Nic Trips

Back in August, when I thought I would be leaving Korea, my students threw me a bunch of surprise "goodbye" parties during our last week before summer vacation. There were lots of tears, gifts, letters and pictures. The next week, while all the students out of school on vacation, my co-teacher came to me with a special offer that the program was willing to let me change my contract to stay 6 more months (this was something that usually doesn't happen), and I decided to say "YES!" Lo and behold...a few weeks later when school resumed, all the students were surprised and ecstatic that I hadn't left and school life continued as normal again. Since I didn't leave Korea at that time, I didn't end up putting the pictures from the goodbye parties on my blog. But since I'll be leaving in 11 days now, I suppose I'll add them now... I actually woke up late the day that my 4th graders threw a surprise party for me and arrive to school about 5 m

The first classes I ever taught independently (with out a co-teacher or any sort of guidance for subject material), in my first few months in Korea back in 2014, were a mess. I had lots of big ideas for sure, but I know now my execution of them was poor and overall they were generally unorganized. After a year of teaching regular classes, after school classes, 2 camps, and several Saturday classes, I was ready to make my last Winter English Camp the best of all. Not only did I collect a plethora of great ideas for this 2 week camp from my year of experience and from my other teacher friends, I was able to finally put everything I've learned about teaching together without any outside assistance and create a camp itinerary, system and syllabus I was proud of. For starters, the theme of my camp this year was "America". I wanted to take the students to the USA in terms of teaching about the country, culture and language. I told them that while we were in English

We arrived in Hong Kong after a short flight from Beijing at about 11 pm. By the time we made it to our hostel at around 1 am, we were exhausted and passed out immediately to regain our energy for the long day ahead of us. To start our day we met up with my mom's boss' niece, who is currently living and teaching English in Hong Kong. She took us to "Tim Ho Wan" a famous Chinese dim sum chain restuarant that originated in Hong Kong. The food was amazing, but also ridiculously cheap! We were stuffed by the time we left and only spent about $18 (for  three  people!). The restaurant has been dubbed "the world's cheapest Michelin-stared restaurant." Our hostel was in an area called Mong Kok, which is filled with famous markets and great shopping. Including: the ladies market, the flower market, the bird market, and the goldfish market. There's also the Temple Street night market a couple subway stops south. The streets are filled with vendors and a

We returned to our hostel late that evening from our trip to the wall. As we started scouting out some dinner (which would end up consisting of tomato and egg soup with fried noodles), we decided to walk from our hostel all the way down to the Forbidden City in hopes of seeing the gate lit up at night. We were not disappointed. Although freezing, and we could barely stand to remove our hands from our gloves for more than a few seconds to snap some pictures, it was well worth the long walk. The following morning, we got an early start to the day, leaving our hostel at nearly 9 am. Our plan was to see as many things as possible, starting with the National Museum of China. To our dismay, however, we found that almost all of the popular tourist destinations in Beijing are  closed  on Mondays. Although the city itself was closed on Monday, the tourists are allowed to enter the front gate, called Tiananmen, which is the monumental entrance to the city that we saw lit up the previou