The sky is falling

Is something wrong? My student's today refused a game of bingo, the game to end all games here in Korea. Isn't it axiomatic that you can never go wrong with bingo in Korea? I suspect Bush may have bingo at the top of his unspoken new strategy to deal with N. Korea.

But today kids refused to play bingo. They wanted to play a game of my inventing. A game where they open picture dictionaries to a map of the world. I then call out countries, from easy (China) to very difficult (Kiribati) and they scramble to find them. The first finder receives a coupon, which with hundreds of such s/he can buy terribly overpriced goods on "Market Day." They love this game. Me: "Borneo B-o-r-n-e-o" Them: silence, then "teacher, one more time spelling," and eventually screaming me me me me me me me me and pointing frantically to the page. Today I had the students pick random countries for each other. Among the chosen were Qatar, Antarctica, Chile, Honduras, Tonga, Nigeria (twice) and others. When a student couldn't pronounce a name and tried secretly pointing it out to me of guidence, it usually ended up in the rest of the students looking for a hint--where s/he was pointing.