Destination: Seoul, South Korea!: 'Twas A Musical Week!

Ah, my week at Seokgye was filled with excitement in the Music Department. The week started on a Tuesday because Monday was the holiday National Founders Day here in Korea. Tuesday consisted of me observing the music classes in Korean. They start each class by stretching and warming up their voices using the piano. Then, the teacher introduced the song Dongchang-ee, which means east window in Korean. It was a very difficult tune to understand because the singers voice vibrates very differently. Na-eun, the music teacher, even said that this is a difficult song for the children to learn because it is not very upbeat and fun. Everyone struggled through it anyways. I could not really tell if the students enjoyed the class but I do know that it was a lot of sitting and listening to the teacher. I did find out that Na-eun is a very young teacher. She is only 23 in Korean age and has been teaching for about 6 months.

On Thursday and Friday I was the music teacher to 4th and 5th graders, which was a bit scary considering I have no musical talent whatsoever. Since students were learning about Korean Folk music, I thought it would be fun to learn an easy American Folk tune. Home on the Range was about the only thing that popped into my head and I know how to sing it, which is a plus. I started off the class with a series of stretches to the song Twist and Shout! The kids loved it and actually danced a bit while we were stretching which was perfectly OK. I just wanted to get them moving before class. Then I was able to test my piano skills and warm up their voices. It was actually just me pressing a few keys that were close together and the students would sing the notes back to me. I guess it worked well because no one told me differently. Then I simply asked the students to listen to the song before we dug into the words and pronunciation and meanings of the song. After listening I handed out the lyrics and we went over the words together as a class. I showed the students what a banjo is and what an antelope looks like because these were very unfamiliar things to the students. We sang the song a few times and everyone caught on pretty quickly. Next, I compared Home on the Range to a Korean Folk Song called Arirang. The students all know the song so they sang with it. We filled out a Venn-Diagram that talked about similarities and differences between American and Korean Folk Music and had a discussion about it at the end of class. Overall, it was very different for me to teach music. It was fun and I think the kids had fun as well. They all wanted me to play more American Folk songs in the English classes that I teach! It was also a challenge because there were high and low level English learners. I had to teach to the lowest learner because I did not want to leave anyone behind. Sometimes my sentences were one or two words with more gestures than anything. The lesson started to get better and better as I taught each class, but the teacher told me that I did a very good job. My work in the music department is done for now.. :)

The rest of the school week was filled with my normal English classes on Tuesday and Wednesday. We talked about dreams in the 6th grade classes and the phrase "What are you doing?" in the 5th grade classes. The 6th graders had the task of coming up with a dream list after being introduced to John Goddard who wrote a book about his dream list. They could work as a group or work alone and everyone wanted to work in small groups. The students liked this small project a lot because it involved them using their artistic skills and having time to talk with their friends while they work. In the 5th grade classes, our focus was on games to improve their understanding of the unit "What are you doing?" We played Bingo, did role-playing, and finally played Snowball. Snowball consists of acting and speaking while remembering everything that was previously said in the group. It is a very fun game for the kids to play.

On Wednesday I was able to visit a private school and watch two Seokgye students compete in an English Speech Competition. They both took 1st place and I was so proud!! The younger group had to talk about a story and what they learned from it. The older group had to talk about a global issue and what they could do to help solve it. There were 16 participants overall and I found the whole thing to be very interesting. Here are the students from Seokgye..

My life outside of school was a little mellow this week. On Monday, Falyn and I went down to Ewha Womens University to walk around and browse the shops. It was her birthday (22!) so we just wanted to get out and celebrate a bit. We bought a few accessories and found these delicious candied grapes for sale. Oh, and Auntie Anne's pretzels was also in the vicinity so we had to stop and indulge! After shopping a bit, we went to dinner and ate some Korean BBQ. Wednesday was a day for gifts! My Grandma Bonnie mailed me a package of goodies and it made my day :) On Thursday I started feeling a bit sick. I think I caught a little bit of a cold. After school on Thursday I made a pit stop at Home Plus and bought the most amazing blanket ever! It sure does help to keep me warm at night. I took some medicine and was asleep by 8pm on Thursday. I am still not feeling 100% but definitely much better. Saturday was the International Fireworks Festival down at the Han River. Falyn and I went around 2p because it said that it was a festival.. but we did not see any festivities going on. We ended up finding a spot on the grass and laying down in the sun for a couple hours. No, we were not the only people laying down in the grass. Apparently we were supposed to bring a blanket for a picnic because that is what everyone does while waiting for the fireworks to start. Instead we slept and enjoyed a relaxing afternoon. The fireworks started around 730p and they were quite impressive. They lasted for over an hour! I think the scariest part was trying to get to the subway afterwards. There were masses of people crowding all of the streets and the police were screaming stuff in Korean which means nothing to people who speak English. Lucky for us some of the policemen could speak English so they told us what we were supposed to do. It took us well over an hour to get home. It was a very fun day, though!