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Friday, January 10, 2014

1-11-14 Video of the Bridge, and Artistic Yosep

1 PM: Only had Yosep in class today, and we made some art.


This morning, the school was extra-empty, nearly devoid of even teachers, but one of the men who used to pretend I didn't exist greeted me first with a bright, "안녕하세요!" That set a nice tone for the day.

The heat in my classroom wasn't turned on, but I settled in there anyway because...I don't know why. It would have been dead easy to hunt down a person and ask them to turn the heat on. But I just sat in my mittens and coat, learning Korean by myself.

When it became apparent that nobody was coming (so I thought), I went down the hall and gave some of the Paris Baguette bread I bought for my students to a pair of cutiepie first-grade students who appear to be our school's other pair of twins. They always say hello to me like I'm a special part of their day, and they've been sneaking up to the door of my classroom to peer in. Yesterday I surprised them by crouching low and and opening my class door, so our eyes were on the same level. They ran off shrieking like it was a divine sort of joke. English Sem is funny.

Later, I saw Dongseok so I gave him and Beomjoon and their friends the remainder of the bread and cookies, to which Dongseok said, "Oh yeah, thanks baby!" This child. A few days ago, he saw me on the street while he was walking ahead of me, and he looked back about five times to make sure I was watching him. Needs his attention like a flower needs water.

Then just as I was learning how to conjugate irregular verbs ending in ㄷ, Yosep rolled in! So our low-attendance winter camp just got as low-attendy as it can: it was only me and Yosep today, so we made art. We drew science fiction cities and labeled the parts of our cities in hangul and English.

This was after I had exhausted a few other possibilities. I had stuff prepared, but not the kind of stuff you could do with one kid, because it was competitive. I tried word games, then I tried a Powerpoint Rorshach test for a few minutes, then I suggested cards and Monopoly, then I asked him what he wanted to do. No response. Yosep's intelligent but he's not good at decision-making, even when he understands the question perfectly. He's very peaceful and laid back. He wants me to come up with something good for us to do.

So I decided to whip out the art supplies and have us both draw future cities. I can scarcely draw. And for ten minutes, he just watched me draw and label the parts of my picture in two languages; I thought this was another failed idea since he wasn't trying it out yet. Then I told him to go ahead and try it and HE DID AWESOME. It just took him a while to plan out his city and how he wanted it to go. We drew with pens then used pastels on top of that, smudging the color in with our fingers.

Yosep's.

Yosep made a cool underwater city with a train track leading through the skies to an even cooler floating green city where people watch soccer matches. We worked side by side, and while I added flourishes to my drawing, he used my phone dictionary to look up English words for his picture. I didn't even direct him to do that part--he just knows the routine with us, where we use the dictionary to communicate.

Also, Yosep revealed the he knows the unlock code for my phone. He must have watched my fingers move over the keys enough that he learned it, because he would just reach over and unlock my phone to use the dictionary at different intervals. He looked thrilled when I finally realized that he had cracked the code. I put up a token fuss and pushed his arm, but I let him keep using it. My food and my technology are all yours, kiddo.

My future city, by the way, was a dystopian future where we live in castles suspended upon pink pedestals over a lava ocean, while the stars keep their sad watch over the eternal night.

Mine.

He stayed a few minutes after class to finish, and I sent his picture home with him. He was going to leave it with me, but something told me that it might be nice for him to keep it. I kept mine, too.

On the walk out of school, Laryngitis Seonghoon greeted me while walking along with his little guitar strapped to his back. I couldn't think of anything in Korean to say to him, so I just said, "guitar!" pleasantly and he said, "yes," pleasantly. Smooth words, Leigh. Better slow down with your clever verbosity. Think I saw Deokjae on a bike--some darling boy on a bike greeted me, and he looked Deokjae-ish, under his face-obscuring hat.

Saw 1st-grade Sangyeop over the bridge. When he saw me, he stopped in his tracks, bowed, then took off his hat and tipped his cap to me. Dawww. This is the kid that I was "married" to during a game of Monopoly, the one who hid money from me. I told him his hat looked good and he said thank you.

Got my train ticket for Monday, now to get my new luggage and pack to go home in two days! Wheeeee!
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