Korean Middle School kid games

This is the last week of this school year in Korea. The school year begins in March. The kids come in for one week to say goodbye to friends, gather their belongings, move to their new classrooms, graduate, and have new students get used to their new school.

Most classes aren't actually taught. I was told to just let the kids do what ever they wanted, and just babysit them.

Here are some of the games the kids were playing to keep themselves occupied.

Thumb game - The students sit in a circle, and each take turns saying a number (from zero to the number of available thumbs). If the student is able to get the same number of thumbs up, as the number he said (eg, three... and three thumbs go up) then he gets to slap the other kids on the wrist.

Coin flipping game... The students put two coins on a book and slap the book. I'm not sure how to they score it, but it's something about getting the coins to turn over, without falling off the book. And naturally, they hit the loser.

Slapping game - I didn't watch long enough to figure out the rules, but the basic idea is that you smack your hands on the desk together, and if you are able to trick the other person in to moving the wrong direction, you get to slap the offending hand as hard as you can. You can't see it well in the video, but the backs of their hands are bright red.

As you can see... they're peaceful, gentle, calm children who have nothing in common with American middle-school kids.

Everland Winter Vacation

Here's some pictures from our winter vacation, 2009!



We went to Everland, which is similar to Disney Land. Everland is (or at least it was) the 5th largest amusement park in the world.

Marshmallows!!!!!

I’m sure that you, like me, find yourself wondering from time to time how things come to be. I’d like to share some pictures of “how marshmallows came to be”. I live up in the mountains, in the countryside... with not a lot to do on weekends. I have a lot of time on my hands, so I decided to share what I've discovered.

Marshmallows are actually the blossom from a special breed of sugar cane plant: The saccharum officinarum marshmallium, or "Sugar Cane Marshmallow"

Did you know that marshmallows were originally from Korea? This special breed of wild marshmallium still grows naturally here. In the fall, up in the mountainous areas of Korea, you can see them dotting the fields.

Western-style marshmallows are harvested much sooner, before they fully blossom to keep them sweeter and easier to package for distribution. Here are some matured blossoms in the process of being harvested.

They don't taste as sweet as the kind I'm used to... they have an earthy, straw-ish flavor. It takes some getting used to, but I'm working at it! Their flavor makes them unmarketable in western culture, but they have a variety of other uses.

In fact, Scientists are currently researching how to process the fully matured bloom from a marshmallium into a cheaper kind of “Memory Foam” for beds.

Yoot Nore New Years Game

Yoot No-re

Today my co-workers and I played this game. It's a traditional new-years activity.


Each team has little pieces, and you move around the paper based on how many points you roll.

You throw these sticks on to a blanket (or other designated area) and score points based on how many are facing "up" (the little hat and design is "up").

This is a fairly good demonstration of what the game is like. If you roll well (like he did), you get to go twice.

They are telling me "high! high!" (the other team) and mine is saying "no no no!" After I throw, they are saying "good! very good!"

This time I rolled badly. I started doing badly after they explained the rules of the game. I played a lot better before I knew what I was doing.

According to the Principal, I was the best player on my team. So I explained the concept of "Beginners Luck". We still lost, twice.

My dogs

Birthday at work

Haaaappy Birthday to me.

This was the birthday party my office had for me. They're really sweet. They bought me a cake, and sang to me. The kids heard it was my birthday and they sang to me in my first class as well. People don't age on their birthdays. You age on New Years. So, to them, I'm still 27. That's why there are 2 tall candles and 7 short candles.

And on top of my cake,

there were oranges, cherries, grapes, mellon...
and tomatoes!

The P.E. Teacher, aka "Mr Funny Guy #1" (I never found out his real name), wanted to put icing on my nose. I kept resisting, and he thought it was because

I was afraid of the cream... I was trying to get him to use a different finger. I explained after.

Open Class

Songwoo Joong Hakyo Open Class

How would you like to see exactly how I *never* actually teach? OK not exactly *never*. But usually I have 20 kids, not 40. But the most important part is that I never have a co teacher. I do everything myself. In this lesson, we try to make it look like we teach side by side on a regular basis. We don't. I see her once every week or two, in one or two classes, where she does discipline. Mostly we split the classes in to two groups, which works out well for both of us.

"You cannot (objectively) observe something without changing it in the process." Even more so when there are 30 people observing it, and there's a video camera. At first the kids are petrified, but eventually forget about it and enjoy the game. These are the highest level kids in the school.

The schools in Korea host these "open classes" where teachers from around their district come and observe a class, and then give feedback. Everyone really loved our class, and the principal and VP were glowing with pride at their trained monkeys (Wendy and I). This is the "Open Class" my co-teacher and I did for Song-woo Middle School. I had to cut it in to 6 pieces to be able to upload it, because the file was too large.

1) Introduction: Asking about the date, and which holiday it was, and if they can guess what we'll talk about.

2) My presentation: What is thanksgiving? What do we eat? What do we do? Crossword Puzzle.

3) Wendy's Presentation: What is Chuseok?

4) Comparing Thanksgiving and Chuseok: We spent about 3 minutes walking around talking to the kids, and making sure they were actually writing things down. Mostly the kids had no idea how to spell "August" or "Thursday" or "November.

5) Quiz Show: We quizzed them about the vocabulary and different traditions. This wasn't my idea, this was all Wendy's idea. It went over really well.

6) Summary: What did we learn today? What will we do next class?

And that's all folks!!!