Long Overdue update

Yep I'm still here. Its been a while since my last post and I realized that I am have been negligent in my promise to update on signifigant happenenings. Probably because they aren't really all that significant but its all relative right? I'll go through stuff in chronological point form style because thats the easiest way for me to cobble this together and gives the blog all the wonder and mystery of a grocery list (what comes next? I hope its 'bananas'!)

In a UN conference room a S. Korean soldier literally stands on the border of North and South Korea. The aviators make him look tough. The gun helps too.

• Last month I went on the DMZ tour, the De-militarized Zone of course had more armed military than I have seen anywhere else in Korea, perhaps they are using the French 'De'. It is interesting to see a heavily armed border and know that there are severe consequences for walking ten feet in the wrong direction (over the border), but I couldn't quite feel like I was in a Tom Clancy novel as it was fairly touristy. There was an element of tension though, which is quite an interesting thing to experience. South Korea's only neighbour by land is a country very similar to thier own that they have been at war with for over fifty years. You get the idea of how Superman feels when he visits bizarro world.

here the kids are improvising a slide out of a wheelchair ramp, previously they used me as a jungle gym. resourceful bunch.

• Took the kids to the park for a field trip, which is relatively lame as far as field trips go, but they did make a visit to a science center as well. In Canada the science center is run by the government, this one was run by an electronics company called LG. The exhibits were comprable but the corporate product placement did make it seem like LG invented pretty much evrything they were demonstrating (like electricity, DNA and a robot that could draw your picture very sowly). Its never too young to teach these kids about the birds and bees so one of the exhibits was a very detailed crash course on reproduction and heredity. I'm sure our three year old students fully absorbed everything they need to know about XY chromosomes. they followed that presentatoin uyp with a cool machine that will take a male and female and predict what thier baby would look like. Yet another activity that kids ages 3-6 obviously need to experience. One of the pairs was Wendy (age 5) and Denny (age 6), the resulting picture looked older than either of them and exactly like another student in thier class named Valentine next one of the teachers (egged on by the rest) took me into the machine to see what our baby would look like. If that kids face isn't an advertisement for keeping the Korean bloodline pure I don't know what is (its okay to call the kids ugly because it doesn't actually exist).

• I don't have a picture but the biggest actual development is that the school I work for was bought out by another school and my job has changed drastically. I have been moved to a different building while they remodel my old one and starting ext month they will fully integrate the two schools together. For now I mostly just teach kindergarten at my Hagwon, with only two elementary classes there a week (I still teach at an elementary school two afternoons a week). The upshot is that at least for now my hours are drastically cut down (at the same pay) with two days a week where I only have 3.5 hours of class time (down from 6!). the downside is that there are a lot of changes that have been stressing me out and our new boss is very critical. In the end I'm sure it will work out but in the short term its actually a lot tougher. But some changes should be interesting, such as the fact that I now have three classes a week where I will be teaching Musical English, and have been given pretty free rein as to what that entails. This fits perfectly with my plan to get all the kids signing 'the song that doesn't end'

• Climbed a mountain, it was fun. Its the same one Ken climbed with the land mines and stuff. I know its silly but it was kind of scary to even take this pic (wish my camera had better zoom).