10 AM: No classes for first two periods, so yay!
Jeongminnie came by to look up math terms in English in my computer. For some reason he decided that he needed to know "isosceles" and "exterior angle" in English as well as Korean. While he was doing this, Minjoonie (who I've taken to calling by the nickname "Sunshine" because of his yellow coat and happy disposition) stood behind me, resting his chin on the top of my head. He's so adorable, words fail.
I wore a scarf to work today because I'm trying to get the last little bit of wear out of my summer dresses, and they don't have the high throat-covering necklines that are becoming increasingly important this fall. I had forgotten that when true fall and winter hit Korea, you have to cover up every patch of skin, parts you never think about--neck, ears, wrists, the whole lot.
But as a result of wrapping the scarf around my hair then pulling my coat on over that, everyone thinks I've cut my hair and kids are doing double-takes to make sure they've really seen what they think they've seen. Nope, y'all. It's still there, just tucked in.
I got an apology letter from my Seongyoon, a 1st-grader in my afterschool. Yesterday, he and Seungsu would not stop fooling around, so I sent Seongyoon to the back of the room. He was extra crestfallen about it, so when he left class, I had to work to bring a smile back to his face.
Seongyoon's one of the kids that whole-heartedly loves me. I didn't quite expect for him to be so bummed about me sending him to the back, but he was and I had to try to bolster him up. I handed him a piece of paper and told him to bring it back to me as homework--he was supposed to draw a picture. Instead, I got a full-page apology in not-entirely-comprehensible English, but it was beautiful and special and heartfelt. I wrote him a return note that I'll deliver to his class in just a little bit.
Mr. B came by to confirm that I'll be singing at my school festival. No getting out of it now--I even told him the song title. He's going to get a 2nd-grader to play guitar for me, and that will be that. Despite my initial shock/fear, I'm really rather excited for this now.
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11:40 AM
Class with 2nd-graders went fine. But NG had to step out to take care of business, which is when Yunho decided to just not mind my orders to please sit down already. I had to make him and Gicheol come to the front to apologize to me. I was so glad when NG got back, because they do calm down for him. I'm concerned about his stress levels--he's got a lot of school responsibilities lately.
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3:30 PM
Next two classes were okay-ish. With no game, teaching 1-7, 1-8 without a game is tedious with a capital T, First-graders simply do not understand a class which contains no game. Me and SG2 used the extra time to plan our open class next week. We've got 1-1, 1-2, which is not a bad group to have an open class with, and we're going to have them do a debate.
3rd-graders were mine all by my lonesome, and it was hard to get them to learn their pieces, but 3-1, 3-2 reaaally like me, so we had a million inside jokes, even though I ended class with a headache.
Youngmin got on my Facebook and friended himself.
Yeah. Sat by me and used my account to look up his own self and click "add friend". Why am I still surprised that they do these things? Fortunately, my Facebook is 100% kid-friendly.
Minjoonie captured a dragonfly and proved to me that it can hold a toothpick. I'll add pics later.
I untucked my hair from my jacket after HH said I looked like Johnny Depp in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Tonight, me and ES-Friend are doing a 2-girl bookclub, and I'm quite looking forward to it.
