World Cup Withdrawl

Hello all,

Hopefully everyone had a chance to see the World Cup final. It was good, not exceptional, but thoroughly dramatic. If you don't know, Italy beat France in penalty kicks after the score was tied 1-1 after regulation. Personally, I felt kinda ripped off that the final of all finals was decided by penalty kicks. I mean, penalty kicks are not a true indicator of a team's strength. Basically, it has nothing to do with the feel of the game... Needless to say, I was disappointed with the outcome. However, I couldn't help but get caught up in the craziness of Zidane's headbut. I seriously think Zidane lost his mind...the dude is too old!

On a related note, I was able to play soccer here! HJ's church is actually thinking of organizing a soccer team - and would like me to participate. So last Sunday, they had a little scrimmage. It was awesome fun...like totally. So much fun to play soccer in Korea with Koreans. Seriously. I was totally impressed with the guys from her church too. My first impression was that most were relatively unassuming, but get them on the soccer field - they tear it up! Good times...

Continuing on, I hope everyone is doing well and enjoyed their Canada Day. Life has been moving briskly along, day after day turning into week after week. I am amazed that I have been here more than a month now. I am still very much enjoying teaching. Things are starting to feel pretty natural and I am really enjoying being in front of a bunch of students all day. And when I say all day, I really mean a quite smallish chunk of the day. Each class is 50 minutes long, which works out pretty well, and I have a maximum of 6 classes a day. (This is just such a cute picture of my locker - doesn't Mr. Fluffy look so tired!! Really, this made me laugh so much...)

These teaching experiences have also taught me (quite quickly) that I prefer working with certain grades. Before coming to Korea, I had thought that teaching at any grade level in elementary school (above kindergarten) would be great fun. Yet, I know one thing - grade one and two students are so crazy! These kids have way too much energy! I think a small part of the problem is the fact they only understand about 10% of what I say...but seriously...these students would need constant monitoring regardless of speaking English or Korean.

Now, these students can fun for sure too...but I still think my more favourite classes are grade 5 and 6 students. Everything makes more sense, we can joke around, and they're not constantly hitting, crawling, and running around... It is kind of sad though, because I am only teaching at Mokdong for a few more weeks. It's gonna be a little bit hard to say goodbye to some of these students. Although I surely won't miss the commute.

In other news....Korea has recently been overwhelmed with rain. Apparently, the rainfall has broken records in some areas. But that's not all - as you can see here, the rain has even managed to flood subway stations! So, yeah, I guess a fair amount of damage all around. However, nothing really too close to where I am, thankfully. I think the rain is mostly due to the summer monsoon season here in Seoul, but a passing typhoon Bilis doesn't help either! The humidity has been kinda gross lately too. From what HJ tells me, it will only get worse, as typically July and August are the worst for humidity. Still, the sensation of wet warmness every time you step outside a building takes some getting used to. I'm not complaining though, I would much prefer the heat as opposed to the crazy cold of the winter...

Signing off for now,

-Paul