Maverick! English, please!!!!

This is the first weekend that I am spending all by myself organizing my life.
Although it might sound semi-antisocial it is much needed. It is imperative that I deep clean my apartment and get some "me" time. Sometimes, just sitting and getting things done that you need to do is tremendously important. I've been trying to read a book lately called, Freakanomics, it's really interesting, but I hardly have the time to actually delve into its actual content. The only chance I get to read it is on the subway to work. A grand total of probably...10 minutes a day. Pitiful.

Next weekend our school is having a PT Competition (Power Point Presentation). The competition takes place in another area right outside or Seoul with all the different Avalon Nok-Ji-Won campuses. Each of the foreign teachers was chosen by one of the students to be their mentor for their project. Erica chose me, and her presentation is whether genius is a product of nature or nurture. Her argument is that genius is made, not born. The other 2 students that are going from our campus are Sue and Ted. Sue is doing her presentation on Animal Cruelty and Ted is doing his on the Somali Pirates. They should be interesting. :)

With the new semester beginning this week I also got a whole new batch of students. It's kind of sad because I miss my old students, but I have some really fun new ones. For example, they give themselves English names, right? Well, sometimes they come up with some very original ones. I now have a Cropcop, Maverick, and Dumbledore. So in class now I get to say, "Dumbledore, can you read the first paragraph please?" One of my students also named herself Claudia, which is one of my best friends names; that made me smile!

I teach Writing, Newspapers in Education, and Converstation classes this semester. Writing and Newspaper class are both Nok-Ji-Won level, therefore, the students levels are really high (pretty much fluent speakers). The Conversation class, however, varies in level. They go from BA (which is the lowest in my part of the campus- they hardly talk to you) to NI (which is just one notch below Nok-Ji-Won). To put this in perpective in Newpaper class this week we talked about the morality and ethics of the death penalty and in Conversation we discussed how to answer the phone and take a message. What I find most challenging about this is switching gears between one class and another because sometimes I will literally have a NOK class and a BA class back-to-back. So, I'll go into my NOK class and talk to them like they're slow and they will look at me like I'm crazy.

Next week I should have some awesome pictures from the PT competition. I'll post them ASAP. Maybe I'll get a picture of Maverick this week, too. For now though, I'm going to go back to cleaning and reading. I miss you all and hope everyone is doing well.

Oh yeah, Mom and Dad, I forgot the one thing I was telling you about that you said I should write about. What was it?

Love,
Margaret