Monday, October 13, 2008

Life and Death



Hi.

This week the pond in the school yard got a bit low, and one of our students grabbed the only surviving fish and squeezed it until it's eye popped out. The fish lived, and now has one eye. The boy had a half day detention, and we had a long talk with his mother, who was quite shocked... but so were we.

The same day Wednesday, in the morning I was gathering leaves for a school activity in the park beside our school, and I discovered a nest of 3-week old kittens. They were so cute! all tiny and orange, with their eyes and ears open, but no teeth yet. I kept checking on them throughout the day and then after school their mother was back, which was really glad for because I wasn't sure what to do about them. She picked a good spot for the nest because we'd walked by it so many times and never knew it was there. Friday someone had build a roof shelter over the spot they were nesting in. At lunch recess one of the kittens got adventurous and wobbled over to the school's fence and tried to come underneath it. All the kids saw it and after I told them to be more quiet (they were yelling excitedly) I ushered them away so the Mom would retrieve her kitten. And then they were gone. After school they were simply no longer there. A man who looked like a security guard of some sort brought a dish with some food in it and took away an empty one and paused to look confused because the cats weren't there. So we figure either the mother cat moved her babies to a more secluded spot, or someone came and took all of them... =( I just hope they are ok.

We tried the movie theater near our house, and because we were splurging, bought the 10,000 Won snack combo which came with two kinds of popcorn, nachos, two pops and of course a bag of fish pieces.

We thought we wouldn't be doing anything for Thanksgiving, but at church a bunch of people decided otherwise, because of the number of Canadians attending, that we should all go out for lunch to Ashley's American Grill. Yes, we saw the irony, but there were no restaurants with Canada in the name. We all had the salad bar buffet which is more of a buffet and less about salad, but still very good food. Cheesecake mmm. =)

Today we went on a field trip to a fire station. The bus driver got lost on the way there, but once we arrived it was pretty cool. They had four different hands-on activities the kids could do. the first was where they had to call 119 (that's what it is here) and then 'put out' a fire on a screen by spraying it with fire extinguishers that shot water. =) it was fun - yes I did it too. There were two different mazes you had to go through in the dark with fog... as if you were escaping a burning building, and the last was a simulation of an earthquake in a kitchen. Basically we hid under the table and got shaken up... a couple of the kids were too scared to do the last ones. Poor Ye Jun, he started to cry when we were in the first maze and a door we opened flashed a bright red light, like it was fire, and he pretty much didn't stop crying until we were done doing activities. Then I remembered that although he is in my class of 5 year olds, he's still 4, which by North American age measurement would be 3. They are all so little.

Chris has another student who started today, so he's up to 6 kids, and we got word of another who will start in a few more weeks, also a girl (yay!) although he's teaching more than half the school now. I'm sure more kids will come soon, but I'm starting to think they will all come at once, in March when the Korean school year starts... which could turn out to be pretty interesting.

Kay =)

1 comment:

Unknown said...

that is a HUGE maple leaf!
i hope those kittens are okay too.