Kids essays - Part 8 - Christmas card edition

Most of these have already been put up on facebook, but I will share them here as well. The last week of fall semester was hard. Everyone was tired, we had finals to write, grade, redo. The kids were all ready to be done too. One "bad" part of my job is that I don't really get to do fun stuff with my kids. Sometimes this is awesome - I actually teach them instead of watching Mr. Bean. Sometimes this sucks because hey, who doesn't love Mr. Bean? The last 2 days of class, I let the kids "play". We didn't actually play anything fun, but instead of doing real lessons, I let them make Christmas cards. Some kids got into it. Others, not so much. It didn't really help that Caroline was also doing basically the same thing in her classes. Here are some of the results:

This one is really only cute because of the misspelling of Merry, which she fixed.

Their original assignment (before they could make cards) was to write about another  holiday in a different country. Alice wrote about Halloween, which of course is never complete without Abraham Lincoln (aka Lincan) wearing jeans and sporting a sweet Korean style bowl cut.

Andy did not really want to draw a Christmas card. This is actually his second drawing.  But when he showed me the final product, this side was shown first. I really like his reindeer.

This is the original drawing. It started with the tree with knives and a skull on top. This just shows that some stereotypes are true - boys like guns etc. regardless of nationality.

This is one of the older boys. I did not give him a present.

This was a nice card done by Jane. Her older brother Jason also goes to my school. She likes to describe him as fat, even though he isn't.

I really don't know why I can't rotate pictures here. Ryan drew a picture of Jinju castle, then got bored and decided to reenact the battle using Mario and Luigi. You know, the historic version.

This is from Julie. They call me L/S teacher. The older kids usually call me Ryan, but all the younger ones call me Teacher and if there are 2 of us, they designate by which classes we teach.

Again with the vertical! This is Mack's drawing. My favorite part is the kid sleeping next to the tree. Although the reindeer is pretty cool. Reminds me a little of Max from "How the Grinch Stole Christmas"

Mary made a book

I think I'd like blue Cristmas, even though Elvis didn't.

Yellow Critmas has a lot going for it, but green shows patriotism...tough call.

She got new pens earlier that day - thus the colorful Christmas

This is the card Mary made for me at home. She was shy when she gave it to me and apologized for printing things off the internet instead of drawing them herself.

Damn straight I'm lovely

This is Olivia's drawing. I enjoy the festive air with "have a good time", but my favorite feature is the "fire" label.

This is the front of Optimus's card. He is one of my older boys and has corrupted some of the others by showing them videos from Lonely Island. Now they sing inappropriate songs.

The inside of his card - To Santa and reindeers. You didn't give me present last year. Screw you guys!

This is how easy it is to impress children. They thought my Rudolph was awesome.

Santa got compliments too. I seriously need to work on my beards.

This was homework that Alice did. They were supposed to write and draw about exercise. It says, "Playing runing mushine is healthy!" It means running on a treadmill is healthy.

The outside of Steve's card. He is in one of the youngest levels and is 10 I think.

The inside of the card. He thought it was hilarious when I opened it.

This is some of Hannah's homework. There is nothing really funny about any of this. I just think it's cute.

 This next card deserves more than just a caption. This is Tommy's class project. He chose this instead of a Christmas card. He was supposed to pick a country and write about a famous person, landmark and holiday. Here's what he wrote in the top: USA is great country continent is North Americans language is English important day is Thanksgiving important person is Lincoln favorite city is New York it is stateue of liberty USA help 6-25

You have to give him props for capital letters, but the boy can't use a period to save his life. He also holds his pencil in a fist which helps to account for the awful handwriting. So he drew the flag, wrote this, drew the Statue of Liberty (which by the way is holding a book labeled "book"), then started drawing tanks on the bottom to show how we helped South Korean during the war (they often call it the 6-25 war). So he then turned the tank into a robot tank and set the North Koreans on fire. Then he drew Mario and Luigi. For some reason Luigi is a South Korean and Mario is a North Korean. Luigi cut Mario in half with a chainsaw and he became an angel. So now that you have the background, here's the picture:

After Christmas card class, we were finished with school for the next few days. We obviously had Christmas Eve off (since it was Saturday), but we also had Monday and Tuesday off as well. Friday night I decided to decorate a bit and made a card wall. That night Liezle came over after work and we just sat and chatted for awhile then went to bed because we were both really tired.

Card wall over my couch.

On Saturday, I met up with Liezle and Keung He for lunch and coffee at Beans Farm. We split a waffle. Then we ran some errands and went grocery shopping because we had to make food for the church potluck on Sunday. It was a comedy of errors because neither of us are that great at cooking, and we only had Liezle's toaster over to bake in. We decided to make a potato bake using potatoes (duh), mushrooms, onions, bacon and cream. It was good but we had to cook it in tiny batches. We also screwed up the first batch of potatoes and ended up turning them into mashed potatoes. We also decided to make ice cream pies because we didn't know if anyone was going to bring dessert. I crushed peanut butter Oreos with a vodka bottle because neither of us had a rolling pin. We decided to try to decorate them using chocolate syrup. Mistake. It's really hard o draw with that stuff if you don't put it in a piping bag or ziploc bag. They tasted ok, but we forgot to cover them and so I think they were slightly freezer burned. We were also in a rush because there was a candlelight service at church and we wanted to go to that too. It was really fun cooking with Liezle though and while we made a mess, said the word "shit" a dozen times and used our hands as substitutes for just about every utensil (we washed them first), we also laughed and turned out some decent food. 

It's an awful picture of me, but whatever. This showcases the Christmas tree pie. It's also a picture of me wearing pearls from Holly. As she put it, "I know you didn't ask for them and probably don't want them, but I thought you needed them so wear them."

This was my attempt at a snowman. He was ok until I tried the hat and arms. Then he turned into cowboy snowman.

After cooking, we rushed to a cab and went to church. They had it decorated and lit with candles. We each had a dixie cup with a tea light in it as well. We sang carols and read passages about Christmas. I read an excerpt out loud to everyone. After this Liezle and I went to see Sherlock Holmes because we didn't want to go to a bar, but didn't want to go home either. We were really tired at the end of the movie though.

Candles and a star at the front of the church

Next up: Christmas Day.