My babies...

     I guess it’s about time that I write another blog, right?  It’s been a bit since my last post, and that is mostly due to the fact that nothing that interesting has happened.  My class of 7 year old students graduated, and no tears were shed on either end.  I think we had a love hate relationship, and neither was sad to see the other one go.  However, I do see them still around school, and we are both always excited to see each other now, after the fact.

       My new class is also known as Kiwi class, but now they are 5 year old little babies.  Seriously.  As I have mentioned in previous blog posts, when Korean children are born they are seen as one year old.  So the students in my “5 year old class” are actually four years old.  But in fact they are all turning 4 this year, so in reality they are all 3 years old- hence, babies.

      Although I have taught 5 year old students before, it was never from the beginning (my first job I taught 5’s but they were already 6 months into school).  I like to believe that I’m doing an okay job with them so far, but I am SOO exhausted by the end of the day.  I seriously feel like a mom to 10 children, who don’t speak English.  They are learning very quickly, starting to understand what “school” is, and I can see great potential in all of them (well most of them).

    We have begun the year learning simple phrases, counting numbers and beginning to identify letters and colors. A lot of the students come in with a basic understanding of English, which makes the first few lessons easy.  Google has become my best friend, and I never really thought I would be googling “easy art ideas for preschoolers”, but that is my life at the moment.  I’d also like to point out that there are NO easy art ideas for preschoolers.  Anything ‘easy’ means that I have to do at least an hour of prep work of cutting things out for them, so they have it easy to glue.  Eventually, they will start to be able to use scissors themselves. 

     I was so happy to learn that I would be teaching 5 year olds.  I kept on having dreams about teaching them, and I had a feeling it was going to happy for me.  I love being able to be silly, creative, artistic and not as serious with a class.  With my 7 year old students, it was a lot of work for them which created stress in the classroom- something I am not a fan of. 

     We just had our first birthday in class, so naturally, we had a birthday party at school.  The parent of the birthday child provides a cake, fruit, juice and other snacks for us to have a small party.  Each kid in the class buys a present that the birthday child gets to open.  And of course, a camera man comes in and takes about 100 photos of the event.  It’s really fun and I get just as excited as the students do about it.  So just to clarify, this girl has just turned 4 years old, and she’s the oldest one in the class. 

     Overall, I’m very happy with my new situation at school.  Happy enough to stay for the school year, which means I’ll be here until March.  My kids are adorable, fun and happy.  I had a few criers at the beginning of March, but they have all started to settle into our lifestyle from 9:30-3.  I’m looking forward to being able to communicate with them better, and really bonding with them.  New Kiwi class is already better than old Kiwi class, no offense old kiwi class.     

My third Christmas away...

I can't believe that this was my third time away from home for Christmas. I seem to be getting into this habit. Each time away I always realize how much I miss friends and family back home. As much fun as I am having experiencing all I am- around Christmas time I can't help but feel jealous of everyone together back home. But going on tropical vacations definitely helps ease the jealous pains. 

Conor and I decided to go back to El Nido in the Philippines. Although we had been there before- it just turned into the easiest (and cheapest) place for us to book last minute. Our two friends from work, Brent and Mackenzie, came with us too. Getting to El Nido is a process. We flew from Seoul to Manila. Manila to Puerto Princesa- where we stayed a night. The next morning we took a 6 hour van ride to El Nido. The van is an experience all in itself. The first 3 hours are fine, but as you get closer to El Nido the roads get curved and rocky. It's a trek, but totally worth it. 

The Philippines is such an amazing place to visit. I felt it the first time around too. Everyone is nice and kind and always smiling. You can't help but feel happy there. There are stray dogs everywhere that come up to wagging their tails. I felt such a sense of relief upon arriving. Any work stress just melted away. 

I'll take a minute to briefly talk about work since I haven't posted anything about it yet. I have 9, 7 year old students in my class known as Kiwi Class (5 girls and 4 boys). They are quite a handful. The first week was rough for all of us- a big adjustment period. But after a few weeks I think we have all finally gotten into a routine together- figured out what works and what doesn't. I only haven them for another two months before they graduate. We've had some ups and downs so far which is why I haven't written about them yet. We are still getting to know each other. I hate to admit it- but I did miss them a little on vacation, don't tell anyone. 

Anyway, back to vacation. We stayed at a small hostel called Anang Balay. The woman who ran the place, Anna, immediately treated us like family. She and her staff were so good to us the whole time. The place had a roof with a beautiful ocean view, that became our hangout spot. The hostel cat, Ming Ming, sat with us up there every morning and evening. Anna helped us book tours, rent scooters and even introduced us to the police chief! It's always nice to feel at home  where ever you are staying. 

We stayed in El Nido for 7 days which allowed us to do a lot of things. We had a few rainy days and all of us (except Conor) had a sick day as well. Luckily the sick days and rainy days fell together. Twice we took boats out to go to other smaller islands close by. Out on sea we got to do some snorkeling in the beautiful blue water. We swam through rough waves and small caves to see "secret" beaches. But my favorite part of the island hopping is the lunch provided. Our tour guides cook/ prepare amazing feasts of fish, pork, rice, veggies and fruit. It's probably the most authentic food to eat on a trip and it's always delicious. The tours also allow us to meet some other travelers staying in the area. If anyone doesn't know, I don't love being on small boats. One trip we were moving between islands and the waves got really rough. Our guide and driver just laughed at how scared/ uncomfortable I was. Later he told me that it's like that everyday (is that supposed to make me feel better?). It's an irrational thing for me to be scared of considering I know how to swim, but the idea of a boat flipping over makes me cringe. 

El Nido is a cool little town. Although there are plenty of tourists there, it is not run over with tourism. The locals and tourists just hang out together in the area. There aren't big resorts taking over, just small hostels, a few restaurants and shops. There are no cars- only tuk tuk trikes. My favorite part about El Nido is the fact that there is no electricity between 6am and 2pm (sometimes later). It makes so much sense because there is no need for the electricity then. BUT I always woke up around 630 because it was so hot and our air conditioner had shut off. 

On the days we weren't island hopping we would take a tuk tuk to a beach close by. Los Cabanos was where we saw the beautiful sunset. On our final full day in El Nido we rented scooters and headed out to Nacpan beach. It was a bumpy hour ride, but totally worth it. Felt amazing to be on the back of the scooter on a beautiful day just riding through towns and past rice fields. The beach was as beautiful as I remembered it. This time there were a few Filipino families there. Everyone had the day off for New Years and it was fun to see families relaxing having a good time together. 

Saying goodbye to the Philippines and everyone we had met was sad. But being on this trip and having a new year ahead of me I had a lot of time to reflect. I am so proud of myself for going on these new, scary,  exciting and different adventures. I never thought this would be my life- but now I can't imagine it any other way. I'm looking forward to 2014- ready for more adventures and positivity in the next year!