8:40 AM: Byeongjo came by the office and said "Good morning, Woori," to me. Because my name "리" is spelled almost like "우리"(woori/uri), the word for "we". It was mighty cute. Then I was fixing my hair in the office mirror when Love-You-Need-You-Junho yelled "Beautiful!". I may have growled at him a little bit, re-enacting shades of last September when he first starting yelling such things, embarrassing me into the very dirt.
I used to mentally compare each month of my life in Korea to what I was doing the previous year in America, but now I've gotten to the point where when I want to compare this year to last year, it's stacking up What-I'm-Doing-This-Year-In-Korea against What-I-Did-Last-Year-In-Korea.
Got a happy greeting from Minhee, member of the Giant Class, in the hallway. It's good to see them outside the context of that particular classroom.
I have opened the tiny baking oven I purchased last year. I am going to become a person who bakes. Just last night, I tried to do a thing. I set out to make roasted apples and succeeded in making Very Hot Apples Indeed. They weren't what you'd call baked, but my friend tells me that I needed to preheat the oven. And I needed a pan. And butter. And as I quickly learned, I needed to buy an oven mitt, because I couldn't get the apples out of the over and had to skewer them from a distance with a chopstick to get them out.
But I went and bought tiny pans and butter and an oven mitt, so. Tonight I attempt baked potatoes! I have heard they should be encased in foil, and I have foil, so that's half the battle done right there.
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5:50 PM: Sitting in a coffee shop and it's the weekennnnnd!
I made it through my 5-class nightmare just fine. It was quite a pleasant day, actually. I don't know if I just paced myself more gently, or if I was braced for the day or what, but it went purely fine.
My little squishy 1st-graders were a dozens levels of cute and my 3rd-grade pranksters in 3-7, 3-8 were grand. BY is still looking haggard from his human experiment on himself. He decided to go without food or sleep for a whole day, just to see if he could withstand it. This is what my genius boy does with his free time--self-experiments. Better than doing psychological experiments on others? Mayhap?
In 3rd-grade, Shion was also very happy. He came by my desk for chocolate and popcorn, and though he's still terrified to speak English to me--just flat-out won't ask me questions, but will respond when asked. He's really precious and I'm glad we're talking more lately, thanks to our mutual connection to BH.
BH is doing great by the way. Last year he was a mature-for-his-years kid who helped me survive the world's worst afterschool; this year he's a basically a man, with confident sociability and a smoother fashion sense. He's still wonderful in all ways, and even funnier than before.
One of the 2nd-graders has hideous long red claw marks on his throat. NG told me that one of the special needs' boys did it--one that I've not known to be violent in the past. I was shocked.
Giant class was okay. Me and NG have adjusted our expectations so far downward, if the children do anything at all, we're pretty happy. About 18 of them did one speaking piece in two classes. when they were sorta-kinda supposed to do two pieces. But whatever.
Also! I asked NG if he minded my playing a game with them at the end of 2nd period--I'd been trying to avoid that, since we're trying to get them ready for midterms that they are heavens-to-betsy nowhere near ready for.
But since we had nothing else really for them to do, we did the game with Myeongbae and scorekeeper, and 10 of the students really had fun with it. Rest of the class ignored it, but a few of us had a grand time. And unlike usual, NG hung out in the front of the class a bit and fielded questions from the kids.
When I asked, he later said that doing one game per week with the giant class would be a good idea. No games planned for the other classes, but these boys could use something special. And if NG's for it, that means I have the green light to do games with them! Ensuring at least 15 minutes of fun with me and the boys, at the end of the long stretches of Attempting English With the Unwilling. I was so much more encouraged today after playing something fun with them and ending on a high note,
Also! On a Thursday in October, I'm going with JY-Teacher and YSR to chaperon soem 3rd-graders on a field trip to Seoul! Score, scoooore, SCORE! Can't imagine anything awesomer.
