Come on! Let's GO!! It's 8 o'clock, it's time for bed, LET'S GO!!!

You know how songs can get stuck in your head, and they piss you off, but then you think of another song that you like better and that gets stuck instead, but you don't mind as much, because you like the song?

I wish that would happen to me.

I don't know how kindergarten teachers do it. They must go home and just blast their stereos until the alaphabet song has been replaced by whatever makes them happy. That's what I do, but still, the phonics songs creep back in. They're made to be catchy, that way the kids learn them faster....but oh my god. I know english, I don't need to be humming the song.

"Hello, hello, hello,
Hello, hello, hello,
Hello, hello, hello,
I am Sue...."
Shoot me now.

"I like spaghetti, yes I do, I like spaghetti, do you too?"
yup, this is my life....

Well, I wouldn't say that's all my life has been reduced to but....ya, it's pretty close. I must say though, aside from the annoying songs, I do like teachings phonics. Way better than I like teaching grammar. I have discovered that I don't really know english at all. I know how to speak it really well, I can write it quite well, and I have an extensive vocabulary. All of that though, in no way implies that I am qualified to teach english. For example, why does a sentence always have to have a noun, subject and verb? I have no idea why. What's a past participle? I have no clue, I had to look it up. Same goes for adjective, subjective phrases, and adverbs. I know all of these words, I sort of knew what they meant before this, I know for a fact that my sentences always contain them.....but wow, I didn't really know anything about them at all.

I remember Grade 12 English quite fondly. As I said before I can write quite well, and have always been able to. I'm not bragging really, it's just a fact. In Grade 12 English I didn't do anything. I believe that, based on the way I wrote, my teacher assumed that I knew grammar and myself and my friend Sarah (also an excellent writer) were both excused from doing the majority of the grammar work in class. At the time we thought it was terrific, we went for walks around the school, did extra writing assignments, but we were off the hook from grammar practice. I loved it, since I hated grammar. I can write, but I have no idea how I do it or what it means when broken down into its smaller portions. I blame Ms. Rizun for my lack of grammar skills. My absence of lessons in High School has come back to haunt me in a classroom in Korea.

So, I like phonics. I'm all over teaching the sounds of the alphabet. Give me a room full of 8 year olds and I'm in my element. Granted, we can't really have meaningful conversations in class, but we get the main messages across. "Teacher, me go today no (so, either tomorrow or yesterday...usually yesterday) mother mother house. Me play in the outside but sad, knee ow." You can see the connection between my love for phonics and my dislike for grammar. With phonics kids there is definetly no grammar involved. There are not even sentences involved. It's great. They don't need to know why the verb has to be placed after the subject in some cases, but when dealing with the exceptions.....my god I HATE exceptions....it goes in a different place.

Phonics kids just need to know the sounds that C, A, and T make so that they can say the word CAT. It's fabulous. Also, I get to be goofy with the younger kids. If I had to choose being a teacher as my career I'd definetly be an elementary school teacher, kindergarten if possible, the younger the better. They get excited about anything! I can come running in the room, and as long as I say it in a fun way "TODAY!!! We're going to learn all about the letter CCCCC!!!!!!!" they cheer, they laugh and we learn about C, its sound, and all the C words you could possibly think of. I get to run around the room, explain things through actions and generally make an ass of myself. They love it, it's an alright gig for me and the first part of my day goes by fast.
I have 2 classes of phonics at the start of my day. After that it's all grammar. My next 2 classes are kids aged 12-14. The grammar they're learning is pretty simple. I can look at it right away and know if it's wrong and how it's supposed to be written.

"I am going to the park" "Did he watch TV?" "Does she have a cold?" "They are studying."
These are pretty simple sentences. The book we have is generally ok. I make worksheets and try my best to explain, but in the end, it's kind of all memorization. The majority of sentences are (subject) (verb) (object)....but then come the million and one exceptions and it all goes to shit from there. Honestly, how we ever learned english is a mystery. The language makes no sense to me at all anymore. I'm kind of glad I didn't have to learn grammar in High School, I got to keep my innocence about the english language much longer than most!

There is another reason that I prefer the phonics kids over my grammar classes. Phonics kids are younger, to them I am awesome. I'm they're english teacher, I came from Canada, I'm like, old and stuff and therefore cool without question. I get candy from them everyday, I get greeted with hugs and wonderful half stories about what they did the previous day. When I'm walking down the street on the weekends and I see one of my phonics kids I get greeted with a huge smile and a "HELLO TEACHER!!!" no matter how far away they are.

Now, my older kids are different. I'm sure this comes as no surprise. When I walk into the room, I midaswell be invisible. I midaswell be invisible until they're finished talking for these kids are "cool." I am no longer the cool one in the room, they are far too cool for me to fully realize the extent of their coolness. Teenagers are apparently no different across the globe. When they hit 12-14 years old they all become "cool." They don't need to learn english, it is not necessary. Nothing is necessary anymore, because they know everything that they would possibly need to already. I remember being that old, I do. I remember acting the same way and thinking that those who questioned my infinite knowledge simply did not understand the full extent of my brilliance. Since I still remember, I try to be easy on them. I know that it's just a phase and that they are listening, they're just pretending not to.....but my god, they can piss me off. It is during these classes that I wonder why I'm in Korea. If they don't care, why should I care? It's very frustrating.

After two classes of depressing coolness I have my advanced class. These girls are fun, they can speak really good english and we have great conversations. The drawback to this class is that, since they are advanced, they need to be taught advanced grammar. Right, I barely know basic grammar, and I'm supposed to be teaching them advanced grammar?? My teacher's manual is never far during this class. I have never lied as much as I have during this class. The creators of the english language turn in their graves everytime I explain why a sentence is constructed a certain way. My explanations rarely make sense and quite often refer to the fact that english doesn't make any sense at all and is, in my opinion, quite a stupid language. This would be where grammer has come back to haunt me. I never feel quite as low about my lack of knowledge as I do in this class. It has actually occured where the students will know the defintion of a grammar term better than I do. My favorite line is "well, I know how the sentence is supposed to go, but why don't you try it yourself and we'll go over it after you're finished." That way, I can look at the sentence and know if it's right or wrong, but I don't have to explain as we go along how to do it, I just correct mistakes.

My advice to anyone who wants to become an ESL teacher.....learn your grammar. Unless you are only going to be teaching phonics, it's necessary. On the other hand, if you're only going to be teaching phonics, then bring every single one of your favorite CD's. Trust me, you'll need them after work.

Anyhoo, now that the shop talk's finished, I'll give a quick update on my experiences since my last post.
I finally made it to Seoul. On April 9-10 a group of us made our way to the big city and went on a tour of the De-Militarized Zone (DMZ). The DMZ is a 4-kilometer-wide by 250-kilometer long barrier between North and South Korea. These countires are still technically at war. After the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 the DMZ is the last remaining Cold War-style frontier on the planet. It's bristling with sensors, tank traps and automatic artillery. The tour we went on was led by South Korean guards. We were able to see North Korea and go through some of the tunnels that North Koreans had dug under the DMZ in preparation for attack. It was pretty interesting. Crazy though to be in a war-zone. There was barbed wire everywhere and South Korean guards with machine guns. We weren't allowed to leave the group really, there were signs off the path with skull and crossbones indicating land mines. It was a pretty drab day, raining and quite fogged in. On a clear day from observatories you can see North Korea. At the closet point we were 1 km away from North Korea.

I want to go back to the DMZ and take an American tour. The American Military is still quite prominent in South Korea. They protect the South Korean side of the DMZ alongside the South Koreans. If you go on a American Military tour then you get to go further into the DMZ (for a price of course). You actually get to go into a building that is half in South and half in North Korea. It is where meetings are held between the two Koreas. You are definetly not allowed to cross the line through the middle of the room, but I'm told that the guard who brings you in will tell you that, then turn around to "tie his shoe." You quickly run across the line and take a picture. Kind of childish, but I don't really care. I could then say that I've been in North Korea and legitly add that country to my list.

After the tour we went back into Seoul and found a hotel in the foreigner's district Itaewan. It was really weird to be there actually. I'd become accustomed to being a very visible minority. In Itaewan though, it was almost 50/50. It was weird. I heard english everywhere, I didn't stand out. No one said hello to me as I walked down the street. No one stared, it was nice, but also an adjustment. Itaewan's a fun district, we went out to Outbacks for dinner and settled in for the night.

The next morning we got up and went to tour around Seoul for a bit before heading home. Seoul is huge. I mean huge. There are people everywhere. It's crazy. We went and took some pictures of Gyeongbokgung Palace then headed home. We didn't go inside, we had done enough walking and it's a really big palace. I'll head back another time, I have 7 months to go, I'm sure I'll make it back there. On the way home we took the KTX train from Seoul to DongDaegu. There are 3 types of trains here in Korea. the KTX is the fastest one. On the TVs they tell you how fast you're going. We got going 305 km/hour. I took video on my camera, I don't know how to put it on here though. It's pretty cool. We were going so fast. The train didn't go to Gumi though, Daegu is the next city over. We had to back track a bit to get home, but it was worth it. Even after switching trains and taking a slower train to Gumi from Daegu we still cut our travelling time in half from the trip to Seoul.

I havn't done all that much travelling this month. I've been playing it pretty low-key, hanging around Gumi. It's getting hotter by the second. On the plus side, this means that Korea's actually getting quite pretty. A few weeks ago everything was in blossom. It was really nice. All the streets were lined with flowering trees and bushes. My street is lined with Dogwoods (BC's Flower!!) Very nice. Now all the buds have fallen, but everything is still really green. I'm glad, I was thinking that Korea was a horribly ugly place and that it would never get better. The downside of this change in seasons is that it is getting hotter. The other day it was 32 degrees with 75% humidity. I've never felt humidity before really. I'm not a fan. I keep being told that this isn't bad, that it'll be way worse come July. I have a fan in my room that hasn't stopped going since last week. I'm already feeling damp all of the time, I'm not really looking forward to this "worse" that everyone keeps saying is coming. On the positive side, I'm starting to get a tan already, and it's only May!

That's about all I have for right now folks. It's 1am so I'm gonna head to bed. Everyone take care and I'll talk to you later!