I've made it this far already?

I had a minor victory of sorts today. Last week I was told by my boss, Lynn, that I was too nice to my students. She had me observe another teacher (Annie) to see practical ways to be strict while still being nice. It was kind of a hard thing for me to hear, because as we all know I am a perfectionist, but I think it improved my teaching methods.

Anyway, last night we had conferences with the parents and I guess all the parents gave me good reports! One of the students in my loud/crazy class, Peter, said that he hadn't liked being at Youngdo at first but now he's really starting to enjoy class and he told his parents he can tell that I am trying really hard to be strict and fun at the same time, so they think I'm a good teacher. That made me REALLY happy.


On Wednesday I was teaching my senior level students about noun clauses, and I ended up having to use some good ole Syntax knowledge to explain things to them. I worked out a handout for them that I made that showed the syntactic process of the question word moving around in the sentence. I didn't actually draw out the trees but I gave them five steps in how to make a question out of a noun clause. For example:

1. David arrived two days ago.

First step: What question word do you want to use to ask the question?
--> "When?"

Second step: What part of the sentence answers the question word? Replace that part with the question word.
--> "David arrived when?"

Third step: Move the question word to the beginning of the sentence.
--> "When David arrived?"

Fourth step: If the question word is next to the subject, then insert the verb "do" (tense matching the other verb in the sentence).
--> "When did David arrived?"

Fifth step: If there you inserted the past tense form of "do" in this sentence and there is another verb, change the other verb in the sentence to the present tense.
--> "When did David arrive?"

Ta-da.

I know. I am a linguistics nerd. But it really helped them understand, so it made me really happy to put my Bachelor's degree to good use!!!

Tomorrow is my first pay day, and for THAT I am thrilled. I'm going grocery shopping ASAP as I have been living off of rice for the past two weeks (except for the occasions when my amazing colleagues give me food, like bagels and apples!). I am probably going to buy a cellphone when we go into Seoul on Saturday. I have to pay some bills. I have to save money for my plane ticket home in December. But I will be happy because I get to have galbi and other non-rice food again! :)

I'll try to post more pictures soon too.