P.S.

I forgot to add another valuable lesson learned yesterday: do NOT under any circumstances use Calvin and Hobbes cartoons with adult learners. Kids, absolutely fine and dandy - a cartoon about a fictional boy talking to a fictional tiger that is also his make-believe friend, or fighting an imaginary bubble bath monster - no problem! Teachers, not so much. I was using the same cartoons to do the rearrange and phone activity as I used with my 2nd year conversation class during the semester, which the kids loved and found really interesting. But apparently grown adults find it hard to comprehend the deep and complicated nature of Calvin and Hobbes.

This is what the conversation sounded like more or less (about the one where Calvin wants to water-bomb Hobbes)
Me: Ok, so you have to look at the pictures in each panel and move them into the right order, then call me on the number written on the back. You can check with each other to make sure you have the same phone number, but you should check to make sure your stories also make sense, because some panels look very similar. They are all about a boy who likes to pretend things, so he imagines some very interesting stories. Ok?
Teachers: OK.
*after a busy 20 minutes*
Ms Park: This cartoon does not make sense. There is no right order.
Me: Why do you say that?
Ms Chae: Because tigers do not talk.
Me: Er.. what?
Ms Park: Tigers do not talk. And here the tiger is talking to boy who wants to make joke to him.
Me: ...right. It's not real. The boy likes to imagine things, and one of the things he imagines is that the tiger is real, but really he's just a toy.
Ms Park: Then why does the tiger not eat the boy?
Me: Well, you'll notice that the tiger is also sleeping with it's knees crossed and it's fingers together, which isn't exactly normal for a tiger either. The tiger is not real.
Ms Chae: So.. the boy is imagining that the tiger is sleeping? Why?
Me: The tiger is not important! Just pretend it's a person, like his friend or his dad or his mum, that he wants to play a practical joke on.
Ms Chae: Ok. What is the meaning of tiger's words?
Me: It says "As if life isn't short enough." It just means, life is short. If you throw that, I'll kill you, so your life will be shorter.
Ms Chae: Life is short? What does that mean?
Me: It means exactly what it says. "Life is short" means "life is short". Like I said, he means, if you do that, I'll hurt you. Or "life is short, don't waste it doing something stupid"
Ms Park: But.. what does life is short mean?
Me: Ok, let's ignore it! It's not important. It's just a threat, saying if you do that, I'll hurt you. So don't.
Ms Park: So the boy imagined the tiger sleeping, then imagined that the tiger said that to him?
Me: Well... yes... but it's not important that it's the tiger. It could be anyone! It's just the tiger here because the tiger is his friend.
Ms Chae: Why did boy imagine tiger say that if he is friend?
Me: It's a joke! Let's just look at the story - don't worry about who the people are!
Ms Park: The cartoon does not make sense. Why does boy imagine tiger saying this if he wants to throw the water balloon?

......This went on for a good hour. I'm not a patient person at best, so I feel that the fact that I patiently tried to explain the cartoons for that long and only covered my face with my hands in a gesture of total despair once deserves some sort of reward, which is why I splurged and ignored my lactose intolerance for a 'Real Belgian Hot Chocolate' from Holly's Coffee that Henry introduced me to last night and completely rocked my world. Although apparently Ms Park, who I would guess is in her early 50's, likes dance music, because she chose Sneaky Sound System's "UFO" for their song to study. So yeah, less Calvin and Hobbes and more Sneaky. Must remember.

White Ninja Is There For His Son

Just to keep up with Chanel's expectations of a post-a-day. And because this tickled my funny bone just a smidge.

Haha :)

Oh, also, finally went to the doctor today about my foot. Turned out to be more interesting than I thought - more on that tomorrow (hoping to get some photos).

Reason #3 for blogging?

So I had a few requests for the cartoon strips I used with my kids. They are just normal comic strips that I downloaded from the net and then got all techy with using a little known program called 'paint' (:p) and erased all the speech from. If anyone is planning on doing a lesson about storytelling or anything, I also found some Calvin and Hobbes cartoons with very little speech (below) that I cut up and got the kids to discuss in groups and rearrange them back into the right order. I wrote my mobile number on the back and when they thought they had the right sequence they had to call me on it (yes I totally stole that idea from our orientation ㅋㅋㅋ) to check that it was right. Each group had to then tell me what they thought happened in their story (preferably at least one sentence for each panel). I did this with both first year and second year middle school students, including second year boys, and everyone seemed to find it pretty interesting. With my first years, I used two lots of fairy tales with only 6 or 7 panels, and as well as the rearranging, phoning, re-telling, I added a challenge segment where to get each panel one person from the team had to walk to the end of the room with a book on their head or a balloon between their knees, then give me a sentence using a target phrase/vocabulary from the lesson to get the panel. This was mainly just to kill some extra time, but then I decided to do away with that and switch the the Calvin and Hobbes cartoons. As they weren't familiar with the cartoon's style it was a lot better and more interesting.

Anyway, here they are, hope they're useful :)

P.S. If for some reason you can't get them from here with good enough quality, send me your email address and I'll email them to you.