Free Writing Time: with Jerry

As promised, I have 6 posts queued up from one of my favourite ESL classes. Free Writing Time was the brilliant idea of fellow teacher Michaela, where the students write non-stop about anything for 10 minutes. Don't be fooled, these posts may be silly and good for a giggle, but it really is one of my smartest classes. They are all in Grade 3 and their comprehension is wonderful, we're just working on their writing!

Note: Some posts will be pics, but I decided to re-write others as I am not sure they would be easily read in a photo. I have resisted the urge to make any changes and anything that seems weird is because I've done my best to re-create how they actually wrote it.

Jerry wrote a poem one day:

Children's Verse
title: test

every children mind
is tep tep tep
Because test score
every children say
sigh~sigh~sigh~
and Score 100 every
children olleh But
70, 80 score every children
cry~cry~cry

Costco: not just a one stop shop,

but your last stop shop. Like, last of your life:

i die

I figured this was worth me shamefully making my way back to this poor little neglected blog. Stay tuned for a mini-series of posts from students' writing. I have been making some classes "free-write" for 10 minutes a week. Hilarious.

Eye Spy: Expensive S**t

After a little sleuthing I managed to find the bag I saw on the subway the other day that I decided I needed to have. It's some crazy $1,500 Burberry bag. I don't think I need it anymore.

Good-bye, self-esteem

In Korea, the national hand signal for "no" is making an "x" with either your arms or your two pointer fingers. Either way, it's nice that you can communicate a negative in such a simple way.

On to my story.

As the evenings began to cool off a few weeks ago, it was apparent I was in need of a warm hoodie for walking the dog and just general things you do when you live life walking and biking everywhere. There's an Abercrombie/Hollister section at our local "HomePlus" (Target/Superstore equivalent) and I decided I deserved my little piece of SoCal style. So, Thomas and I biked down last Thursday before work to make the purchase. I excitedly locked my bike, and made my way to the olive green hoodie I knew was the one for me. The sales girl proceeded to take it off the rack and help me into it. And help I needed. As I squeezed my first arm in, it was apparent this wasn't my size, but I squished my other arm in just to make sure. In case I wasn't already positive, I zipped it up. Had I needed a corset with a fuzzy hood I would have dropped the 58,000 won in a second. Thankfully common sense kicked in and I took it off to see the size. Medium. Hmmm, that's a bit of a blow. Oh well, "larg-ee?" I asked, in my very sophisticated Korea-ficated English. The salesgirl looked at me, crossed her two pointer fingers in an "x", and proceeded to giggle as she stated "no!". Now imagine the giggling trailing off as I turned and walked away.

So what did I do? Went next door to the Outlet store and dropped way more than I should have on a fabulous, down-filled, puffy jacket (size small). Take that, lil' bitch! Oh well, I'm a heck of a lot warmer and it was actually a far more practical purchase. Still, if I could go back and give that lil' Korean gal a slap, I just might.

Bare Bones Science

Here's what my Science lesson for the day was:


The lesson was about making secret messages and how to see through paper. All I know is that this combined with my art lesson a couple weeks back is making for some serious unexplainable giggles in front of my sweet, innocent students.

In other nude, I mean, news, I don't actually have any other news. I just wanted to use that clever little pun I'm mildly proud of. Anything to bring a little piece of Carrie Bradshaw to Seoul.

So long

Life hasn't been terribly busy, but I've been a little neglectful posting. We just had a four day weekend which we spent caring for our little snipped puppy and I'm happy to report he's doing wonderfully. I do have a question, would you give your dog medicine that came from a package that looked like this?:


So I don't know whether to laugh at the dead dog, or the dog licking the dead dogs a-hem.

Onto something else very important: my curriculum. In one of my ESL classes (young but advanced kids) I get to teach Science and Art classes. Being the good teacher I am, the first time I look at the Art lesson for the week is usually when I open the book minutes before class. So you can imagine my surprise when I see this is my Art lesson last week:


The assignment? Draw a picture of yourself taking a shower. Hmmm. If the kids weren't all under the age of 10 I would have been pulling another lesson outta my a-hem. But I figured at the least I'd get a couple good photos for a blog post outta it. I was right. Here are my two personal favs:

I call this one eunu-riffi-ch.

This one is titled KEEP OUT!

At first glance the crotch area may look like pubic hair, but it's actually Korean that says, "you will never see this, it's private"! That one is courtesy of one of my favourite (and most witty) students.

Now if only Science was as interesting as Art.

Short end of the leash

Sawyer needs his junk removed. I suppose neutered is the more mc (medically correct) term. The English speaking vet we first took Sawyer to recommended a clinic across the street from our apartment, which is a much better option than taking him home on a half hour subway ride after surgery. We have 4 days off next week so we decided to use that time to get it done.

So today Sawyer and I ventured out on a walk with the intention of also going into the clinic so I could mime chopping off his sac and hopefully book an appointment. I had no clue how much English to expect, so I figured having the actual package along to use as a prop would be helpful. First the receptionist thought I just wanted to get him a hair cut. Then she caught on and said, "Ahhh. Castration".

Yikes. Would it be inappropriate to say my vagina cringed in empathy at the use of that word?

Little did I know that a long walk for my fav pup was actually going to be an hour long vet visit, complete with four needles (blood tests and injections). I was worried he'd never speak to me again. Happy to report we're back to being best friends.

Wednesday is the big day. Poor lil' fella has no idea that today was only a mild annoyance compared to next week. Snip ya later.