Open classes, Teacher's Day #2, and a Fire

Well, it's halfway through May already, and the past week has been insanely hectic at our school.  We had open classes this week, so everyone has been dealing with high stress.  Open classes are when parents are encouraged to come and sit through a class watching their children and the teacher.  As Ben puts it, it's a big "horse and pony show."  When we were at Welton, our old school, we did the class with little preparation or stress beforehand.  At this school, expectations are much higher, so we had to do the entire lesson last week for a "jury" of our bosses.  Talk about pressure!  So this week we dealt with parents hovering around, sitting in on lessons and watching us like hawks.  I even had a mom videotape my lesson.

The good part about this week was definitely Teacher's Day, though.  Korea really takes honoring teachers seriously, and every May 15th, teachers receive "thanks" from their students.  In particular, Kindergarten teachers get a LOT of thanks.  Cakes, pies, chocolates, gift certificates, vitamins, flowers, and a lot of precious cards.  Here are just a few of them!

Today I'm going on a make-up shopping spree with some of those Teacher's Day gift certificates.  I'm pretty excited.  :)

We also had a fire in the school building this week.  It was during our last "class," study hall (AKA babysitting/free homework help time), when some of my students complained about smelling smoke.  I told them it was probably just outside.  Then we heard sirens going down the street.  Again, I told the students that it wasn't likely to be our building and to keep working.  Finally, just as we were about to take the students down to the buses, a Korean teacher came to the room to tell us the fire alarm was going off and we should evacuate the building.  Oddly, there seems to be only one alarm on each floor, next to one of the stairwells.  We couldn't hear it from our room.  So we took the children downstairs and assembled behind the building.  Apparently, one of the signs on the front of the building for another business had caught fire.  By the time we left the building, firemen had already finished hosing down the flames.

That made for an interesting day.

There's not much else to say now!  We have today (Friday) off for Buddha's birthday, so we plan to spend our 3-day weekend relaxing.  After this week, I feel like we deserve it!

Cheers,
Rebekah