My apartment is an oven

I left my heat on full blast throughout the day and when I got home I considered baking an apple crumble on my floor. If only I knew how to bake. It's still a sauna in here and I turned it off three hours ago. That's fine.

Everything's great! There has been a real turn around in Happy class and I'm more than relieved because I was starting to wonder what I would do with if the crying, hitting, yelling, and complaining kept up.

I have extended English Time into the entire day, figuring it would be unnecessarily confusing for the children to have to understand and differentiate between English and Korean Times. Jessica Teacher Time is Korean Time. They're still not quite, okay, not even close to, ready for the dreaded Open Class but with two weeks until the day I think they'll be just fine. I hope, I hope.

In my older elementary classes I have been seeing some really encouraging progress. Remember Eugene, the girl? She arrived in class and couldn't even name the letters. She had no English confidence and never participated. Now she's a reading, participating machine. Go Eugene! There's power in the name!

The other E1's (elementary 1's) were able to handle a simple conversation with me today about their Korean school and whether their teacher is a boy or a girl, who goes to the same Korean school, etc. May not impress you much but that's a serious step up from the usual Korean chatter and blank stares.

And my E2 class of four kids have taken extremely well to the no Korean rule. They are speaking more English and making sure to report any utterance of Korean that might slip out of someone's mouth. I better teach the word tattletale one of these days.

Up for tomorrow, and I'll try not to forget: How much money you typically make as an English teacher in Korea.