Dear Family and Friends,

Last semester was an utter wash in regards to writing and traveling but to compensate, I definitely grew as a teacher. Memorable lessons from last semester were the day when my aunt and parents visited to talk with my students (family visits are a great deal for me: they teach, I supervise), the team-teaching demonstration class that my fantastic co-teacher and I performed at the end of May, a July lecture by my best friend via videoconferencing, and another team teaching performance – this time in front of 35 US school principals. While I still cannot say if I plan to teach long-term, I can say that I’m enjoying the challenges now, and I have the pictures to prove it!

My sweet Aunt Jenny talks flying and illustrates with a flight map.

Mum and I indulge in a hug while I consider clocking one of my boys. (I resisted – that time!)

Our students re-tell Charlotte’s Web events during our demonstration class (in front of ~20 people – teachers from my school, other schools, our vice principal, principal, and my boss from the city). Our students were great!!!!

My co-teacher, Im, Eunjoo and I were very lucky to have Liona Burnham join us and our students got a real kick out of her talk.

Despite the wonderful teaching conditions, the end of the school semester, July 13^th, could not come fast enough. Towards that end, as is a life pattern with me, I had managed to utterly burn out my creativity and energy with quantity (and quality) of work. I actually ended with the semester before the semester ended itself – the Thursday evening that I found out that my British co-teacher Paul would be moved to another school. I haven’t written much about Paul here – but I’ve been beyond lucky to work with him - he has been an invaluable mentor, companion, and friend. More importantly, he is an amazing teacher and our students adore him (despite his sometimes difficult for them British accent!). Although losing him to another school was not a surprise, it was disheartening and the semester concluded on a decidedly sour note even though I will return to Daegu Foreign Language High School in September.

Paul poses with hundreds of goodbye notes from his students.

Burned out, disheartened, exhausted, I had to, had to have a vacation – so I snuck away from Daegu to… Malaysia.

Ciao!
Laura

Miss Ee and Miss Ee – one rarely sees the one without the other – pose with their sign for Paul.

**Pictures of my parents and from the demonstration class are courtesy of Son, Young Chai and Taegu Foreign Language High School.**