This morning, there was a mass exodus as the 2nd-graders boarded about 30 tour buses, each bus the size of a small planet. They're going to see a mountain, but I don't know which one. I told every kid I passed to have a good time and take lots of pictures.
This morning, I saw Byeongsu just wandering around the school aimlessly before classes, so I asked if he wanted to use the colored bubbles I brought. On a whim, I had bought 4 little tubes of colored bubbles at Homeplus, thinking the boys might like them. I was right. Byeongsu and I passed ten pleasant minutes on the school's porch, blowing bubbles and talking about how we miss Jaehyung, who is on the trip.
And a few minutes ago, Saturday Jeongmin came into the office. To borrow tissues! He said that he had lost his tissues, so could he get some of mine? Of course. I'd probably give him my whole desk and its contents, if he asked. This is the first time Jeongmin's been by in the morning, when the office is full of teachers. Many kids say that the 1st-floor office is scary because it's so large and full of teachers and the VP is right here, so I think it's cool that my boy doesn't feel intimidated by the bigness or officialness of the place.
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10:40 AM Well, teaching 1-3, 1-4 B without a co-teacher was a doozy. They were reeeeally not paying attention and I actually snapped and shouted at them to be quiet once, but we had fun. The class mostly descended into the kids play-fighting and looking out of windows, but we did bond over the game.
After class, all the boys I knew by name came up and asked for candy in the "May I have chocolate please?" format that I taught them. For some reason, since "please" is not a unique word in the Korean vocabulary ("please" is implied by the relative politeness of your verb ending), I think the boys have a heinous time with remembering to say please. So I work on their sweetness and politeness levels in English.
Got 3 new names--Yoohan, Jaehyun, and Jeongho. I have written down who they hang out with and where they sit in the Document O' Kids. While I was writing down the new boys' names in hangul, Walk-to-School Minki came up and said, "Teacher! Me too," wanting me to spell his name. Of course, I could. Then Bossy-Dongseok wanted me to write his name as well. It was quite sweet. And Dongseok finally called me Sem, resisting the powerful urge to address me as either "girrrrl" or "Hey man".
As that tumblr account about teaching in Korea says,
When my Students try to speak English to me outside of class, they're just like...
This is Dongseok's vocabulary, in a nutshell. All this, coming from a 13-year-old with wide eyes and a bowl cut and blue lips from the raspberry candy he ate.
And a tiny miracle happened in class. When the game got going, the kids crowded around the front of the room, and Bully-Jaekyung and Minki were sitting together on a desk, watching the forest game on display on the wall. They were talking and joking.
I. I....what? I guess we're just...okay now? Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled that Jaekyung is being kind to Minki and that they've resolved their differences, but I truly wonder how we got from Jaekyung pounding Minki's face into a mess of tears to everybody chatting like old pals. But hooray for that anyways.
One unique thing about the boys here is that they are incredibly affectionate and have zero self-consciousness about how much they touch other boys. They carry each other piggyback, fall asleep on each other's shoulders, sit in people's laps, etc. They seem to have no idea that their actions could be interpreted differently, and of course they're utterly oblivious to how many eyebrows they'd raise if they did this stuff in the States. For my part, I think it's sweet, and the snuggly-ness seems to partially counteract the violence problem.
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I got 4 new names--Bowlcut-Yeongjin, who I met once at the playground near my apartment, Nice-Seongjoon, the boy who I could never quite meet because Daeho kept stopping me, Boo-Jongha, the kid who said boo, and Model-Seokho, a kid whose actual aspiration in life is to be a model. With his height and bone structure he could make that happen, but I kind of wished he wanted something more substantial as a career.
Mr. B actually called me over to introduce Model-Seokho, who was sitting in the back of class. Seokho looked like he'd been crying, and Mr. B said, "Please remember this student. His name is Seokho. He wants to be a fashion model someday." I could tell the boy was feeling bad and insecure, though I couldn't precisely read the situation, so I said, "Oh, he's got a good face--he could do it!"
Then Mr. B told me, "He's a handsome kid. The problem with Seokho is that he always sleeps in class. But remember his name, please." Not sure if Mr. B was trying to embarrass Seokho a little bit by telling me about his penchant for napping, or if he was genuinely trying to make sure that I saw this kid as important. Whatever it was, it wasn't meant in a mean spirit--he wants to help Seokho. And Seokho came up to me after class to ask for chocolate and to remind me of his name and write it down for me.
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