3.24.2009

TEACHER YAKU!

OH. MY. GOD. KOREA VS. JAPAN! YAKU! TEACHER, YAKU!

Fucking A, do they ever take their baseball seriously. Or beating Japan at anything. I can't decide which it is. At any rate, it led to another nightmare manic day at work, and me, with another six classes. While the game was going on, they were all practically vibrating in their seats. Then, after the pre-lunch high precipitating in a climax of sudden death overtime, and Korea, once again, losing, fifth period was like a goddamn funeral. The kind where someone really old died and the attendees are geriatric and mostly having trouble staying awake.

Some little wanker in one of my third grade classes gave me my first "ET" today. "ET" stands for English teacher, and what the little punk doesn't know I know (because all foreigners are clueless idiots) is that it's commonly used in the phrase, "ET go home". It's clever, in a middle school kind of way. But we get the last laugh -- know why, boys? The joke only works in English.

Try again.

Also, I had my other after school class today. There's approximately a million of them, at last count, but I have mostly no problems keeping them under control. To go back to the dog analogy, you've just got to keep moving, keep calling their attention, so they don't get distracted by anything else. One kid decided to throw his backpack out the window and then ask to go to the bathroom, thinking for some reason that I wouldn't notice when he didn't come back. I don't know why Korean students try to get away with that shit, considering their friends will rat them out in a fucking heartbeat. They willingly dished out his full name when I asked, and then made the helpful suggestion that I might need his class number as well.

Idiot.

When I gave the information to my co-teacher, so she could notify his homeroom teacher, she said, "You must have been embarrassed."

Uh. No. Why? You know, Ms. Park, we have a saying in English: Don't get mad; get even.

I do feel kind of like a traitor, it has to be said. Skipping class was my specialty for most of my educational career. But for me, it all comes back to the fact that they wouldn't pull this shit with a Korean teacher. And at an all boys middle school in South Korea, the pack mentality reigns supreme. If the boys see one kid get away with something, it's nothing but a giant waving flag for the rest of them. It's survival of the fittest, my dears. So I had to take down a hookie comrade today, in the name of dog-eat-dog. It's just the way that it is.

In other news, my students finally succeeded in making me blush today. They've been trying different attempts for ages, but I'm practically unshakable. However, a strange thing has been happening during the "Do you know who ___ is?" exercises: they keep writing in the name of the handsome PE teacher, for the portion where they ask me if I know who ____ is.

Today's was a bit too much. One extremely tall kid, with a penchant for English, eagerly raised his hand to read his question: "Sem! Do you know who Lee Byeong Moon is?"

"No, I don't. Who is he?"

"Oh, Sem. He is PE teacher very handsome man. He is very strong, but he is shorter than me. He lives in your apartment."

"My... he.... he doesn't live..."

"CHIN-CHA?!"

"No... he doesn't.... he doesn't live in my apartment.... he lives in my apartments.... how do you... how do you know that?"

Loads of shouting in Korean. I was officially not being listened to.

Aigoo.

1 comment:

MikejGrey said...

Someone in a nameless korea message board posted, "there is no #2 in asia. Just #1 and failure." And it's worse cause a lot of koreans hate japan. As long as dok do is korean though, everything is coming up gimchee.

Arooga!