12 PM: Another day of camp down! Six more to go, I think?
Arrived at school to find a bunch of workers in the hallways, doing stuff to our ceilings and draping electrical cords through the hallways. Don't know if we're getting a new lighting system or what...I have a very limited understanding of what construction workers and electricians actually do. They fuss with stuff and then stuff gets better, is how it works at home.
In class I discovered just Quiet-Yosep and Food-Seongyo, like yesterday. We did our little mini-mystery for first period, and we collectively died laughing when they tried to rearrange scrambled letters to form English words. They could get the word "Dawn" and the word "is" but the final words were just a slush of fun confusion.
Got 3 loaves of Paris Baguette bread today, all garlic butter bread since that's what the boys prefer. I also brought wet wipes this time, because their hands get really greasy from the bread and it gets all over the Monopoly money.
Seongyo folded his hands and prayed over his food. I asked him if he was a Christian, and when he said yes, I told him that I was, too. It was so sweet to know that my hungry little boy knows something about the Lord, at least.
This morning it hit me where I've seen Wintercamp-Jeongmin before. I knew he was B-ban and I taught him, but I could mentally pinpoint which class he was in. He's in 1-7, 1-8 B with Yosep--this kid is Mettugi! (메뚜기) His nickname is the Korean word for "grasshopper" and I've taught him for four months, but it's hard to notice a little grasshopper when he sits by wildchild Hyunmin. For some reason, I could never remember grasshopper's face, but now I always will.
Yoonmo is a crackup. I wish I could understand more of what he says because he's C-ban and has almost no English words. (I feel like my Korean has improved just this week, from talking so much with my wintercamp boys and listening to them.) Yoonmo's also a kid that stands out because he has a deeper voice, but he's about the size of the smallest 1st-graders. That's got to be difficult for him when his buddy Wintercamp-Jeongmin-Grasshopper is about eight inches taller.
I was talking about nicknames and Yosep said that his nickname is "Goat!" That's why he named his detective agency "Goat History Book". I asked why they call him goat, but he had no answer. However, later during the Monopoly game, he head-butted Yoonmo, a gesture I've never seen any other student do, so maybe that's where the name originated.
Also, the 1st-graders are not really imaginative when it comes to nicknaming their brethren--Grasshopper, Goat, and Rabbit. I'm quite sure that the 1st-grade wing of the school contains children named after every other animal on Noah's Ark, too.
Daesung came into our classroom for a while. I told him again that his brown hair looks nice. I asked if he was taking a wintercamp class, and he is--Japanese!(Interestingly, he told me what he was learning in a mixture of English and Korean: "Japan-eo." In Korean, "eo" can mean "language" and Japanese is "Ilbon-eo". But instead of saying either "Japanese" in English or "Ilbon-eo" in Korean, he went with a mixture--"Japan-eo". Cute. He has spoken some Japanese phrases to me before, but I didn't realize he had an actual interest in the language.
I asked him to speak some Japanese for me, and I parroted the three phrases I know. He said that he would do an "insa" (Korean for "greeting"), then he said a few sentences that were clearly him introducing himself in Japanese. From what I've seen of Japanese dramas, it sounded like his pronunciation was good. He pointed out that we had the same brand of phone--LG--and I sent him home with a half-loaf of bread.
Saw Cardsharp-Minsu on the walk home. He was going to walk right past without saying hi and we were the only two people on the road. I said, "Minsu, hi!" He kept walking as if he hadn't heard me, and I put on my serious-business voice: "Minsu, say hello." He said "hi," back and we went our separate ways.
Gosh, Minsu. Would it kill you to be nice? We are not strangers. I've taught him for four months in regular class and in afterschool, fed him popcorn and chips, given him chocolate when he won games, tried to do nice things for him and involve him in games, only to be met with boundless disinterest. I always greet him happily when I see him, and I don't know why he feels like he's got to act like I'm not a person. In Korea (probably even more so than in America) it is very very bad manners to not greet your teachers when you see them. Kids I don't even know will bow and say hello, so what's up with this kid?
But the morning was good otherwise. The boys in my class were darling and I didn't bore them too badly. When little Laryngitis Seonghoon came into school as I was leaving, I exclaimed, "Cute! You are so cute." It was true, and he laughed and blushed over that. This is the baby who said he wanted to have plastic surgery to fix his nose. I don't know if I can single-handedly alter the course of his self-esteem, but I know it can't hurt to have a woman telling him that his face is perfect just the way it is.
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2:40 PM Hahaha I saw Minsu again. I was going for a walk in town since I'm trying to explore the far corners of our little burgh. At a stop light, I saw him turning the corner across the way to walk ahead of me. Our eyes met--or so I think, because Minsu is nearsighted--but I didn't call out because he was too far away and because of the absurdity of the whole thing. I can go weeks at a time without seeing this boy outside the school walls, and now I see him twice in two different locations?
I feel almost like God was joking with me about Minsu, like "Which child would you least like to see at this moment? Oh, is it Minsu? Blam! There he is, first person you see when you venture out your door. He exists, he has a life of his own, and he's important, whether or not he ever acknowledges your attempts to be nice to him. Even if he never responds, he still matters."
Saw and greeted Diamond-Seonghyun. Was greeted by Taekyoon, who very smoothly said, "Leigh! Hello!" not so subtly dropping the "teacher"part. Taekyoon is going through his talking-to-teacher-is-practice-for-talking-to-real-girls phase. I can hear it in the boys' voices when they're doing this; trying out new intonations, seeing which sounds the coolest. I always respond with a smile and wave at the very least--there's enough rejection waiting for them in this world, they don't need to see anything less than enthusiasm from me when they're trying so hard.
Near my apartment, I ran into another crew of my boys. Seongwonnie circled near on his scooter and shouted, "USA!" I petted his head, then saw Inha, C-class Jongmin and Yeongchang, hanging outside the GS-25. Inha said, "Teacher, I'm hungry," so I took them all inside to buy them kimbap.
There was much shouting and arguing among the boys over what they were going to get, and the cashier lady thought we were the most darling things on the planet, as she has in times past. My taking care of the boys is a fiesta of cuteness--it's like I'm a slightly-bigger baby duckling herding a bunch of baby chicks. An older female teacher at school saw that I was feeding bread to my wintercamp boys, and she melted at the sweetness. I don't know precisely why it's considered cute, but I do know I need to continue to feed the kids whenever I have the chance.
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