First period was 2-1, 2-2 B, where I played Monopoly with Taylor-Swift-Yoontae, Twin-Seungho, and Woojin. Twin-Seungho's a crackup, just like his brother Jeongho, when you give him a chance. Every time something went right for him, he'd do a little fist pump or a small victory dance while remaining sitting. Even funnier, he seemed exactly like an old man during all these antics.
Next, I had 1-9, 1-10 B and everyone treated Deokryong like an actual person while we were playing. Geonhong, a tall, reserved kid, was grinning like crazy and enjoying himself during the game. I was so gratified to see him happy.
Hoodie-Woohyuk and Governor-Yunho wanted to play Cat Mario and none fo the kids were really watching the movie, so I switched the cables and let them play. It was interesting to me that they were still obsessed with beating the unbeatable game a whole week after playing it the first time.
As I was handing out chocolate at the end, Deukhee said thank you and it occurred to me that this baby was one of the first kids I knew here. He was at that first Saturday class where I was tagging along after B-Teacher. Our records teacher had Deukhee carry me a banana milkshake and a sandwich. I checked my posts--that happened on August 31st, nearly four months ago. Feels like it happened during my first year of college, it was so long back.
Next, my Tuesday 3rd-grade class had been moved to today, meaning that I had 4 class periods in a row. They were relatively easy because I just played movies and Monopoly the whole time, but 4 straight classes is still tiring because I'm still interacting with the boys on a very intense level--chatting, explaining, using Korean, trying to calm disputes, trying to ask about their lives.
Fortunately, Giant Shion came to class for the 3rd-graders. He has basically never come to English class (don't know how he manages to stay B-ban not C-ban if he does that with any other classes), but he was there today and he won our Monopoly game. After much persuading, he came over and sat with me and Hunyeong and Juyeong and played contentedly. Hunyeong is still trying to take care of me, and he offered me some of his own Monopoly money.
Eyelashes-Hyungjin, a kid who I knew early on at school but who has studiously ignored me for a long time, said something really nice. Hyungjin only started speaking to me two weeks ago, when he discovered that I had chocolate. Even then, he could never remember my name and when I asked him why he couldn't remember me when I was the only foreign woman at our school, he said "I know many people!"
But today Hyungjin walked away from his friend group to come tell me in English that he had seen me yesterday night in front of the Megabox. On Christmas night, I walked down to our theater to check movie times and out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw Hyungjin! But I decided not to turn and look directly because the boy in my periphery had a girl with him, which sometimes makes my boys more chatty because they want their girl to meet me, and sometimes makes them ignore me entirely.
And it was really him, after all. :-) Hyungjin looked very proud to have spotted me and he said, "My girlfriend..." before mimicking being arm-in-arm with a girl and having his arm tugged by her. I think he was trying to say that his girl pulled him closer when she saw me. Never know when those tricky foreigners are going to look away from the movie marquee and decide to steal your man, I guess. It was nice that my last class with Hyungjin had that good moment of recognition.
Interrupt this post to say that Adorable History Teacher just brought me a slice of cake.
Blueberry! Yes, We Eat Our Cake With Chopsticks.
Finally, it was time for 2-5, 2-6 A, boys who had been looking forward to Monopoly all week.
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8:30 PM Finally back to writing! 2-5, 2-6 A was just lovely. We had so many technical difficulties with getting our move to play, but it finally got going and Seungwoon, Jinseo, Seungjae, Minsu, and Dongheum could at last get their much-deserved game. I love 2-5, 2-6 A. They're so chill, and Deokjae teases me for everything, and Jinseo is a smarty and Seungwoon is a sweetie.
Then I rushed with all joy unto my lunch. I lunched and lunched and lunched. Four classes was way too many in a row, but I got some good nourishment in after that. Jeongminnie came to watch videos and he told me how much he liked his Christmas present.
Daesung was just standing around and hanging out, watching me and Jeongmin watch videos. So I told him to pull up a chair so he could be with us. At one point I asked Daesung what song he was listening to on his iPod. He gave me one earbud and I about died laughing when I heard the first strains of Justin Bieber's song "Baby". Daesung's such a sweetie though, it's natural for him to have darling taste in music.
When my 3rd-graders came to get me, I walked to the room with them and then gave the Monopoly game to Jaehwan as a present. It took a minute to convince him that I meant it, but he finally believed me. I gave Jinhwan my Monopoly cards, too. Thanks to my mother, I have backup copies of both games, and I knew Jaehwan and Jinhwan needed something special from me.
Later, Jinhwan called me aside in the hallway to ask me why I had given them the games and I tried to explain that it was because winter vacation is coming up and in March they will be high school students--I won't see them much, or won't see them at all. Jinhwan looked very serious, like we were in a heartfelt movie where he'd run through a busy terminal to tell me not to get on a plane. I think it's just now sinking in for him that he's leaving middle school and his whole life is going to change.
Went and sat in the special needs room and read webtoons with Piano-Jaehyung. He'd scroll down the comic page and read the words to me, but of course he was reading really fast and my vocabulary's limited, but I still laughed uproariously at some of the storylines.
In one webtoon, a mother character told the dad that she was going to have some friends over, so could he clean the house and tidy up the kids while she's out? Various mishaps occur, and Mom returns to her house with friends in tow, only to find a frazzled Dad holding a filthy child under each arm as if they're footballs, all while trying to walk through glass on the kitchen floor because he knocked over something massive that shattered everywhere. I lost it. The scenario seemed so true to life. Jaehyung has great taste in comedy webtoons.
I was walking down the hall with Jaehyung when far off I heard, "Leigh! Leighhhhh!" It was Sanghwa. His little lime green coat and fuzzy head were visible from down the hall and he called out, "chocolaaaate?!!??" I grabbed Jaehyung's arm and said, "Run!" so we sprinted a few steps to my office to get away from Sanghwa. I was just teasing, but when I emerged from my office with chocolate for Sanghwa, he had already gone. I decided to go find him during the next class break.
Later, having opened another chocolate orange, I went to Sa-ban (class 4) to find Sanghwa. They had their doors locked because the they were playing footleyball or whatever (it's played with a soccer ball, but looks like volleyball). I knocked on the door and when they saw through the glass that it was me, Sanghwa leaped over to unlock it, shouting "Chocolate! Chocolate!"
Part of me was very happy that he instantly knew what was happening--I had neglected to feed him earlier, so now he knew that I was there specifically for him, and was there with a treat. I also got chocolate to Afterschool-Jeongmin, who had sweetly greeted me on Christmas Day, despite me thinking that he really couldn't care less about me. He got my attention and waved on Christmas, and that was a big moment for me and Afterschool-Jeongmin.
Dongmin got a bit of chocolate orange, as did Model Seokho, whose beautiful face was covered with small bruises because as he said, "Face...blackboard...pow!" Tons of kids got bit of chocolate orange because I kept opening new oranges and wandering the halls, hoping to run into kids to give it to. They never disappoint in that respect. Seonwoo wanted chocolate, so I made a point of finding him during cleaning time.
Secret-Daeho came by to watch my Christmas lights twinkle. Saw America-Hyunkyeong for the first time in 3 weeks. I know I don't see the 3rd-graders near as often as the 2nd-grade, but I was starting to wonder where Hyunkyeong had gotten himself off to.
Saw Wooseok in the hall; got a beautiful smile and a double-high five. Smiled and said hi to BY, but we haven't really talked after the Christmas Eve incident, though I don't think I'm going to give him a lecture, anyway.
Before leaving school, I got a chocolate orange slice to Eyelashes-Hyungjin, who thanked me.
While walking home, some 3rd-graders I don't know struck up a conversation with me. I heard them practicing quietly with each other in English, saying "How old are you?" I repeated the question to them, "How old are you?" They said, "Oh no, not you!" As if they're practicing their English for someone else.
I answered, "I'm 27." Intense facial expressions follow. They are calculating. They decide the distance between us is not so great because the bravest one says, "You are very young. So young." I laughed and said, "No, I'm old!" Bravest One said, "Older. You are older than me." Among the students, there seem to be only two reactions to my age: "Wow, that's approaching elderly!" or "Wow, so young, we could totally hang out on the weekends!"
I went out for dinner with B-Teacher and S-Teacher. I rarely get to talk to her, but she was a riot. And I thought she was four years younger than me, but she's two years older! She's my unnie! Did not see that one coming.
We got to talk a lot about our school and it was very stress-relieving. She had stories, I had stories, and B-Teacher had stories, so we really enjoyed ourselves. And once again I hear how our school is a lousy place to work, especially for the Korean teachers. S-Teacher has only been at our school one semester longer than I have and in the summer she had to go to the city council and give some kind of testimony about school violence that happened in her homeroom class--it was that bad.
S-Teacher and B-Teacher talked about how our school is seriously ghetto (underfunded, lots of violence, lax manners). But there were some bright spots, too; B-Teacher complimented me on getting along with the kids. He said: "There's that kid, the quiet one who never speaks. I always try talking to him, but he never says a word, but the other day I saw him walking down the hall with you, smiling and playing with your hair."
The quiet kid in question was Seongwonnie. It's interesting how Seongwon goes into pre-verbal phases. It used to be like trying to talk to a toddler--he was either really noisy or almost totally unreactive. I had no clue that B-Teacher was trying to engage him, too. But B-Teacher shouldn't feel bad because it took me 3 months to get Seongwonnie out of his shell. Today, outside he kept dropping snowballs very near to me, so that I wouldn't actually be hit, but I'd still feel the constant threat of being snow-stalked. That's my boy.
S-Teacher did say something sad, though--she said she doesn't like Saturday Jeongmin. He's not in her homeroom class, but he's in the next class over. She said she used to think he was really polite, but now she thinks he's annoying and braggy.
She says he doesn't really have friends because he's so smart, but also because he rubs it in. I've caught myself getting annoyed at Jeongminnie a few times because he just wouldn't stop being obnoxious about his knowledge, so I can't image that the other 13-year-olds are somehow going to manage their ire better than a grown woman can. Kids don't forgive.
Also, she said that he bothered her friend, his homeroom teacher, by taking up all her extra time with talking to her since he didn't have buddies. Sounds a lot like my other teacher friend getting annoyed at Dongminnie for always hanging around her office, endlessly talking about nothing in particular. It's time consuming to talk with them, but the boys are doing it because they're lonely or they're hurt or they're just looking to connect.
Now, I'm not a Korean teacher. I only get small inklings of how severe their workload is. But in my heart I feel like we should endeavor to not see the kids as interruptions. (Now that I've said that, watch me get annoyed at some kid for taking up all my time next week). That's no reason to dislike a kid, because they brag about the only thing they're good at--using their brain--and because they need to be loved and recognized so badly, they'll go to great lengths to get what they need.
B-Teacher said that Jeongminnie was talking to him about going to Canada for the break, but Jeongmin said he wasn't excited to go because he'll "Miss the interviews for Saturday class and miss Leigh-Teacher". B-Teacher said he couldn't understand why on earth Jeongmin was making such a big deal about missing the interviews, and I explained to him that in Jeongmin's eyes, I'm more like his first girlfriend than his English teacher. Separation is the terror of puppy love. Anyhow, I'm glad to be there for him. Jeongmin's been a blessing to me and I pray that the Lord will keep him safe on his trip, and help him figure out how to get along with his schoolmates.
And a shot of the Paris Baguette cake that me and my three friends tried and failed to eat on Christmas night:
And with your prepacked, pretty, perfect Christmas cake, you are given a packet of candles ant two really long matches. You are to light the candles of your cake as if it was a birthday. I thought it was the weirdest ritual, but as me and my crew sat at our coffee shop eating our cake, I turned and saw 2 couples with their own cakes, identical to ours, pulling out smoky candles and digging in. It was like an alternate reality Christmas where Birthday-Meets-Valentines somehow equals yuletide cheer. But it was all good. And tasty. :-)
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