4.07.2009

Your strange manners, I love them so.

Too much thinking, lately. I'm starting to get the where-is-this-going bug. Which, as Mike has already pointed out, is a sure sign it's time to revamp the routine. Not that stepping foot in my first nightclub ever, and having it be in South Korea, isn't hilarious and all.

Plus, as lovely as work (on the whole) has been lately, damned if I'm not one tired bunny most of the time. My weekday evenings are now spent drooling on myself and attempting not to fall asleep before seven pm. But the extra classes end in a couple of weeks, and I can get back to pretending to learn Korean in coffee shops, or whatever.

Since the acquirement of the new awesome co-teacher, I've had it conveyed to me that the most serious punishment a class can have held over their heads at this point is the threat that their time with Waegookin Sunsengnim will be withheld for the week. Even homeroom teachers have started doing it.

I'm so fucking popular.

And a few confusing schedule changees this week have seen me just getting my after school classes started, when the math teacher walks in and announces that I have the other class today, which is met with unanimous groaning.

I'm no fool. I know part of that is because sitting quietly through a math lesson is way more boring than waiting for the foreign teacher to turn around and write on the board to unleash a host of bastard Koreanized English phrases that are all but pure gibberish to the native ear, but are ultimately hilarious to a fifteen year old Korean boy.

But still.

Getting closer and closer to the students. The new favorite pastime among the third graders is trying their best to earn an English nickname off me, preferably one that is mocking in some way. So far, we've got Monkey, Houdini, Short Stuff, Loud Mouth, Deep Bass, Handball King, and Cutie Pie. There's a new My Friend, who is a kid all the other teachers positively dread. He became My Friend because he's so fucking terrible in class, that he now has his own special desk butting up against the side of the teacher's podium. When I got to class and noticed this, after calling the class to attention, I said, "What did you do?"

"Neh?"

Someone translated. "Oh.... uh.... talking. Talking talking talking. Now, I sit here."

"... Great."

He kicked off shortly into class and I told him that he shouldn't make me sad that I have to stand so close to him -- we should be friends.

Monkey asked for my phone number while standing in the lunch line today. I do my best to nip that kind of nonsense in the bud, so I just responded by laughing hysterically, which was a big hit with the other boys. He then tried to give me his phone number on a piece of paper, to which I responded, "No, thank you." The third graders spent the remainder of the day wandering the hall, singing "Give Me A Call".

Some total creepo was wandering around the school grounds today. He followed me off campus after work and a good way's down the road. I sort of lingered around at the main intersection for a while, using the excuse of chatting with some students while keeping an eye on him, given that my students were everywhere, and I didn't want him going near any one of them. I'm not sure exactly what was off about the guy, but he gave me an ice-cold feeling as soon as I laid eyes on him. So I lingered, and he lingered, and eventually he crossed the road and caught a bus. I'm not sure what I would have done had he actually approached a student, and maybe I had the total wrong impression, but you just never know.

I think the other thing that's been getting to me is that some lanky, tri-lingual fellow managed to make a blip on the infamously blank Liz Radar recently. God, how I hate that feeling. I'm doing my best to ignore the fact that not receiving a message within 24 hours from someone is actually bothering me. But I give that about a week before it's forgotten. So long as no more messages appear. And you know I'm just fucked enough to be mostly hoping that they don't.

That's a total lie, obviously. He should just give me a call, baby.

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