::A Geek in Korea::

Today is my last day to prepare my students for their upcoming examinations. Christmas Eve, and my students are expected to study? Not likely. I prepared a review paper with twenty questions likely to appear on their tests, and we spent time answering each of them.

They have all the questions for the examination, so all they have to do now is memorize the answers and be able to choose them out of a series of multiple choice questions. It might happen that all the students get good grades to give their parents. I certainly hope that’s the case at least.

After we finished our review, I handed out forms for holiday cards. There were trees, snowmen, and stockings with presents. The students then had to write letters to their families, or Santa, about the holidays.

The number one requested gift that students wanted to spell was “Nintendo DS”. Awesome. However, some of the students tried to tell me that Yoshi Island DS wasn’t a good choice for a game, and that New Super Mario Brothers was the only good game someone should want. What a weird argument. I can remember three years ago when no one in Korea knew a single Mario game at all. Now I’ve got kids thinking they know more about Mario franchise games than I do. (Both of those games are fantastic. They don’t know what they are talking about.)

When students would inquire as to what the school was giving out as a gift, the secretary said she was giving out “Free Hugs.” Awesome. I happened to find the cane pole that fell behind the computer in the teacher’s room. This is for the “bad” students that need to be intimidated into studying. The students thought I was offering a “free beating” when they saw me with it. This is the only day in WEEKS where no students came into the teacher’s room, so perhaps I should keep with it.

Tags: christmas, school, homework, free hugs, free beatings, cards, study, tests