In China, they have a saying: "Don't put your winter clothes away until Tomb Sweeping Day". This may seem like a really obscure guidleine to follow when changing over your wardrobes for the seasons, but without fail it proved correct for both my Springs in China.
Last week, the weather in Korea was absolutely spectacular: mid teens throughout the week. I was tempted to have my winter coat dry-cleaned and sent back to Canada, but then something in the back of my head told me to keep it around for a bit alonger.
This year, Tomb Sweeping Day (QingMing Jie) falls on April 4th. Sure enough, despite the spectacular weather we'd been having, this Sunday it rained and cooled off enough for me to need my winter coat again this week. Chinese wisdom strikes true again! Mark the 4th on your calendar and don't put your warm woolies away until then!
2 Comments
This week I've been doing station activities with my students where they rotate through 4 different stations during thier class. There is a listening exercise, a speaking exercise, a vocabulary development exercise and finally a writing exercise which is supposed to bring all the skills together. In the last station, I instructed the students to put their finished writing in an envelope so that it could be corrected and I could write some feedabck on it. This seemed like a brilliant idea to me, until I looked at the stack of papers on my desk and rememebered I have approximately 780 students. Right. Spotted yesterday, on the line 7 metro from Taereung to Suraksan in full rush hour train-car squishiness: Although it's not officially Spring here in Korea, the weather would make you guess otherwise. The last couple of weeks have been absolutely beautiful, with daytime temperatures floating around the +10 mark, and this weeks forecast expecting a high of +17 by Thursday! How happy am I?!?! The new school year in Korea started on March 3rd, but the week leading up to that I took another 5 days of holiday leave, and stayed in Seoul to explore things that are a little closer to home. The War Memorial Museum had an exhibition of the Dead Sea Scrolls, so I finally paid it a visit, but find that I need to go back to really do it justice. Even in the couple of hours I spent there, I only managed to get through the outdoor exhibits, the Dead Sea Scrolls special exhibit and the first floor historical war exhibits, where I finally found out what a Turtle Boat is! The famous Turtle Boat, complements of Yi Sun Shin. Another beautiful day during that week of holidays, Sara, Richard and I decided to hop on the Seoul metro for 2 hours and head to Suwon and it's famous Folk Village. You just can't come to Korea and not see a Folk Village! Being the middle of the week, we were close to the only ones there, so it made for a nice, quiet outing. It was definitely Spring-y with the clear blue sky, the heat of the sun, the snow and ice melting, and all the farm animals copulating. Kid you not, we interrupted a ridiculous number of mating attempts that day. I managed to get quite the look from a goat at one point after coming around the corner and bursting out in laughter, scaring off his partner. Oops.
...Kimchi pots!! We spent the later part of that day hiking up a hill in the middle of the city to walk around the walls of the Hwaseong fortress. Really spectacular, and it offered some amazing 360 degree views of the city. And that pretty much brings us up to date other than this past week I returned to school and so far, it seems things may go a lot smoother than the last 6 months. I have three new co-teachers, half of my students have moved up to high-school and I am trying some new things in my lessons which have so far proven good for behavior management and keeping the students on task. In my current job, I generally manage the success of the day/week by the number of times I have been told to 'Go f*** myself'. So far this week: 0 . An absolute record. Hopefully this is the start of a new beginning and not just them going easy on me because it's the first week :) |
Recently Updated...03.25 - Two posts! About Me...Out and about in the world, teaching others and educating myself. Stuff I Like...Traveling. Cuddling a cat. New toothbrushes. Friends. Socks of the Joanne Younes variety. The smell of sun-dried laundry. Baking. Archives
March 2008
|