Did you know that the word 'were' rhymes with 'her', 'sir' and 'fur'? and none of them are spelled the same?? Seriously shouldn't they be 'wer', 'her', 'ser' and 'fer'?? That would make more sense ... But No!!
Did I mention the word ridiculous?? Because I'm thinking it very very loudly :-)
What to talk about?
Well in about half an hour I am going to teach my babies classes. I never thought I would say this but they are almost becoming my favourites - too cute. Specially Harry and Sally, the 5 year olds. When I ask Harry a question he will sit there silently figuring out the answer and then suddenly one hand flies up into the air, "aha" he announces. And I know he has determined the answer. However I must wait to hear it, as he insists on getting out of his chair and standing up before he will answer any question. - And, the chair is almost half as big as he is, so this is not the fastest of events :-) I'm never quite sure how he gets his answers, they are generally right but it seems like inspiration just slides into his head at the appropriate moment.
With Sally on the other hand I can see her mind working as she works out her answers, I put a word for hangman on the board, she'll count the letters - methodically but fast. Then you can see here eyes moving as she runs down a mental list of the words for the week - which ones have that number of letters? She suggests some experimental letters and quickly narrows down the options of words available - and she's only five. The mental processing is way above her age. It's quite delightful to watch.
But all the kids are great - I even enjoy the naughty ones - while I make them come and park their chairs right next to me with their backs to the rest of the class.
Came into class last Thursday and one of the teeny tiny girls gives me a sticky lolly that she has obviously been clutching in her hand for at least the last half hour, waiting for her chance to solemnly present it to me.
Last week I was in the supper market and I saw one of the girls - I don't even teach her - just say hello as I walk between classes. She waved excitedly and tugged on her Mum's arm to point me out - and then a couple of minutes later come running over to give me cookies.
The motivation for learning here is very much extrinsic - these kids will do just about anything for stickers. And some stickers are better than others. I generally take a selection of stickers to class, and make sure I have a couple of different ones on the ends of my fingers for them to choose from. Girls like the sparkly shiny stickers, boys are more interested in what the pictures are. But there are some exceptions. I had sparkly hearts and world flags the other day. Sally very deliberately chose the flags, each time she would examine them closely and say the name of the country that they came from a couple of times before placing it carefully on her sticker page. I got the distinct feeling that I was giving her precious jewels. Today I am taking smiley faces and dinosaurs. (My sticker collection is becoming quite extensive.)
Another student story - but this is from one of my adult classes. I was taking the roll one morning and inadvertently spoonerised one of the students names with that of another student. Hillary was the last student on the list so when I got to Sally (Sally is a very popular name) I call out 'Sillary' - the students look me blankly and I look at them just as blanky - 'What was that that just came out of my mouth?' I'm wondering - and then before any of us can correct the mistake Hillary says "I'm changing my name, from now on I'm going to be Hally" The funny, amazing thing is that Hillary who is the worst English speaker in the class worked out what I had done before I or anybody else did.
This last weekend I had my first 'Out Of Seoul' experience. Caught a bus and went to visit a couple of girlfriends in Daegu. Got off the bus at 7pm and there was no-one there to meet me. I looked around blankly - where was Luleka and Londie??? Oh no what if I got on the wrong bus and I've ended up in the wrong city? It will be dark soon - it's starting to rain and I have nowhere to stay. Panic was starting to put out feelers when my cell phone rang, "Where are you?" Turns out I was in the right city but there is more than one bus stop - at least three in fact, and each of us were at a different one. Londie and Luleka got together first and then with the help of some friendly Koreans who spoke 'semi-English' I was able to join them. This involved as each giving our phones to the 'semi-English' speakers who then talked in 100% Korean to each other and then 'my Korean' told me "taxi, taxi" and wrote the name of my destination in my diary. Eventually we were united safely and had a fantastic time. God is very good and His timing is perfect. We didn't do very much, mainly sat around the apartment and indulged in girl talk - And took lots of photos - will post the best of them to face book :-)
The Sabbath Sermon was all English, no translation - at the speakers request, a pastor from the division office, he preached twice, once in Korean and once in English. So nice. I'm finding I lose the thread of a sermon easily during the Korean translation portion of the sermon. It is important that I take notes during the sermon to help me stay focused. And websites like AudioVerse become more important.
One thing I noticed while travelling to Daegu is that Korea is very hilly - kind of like the Parapara's north of Wanganui. But while we make very windy roads that hug the curves of the hills, in Korea they just cut right through and make straight roads that are easy to drive on. And then in every spare bit of land that is flat enough there is food growing, rice paddies, orchards, small greenhouses, even right up next to the motorway in land that we would consider to be part of the verge.
Another thing I saw - you know the people that hold the 'danger men at work' signs - well here they are not people they are maniquins - guess they don't have to pay them danger money.
And when we pulled into the rest area almost every car in the car park was white, grey or black. So then I had to do some quantitative studies - these results are very rough, but from my observations of random representative sample - the cars driving next to the bus on the motorway - it would appear that of 100 cars 94 are black, grey or white, 3 are red, 2 are blue and one is some other colour.
And on that scientific note I will leave you to contemplate the boringness of car colouration in Korea. But am planning to log on again in the next 24 hours and tell you my thoughts about Joshua and the Fall of Jericho.
No comments:
Post a Comment