The English Kindergarten graduation is in less than two weeks, after which I will have a fresh batch of new students starting in March. But this month, two students in Duke class were celebrating birthdays, which I quickly found out is quite a big deal in kindergarten. One day each month, if there are birthdays to celebrate, there is an elaborate table set up in the classroom adorned with cake, fruit plates, flowers, teddy bears, etc. The birthday kids pose for several photos...first individually, then with the teachers, then with different combinations of other students. The whole ordeal takes about a half hour, with other students screaming the words of "Happy Birthday" and running around the classroom.
After the birthday photo shoot, we ate a special snack consisting of birthday cake and kimbap. Amazingly, the kids all wanted more kimbap, and barely anyone wanted extra cake. I'll just assume that they're all afraid of the gluten, too.Finally, there's a lot of love in the classroom,
so all of the other students write these little notes to the birthday kids. The kids give each other the notes and hug each other and everybody is happy. Aside from the birthdays, things at school have been pretty monotonous. Because graduation is approaching, we are almost constantly rehearsing a play called "Genie Puzzle" that the class will perform on stage in front of their parents. Now, some of my students can't even read, so I'm sure they have NO idea what the play is actually about. But being the parrots that they've been trained to be, they have memorized their lines and can deliver them on command nonetheless. Anyway, the play is basically a watered down, ripped off version of Aladdin...the kids find a lamp and a genie comes out and they have to solve a puzzle and then the genie will grant them a wish and blah blah blah. I never thought I could hate anything more than "Biscuit's New Trick", but I was wrong.I'll leave
you with a couple of highlights from the last few weeks. One morning my class was really misbehaving and I was feeling particularly evil, so I made them count out loud from 100 to 1000. This may or may not qualify as "cruel and unusual punishment". The kids started staring blankly into space at around 200, and by 300 a few heads were down on the tables. Around 350, I decided to do a little experiment, and I pulled out some chocolate and held it up so the kids could see it. Just as I expected, everyone became extremely attentive and began excitedly belting out the numbers. We made it to about 475, 
but then one of the students went comatose and I was forced to revive him. Just kidding. Another morning, we did a small project focusing on answering the question, "what do you want to be when you grow up?" and the kids gave some hilarious answers. In a class of twelve 6-year olds, four want to be dentists, one ambitious boy wants to be a "sports player and scientist and singer", and one girl simply answered "sweeping". I explained that "sweeping" is not a job and instead told her that the proper way to answer is, "I want to be a housewife". That's my job: corrupting young minds, one day at a time.
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