Today has been a return to total normality, as far as work is concerned. Which is a bit sad for me, because it means my student interaction and actual 'teaching' time goes WAY down. I'm not sure if/when after-school classes will start back up. Maybe later in the week, or next week. I had to sit in on four classes today, and had about 10 minutes at the end in which I had to do a read and repeat power-point. On the 3rd graders ppt, which comes off a CD that is shipped with the government recommended, full colour, flash interactive textbook, there were two mistakes! And, really often, the example sentence used for the word uses new and complicated words... dumb. For example, say the target word is 'concentrate'. Instead of using a sentence like 'It's good to concentrate in class', they have ones like 'It's not practical to concentrate too long'. Seriously, 'practical'? Dumb. One sentence, with the target word 'although' was: 'the man was old, although he was strong'. Not a great sentence... it should be 'although the man was strong, he was old', or even better 'although the man was old, he was strong'. Luckily, the slides can be edited, so I fixed them up :)
In other news, I got one really great example of a student's written work today:
I asked my co-teacher what I should do with it. He said 'just correct it'. I told him it made no sense, what should I do when the English was so confused I couldn't understand it. He just stared at me in consternation for ages (I swear, like a minute), and then said 'just correct the spelling and grammar'. I told him there wasn't much point, it needed re-writing. Again, with the totally confused stare. So, I read some of it to him. He goes 'Oh, that's so strange! Why is it so strange? Hmmmm, maybe just tell them to re-write it'. I really don't think that's going to help, but there's not a lot I can do - the kid is WAY over their head with attempting this piece of writing. They can't even write 'my name is Ok-Jo', but have written 'I'm... in a Ok-Jo'.
Lunch today was a disappointment too. The main dish was tofu, and while the sauce was nice, I find the blandness and texture of tofu difficult to overcome. There was also a pleasant, but unexciting noodle dish (which the V.P told me is called 'jap-chae' in Korean - he loves to tell me what the food's called), boiled rice, and soup made of salty water and seaweed. It was all totally pleasant, but not as good as usual.
To make up for it I might be going to dinner with Courtney when she gets off work tonight. Just waiting to hear back from her. I'm supposed to go running after work, but I'm feeling all weak and spaced out from this cold. Not sure if it's a good idea to exercise or not. I think what I'll do it take a long way out to dinner if I end up going, and power-walk.
And while I wait the next 40 mins until I can go home from work, here's today's five:
1) The bus was really crowded this morning, but I managed to get one of the last seats. Good start to a Monday :)
2) I just found out that next Monday is the school's birthday - which means we all get a day off! I am going to plan something cool to do, because everyone else will be at work, so it will be quieter than usual out and about. Everland maybe?
3) Damn, I'm stuck on three. Slow day today. Ok, I listened to my new CD again on the bus this morning and am still really enjoying it.
4) Um, it's nearly home time? Does that count?
5) I might get an ice-cream on the way home. I need to get to 5 things somehow...
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