anything, but just that it was pretty uneventful. oh, yes, now i remember. so, i initially had big plans of dressing up and biking around to different pubs and/or attend a friend's party, and also to participate in a big halloween scavenger hunt around seoul. but...it RAINED. all day. looking back, i can't believe i let the weather take control of my halloween fun like that, but it happened. so be it.i did make it out on halloween night, tho. joined some friends at a music festival where we had some drinks, caught some mediocre high school garage band style music, and we saw some pretty decent costumes. the highlight, tho, just might be the falafel that i had at the end of the night. ;)

actually, the best thing about this halloween was definitely the party we had at my school. i actually got to plan it & it was a lot of fun. the whole school was decorated, all the kids dressed up for the costume parade, we had a pumpkin carving contest, trick-or-treating, a halloween movie and, best of all, a haunted house. the haunted house was in the gym, which is down in the basement. we fixed it up like a spooky obstacle course: a scary soundtrack playing, ghosts and spider webs to walk through, tunnels to crawl through, and a "witch's kitchen" where the witch (one of the teachers) was brewing up some eyeballs and worms (the classic peeled grapes and noodles). we also made a sweet coffin out of cardboard, tape and spray paint that one of the teachers laid in and grabbed people as they went by. the kids were a little bit scared (they ARE preschool & kindergarteners), but it ended up being their favorite part of the day. halloween...luv this holiday.

orion class learns a new song

i take rosie, the ukulele, to school all the time & my kids love to learn new & not-so-traditional songs (like "hotel california" & george michael's "faith"). i try to teach them the more appropriate ones and so far they know "somewhere over the rainbow", coldplay's "yellow" and now we're learning "stand by me". the video quality is pretty bad, but here's a short clip. the best thing about it is that we catch david picking his nose. hehe.

meet my class!

so this is my lovely classroom and these are my wonderful students. things get a little crazy toward the end..but they're great. so cute, right?

cuties, eh?

man, the kids in my class are way too cute. we had some fun today and actually got a lot of work done. we even had time left over for coloring and a quick game of 'heads up 7 up' (remember that game?). this is karen & alice in the picture, working on some phonics exercises (hey, hooked on phonics, worked for me!). aaaaw!