It's The Grade 4's Turn

I taught the grade 6's first period and then I headed to the gym to judge the grade 4 English Speech Contest. The grade 4's are aadorable, but I feel like I've hardly taught them this year, so I'm not as close to them as the grade 3's and 6's. Anyways, the grade 4 male teacher did an introductory speech and then the principal came on to do his speech and it took longer than usual. Plus, when you don't understand the language it can be a pretty boring 10 minutes.

Then the male teacher did a warm-up song and routine with the grade 4's to get them excited and ready for the speech contest. I took a video of it, so I will post it when it decides to download.

The speeches were really good and I actually really enjoyed watching and listening to them. Two of the grade 4 girls that were in the contest had a great speech. They had an entire skit that they did to their English speech. Although their speech was fun and funny, their fluency and pronunciation wasn't great. Since, it was a speech contest I couldn't pick them to win, but two of the other grade 4 teacher judges did pick them. I explained to the grade 4 English co-teacher that since it was a speech contest that I didn't think they deserved to win. She said that she understood, but whether she really did or not, I will never know. During the speech contest I felt bad for the contestants because the rest of the students were talking the entire time. It was rude and disrespectful, but that happens here. Below is a picture of the two girls who did the skit as their speech contest presentation. Sorry that it's blurry.

After the speech contest I had two more grade 6 classes to teach and I again had the rest of the afternoon off. I spent the rest of the afternoon chilling out, watching House, figuring out next weeks lessons with the grade 4 and 5 teacher and went to the bank with Jiny to pay for a bill. I also found out that the three students I picked as the winners for the speech contest WON!

Once I was done school for the day I came home and changed to get ready to go to Itaewon, Seoul for the night. While I was waiting for the bus to Tracy's I had to take a picture of a typical occurrence in Korea. It is not uncommon for Koreans to park their cars on the sidewalk. Yes, folks sidewalks in Korea are also used as parking lots. Motorcycles also use the sidewalk to drive on, so make sure you watch where you're going. I mean it really is ridiculous, but that's how they do things here. When it suddenly becomes normal to park on sidewalks, drive motorcycles on sidewalks and not wear helmets while driving motorcycles like maniacs, you just kind of get use to it.

Then I went over to Tracy's and helped her put up some mosquito netting on her windows to keep the bugs out and then we went out for some Shabu Shabu. When we finished eating we parted ways and I headed to Itaewon, which is about a 60-90 minute train ride. I took the train to Yongsan and then cabbed it to Itaewon from there. Then I met up with my friend Rudy around 8: 30 p.m. and we headed to the Rocky Mountain Tavern, which was awesome because I finally got to watch Sportscenter. You don't realize how much you miss something until you see it. Anyways, I met some of Rudy's friends and then Rudy took off with anotehr friend and I hung out with her friend Marco. Then we headed to over to Marco and Rudy's friend Jake's house and I headed up hanging out with all them until 3:00 p.m. Saturday afternoon when I finally decided to train it back home. Now, I had been awake since 6:30 a.m. Friday and I didn't go to sleep until I got home Saturday night around 5:00 p.m., so I was awake for about 36 hours. However, I did end up getting 16 hours of sleep Saturday night. When I got home last night my water wasn't working, so I was freadked out thinking I didn't pay and a bill and it got cut-off. I was beat, so I took a 4 hour nap and then got up and checked the water again, but it still wasn't working. I went upstairs and asked the landlord and he apologized saying that only the 1st and 2nd floors had water and the top floors would have it in about an hour or so. Around 10:00 p.m. he knocked on everyone's door to see if the water worked and it did.