The woes of celebrity and a tragic string of minor indecision.

Teachers' Day. How terrifying. Every other teacher got pinned with a corsage at the opening ceremony this morning -- my student, a third grader, started to awkwardly put his hand inside my shirt, spazzed out, giggled, thrust the corsage into my hands, and promptly ran away. Coteacher had to do it for me.

On another note, I had yet another group of six foot tall students leap, squealing, over each others' heads today to escape when a bumblebee came in through the window. I explained, yet again, that this type of bee cannot sting you.

One particularly English adept student, who I've gotten to know fairly well because he leads the gang that "cleans" the English Zone every day, and ceaselessly chatters in English the entire time, asked last week if I was going away with the first and second graders, or staying and going with them to Lotte World. I said, staying with you, of course. My favorites.

Apparently, by today word had gotten around. I was surrounded in the hallway after lunch. "Teacher you Lotte World going?" I didn't get much sleep last night, and was a bit miffed about most of my classes being canceled today, and therefore having no actual purpose at work, so I wasn't in my normally convivial after-lunch mood, and was trying to escape down the hallway as quickly as possible to get to the bathroom. But a literal mob formed around me. The male teacher from my office, seeing this from down the hall, paused and arbitrarily and half-heartedly "Ya!"ed once, but, seeing that it made little difference, he went back to whatever he was doing without addressing the matter further.

The mob grew.

"Teacher you with me bus sitting?"

"Teacher! I best friend! You sitting with to me in roller coaster!"

It's nice to be liked, but I haven't the foggiest idea where this sudden, momentary celebrity status blossomed out of. And today wasn't really the day for it. Also, I'm a little afraid of Lotte World.

A lot of the schools' former students were in today, visiting old teachers, which was quite nice, except for the fact that they're high school boys -- my sworn enemy in Korea. Coteacher decided to drive me home today, maybe because I apparently looked "exhausted" (was exhausted), and as I pulled the office door open, we were greeted by a mammoth crowd of 17 or 18 year old boys on the other side.

"WAAAAH! HAAAA-EEEEE!"

I lowered my shoulders and scuttled through the mob to the other side, which respectfully parted to allow Coteacher to pass after me. In the parking lot, I tried to explain what it is about Korean high school boys that intimidates me so much. First of all, they always appear in a group of ten or above. Secondly, it's not that they're any taller than the average Westerner.... it's that they're all the exact same height, which happens to be a few inches taller than me. I don't like being crowded in on by them.

Overall, it was a day that would have been lovely, had I been my normal self. Usually, I adore basking in the attention of my/other people's students -- it's true. But I'm grumpy and tired. And the weather is a horrible brand of in-between. And it's going to rain tomorrow, and I have to go to the stupid bookstore and stumble around being elbowed by stupid people sifting through the abomination that is the English study textbooks section like crazed animals.

I came home and almost promptly fell asleep. Now I'm debating if meeting Small Town for a drink later would make things better or worse. Also, I'm debating whether or not I'm hungry. My life is tragic string of minor indecision.