10-18-13 Home Life of the Kids, Third-Grade Fire Drill, 2 Months in Korea

8:30 AM: When I got to school, Oldest Teacher called me "Minyeo," which means "beautiful girl," or "the beauty," so that's always a nice way to start off the day.

Talked to my Daddy on the phone on the walk over, and his 30-year high school reunion is coming up. Time flies, for everyone.

KBR-Teacher and I meant to study language last night, but we just ended up venting about the kids for an hour. But it was good. We laughed and compared notes, and I got advice from her on a few issues I'd been mulling over. She also filled me in on their family situations.

Pepper-Dongmin is not as scary a kid as I supposed. Yeah, he does the bullying thing, but he gets bullied too, and he lives with just his grandfather so he doesn't get any discipline at home. I don't know if Dongmin's parents are living, but in any case they are not part of his life. Add to that the fact that he's C-class, the lowest of the low and not likely to rise.

KBR says that Dongmin is very childish when you get to know him--that he can talk and ramble for hours about the silliest things. He comes to her office every day to talk to her about nothing, and it drives her a bit nuts. I can see why, but I know he must need someone to listen to him if he's willing to spend all that time chattering to her about life in general.

Sanghwa's family's very wealthy, but his parents are so busy he rarely sees them. They apparently have a very tense relationship.

My Jiwoong liked English in elementary school wasn't merely a good student--he was considered extra especially gifted. That changed, somewhere along the way. KBR says that Jiwoong does bully other kids a bit, but he also gets teased horribly by his own peer group under the guise of joking, and he gets hit very hard very often, under the same umbrella of friends who are "just kidding". Is it any wonder that he can't spare any polite, gracious words, after all that?

My boys, Geon, HH, Insung and Daehoon got 3rd place in their skit competition, and out of about fifteen teams, that's not bad. But HH looked really glum yesterday--don't know if it was because he'd heard the results already, or if he was just a tad burned out from the competition.
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1 PM: 1-3,1-4 B went better than humanly expectable after last week's fiasco with Minki. This class has: Walk-to-School Minki, Bossy-Dongseok, Tan-Loudmouth-Sanghyeop, Round-Faced-Heesu, Inho. Tiny-Quiet-Seongyu (middle of room), Personality-Jaeson(tan, back of room), Bully-Jaekyung, Supersmart-Eunchan.

Last time, the video feed wouldn't work, but this week I jammed a marker under the video plug and it suddenly worked. Scattergories went medium-well, filling out worksheet went medium-well and the final compound word game went really well.

I met new boys.

Quiet-Seongyu is tiny,wears a full suit, sits alone, looks sad, and says correct answers so quietly I have to take three steps forward to hear him.

Jaeson requested a particular Youtube video that is a song related to the game Minecraft. I'll remember him because he's got interesting tastes.

Bully-Jaekyung is, no surprises, the big boy who was trying to flatten Minki's face last week. He's pleasant to talk to and has a charming manner and Justin-Bieber hair.

Supersmart-Eunchan answered more questions than all the other kids combined.


2-1, 2-2 A was great as well. Letter-Byeonghyun, Joker-Seongmo, Poet-HH, Artist-Joohyun, Kimchi Power Kyeongbae, Glasses Seohyung, Red Sweater-Keundeok, Perpetually Sick-Byeongmin. 

They I walked in and tapped Seongmo's hand and said "There's my favorite student," so I'm just going to call things even, there. They all got vicious during Scattergories, and there were many wild accusations made about idea-stealing on all sides. Byeonghyun and Seongmo made several inside jokes with me about stuff we've discussed in our afterschool, which I love because it's a friendly thing, but it could also easily make the other kids jealous.

At the end, we got to the point where we were switching points among the teams and it was just a circus to see who could be the last to switch--I'll have to think of a different/better scoring system, but this one worked this time. HH's team won and he was beaming at the end, which is what I wanted. He looked way too down lately.

At the end, all the boys swarmed around me for chocolate. Byeonghyun and Seongmo launched into the loudest praise possible, shouting tandem variations on, "You're so beautiful! Your hair, your eyes! The best!" All this while I'm trying to coach Kyeongbae and his friends through the "my hero is..." speech. Though I do love having Seongmo and Byeonghyun being insanely loud and competitive, because that's their natural state.
 HH came back for more chocolate and said, "My hero is Leigh!" I had to correct him to make him add "Teacher" to the end, but it was all fun.

Played more piano and UNO with Jaehyung and O-Teacher.

Saw Cutie-Hyunki from yesterday, and made him smile when I remembered his name.
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3:30 PM Had a good 2-3, 2-4 A with: Sunbin and Hyun (afterschool), Joon and Jeongmin (afterschool), Yoonjae (Tall), Minwoo (introduced me to Byeongyoon), Byeongyoon (Magician), Shinhyuk (necktie), Inha.

We didn't have KBR-Teacher in there, but they were fine. We got through everything okay, and Tall-Yoonjae actually seemed thrilled to see me. No idea why that kid in particular would feel charitable toward me...maybe because I said I met his mother at karaoke, which I did? Anyhow, I stuck with him and Emo-Joon while they filled out their worksheet, and I was blown away my Yoonjae's good English and by Joon's smiles. I guess all it takes for Joon to be happy is sitting by his BFF.

Little Minwoo in this class decided to get my attention during Scattergories by making some puff-cheeked bubble-blowing noise somewhere between a fish, a pig, and a pony. It was the cutest thing I've beheld all day.

One B-class child (the one who told me Sanghwa was hitting him?) wandered into our class. I let him stay.

Then for 3-7, 3-8, 3-9 B I didn't teach, because there was a fire drill. But there were so many misunderstandings. First I went into room 3-7 when I should have gone to 3-8 and one of the boys had to try to get me to the right place, but I didn't know whether to believe him. So I waited for Mr. B and he said that yes I did go in 3-8, but that I didn't need to teach because the fire drill would start in a few minutes.

So. I plunked myself down at a table near the front and brought out the UNO cards, asking for people who wanted to play. At first there was no interest. No one moved. I put the cards up, assuming nothing was happening. But as soon as Mr. B came up to talk to me about what I wanted to do for the school festival, some boys started filing into the front seats, looking simultaneously hopeful/expectant and too cool to give a care. As usual, they want to do things but they don't want to appear as if they want to do things.

Therefore, I got the cards out again. I played with the 5 coolest boys in class, who were naturally the ones who thought they had a right to the game. They picked up the rules quickly, and I had just won the first game when a fire drill sounded. I packed up the cards and we shuffled out, but then the kids came right back up the stairs.

They said it wasn't a real drill. I groaned. They said we had to go back to class;

Me: "No...."
Them: "Play UNO again!"
Me: "Shireo!" ("I don't want to/I hate it.")
Them: WHYYY...?

But I was mainly protesting because it was fun--we're in the process of developing a joking sort of relationship and it's taken me longer to bond with the 3rd-graders than with anybody else. They took great joy in shepherding me back into the classroom for another round of cards. I played with the same boys, plus one extra cool kid, and every other student crowded around.

Round about this time, I begin to get the distinct prickly feeling which means that one or more someones are touching my hair and hoping I won't notice. They may even be contemplating yanking out a strand to keep--students have joked about that before. So I handed them some more hair, to give them official permission and to sort of de-mystify the whole process. My hair's not a magical object. About three of them played with my hair while I finished the game, and soon the real fire alarm rang and the kids filed out to be sorted on the soccer field.


Red-Sweater Keundeok just came by. "Teacher...third class, I am looking for my pencil case. Look like cat?" I told him I hadn't seen it, but I gave him chocolate.
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5 PM: Poor Sanghwa. I'm at home now, but when I was leaving school I saw him sitting on a bench next to the bikes. I walked up to give him a  chocolate, but then I saw that he was actually talking angrily on his phone. He hung up and kicked his bike, then punched a metal wall. His entire scrawny body was shaking with anger, and he was crying. I should have left, but I didn't know if he needed help. I sat on a bench and said a few Korean words to let him know I was offering help.

He didn't say anything. I put a chocolate on his bike seat and he swatted it to the ground, then rode away. Further down the road, I passed him as an older female teacher was giving him a thorough talking-to...I don't know what about. I don't know what's going on with Sanghwa's family life, but it has made him a little ball of sadness that manifests itself as rage.
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8:30 PM Bought winter coats and mufflers. To me, everything that wraps around your neck is a scarf, but here, warm scarves are just "mufflers". And gloves are hard to find--I went through 7 stores in my town before I found a place that sold gloves. They'd have jackets and coats and all manner of winter-wear on sale, but nothing to keep your hands warm! Don't know if this is a Korean-store thing or if it's this hard to find gloves at home and I just didn't notice.

One bit of Korean school culture I forgot to mention is that we don't drink beverages with our lunch at school. There aren't even cups, period. The teachers and students all sit down with our trays and eat massive quantities of lunch, with nary a drop of water or cola to be seen. The trick is to alternate eating dry foods with eating your soup. There is always a soup and you had better not skip it if you enjoy not-choking.

I haven't had a problem with it. Even most of our "dry" foods are like kimchi--a sort of wet, fermented cabbage, so it's easy to eat. After lunch, there's a drink-cup station you can go to--the boys flock around these dispensers of silver cups and run water from spouts into the cups, getting all the hydration they need after lunch.

I always pack a bottle of water and an extra bottle of cola or juice or tea for school. We have coffee in the office, but it doesn't do much for thirst, and we have these big water fountains in the hallways, but they're huge and designed like metal troughs, and the boys stick their whole heads in there. So there's no way I'm drinking from the hall fountains because they're probably full of Ebola virus or something.

After my last class today, there was some special food for teachers and a few students behind the school--they had some veggie pancakes, kimchi, grilled pork, a rice cake thing that tasted like peanut butter, and other foods whose names were too long too remember. Today was the first day of...rice harvest? It was something special, but not an official holiday.

While we were standing outside eating, I talked to AM-Teacher, a pretty girl whose specialty is Korean Literature and we mostly chatted in Korean, or as much as I could manage. Her 1st-graders kept swooping in to insist that she should speak to me in English, but I kept trying to diffuse that situation and insist on Korean. None of the girl-teachers will ever talk to me if they think people are judging them based on which language they use. It's almost a Catch-22 because if they don't use English, people will assume their English is bad and if they do use English, they'll confirm it. I'm just trying to make friends, and the boys don't know they're complicating things.

Secret-Daeho kept coming up to stand by me and ask questions about how I liked the food. I knew there was a big soccer match with the 3rd-graders today, so I asked in English if he had been in the soccer match today, then immediately re-phrased the question in messy Korean, as is my habit. Daeho laughed and said, "I understand! No, I didn't play today."

Daeho asked me how one of the rice cakes tasted and this particular kind had a weird chalky consistency, so I told him quietly that it tasted a bit like dirt, then I tried to say it Korean and he corrected, "No, Teacher, no it's okay. I understand. I study English a lot." Turns out, Daeho isn't 3rd-grade C-class like I thought, he's 3rd-grade A-class, which is the reason I've never taught him. He doesn't have the world's best English, but he can comprehend more than he can produce, and he doesn't like to be spoon-fed the meanings of basic sentences. I told him, "I'm sorry, but I'm not used to students understanding what I say," which he thought was hilarious.

In other news, I've been in Korea for 2 months! I landed here on August 18th, and now it's October 18th. So in order to fulfill my one-year contract all I have to do is repeat what I just did five more times! I think it's do-able. :-)
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