Speaking Tests and Fun with Friends

Two weeks ago, I was getting the students ready for their speaking tests. In previous semesters, I had some guidance about what the test question should be, but this semester, I was told just to make a culture question. My third grade question is about manners, and it is a bit harder than I intended. It took me two classes of teaching the topic before I really hit my stride with it, so I'm a bit worried about those two classes and how they will preform on the test. We shall see. The second grade question is about English idioms. Last week, I was supposed to start giving the tests for all the grades, but the second grade teachers felt that most of the students forgot about the tests, so they postponed it until next week. Personally, I felt that if the students forgot then it was their fault since I told all of them about it. I did start the third grade tests though, and they have been good so far. These are the last speaking tests I will be giving anyway.

Two Sundays ago, we had a wonderful time with our friends Marie and Ben. They came over to our house for the first time ever! We've been over to their house for so many fun events this year since they have a nice, big place, but they had never been to our's before. They came over in the afternoon, and we played Beersbee in the park near my school. It's a game where you put cans on two poles opposite each other, and the teams take turns trying to knock the can off the pole with a frisbee. They are taped out beer cans, hence the name. After playing for a while, we went back to the house and played Catan before getting dinner at red pork and milk shakes at a delicious place down the road from the red pork BBQ place. Hope they had a fun time visiting our place!

Last Friday night, we saw Pitch Perfect 2 with everyone except Matthew, who was being lame. Gianni and I didn't go into it with high hopes, but it was actually pretty good. There were jokes that fell flat, but most of it was pretty funny. Not a great movie, but worth watching anyway. It was another one of those movies though that really doesn't translate well to a Korean audience. There were a lot of English language jokes or jokes with American Culture references, so we and the other foreigners in the theater were the only ones to laugh at those.

On Saturday, we spent the day playing games with Maria and Matthew. The board game cafe has Life in English now, so we've been playing that. It's such a long game. At one point, we were debating whether to stay or leave the board game cafe, and I think the manager saw us debating. He asked another staff member to come over and bring us a new game to try called Splendor. We really can't say no to the manager, and he always gives us such excellent recommendations (Love Letter, Ticket to Ride...). He seems us all the time, so he knows what kinds of games we like by now. So we played a game of Splendor before we left. It involves having to use gems to buy cards that give you points to win. In a way, it's kind of a mix of ticket to ride and citadels (a card game we like). After about 3 hours in the board game cafe, we went around the corner to get some delicious Italian at Little Italia.

This week, I continued giving speaking tests to third graders and started giving them to second graders. I'm being a little tough on the second graders because they had a whole preparation class to write something and practice it for the test. Most of the kids are doing pretty well, even the third graders who I taught prior to really nailing down my lesson about the topic.

Another big news story in Korea that you may have seen abroad is that Korea now has the most people with MERS outside of the Arabian Peninsula. MERS is a respiratory virus that started in the Arabian Peninsula. It came to Korea after a Korean man went out there to work. He came back and visited 4 hospitals before they realized what it was. The virus spreads through close contact with individuals who have it, so it's not really easy to catch at least. The man spread the virus to some hospital staff and other patients at the hospitals he visited before being diagnosed. Most of the reported cases are in the Northern part of Korea, around Seoul. But I have heard rumors that there is one person being treated at a hospital in Daegu that isn't terribly far away from us. In any case, we've been told not to worry too much and to just wash our hands a lot and maybe wear a face mask. The Koreans do seem to be quite worried about it. I guess when the SARS virus came to Korea 10 years ago, there were immediate moves by the government to contain it, which helped keep people calm. As far as I understand, the government has not done a whole lot of deal with the problem of MERS, and the president is even taking a trip to America soon, angering a lot of people. This morning, my school, and most, if not all, of the schools in Daegu, stopped the kids on their way in to school to check their temperatures. Not sure how effective that is because a kid could just get a fever another day, so unless you check them everyday, I don't see the point. Also, apparently, some of the schools weren't even wiping off the thermometer before giving it to the next kid. I didn't stop to watch what they were doing at my school, but that's so disgusting. I know that the Western and foreign media keeps writing news articles about how MERS isn't that big a deal here because Korea has such a modern medical system. In a way, that is true. But based on what I heard from friends this morning, they don't even have a grasp of basic hygiene! Some friends said they were wiping the end of the thermometer with alcohol wipes...at least that's something. Others said they were just going from one to the next. They mostly use the in-ear thermometers in Korea, but that's still disgusting! You don't want someone else's ear gunk in your ear! Other places use the "rub on your forehead" kind, which I have never seen, but still sweat rubbing on sweat. Anyway, I think the Korean government needs to get on this and give instructions to people instead of staying silent and causing fear. The hospitals where there have been reported cases are even threatening to file libel suits against anyone who publishes specifics about where patients are being treated! That's insane. I think people have a right to know and avoid those hospitals. Anyway, rant over. I'll keep you updated on the situation if anything else comes up.

We are headed to see some dinosaur fossils and footprints on the Southern coast of Korea this Saturday. Gotta be careful and make sure not to get MERS on the bus, but there haven't been reports of anything to the South of us. Hopefully, it'll be ok.