Program REACH

Today was my first day volunteering at a local orphanage in Suwon through a non-profit organization called Program REACH. The program was started over a year ago by a group of expats, but I only recently found out about it. I got the idea to do some volunteer work a few months ago, so I Googled and was pleasantly surprised to find this right in our neighbourhood.

I teach English to three kids for an hour on Sunday afternoons. There are about 10 volunteers; half teach Wednesday evenings and the other half on Sundays. We share the same kids - the three I teach on Sundays, someone else teaches on Wednesdays, thus we have to coordinate a bit.

They're middle school students and super low level. They mostly want to communicate in Korean; so I'm doing my best to teach them in a mix of basic English and mangled Korean.

Today we played Sight Word BINGO and another game I downloaded from eslprintables.com (an awesome English teaching materials exchange site I’m a member of).

So far, so good.

Baby Frog Fish

"Baby frog fish" is the expression Clark once used upon spotting a tadpole and not knowing the English term.

I was reminded of this (cute Clarkism) today while parking the car after returning from Homeplus. As I was backing into the space, my rear wheels nudged the rubber parking curb a little more aggressively than intended, at which point the following conversation ensued:

Clark: Oh! You hit the bar.
Sarah: I don't think it's called a bar.
Clark: What's it called?
Sarah: I can't remember.
Clark: Parking pole? Rubber blockage? Rubber stopper?
Sarah:  (laughing) No. I don't know, I can't remember.
Clark: Wheel blocker? Back stop?
Sarah: Definitely not ~ that's not English. I don't know, I seriously can't remember.

And herein lies the problem; I'm losing my English vocabulary! Before writing this post, I had to Google "rubber in parking lot" which subsequently led me to the phrase "rubber parking curb" (used above). 34 years-old and I can't remember the word 'curb'.  Not good.

My inability to recall English words seems to be occurring with greater frequency and resulting in asinine conversations like the one above. I guess this is what inevitably happens when you live in a foreign country for an extended period of time without the company of friends who speak the same language (natively). If I stop to ponder for a moment, I have to admit that my English is riddled with Konglish expressions, flawed grammar, and gaping vocabulary holes. Perhaps I should invest in some native English-speaking friends?