DayMindXPression is a writing repository by Daniel Shin. The online magazine focuses on various subjects that come to mind. As a place to publish various essays and articles, Day Mind XPression and its content are copyrighted.
© 2007 – 2008 Daniel Shin
The above fascinated looking kids are my students at the orphanage center. We had a couple of minutes to burn before our class time ended, so I decided to take out my Cowon P5 and play the World News Webcast podcast. They never have seen an English news video before, so it was a great experience to them.
Unfortunately, some of my students are still struggling to remember and recognize the ABCs (Capitalized and lower case, which are actually a lot of letters), and all of them probably did not understand a word what Charles Gibson was reporting. Nevertheless, they loved watching the news, because they got to see President Obama in video form (I guess these third graders don’t watch the news at all).
Teaching English has been a rewarding opportunity, but there have been some hiccups. I had to punish two students today for continuous disruption and made one of them almost cry. Still, I love all of my students and hope they can use my English lessons to do well in school when their term starts.
I have mentioned that I am volunteering at a children orphanage by teaching Basic English to nine third graders. Unfortunately, due to the increasing moral hazards among the young students I was forced to punish a boy for disrupting the class.
It was not a pretty scene, but it was necessary. Many of the third graders poke each other, make jokes (which are tangent to the class material), and sometimes yell at other students during class time. I have been very tolerant for their behavior, because first, they are young, and second, they are doing their best to study the material, despite what it seems to the contrary.
Many times, the yelling and the screaming among the students get out of hand, and in the past I have threatened them to kick anybody out for excessive distracting behavior. But because I have never actually kicked anybody out, the children seemed to develop a theory that I might not follow the penalty regardless how disruptive they are.
So, I had to stop class and tell a student to get out. He was under emotional paralysis, but I had to act firm, so I told the class that I would not resume class until he got out. He stayed glued to the seat, perhaps waiting for a possible pass from the teacher, and I just waited without teaching until our class time ran out.
This was a very effective punishment, because many others in class have told the student to get out, so that they can continue learning English (which clears the notion that the punishment was arbitrary and unfair). I talked to the student alone after class and told him not to disrupt class again. I really did not want to punish a student for misbehavior, but the moral hazard levels were approaching beyond my tolerance.
Well, it was a good experience nevertheless.
Here is a video of my class when they are mostly working hard.
I have decided to take a break from my principle (of eating all Korean) by eating lunch at a Korean McDonalds.
I initially thought that McDonalds was going to be expensive, but for 4500 won, which is about $4.50-ish, I had a large meal. Price-wise, it is competitive, but the only complaint that Americans might have is that a “large” in Korea is actually a medium in the United States.
The burger was so tall that it was wrapped with a paper container to prevent the stacks from falling off.
There is a lot more lettuce compared to the McDonalds burgers in the United States, and the sauce they used has a nice hint of Korean flavor to it. It’s similar in taste with the sweet and sour sauce. Overall, the meal was quite good!
There is an emphasis on recycling your waste in a Korean McDonalds.
Finally, this is totally awesome! You can actually have your happy meal delivered by a McDelivery service.
The past couple of weeks have been somewhat crazy in terms of workload from my LSAT studies, and unfortunately I could not allocate the time to continue the daily blog writing for my “Hitting the Wave” writing series.
It all started as I put off a couple of blog posts to make time for additional rest. Solving three or more LSAT sections a day truly took out a good cognitive energy out of me, and I truly did not have the strength to do much anything else, except sleeping.
There were a couple of interesting events since the last writing entry, and I would nevertheless write them later in time. Thus, I have decided to abandon the daily writing method and adopt a more flexible writing schedule in which I will write an entry about a current or a past event every two or three days. I wanted to stick to the daily writing schedule, but the study schedule demanded additional attention.
Although I have not been writing for the couple of weeks, I have still continued to carry the digital camera and record some of the most interesting moments in my life in Korea. There are a couple of video clips that I am ready to feature in the future writing entries, so please be excited! Some of the interesting writings topics in line include “The best place to date in Korea”, “An awesome view of Seoul from high above”, and “Teaching English at a Korean Orphanage” (Each of these planned writing entries have a video clip attached).
In any case, life has been quite busy, but I love my summer life. It’s been rainy today, but for a couple of days the temperature reached almost 90 degrees in Seoul, so staying indoors (with air conditioning) has been bliss.
There will be a new writing entry in three days, so stay tuned! (Or subscribe to the website’s RSS feed)
It has been over three weeks since my arrival in Korea, and I think it calls for a “reflection” post.
First, I have been doing some intensive studying on the LSAT. I have been improving very well, but my ultimate weakness is the pressure from the time limit. Other than that, I think I like the gaming section out of the other three sections as long as I am able to make good deductions prior to answering the questions.
Second, I am surprised by the schedule that I have been on for the past three weeks. Waking up early in the morning, going to school to study, and then coming late at night isn’t as frustrating as I anticipated. Of course, waking up early in the morning isn’t the greatest feeling.
Third, Korea is much geekier than the United States. Everybody is using their cell phones to practically do everything virtual. However, I doubt that these wonderful people check their e-mail accounts as often as I do in the United States. Speaking of cell phones, I rarely see people working on their laptop in public areas, such as coffee shops.
