Swing time!

This is my little niece (now 4 years old) pushing her little brother (now 2.5yrs) at the kiddies playground in Kings Park last week

Back home

Well after four and a half absolutely AMAZING months in South Korea, 
I am back home. I was so busy I didn't do any blog entries! So just for 
a quick summary:

Handong Global University, which is a Christian university in a fishing 
village called Pohang (country area) paid my return airfare, meals, 
accommodation and gave me a salary to teach Korean 3rd graders 
on a winter English camp. I flew out of Perth on Christmas day last 
year on a 33 degrees Celsius warm summer day and into Seoul on 
Boxing Day on a MINUS 11 degrees Celsius FREEZING cold winter 
day! So crazy. It was a relatively quick flight - just two planes: Malaysian 
airlines to KL, then Korean air to Seoul. Easy. 13hrs in total including 
one-hour in the airport between flights.

Well I was pleasantly surprised to meet 15 other international teachers 
who had also been recruited to teach English. They came from England, 
America, Canada, South Africa and The Netherlands. Nicest people ever.

The first month of teaching was tough and it was definitely God's grace 
that enabled me to teach five classes a day. I really don't know how I did it. 
I sang, danced, taught balloon art, played silly games, bribed the kids with 
lollies ... whatever it took to kill the time. I had no clue as to what i was doing 
most of the time and got horribly sick, as did all the other teachers because 
we were grossly overworked. Well the work itself was not hard, but what was 
hard was the incredibly full-on schedule that included meetings up to midnight 
some nights and then having to do lesson plans after this!

Having never taught in my life before and having no clue as to how to prepare 
lesson plans, i was more reliant on prayer and grace than the others, i'm sure. 
I definitely has fun though and the other teachers were seriously the nicest 
bunch of people and the most amazing people I have ever met in my life. 
I loved them all to bits, despite all our differences. They were great.

The kids on the other hand were challenging. I had some very naughty boys 
who became more and more naughty as time went by. I would be writing on the 
board, only to turn around and find that one had climbed up on the window sill 
or one had unplugged the heater and was riding on it like a bike! lol 


Then my little girls also required much grace. It was hard to balance good and 
bad behaviour in the class and i had one of the most, if not the most, 
challenging combination of kids possible. Actually, i think every teacher agreed 
mine were the naughtiest class :-)

So that was the teaching bit summed up in a very short commentary that doesn't seem 
to do my time justice. Oh well, another day :-)

Messages for the devil who is under my feet