E.T. Phone Home

OK. So I totally have not been watching the Olympics, but I have been discussing them in my classes: teaching sports vocabulary, awarding points in my various games & activities in which the winner gets a gold "medal" drawn on the board, and assiging my upper-level special class to write a composition about something that has happened in Turino. What I have learned is that, if anything, my kids are watching the short-track speed skating, as well they should, since their country was doing well in the event, it seemed. Tony's composition is as follows:

I watch TV for Olympic skating, skiing. I think we are best. I know who have the gold medal in Oympics. Her name is Juin Sun-ue. She knows me. My teacher teaches her, and my sister. I am so surprised because she's very fast. And skiing is very nice. Spinning in the sky is so nice. 120 degrees in the sky. I can't do that. I think it is very dangerous but Americans like it. Like football/soccer is best friends, snowboard as well as skiing. I have ridden a snowboard. It is easier than skiing. Riding a snowboard is very excited.
Fighting, my sister, Juin Sun-ue!

For some reason I was ridiculously charmed by that essay. I don't know why. I rather like the notion of thinking of football-soccer and snowboarding-skiing as "best friends." Plus at the end it was kind of like he was saying "Fight on!" which of course melts a USC Trojan's heart. We talked in class too about how his skating coach also coaches the medalist. Fun times! Everyone here has been very excited about how the Koreans took gold-silver-bronze in one event, but they are simultaneously angry at I think his name is Ono, who pushed another Korean in the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake, costing the other guy the gold. It is a sore point here!

Of course Tom, whom I've previously quoted in a different blog entry, also wrote an Olympics essay, though he clearly sees more excitement in other sporting contests:

Today's subject is Turino Olympics. Now Korea has gold 3 silver 3 bronze 1. I think Korea doesn't have a good soccer team but Korea is succeed. I love Korea. We are 5th now. But Linda teacher's nationality is U.S.A. So U.S.A. Olympic ranking was 1st, U.S.A., and Russia is 1st now. I think very fun sports are soccer and speed skating. I want the World Cup to hurry, please...

And so on. I really enjoy teaching this class! I get to start another "special class" of pre-teens who've completed the Ding Ding Dang curriculum this week, when two more level 11 classes graduate. Perhaps I have found my niche here. It's fine with me! One of the level 11 classes graduating this week is my evil MWF evening class I've previously vented about and I'm super-glad it's dissolving. Only a few of the students are sticking around for the new special class, thank God! and then I get a few students from some other teacher's graduating class as well.

This has been an amazing, busy, successful weekend including the preschool graduation festivities and acquiring a cell phone, among other things. Big accomplishments. I am so very excited about having the cell phone I can't even tell you. It's rather an ordeal here to get one because they are expensive ($300-400) so most foreign teachers find a used one, and have to do pre-paid, and there's more to it and it was actually a really cool experience getting it and I made a new friend. But I am far too tired to write any further now and I am going to collapse in a heap. I'll try to catch up on Monday!