Election day!

This is the second election we've seen in Korea - this one's the big presidential race.

Thankfully, unlike last time, we're not being woken up on Saturday at 7am with blaring music coming from campaign ad trucks driving by. And I don't know if it's because of where we live, or if it's because we're in a different city, but there's been WAY more dancing. Another new feature is what I call the "podium truck". It's pretty much your average Korean pick-up truck, outfitted with a cube-sort of container that's fashioned into a small room. The side of the cube is cut out, so that you can see into this 'room'. Mounted inside of it is a podium - so basically the truck can park anywhere and PRESTO! instant platform!

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get out and capture any videos of the dancing and such. But fortunately, somebody else was! Here's an example of the podium truck - with dancers!



This one's more of a video-video, rather than a snapshot. It's for the front-runner, Lee Myung-bak. Lee was suspected of some big-time white-collar crime... embezzlement and fraud charges for which he was cleared a couple weeks ago, in the thick of the campaigning. Many suspect that his being cleared of the charges is nothing more than the legal system jumping on his bandwagon - his support comes from a hope that electing him will mean good news for the Korean economy. That's the gist of the situation, anyway.

I'm pretty sure the song used in the video is an old pop song - I hear it used in campaigning a lot - here the words are changed a bit to promote Lee Myung-bak (이명박), the candidate.

Another one for Lee Myung-bak that really features the podium truck. And an awful song. (Is it Avril? Eeks. Is this song meant to represent his point of view on English education here? Oy. We're in trouble.) But not much dancing.

More things my 3rd graders made this term

Just a few more short animations made by and with my 3rd grade after-school program. These kids are pretty awesome.

Most of these were made within a the time-frame of a 40 minute class!


(A lot of kids actually don't seem to care too much for bebimbap. Too many vegetables! They made this after watching Ishu Patel's "The Bead Game".)


(For this one, they were told to make five different drawings - like a large, short flipbook.)


(This was our first or second class. We did this exercise after watching Norman McLaren's "Neighbours".)

This one has nothing to do with anything, really

Typical lunchtime at Yeomti Elementary School.



It's true I have no fashion sense. Mostly the comment was about my bright orange angora winter hat I was wearing.

Nutty November, part 1.

One of the sort of "extra" projects that kept me super-busy last month was preparing my after-school 3rd grade animation students for the big Asan English Festival. For the festival, we prepared a short song and a simple dance, which was performed in front of one of the animation exercises the kids had done over the term. For this animation exercise, the students were given a "start" picture and a "finish" picture... and six blank frames. In the six blanks, the kids had to draw transitions to go from the first picture to the last. It's a lot harder than it sounds, and the kids really impressed me with what they came up with!

Here's their performance at the city's English festival last week. Apologies in advance for my shaky camera work - I was sort of directing them while shooting. And yeah, that's me yelling "woooo!" at the end. :)

Nutty November, part 1.

One of the sort of "extra" projects that kept me super-busy last month was preparing my after-school 3rd grade animation students for the big Asan English Festival. For the festival, we prepared a short song and a simple dance, which was performed in front of one of the animation exercises the kids had done over the term. For this animation exercise, the students were given a "start" picture and a "finish" picture... and six blank frames. In the six blanks, the kids had to draw transitions to go from the first picture to the last. It's a lot harder than it sounds, and the kids really impressed me with what they came up with!

Here's their performance at the city's English festival last week. Apologies in advance for my shaky camera work - I was sort of directing them while shooting. And yeah, that's me yelling "woooo!" at the end. :)