Signs of attitute change

Some of my students are starting to show some real good signs of progress. They are shy in the regular class where brilliant, privately educated kids call out answers. But in their smaller supplementary class, they participate actively with strong confident voice.

I see some of them really are concentrating better and started write down words in their notebook, where as before, they would disturb the neibours and cause frawns.

I'm optimistic.

A letter to a friend - edited version

I try to be a creative teacher. So I go from teaching Doctor Seuss to Word power with Greek and Latin roots. So far I manage to have fun so I suspect some of my students are having fun.
I remember the old days when the teacher wasn't having fun I certainly wasn't having fun.

I made the kids pay the equivalent of 10 cents each time they don't greet me or my co-teacher with Good morning/Good afternoon. So even what they say is wrong -- like saying "Good evening", they do greet me more often in English than before. As they say, money talks.
No, I'm not going to be rich from it, so far I haven't collected any money but enjoying the side-effects of the money talk.

I help out at the budding Landmark in Seoul on Mondays and Thursdays. Wednesday and Saturdays I do my ballet class in this very ritzy part of town.

Last weekend, I was out with my Canadian friend who is teaching English in further suburbia. So we did the touristy things. We had dinner at a restaurant on top of a tower on top of a mountain. The view was great and the dinner was spectacular. After that we went to see a movie - it was raining so we picked one that started 5 minutes ago. Turned out to be "Lars and the real girl". It was surprisingly quite good. I really did not expect much at the beginning - given it's about Lars' relationship with this silicon woman named Bianca. Then we went to this 24 hour Sauna to warm up the chills. Their water was from the natural hot springs with sulfur and my skin felt like a baby's bottom when I came out of the shower in the morning.

Just finished a book called "The attack". It's about suicide bombers in Palestine. I never thought I'd understand them but this was a very powerful book and I have a whole new perspective on them. It was hard to put down. I put up my condo for sale in Montreal and I will move mom here. For one thing, the winter is shorter here. And given I get an apartment, I just need to pay the utilities. I uploaded some pics in the facebook. I like it cos it lets me keep track of people in my life and what they're up to.

All in all, I'm doing well I think . I do complain that all the girls here are so skinny and cute I feel old, fat and frumpy. I wear ex-large and sometimes I have to buy men's clothes. I can wait to go to Jackpot in Montreal. MJ will come to visit in April. I'm looking forward to it.

Gee weez, I just wrote a novel. Hope you have a sunshiny day and Happy Easter!

It's been a long time

This site is blocked at work and updating facebook makes me lazy in updating this one. I am selling my place in Canada and moving a lot of stuff to Korea. I just know it's the right thing to do but not very comforting cos I don't feel as though there are people who can help me. But I know that's a lie. Most of my friends are ready and willing to do whatever's needed. Silly me, I thought maybe my unemployed uncle #3 would be willing to help me out for the price of free trip to Canada but he seems at most reluctant. He pisses me off but I was forewarned. My aunt calls the 3 uncles the courageous in front of a meal - but very little else - people.

I want my clothes, shoes pictures. At least it seems that there have been 3 visits for the property already.