Teaching success and girl time

My first small, but true teaching success happened this evening between 8 and 10 p.m. (Koreans study late even on Friday nights.) I had a one-on-one appointment with Kim Ji Su, the girl in the picture, who is just learning to read. She understands phonics enough to read, but her comprehension is very low. She is also incredibly shy and seems nervous, so our two hours together require patience and painstaking perseverance.

Tonight, we read two short paragraphs about musical instruments and completed a number of multiple choice questions to evaluate comprehension and vocabulary. She missed nearly every question of the reading comprehension before I discovered the reason: she simply didn't know the meaning of about 80 percent of the words she was reading. Most of her answers were guesses. After looking up a dozen words in my (actually, fairly lame) Korean-English dictionary and struggling through the first page of questions, I decided we should slow down and just focus on vocabulary. So we created flash cards with the English word on one side and the Korean word and a small picture on the other. I drilled her a few times on eight of the major vocabulary words. We finished the session with another fill-in-the-blank activity, and she aced it! I felt so proud of her.

Sometimes I leave class feeling like a babysitter. Tonight I left feeling like a teacher.

Kimchihey, my Korean sister, had a late night class at the hogwan, too, so we walked home together. When I first saw her, I said "Hi Kimchi!" ("Kimchi" is spicy cabbage--a common Korean side dish.)

"Kimchi?" she questioned. I realized my mistake, and we both burst out in laughter.

"Am I food?" she asked. "Maybe you are 'Salad.'"

I laughed again. We were both pretty tired from the day.

Later, she asked me if I wanted to "do masks"--apply a rubber, cosmetic mask to my face--with her and Kimjimin. I layed down on the bed while she applied the mask. Then she took my picture, and when I reacted playfully, she said I looked kind of like a marshmallow. Haha! I couldn't argue with her. My face did resemble a marshmallow.

Psalm 68:6 says "God sets the lonely in families..." I don't know what that meant when it was written, but I know how it applies me now, and I know why I stumbled across it the other night when I was discouraged. I'm so thankful for my Korean family.

Emma invited me to go with her to Gyeongju tomorrow--the former capital of Korea and one of the most popular tourist destinations. I can't wait to go! I'll try to take lots of pictures.