Not with a bang but a whimper;

[prologue] Okay, so one of the reasons that I haven't updated this thing in a cow's age is that I have been going through great pains to try to get my damn pictures uploaded on this thing. I know I'm not super tech. savvy, but I used to have a blog that was html-only, and I'm not an idiot--so why is this so difficult to do?! Well, firstly I couldn't upload to EITHER photobucket or flickr for ages because for whatever reason, my computer refused to let the loading take place. So that was frustrating. THEN, once I was finally able to get them up on flickr, since my blog is incompatible with flickr (once again, who knows why) I had to do all the image tagging on my own, which took FOREVER, only to discover that I used the wrong hotlink and the images won't load. D= So, I figured out HOW to do it, but it takes forever, and I'm not even halfway done yet. Screw you, flickr. In the future I refuse to hotlink any more images (unless all of my lovely domain-owning friends are willing to hook me up..... with an FTP program. Hint, hint), I'll just direct people to the account. I would link you to it right now, but my work computer blocks half of the Internet including the flickr page, so...... yeah. 나중에 (later)! [/prologue]

Now, onto the actual contents of this entry. I felt that today merited an update, as it's my last day at school of the semester. (Big shoutout to my principal who gave me Monday off!, even though he will never read this.) Even though I've been telling my classes for weeks now that "This is the last class I will be teaching you," (since some of my students had their last class with me THREE WEEKS ago, oh school scheduling), and I've been packing for America and so on, it didn't really feel real today until I was cleaning out my desk, throwing out my "class cards." They're leftovers from the previous teacher, a collection of every students' name, one card per student, bunched together by classes. She used them for seating charts, while I used them for class "participation." (Somehow, even the most stubborn students will talk when you randomly pull their name out of a stack. Koreans are fond of impartiality.) I took them with me to pretty much every class, and now I've thrown them out and will never use them again.

This certainly isn't the end--I'm only taking a break from the school for about 2.5 months--but it feels like the end in a way, because it's the end of the school year. In the West, the school year starts in September, with a brief sojourn in December, and then has a "real" break in June. In Korea/Asia, the school year starts in March, following a 2 month winter break. In the summer, the students (or at least MY students) get about a week off, very similar to our winter break.

When I come back after 2 months, everything will be different. I'll be at a new desk, moved out of the "discipline" office (I guess I can't complain about that......). My favourite coworker will have been moved to a Gwangju (about 1 hour away) teaching post. My 2nd year students will be my current 1st years, except all of the classes will be reshuffled, so the dynamic will be completely new. And I will have a couple hundred new 1st years that I have yet to meet! It's so hard to believe that this semester is just so over for me. @_@

In review: I don't think I actually taught a full semester here--only 16 or so weeks. I think the Spring will be a longer session for me. There are still a lot of things I need to work on for next semester--tighter lesson planning, STRICTER DISCIPLINE!--but I feel like I've built a fairly good foundation at this school. I understand my students much better now, which will help me in how I teach them. I also understand how the school works better--when I first started teaching, so many things I didn't understand about the school made my lessons run rather choppily. (For example, I didn't know about the magic of instant schedule changes--such as classes being cut from 50 to 30 minutes long, and you have 5 minutes to figure out how that's going to work out.)

Since I'm feeling list-y, let's have a list to round things out:

Things I Have Learned From Teaching at YH:
1. Never, ever underestimate the power of the Group. Don't single out students. Don't look like you're singling out students.
2. When someone goes to the hospital, they're just going to the doctor. Students go to the doctor's office all the time in the middle of the day (alone, even!) because they have no time at night. Speaking of which......
3. (My) students do AT LEAST 3 hours enforce study hall a day, not to mention 2 hours of extra "supplemental" classes. My talented students study 2-3 hours more than that a day. So I should really cut them some slack sometimes. =\
4. Boys caressing each other's faces, hugging, or resting their heads in each other's laps is completely normal, heterosexual behaviour. I guess. X_x
5. Test score >>>> anything else in life, including food, sleep, happiness, and my class! =D
6. All the punks are put in one class!
7. Being forced to speak English for more than one word is the most punishment possible...... unless it's in a competition/game.
8. All of the following activities are "appropriate" during class: Checking oneself out in a mirror, reapplying facecream, checking a friend's hair for..... lice (??), playing Korean poker, studying for another subject (ok I'll admit I did that, too), writing love letters, having a normal volume conversation, and clipping fingernails. I'm sure there's more but I'm forgetting it. =D
9. Heating in hallways/bathrooms is a waste of money. Bah humbug!
10. My class is one of the few destressing classes my students have. Which can be both a very good and very bad thing.......

I'm hoping that this list seems more positive or negative. The fact of the matter is, teaching here is mostly hilarious (if sometimes tedious--once I get to teach a lesson for the 16th time I'm not even thinking anymore), because my students are hilarious and often a lot of fun. They're certainly not all sweetness and angelic, but they really do grow on you. When I was teaching one of my 1st year classes yesterday, I said that the reason I would not be teaching next week (they still have a week of school) was that I'm going to America. The entire class GASPED in horror, because in their minds that just means I'm MOVING back to America. Cue me waving my hands around and going, "Nonononono, for vacation." Then some of the girls actually cut out their dramatic stage crying and gave a sigh of relief. It was pretty amusing, if somewhat unexpected. (Most of my other students were more like, "Oh, last class? Let's watch a movie!" as if I ever show movies in my class.)

On a final note, I think it's a good thing that I'm done with the current 2nd graders, even though I will miss (some of) them. They were taught for 3 semesters by the previous English teacher, and so their memory of her is so much stronger than that of the 1st graders. I always felt so intimidated by living in the previous teacher's shadow (she taught a lot longer than I have--3 years!!) and even if the students didn't know how I felt about this (I'm sure some of them could smell my Newbie-ness from a mile away), I think it effected the nature of our classes. I'll have more of a fresh start next semester.

And I have just been informed by my co-teacher that I have to go now, to move my stuff into a new house in Mokpo (er, more on that later, I guess), so unfortunately I have to end my rambling now. ttyl!