My kids do me proud...

...and many of them can even spell Nuku'alofa correctly.

I just finished grading the Oceania map quiz. That's the hardest map quiz we've had yet, and the most totally unfamiliar. (Do you know what the capital of Vanuatu is? Could you even find Vanuatu on a map?) And they complained about it a lot (as far as I can remember this was the first time some kids even complained in writing in their weekly journals about a map quiz). But I corrected the quizzes today, and I'm really proud of my students. It's quite obvious that all of them studied (some of them harder than others); normally there are a few kids who obviously didn't and totally bomb the quiz. There was only one failing grade out of thirty-four kids, and he would have passed if he'd gotten a few more points; there were a few in the C+ and B- range, and a very gratifying number in the A-range. There are always a few extra credit points, so there are always a few kids with better-than-perfect scores, but this time it seemed like more than usual. Plus, my lowest-level ESL student, who was given a mandatory zero on his last map quiz because he had answers written on his hand (he would have failed it anyway), got a 63.5 out of 63. It made me so happy.

THIS JUST IN: Chickens not only birds to lay eggs

Ducks, quails also reproduce oviparously

The other day at school, one of my colleagues said she had accidentally bought some duck eggs. She had bought some expensive eggs, thinking they were organic or something. Having brought them home, she made an omelet. They tasted funny. She then saw a picture of a duck on the carton. Apparently she has some ethical qualms about eating duck eggs, and did not intend to eat any of the three remaining eggs. Seeing my interest, she offered to bring them to school for me. And she did; so I had three duck eggs to try. I had two of them fried with some of the leftover pork from the faculty dinner--they were good. Maybe a slightly stronger "eggy" or "gamey" flavor. Today I went out shopping and got another carton of duck eggs. I used some of them to make cookies, and now there are four left over. I don't know if the duckiness of the eggs made a difference to the cookies--I had to put about a cup of extra flour in to make them bake up properly (give them "structural integrity"), and using dark brown sugar instead of light brown was probably a bigger deal.

When Leslie and I are all grown up and have a house in suburbia with a backyard, I want to be a duck farmer.

Happy New Year!!

Hi everyone! It's the Lunar New Year this weekend, so we have today and tomorrow off from school! Last week was very busy (and I was quite sick); on top of our normal teaching and preparations, we also had to work on our curriculum maps (entering our units onto the special website) before our faculty meeting Friday afternoon. After the meeting, the school took us to dinner at a very nice Korean BBQ restaurant (I had tofu and Daniel took home a bunch of extra meat). On Saturday, we spent several hours watching the Olympics Opening Ceremony at our friend's apartment (they can get American television through slingbox), which was a lot of fun (she made us and her other guests delicious homemade banana muffins, crepes, and coffee cake), went shopping at Costco with another friend, and then went to that friend's place to eat Costco pizza for dinner and watch Amadeus. Yesterday, I met up with my elementary school friend (who's also teaching in Korea this year) at the Namsangol Hanok Village in the center of Seoul. It was very crowded--they had several special activities set up for the New Year, and a lot of children were wearing their beautiful traditional outfits (called hanbok) under their coats. It was fun to see kids playing with traditional toys, writing good-luck letters, and making recorders out of bamboo. We also watched a cool performance (video below) and tried homemade rice wine (called Makgeolli--not my favorite). We later went back to the apartment she's currently staying in, which is near Itaewon, and then I met Daniel in Itaewon at a yummy Indian restaurant for Valentine's Day dinner. Today, I need to start doing some work (grading tests and planning my next units especially). We are traveling to Kyoto, Japan for Spring Break (at the end of March), so we've spent a lot of time on the internet and skype the last couple of days trying to find hotels; we've called at least 20 places for the first night we're there (we're set for the rest of the week) and they're all booked, or else very expensive. We'll keep trying! :) I can't wait to visit Japan! We hope you're all doing well!


Playing with hoops.


They had a "man" and "woman" in traditional clothing.


The N Seoul Tower.


Making Korean recorders.


The garden, looking down from the traditional houses.


In one of the traditional houses.


One of the rooms.


Letters people had written.


I loved his hanbok.


Kite-flying.


The performance--look at their hats!


More performance.




The rice wine.


Yummy red bean-filled pastries.


At the Indian restaurant.

Ice Skating Adventure

Hi everyone! After a stressful past few weeks, we had lots of fun today because of an ice skating field trip (for 4th-10th grades) this afternoon! While chaperoning our homerooms (which mainly consisted of getting them there and back in one piece), Daniel and I also had the chance to skate! We were at the rink for over two hours, and I skated for most of that time. While the students were first being given group lessons, the ice was open on one side of the rink, which was very nice; when they were done with the lessons, it was pretty crowded. I skated alone, with Daniel, and with a few of my students (at one point, I was pulling two girls at once). The only not-so-fun part was when one of the 8th graders cut right in front of me, and when I tried to stop, I fell and bruised my knee. :( Most of the students had a great time; however, a few of them (the 10th grade boys especially) didn't want to give it a try. Here are some pictures from the trip:



My students getting their group lessons.



Empty ice!





A few of my ninth graders.


While fixing my skates.






Two other teachers. :)


I taught my students how to play Apples to Apples today (in the half an hour we had left of school when we got back); they really enjoyed it.