silly costumes and catchy tunes

The graduation ceremony went off without a hitch, it was hosted by me and a co-teacher named Reggie. The kids did well, and the parents seemed interested at the beginning. I'm not looking forward to the pageant era of my life, let me tell you. The only thing less engaging than your own child dressed in a silly costume reciting some song or poem is someone else's child in a silly costume, but I digress.

Some of the acts were very cute, and here are some of the kids I've been teaching for the last few months.

These are photos of some kids from Kiwi class,

This is Brady, Sunshine and Sue. Brady thinks that I really like when she does her work really fast and then tells me she's finished, incessantly. So I've learned to give her mindless activities to do until the other kids finish (like copying out the alphabet repeatedly). It's quite effective.

This is Sunshine up-close, she looks like a fish

Kiwi class is sometimes very difficult to teach. There are a lot of characters in that class. Daniel has the floppiest ears I've encountered. If you flick them they wobble

for like 3 minutes, it's hypnotic. He doesn't mind you playing with them. They don't normally wear those drab uniforms, they can wear whatever during class but for the graduation thing they all wore their uniforms.

This is Paul and Thomas. They are two of the smartest kindergarten kids I've met. They both speak very clearly and keep me entertained. Thomas weighs about 6 lbs. and can fit in my pocket. He is very tiny.

They are a part of Banana class, who I teach every morning before Kiwi class. The classrooms are usually more decorated but because this week there are all new students we had to take down all the decorations. Banana class is the oldest class I think and they are some of the most capable kids in the school. I play games with them and it's usually Uno, but they play it carefully, so as to not make anyone angry. As the object of Uno is to get rid of your cards, playing a pick-up-2 card is social suicide. If you play this card your neighbour has to pick up 2 more cards. I've seen friendships dissolve over such a strategy. Don't even get me started on the pick-up-4 cards. I haven't had a game class where someone hasn't started sobbing because the person changed directions, postponing their turn til it reaches them the other way. It's tremendously entertaining.

This is just a little clip of the kids in the class, Patrick, Bobby, Thomas, the girl formerly known as Wendy, and Michelle. Wendy decided that Agnes was a better name, it means lamb..lamb of God; I guess that's better so she is now called Agnes. The video is not hilarious, but it's shows you what the kids are like.

On to the graduation thing, the kids have been working on a song and a little dramatic presentation in English and they performed it for the parents. The Korean teachers had a catalogue of kids' costumes and sometimes they were a bit strange. One class dressed kind of like tiny gay American patriotic pirates. They had tight spandex suites that looked like the American flag and plastic head band things that were also flags, it was very strange and they sang "lets twist again". I unfortunately have no photos or videos of said performance.

Kiwi class doing Peter Pan(s)

In the suit, is Daniel. He is very active but his mother makes him wear very thick sweaters, so he is always very sweaty. His hair is usually pressed into the side part, but when it's sweaty it's really quite funny. I dreamt that he had a sweating condition and it was a serious medical problem. The kids have began to invade my dreams too, not a good sign.

I had to sing "playground in my mind" with Orange class. I didn't know the song but I think we did well.

Anyways, this is getting long. And I'm tired of playing with arrangements of photos. I hope this adequately described the event or at least some of the hilarity that are my students. I apologize for the wonky alignment of photos and things but it's getting really frustrating and I'd like to be done with it.

I'll talk more later
keep it real.

Evan