wednesday, april 19th our entire school went on a field trip to lotte world, an amusement park i'd been to once before last year. my duties were to help look after the first-graders, which wasn't easy as you can imagine. still it was a fun time.

it took a total of twelve big buses to transport the entire school across town to the park. along the way, one of the rambunctious boys in the class asked the teacher 선�님, 버스 �어로 �지? which means teacher, how do you say bus in english? the confused look on his face when i told him that bus was bus was priceless.

as soon as we got inside the park we went straight to a ride that was based on sinbad. the line quickly entered a dark cave and within seconds all the scardy cats in the class had tears streaming down their faces. next thing i knew it i had kids holding my hand or hanging onto my leg with utter terror in their eyes. i thought it was hilarious, especially because of the fact that the kids that seemed to be the most scared were the ones who tend to be more outgoing, misbehave in class, or even are sometimes bullies to their classmates. i assured them all that they weren't going to die and that it was fun. some of them reluctantly believed me and calmed down a little.

once we got on the ride, i found that it was basically a take off on pirates of the carribean, complete with riding in a boat and going down two slight drops early in the ride. on those drops, the boy sitting next to me grabbed a hold of me so tightly he was digging his nails into me. i'm not one for rides myself either, so i could sympathize with him. at the same time i thought it was the funniest thing ever. then to top it off the ride actually was a little scary, including lots of skeletons and scenes of guys being hung upside down and tortured.

by the end of the ride most of the criers had calmed down and by the time we were back out into the park they were all acting like they were never scared and talking about how fun it was.

she's in 6th grade so i don't teach her, but i met her when she repeatedly came up to me and demanded that i give her candy, to which i of course always refused. later i found out her name is 수민 (sumin) but everyone calls her 수남 (sunam), the 남 (nam) part meaning she's like a 남� (namja, boy). but she told me herself that her name was sunam, so i guess she is proud of the nickname.

charles was one of the scardy cats from the sinbad ride, which was funny since he's easily the biggest and tallest or the first graders. after that first ride he wasn't scared anymoe, but still held my hand for the rest of the day.

mike was the one who dug his fingernails into me on the first ride.

those chips that are in yaerim's hand were just moments earlier spilled on the floor of the park. she's in the act of scooping them back into the container for subsequent eating. it was one of those moments where i started to say something and then just decided to let it go.

from left: amy, katie, kayoung, and hyebin. finally the parade started, which didn't have any kind of central theme. it was just a bunch of brightly clothed performers of all sorts of varieties.

on the bus ride home all of the teachers, including me, took a nap in their seats. once we got back to school all the parents were there to pick up their kids. the school prepared a special meal for us to have before going home.

after that i went home and took another nap.