Week 2 down

Our second batch of kiddos has just left and I'm finally getting to that "I haven't written in awhile ..." post.

Life here is divided between the chaos of herding 200 children and the quiet of rural isolation - it's really an odd deal. For the past three days I've been going nonstop from the wee hours to the wee hours, and now I'm sitting here wondering what to do with myself for the rest of the week. It's like in three days I've forgotten how to have hobbies. Never fear, I'm sure I'll remember by tomorrow. :)

I've now taught two three-day weeks and one Saturday session, and although we still have all those startup fiascos popping up, it seems like we've been here forever.

Last week's class of 11- and 12-year-olds (Korean age) was wonderful - full of sweet, fun kids and eager students, and even the rapscallion boys' ringleader was nothing more than a minor discipline problem who responded really well to direct commands. I was sad to see them go.

I figured I couldn't possibly be so lucky with this week's group, and when I walked in and saw it was a group of 13-year-olds, I braced for a tough session. Just in the year's difference, you can see the kids slipping into teenage diffidence - guarded eyes, self-conscious shrugs, baggy clothes, dramatic eye rolls ... and that one kid in every group who always slouches under a black hood.

But then lo and behold, by some cosmic fluke these kids were even more amazing and full of surprises - in fact, the one with the hood turned out to be my most interactive and helpful student. And their grasp of English was incredible, which meant we got to move past basic vocabulary into more fun cultural lessons (they were perplexed that adults don't ask each other their ages within minutes of meeting, for example, because in Korean that's mandatory to know what form of language to use). To a kid, they were earnest participants and really put themselves out there. The weirdest part was that although all my girls were great, it was the boys who were the ones first in line, volunteering the most answers and helping turn out lights and close doors. Like I said, cosmic fluke. But I'll take it.

These first two groups were a PR move - free for 200 selected from hundreds of participants, I think largely because they scored well on a test, and a lot of them were from well-off families who invest in private English academies. Next up (and from here on out) we get general public school kids for weeklong sessions, which will undoubtedly be an entirely different ballgame.

Now back to remembering how to read, run, study Korean ...