Last week, we took our first field trip with our students. We took an hour long bus ride, during which Jay taught the kids how to hold their breath through tunnels (some kids took it so seriously and I thought they were going to pass out, while others plugged their noses and continued talking the entire time), to Wawoo Temple. I felt bad for other visitors to the temple on this particular day. If they had come for a peaceful, enlightening experience we may have put a slight damper on that.
We arrived at the temple and sixty little red fleece vests piled out of the busses. One of my students, Kevin, is quite a handful. I had tried (emphasis on the tried) to implement the “buddy system†with my class, with me as Kevin’s buddy for fear of what he would do during this outing. It started out great, each student had their buddy in hand and I was doing “buddy checks†about every 2 minutes. As I tried to keep my eyes on the other children, Kevin, while holding my hand, managed to squat down pick up some rocks and start hurling them at the bus.
Once all the busses arrived, we headed up a hill. This was a steep hill for many of the teachers (some were extremely winded once we made it to the top and some even had to energize themselves by eating a donut during the climb), let alone for these tiny kids. We made very few stops while ascending the hill. Once at the top every kid whipped out plastic picnic mats, plopped themselves down and enjoyed massive amount of snacks their moms had packed for them. Inevitably, once we hit the top of the hill Kevin (if you have not hear my Kevin stories yet, he is one of my favorite students but cannot manage to stay in his chair for more than 2 minutes at a time and cannot manage to make it a day at school without going the bathroom in his pants) had to go the bathroom. I frantically tried to get one of the Korean Teachers to watch my class so I could run with Kevin down the hill before he changed his mind about actually going to a bathroom facility and just went in his pants.
Once snack time had finished, a good 45 minutes later. It was time to head back down the hill. It hadn’t really crossed my mind while we were heading up this steep incline that the way down might be a bit more difficult. My little “buddies†started falling over left and right, two by two. Trying to stop slow down their momentum and their urge to start running was no easy task. My class had a bit of a hang up midway down when Rosie and Daniel (these are two of my students that need an entire blog entry of their own for me to explain their relationship, I never knew 5 year olds could be in love until I met these two) got into one of their notorious “lovers quarrelsâ€. Daniel threw himself on the ground crying “Rosie doesn’t like me anymore and won’t hold my hand†as Rosie stands there, hands on hips, rolling her eyes (I kid you not). When I finally convinced Daniel life would go on, we preceded down the hill.
Once we reach the bottom, it was time for class photos before getting on the bus, and heading back to school. When we got back to school, all the teachers joked that we could have walked up and down any hill for this field trip. I don’t think my students would have noticed the difference, because the next day when I asked them what we say on our field trip, they told me what kind of snacks they ate.
Enjoy this photo album with all our pictures from the field trip.
