Last Day of My First Contract.

Today is the last day of my first 1 year contract.. ever!  I am pleased to say that I am enjoying it thoroughly, as it is the last day of summer English class for the majority of students (there were only 6 in the after school group that finished on Wednesday).  We are having an 'easy' day to say the least, with our open market, teachers' market, a snack party, and the movie The Incredibles.  The other Fridays of camp were similar, except they started with a review and a test.  Today we decided to give that a miss in exchange for a snack party, which I think is well deserved for the students who have been coming to study English during their summer vacation.

The open market and teachers' market was really fun as always.  A cool thing my co-teacher Eunji and I did last winter camp was give out laminated monopoly money instead of candy for participating in class or for winning games.  Since we can sell candy at $5 and/or $2, it is a very wise move for us teachers, and letting the students handle the fake money is very valuable, so we decided to do it again for this camp.  Not only is it really fun and exciting for them, but it also teaches them to protect and manage money.  There were a few cases of students losing their money, and as much as I would have liked to just give them more, they needed to learn not to leave it lying around, so a little tough love was necessary there.  It makes for a great market activity at the end of each week as well.  We allow the students to bring in toys and snacks to sell to each other, and then we open the teachers' market where they can buy toys, school supplies, candies, stickers, and even lunch with the teachers!  Today we are ordering fried chicken (I guess we aren't exactly being nutritionists.. but it's a treat :) for two of our brightest students (who also earned enough for lunch during the first week too).

Making monopoly money!

This is actually a picture from last winter's teachers' market.  (having some technology issues right now)

Different things for sale at the market.

I'm also very excited because I am packed and ready for my visit back to the States, however I am experiencing a bit of frustration thanks to the airlines (big surprise there).  My itinerary from Busan to Cleveland was to take 24 hours, leaving at 7:20 am Saturday morning, and arriving in Cleveland at 6:20 pm the same day (Ohio is 13 hours behind Korea).  Now my flights have been rearranged so that I will leave at 11:05 am on Saturday, and arrive in Cleveland at 6:22 am on Sunday morning!  Not only is that pretty disappointing news for my parents who are picking me up from the airport (later than anticipated, and really early in the morning), but I will have a layover in Seoul for about 5 hours, in San Francisco for about 5 hours, and in LA for about 5 hours AND that is a cool 32 hours of travel time.  I also had my sleep pattern all worked out to minimize jet lag, and now I don't think I can do much about it.  The one good thing to come from this is that I don't have to spend the night in Busan tonight, which will save me a little money.  Nonetheless, I am very excited to be home seeing my family and friends :)