놀이시간.

Not funny. And not hard for even a Korean babo like me to figure out. My grade three boys saw this and immediately escorted me to the teacher's office to report it to Coteacher. I told them I was perfectly capable of showing it to her and explaining it myself, but they grabbed me each on one side by the arm and demanded to know the name of the perpetrator as they pulled me down the hall. That's the difference between the first and third graders -- the first graders are easier to control, because the balance of power hasn't shifted yet. They're still afraid of you as an Adult with a capital "A". The third graders, however, are transitioning into manhood. They have a certain protectiveness toward the female teachers, which can actually be just as useful when it comes to controlling misbehavior.

They're especially protective about anything that has to do with the younger boys taking advantage of the fact that I'm a foreigner and I don't always understand what's going on. Seungtak has been in the office and out in the hall on his knees for something every single day this week, but when he saw this, he muttered, "unbelievable!" in English and his face turned red with anger. I'm going to miss these boys when they are gone. Although I love enough of the first graders, I can't help but feel that my third graders are the last generation of a certain kind of respect.

They invited me to their bibimbap party tomorow afternoon to make up for it.

So it's kind of a good thing that J has ended up with the flu (I mean, not a good thing, but not a bad thing as far as our plans for the evening getting cancelled), because to be honest, I'm completely exhausted and, as I've said before, I would prefer not to stumble home at 6 am only to have to be dressed and showered and trying to cover the smell of booze as I drag my ass to the school at 11 tomorrow morning.

So as long as Smalltown doesn't end up canceling his plans with his girlfriend and phoning me up at 11, using CP as bait to tempt me out in the cold to the bar, I should be alright.

Speaking of CP, he was part of what played into me staying at the bar until 2 am on Wednesday night. God. He's kind of 바보 is what I've noticed, and I don't think it's just the language barrier that's doing it. JH and Smalltown got to talking after Smalltown arrived on Wednesday, and I got drawn into a ridiculous conversation with a Korean man who claimed to be a public school teacher, sitting just to my right. It took him all of five minutes to start droning on about how I was in love with CP. How did he know? He could just tell. He is man. He know these things. So what does he do? Tells CP that I like him. And then asks me right in front of CP to size him up by looking into his eyes, which are the windows to the soul. At which point I introduced him to the word "naive" using my phone dictionary. CP grabbed the phone and then turned red and said he wasn't naive, just "pure". The alleged public school teacher then insisted that he was probably neither and I was just easily fooled.

I said I wasn't easily fooled, and neither did I love CP. I just think the way he blinks all the time is cute. JH told me you're not supposed to tell boys things like that straight to their faces. I told her I couldn't be bothered not to. If I think someone's cute, why shouldn't they know about it?

Because then he's already won.

Well, great. So he's won. That doesn't mean that I lose....