Wednesday 20 June 2012

I know... I'm not a good blogger... sorry!

Well, I had hoped to have been able to post at least once a fortnight on here but it just hasn't be possible...

My workload in school went from 'slightly easier than last year' to 'what they give with one hand, they take away with the other' and my microly reduced timetable of classes jumped to include 7 extra classes - 4 before school (starting at 7.50am) and 3 after school classes. In total it equated to 100 hours extra work that I was having to plan for on top of my regular classes so I wasn't really amused.

Now, with summer coming up, many students for these extra classes are starting to fade off... which is bad in  that I am still having to be in school at 7.45am but then most of them don't even turn up until 8am or later - which also means we don't get the work done in class and they have homework to do (which quite a few don't do with any conviction at all).
While trying to plan for the summer, and what camps I was having, I was told that I'd be taking 2 hours each day (for 2 weeks) of students for a competition, 2 hours of guitar class, and then 4 hours each day of English Camp (1 week for Grade 1s and 1 week for Grade 2s).  After sleeping on it I decided that I wasn't convinced of the benefits of teaching the guitar class everyday for 2 hours - if they don't practice at home (which most don't) then they are only coming me for me to practice it with them... which means they are wasting my time and theirs.  I need them to listen, understand and copy what I play and then to practice playing it themselves so we can move on... but it seems that only 2 guys in the class actually adhere to this notion where the others just think it will come naturally! Yeah... right!

My teaching should be finished on the 3rd of August... so I have literally 12 days away from school before the new term starts (4 of those days are weekends and 1 day is a National Holiday - so I only get 7 days holidays).

Grrrrr....

So anyway, less of my complaining... what's been happening...

Let's see... my last post was in April and I promised a load of photos from our Winter Vacation (how American!) so the if you haven't visited our Flickr page to view the photos then you can have a looksy below at the slideshow!  Our holiday was to Kuala Lumpar in Malaysia, then up to Bangkok in Thailand, back to Northern Malaysia, Penang, a couple of days on an Island off the coast before taking an over night train back down to Kuala Lumpar and then flying home to Korea!
[If it looks like we did a lot of eating... then yes, we did!]


We also got to pop home for a quick visit in February which was much needed.  I think my Mum always thought I'd be the one out of the two of us that would get homesick - but I don't really.  I enjoy doing something different having a little distance from the scandals and stories back home for a while, ever safe in knowing that I plan on returning home to live at some point closed to family.  Danielle on the other hand does miss home a lot... well, not so much home but family and she sometimes finds it difficult - though making money, having job security and ultimately being on a road to being debt free is a strong remedy - so getting home, or seeing people from home is always lovely.


The trip home allowed us to have family gatherings, days out for birthdays, meet up with some other friends and restock on toothpaste, deodorant and pain killers.  We also filled up with chocolate, Easter Eggs and other sweetie essentials that we figured we would not see for possibly the next 18 months at the least. 

There are hundreds more photos to include on here... so I'll cheat and do them all separately!