Your Favorite Food is Meat?!

I am now an official English teacher! That's right my friends, as of yesterday I have successfully comandeered my very own class of students, complete with a classroom with a chalkboard to boot. No matter that I had to bribe the students with chocolate in order for them to agree to let me take a picture of them, or that they repeated everything I said in English back to me in Korean. No, none of that matters, because I'm an official teacher of English to speakers of another language. Nothing can stand in my way on my path to my English-teaching destiny. Nothing.

In order to be able to keep all of the screaming students straight, I sat them down and had them answer seven questions:
1. What is your name?
2. What is your favorite color?
3. What is your favorite food?
4. What is your favorite place?
5. What is your favorite kind of music?
6. What is your favorite subject in school?
7. What is your favorite activity to do after school?

Armed and ready, I fired the questions at the students, providing them with paper and pens to respond. Circling, answering the different questions, I ran into a variety of hiccups that made me fall in love with my students. One girl, who will remained unnamed for the sake of her privacy and dignity, answered me in private that her favorite food was meat. So I asked, "Pork? Shrimp? Beef? Chicken?". Oh no, no limiting for her, she replied with a big swoop of her arms, hugging the make-believe chunk of steak that had been floating in her daydreams, "I love it all!" Adorable girl, but I decided not to bother informing her about her future sky-high cholesterol levels. Maybe I'll make that a trivia word in the future...hmm...

The students asked for example of favorite music in order to be inspired, so I listed a few on the board. I noticed the blank expressions of the majority, and realized, in order to truly win them over to my side, there was only one option in front of me: acting. It's true. In front of twenty little middle schoolers, I made my stage debut, singing and dancing to my own versions of classical, jazz, pop, dance, pop, country, and last but not least, polka. This was thrown in as an encore performance.

By the end of my hour with the students, we had learned each other's names and how to successfully do the macarena. Who knows what will happen next?

written by

Rachel in Korea! on September 8, 2008 from Seoul, South Korea

from the travel blog: South Korea, 2008-2009

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When we Americans hear the word "Meat" we brazenly assume beef, pork, chicken, seafood, etc. - all the normal ones. But "meat" could also include other, not-so-common animals. Rachel, have you seen many dogs and cats running around?

written by Dad on September 12, 2008

God, if only I could have been there to see you sweet dance moves...haha.

written by Erin on October 29, 2008

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