English Camp

For two days before and two days after Christmas my school ran an English Camp. The point of the camp is to teach English (obviously) to the students in a more entertaining way than ordinary class. The students at my school were lucky enough to play basketball, sing songs, learn a dance, and read books, to name just a few of the activities that filled the four day camp. The last day of camp was performance day, and I managed to make a few videos of some of the students "performing."

The 1st and 2nd graders had to introduce themselves in English. They were very nervous to do this in front of all the teachers and other students, but I think they did well.

Here's a 1st grade girl introducing herself:



Here's a 2nd grader introducing himself:



And here is a group of 4th, 5th, and 6th graders singing Old MacDonald:



Proving just how great of a teacher I am, none of those students spoke a word of English before camp started.

(That might not be true.)

(But I'm still a great teacher.)

Vacation!

One of the few perks of the whole teaching in Korea job (other than not having to pay rent, free air fare to and from Korea, and the whole getting to live in Korea thing) is the 3 weeks paid vacation we get over winter break. My vacation started yesterday, Friday, and this Tuesday I'll be flying to the Philippines. Rough life, huh? I'm traveling with one other teacher from Taebaek, and we'll be there for 2 weeks.

What are you going to do for 2 weeks in the Philippines? Well, other than sit on a beach and get tan, we have no real plans. Well, no plans besides swimming with whale sharks. That's right. We'll be swimming with whale sharks. Try not to get too jealous.

He Lives!

Oh look Brian hasn't posted in a long time. Go figure. Don't worry, I'm working on that right now. To start, here is a link to the photobucket account I just set up, so everyone can see all the pictures I have been taking and will be taking while in Korea. Enjoy.

http://s760.photobucket.com/albums/xx241/bnewsom3/

Your Turn to Suffer

These are some examples of Korean pop music, or "K-Pop." These songs have been stuck in my head at various points in the past couple weeks, so I think it's only fair that I try to get these songs stuck in your heads as well. And trust me, the attractiveness of the girls in the videos does nothing to decrease just how annoying most of these songs are.











Ok, I lied. I actually like this next song a lot, but only because the English translation of the lyrics is absolutely ridiculously hilarious. I've included the link for the lyrics in English after the video.




http://www.jpopasia.com/lyrics/14764/norazo/superman.html

I'm Famous

So our little dance got some attention and now we are in a newspaper here in Korea. Here is the article (the picture at the top of the post is the picture that went along with the article):

http://www.tjinews.co.kr/ArticleView.asp?intNum=4222&ASection=001001

I'm assuming most of you won't be able to read that, but I assure you that it says nothing bad about any of us. The article doesn't even mention the dance, just the Korean contest. The paper just chose the most entertaining picture it had from the festivities to put with the article.

The point of all of this is I made it into a Korean newspaper, and not for any of the reasons most of you assumed I would make it into the newspaper for. Ha!

Enjoy

That's me and some other teachers singing the chorus of "Sorry Sorry" by Super Junior as part of my speech at the Korean contest we were lucky enough to attend this week. We are also attempting the dance that goes along with the song. I think we look "great."

Now here's the actual song and dance. I can't really tell much of a difference between the two videos. Except for the fact that I'm better looking than anyone in the 2nd video. The part we tried to replicate starts at 59 seconds and runs to 1:29.

Showing You How Big of a Dork I Am

I found all these videos tonight, and I think they are hilarious. They are posted funny to funniest, and that's not up for debate.




Some people have too much time on their hands.




I hate Scarface, but I love Star Wars. Shocking.




If you didn't laugh at least a little bit at that, we can't be friends anymore.




Funniest because of how ridiculous it is.