Teaching Can Sure Be Sweet

When my new kindergarten classes started about a month ago, I got a gift from one of my student's mothers. It was this bag with a jar of sugar candies in it. It's definitely a nice gift, but the messages with it are funny.

On the outside, it says "Bradley Teacher: I appreciate your interest in my son." Hmmm ok.

And here's the jar of candies, which say "Be My Love Sweet" on the outside of the jar.

The be my love sweet thing is pretty funny, but this is a fairly common practice for Korean parents to give a gift of food to the teacher as an incentive to teach their children well. The only problem is this kid is kind of a terror. He hates to sit down during class, and occasionally he likes to punch me in that special area. He is surprisingly strong for a 6 year old, too.

So thanks for the gift, I'll do my best. Or maybe I'll just give the candy to the kid in exchange for not hitting me in the balls.

Ouch.

So my town has a batting cage, conveniently located directly behind my school. Craving some baseball action, this Sunday I went for the first time. I only swung at about 100 balls, but I got this ridiculous blister on my hand. I was wearing the gloves that they provided, but they were these strange gardening gloves.

The batting cage is nice, thought there are three right handed cages and only one that caters to both righties and lefties. It's a super good deal to bat there because it's only 500 won for 20 balls (about 40 cents), so I did about five rounds.

The batting cage

my hand day 1

my hand day 2

So today (Monday) my rib cage was super sore and it hurts to twist in some directions. My hand still hurts a lot if I stretch it. We'll see if I go again this weekend.