I had a really confusing class in Grade 3 today as half of them weren't there yesterday and they definitely had to do today what the class did yesterday (if that makes sense?) so I had to split the class in two and my co-teacher wasn't in.

What happens??

My Mentor teacher offers her help!! First day shes offered and first day it was needed :D.

So she looked after the half who had to catch up and to begin with I didn't know what to do with the other half, as, if we played games then we'd distract the others and they'd rush thier work to finish and join in.

SO

I decided to begin using my resources and read to them from one of my thousands of books. It was the most bizarre experience. My old primary school teachers used to read to me and here I was doing the exact same thing 17-18years later to a bunch of Korean children in Korea.

To start they were sat in semi-circle around me listening, really, quite intently. Although I was sat next to the board so if they didn't understand anything I could just draw it.

By the end they pratically climbing on top of me and pulling the most amazed, happy and excited faces to anything that happened in the book... you wouldn't think a book called 'Bear in the Square' would be that exciting but for them it was.

I don't think I've ever had a lesson with Grade 3 when they've been that quiet throughout the entire lesson.

For Grade 5 one student turned up so we just went a played outside recording his 'Daily Schedule' - I've set a competition project for Grades 5 and 6 to record thier daily schedule and the winner gets and AMAZING award. So today the daily schedule included;

'I balance with my friends' (I got em to climb a climbing frame and have 3 of em stand on top of it.... I couldn't even do it so fair play to em!!)

'I climb trees' (self-explanatory) and

'I do obstacle course' but he didn't win that one, I DID!! So he ain't using that in his project!

Also this week the kids filled out thier forms for after-school classes. I think they have a choice of eight different things to do.

SO out of 70 students in total in the school, just under 50 of them have signed up to do after-school English now.

It made me so happy yesterday to hear that... can't quite believe it. In my Grade 1 and 2 class today I almost filled every chair!! And not only that they are remembering what I teach them as we had a (sort of) test today. AND my lesson was being supervised aswell. Golden Day!

AND I've managed to get from 19th January to 6th February on holiday. Just shows how much ya can wrangle an official '7 days holiday' with talent show dances, weekends and national holidays!!

Although these weekend the POE (Provincial Office of Education in Jeju) are paying for us all to go in a submarine with windows to go look at fish, go go-carting and fly in hot air ballons across the island and I've book flights to Busan to go see mates from orientation for the weekend. I am gutted!! If there is a lesson here then it is don't go and see people you want to see; wait at home and there is a 2% chance of something 5 times as better occuring.

Saying that this weekend in Busan may be the best of my life so I am not bitter.... No, no I am not.

ALSO now I have found maybe 3 people who are super happy to teach me Korean for free, a man to help me make Korean food (ate tuna the other night and it wasn't actually that bad.... apologises to anyone who I criticsed in the past) AND a piano teacher maybe on the short-list aswell!!! I just hope the inspiration and motivation keeps up!!