Candy makes you popular.

It's Halloween week and they may as well have made an announcement over the PA that the 원어민 has candy coming out of her ears. I'm making the first graders wait until we have our Halloween classes together, but I was like goddamn Santa Clause with the third graders, who won't have class with me at all. Who am I kidding, anyway? If I could bring those boys ice cream everyday, I would. I even stopped and picked up two more bags on my way home, so I wouldn't have to be stingy.

This entire ordeal extended all the way into my apartuh. Some first graders were circling on their bikes when I came walking up from work, so I stopped to ask them if they knew what Saturday was, and open the bag of candy I'd just bought at the store. What happened then? Little vultures from another middle school with very, very similar uniforms came running over, shouting, "TEACHER! TEACHER!" Like I don't know my own boys. Bugger off.

Actually, you know I gave them candy too. I'm a fucking sucker. What do you want?

I hope nobody's 엄마 calls the police and reports a foreigner handing out candy to random kids, though.

I also did something bad today. I was of two minds about doing it, but I decided it was better to know. The students in my after school class had to fill out an evaluation form today. With a little help from google translate, I read the damn things. The marks were mostly neutral to good for the actual class, almost all negative about the class time, and in the places where they could write the good and bad comments, the bad comments were all about how easy the books were (oddly enough, that was all coming from the second graders, who have struggled to keep up in class all along, whereas the first graders who have made short work of just about everything, simply wrote "없다"). And in the "write one good thing about the class" space?

"Meeting with the native teacher."
"Having conversation with the foreign teacher."
"The native teacher should teach again."

and even

"Only the native teacher."

After bracing myself for not very nice things, that was nothing but a huge relief. There are two second graders who marked everything the lowest possible and wrote "없다" under the good comment sections -- that was the worst of it, and I can guess exactly who those two were.

I've got a wicked cold setting in today, which I think was making the other teachers nervous at work. I let them take my temperature just to ease their anxiety. I was a nice, safe 36.8. It's just the weather changing -- I'm not infected.

It's getting dark too early now. It makes me want to cook big meals at home. I think it's time, now that I'm not going to class anymore, to bust out the Korean cookbook again, and see if I can master something other than 된장 찌개 and 김밥. The trouble is, there's no Mike around to force-feed it to after it's cooked.

Today The Baby made the first contact after what went down Saturday night. I couldn't make myself answer. But. What is it? Just. Young. You just can't help but think, he's so fucking young. It's like holding a puppy accountable. All cultural implications of that particular word choice noted and accepted. I dunno. I'm not ready to cave yet. Don't know if I will get to that point. Don't know if I want to, or if I care. I don't feel as cold as I normally do. Hell. You don't even know what I'm talking about.

Here. Have a music video to make up for it.



Now excuse me while I finish the last few episodes of 소울메이트. 민애 is my hero. If I could make a specialized request for a Korean best friend, it would be her.