English wordlists make me pull my hair out!!!!!!

At my school, they have somehow come under the notion that the best way to ensure the students are learning is to give them lots and lots of tests, I mean if they get it right on the test they definietly learned it, right? So if they take lots of tests they are aquiring a wealth of information. Vocabulary wordtests are the quiz of choice, each test containing 10-20 words, each student completeing 2-4 of them each day. Some of my older kids are expected to remember 100 words every day for these tests. So ofcourse it seeming unreasonable and ineffective the kids don't bother and the scores drop (not that the grades in our school mean anything). When this happens the school freaks out because it looks like kids are not learning anything so they put a re-test policy in place which says kids must get an 80% or higher on their tests or they have to re-take them until they get a 100%. So now ofcourse whenever we doing anything in class in which the kids could possibly learn something they are too busy memorizing words so they don't have to take a re-test. Phew... I am glad it at least looks like my kids are learning something, even if they just memorize and forget not having any concept of what the word means or how to use it.
The best part about it all is what the wordlists are comprised of. They are often made by Korean staff (who don't speak English) who look for random words in the reading book and then google a definition to cut and paste. Sometimes teachers are asked to make them, which usually results in some ridiculous words, just because you know if the kids never learn them anyways, the teachers might as well get a chuckle. Well, one time I had a really smart class. These kids actually did learn to use the words, and I was shocked when I saw the word "crap" which was on a wordlist, used correctly in an elementary student's essay. The other day I saw erotic on one of my wordlists...glad no one asked questions about that one. Oh and one of my person favorites was "dirtbag- a filthy and vile individual". So to all my good friends who claim to be dirtbag climbers I assume it retains the same definition but refers to a climbing individual.

Thanksgiving in Korea
Yesterday was Thanksgiving and since our schedule is not conducive to cooking or eating dinner Rachel and I went to the Outback Steakhouse for western food. It was not really Thanksgiving-like but good. I decided that my favorite class deserved to celebrate Thanksgiving so yesterday morning I cooked a huge batch of pancakes (I always use pancakes in example sentences and they have become a joke in class) and brought them into the kids. We talked about what people do on Thanksgiving and I told them stories, like the one about my friend jane who ate so much she puked, and then went back for more. Then I made them all say what they were thankful for before we ate our pancakes together. The kids were so cute about it and they were thankful for things like friends and family...not ipods and money, which I was half-way expecting. I guess you don't always need a turkey and family and friends to feel the Thanksgiving spirit. I had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner of pancakes with a class of 10 year olds.

The last few weeks have been very very busy. WE have been lucky enough to have some visitors here in Korea and it has been really nice to see familar faces from home...and to go do touristy things. So a couple weeks ago our friend Nick stopped over for a week in Korea. We had soem nights out on the town, went climbing and hiking and saw some beautiful fall colors. We also had our first experience with Dr. Fish....which is quite an interesting concept. Koreans are pretty anal about their skin, so they have developed this method to get rid of dead skin on your feet. Basically you stick you feet in a pool of water and fish come and nibble on your feet and eat away all the dead skin. There is a Dr. Fish coffee shop near us and so ofcourse we had to try it. We took Nick with us and all the fish swarmed to his feet, which made it more bareable for us. I can't say I was ahuge fan of the whole thing, it felt a little strange and creepy...but when my parents arrived a couple days later I had to take them as well. So I have no experienced Dr Fish 2 times and feel quite certain that i will probobly get sucked into it again at some point.
So my parents and my good friend Del have been here for the past 10 days. I took a week off work and we did some exploring. We spent a few days in Seoul and then made our way to Seoraksan National Park. We did a few hikes there, it was really beautiful and amazing to be there in the middle of the week when it was less crowded. Oh and the entire time we were away we only saw one other westerner which was pretty cool. We also went on a tour to the DMZ or demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. It was realy interesting and I will write a blog about it sometime soon. So this is why I have not been keeping up with my blog lately...but I have not abandoned it and will getback to "blogging" now. Here is a link where you can see some of the pictures from my "vacation":
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=68949&l=58fa6&id=855105612