has it really been that long?

Wow.  I haven't posted much of anything on here and I see the last post was in January.  I really need to spend more time writing about life here in lovely South Korea.  This year I worked very hard and took a three week vacation in the Summer.  I was able to have a great visit to the UK and then I travelled by train all the way down to Sicily where I took a ferry over to Malta for three days to take in the Rod Stewart concert.  After that I flew to Egypt (because it was on the way) and finally got to see the pyramids and the Egyptian Museum.  I do want to go back and skip Cairo (hated it) and see the Valley of the Kings and take a real cruise on the Nile.  After that I hit Kenya for a week and had some great times with my son Chris.  He is raisning money for some water projects in Muhuru Bay and I couldn't be prouder of him.



When I arrived home I was totally surprised to find that my dear friend Mallie had sent me another care package and this time she decided that I needed Jell-o more than anything else in the world.   As we all know, there is always room for Jell-o and I am so happy to have such a dear, and somewhat crazy friend.



 The Fall semester started of great.  I really think I'm hitting my stride as a teacher.  This year I'm pretty much teaching on my own so I'm using lots of powerpoints that I ind on waygook.org.  I breeze through the chapters in the book and supplement with games and activities that I find either at waygook or barryfunenglish.  I have my 1st and 2nd graders started on phonics and a couple of them are turning into pretty good readers.

September brought friends to Andong for the mask festival and several false starts for other trips. Some new teachers have arrived in town so our little community of English teachers is growing again.  Now October is suddenly here and I am gearing up for the KOTESOL International Conference in Seoul this weekend.  Sundays I offer free English classes at my apartment for some of the teachers and their friends and this past week six of them showed up.  It's a little difficult because of their varying levels of English speaking ability but it certainly is fun to have someone other than small children to talk to.  Thursday nights I teach the formal English class for teachers but I really like the informality of having a class, some wine and a little food at my apartment.

Last but not least the funniest web video series about English teachers in Japan has surfaced.  Episode One deals with a newbie teacher at a private school.  The second episode was just released and I really love the opening segment about teaching philosophies and styles.  It really is funny stuff!