School's in.

Bank account danger: What the Book? delivers to your door. Troub-le. Of the absolute best, my-new-life-as-a-monk variety.

Finally started answering the phone today. Of course, my battery has died now. My boys are back, God bless 'em. I broke up two fights today. The third graders have done the most fascinating things with hair dye. I've never seen anything like it. Two more of my third grade goodbye classes. "I love you Teacher!" Oh god. I love you too. Don't go.

Some of the new little babies from the orientation last week have started to spot me out in the neighborhood already. Generation after generation of thinking saying, "Hello!" is really, really hilarious. And she said hi back! Way to go! High five-uh!

Had the center boys tonight and an extra special surprise -- a girl! God. Every time I teach girls I get really depressed about how stupid boys are in comparison. I love them and they know it, but girls just have a fucking clue way earlier in life. They're capable of concentrating, paying attention, applying newly acquired knowledge to the tasks set before them....

Instead of having to drag them around by their coattails back to their seats and constantly snap your fingers, as if addressing a group of dogs, "Here! Look here! Look! Look here! LOOK HERE!"

Not one second after I had walked in the door and a new little guy who's moving up to the junior high group who's name is Hyo-something (which I need to work out as soon as possible) ran up and shouted, "MANCHESTER!?" in my face and then keeled over in a fit of giggles. Great. This is like, a thing now.

The other teacher and I were left alone with our group in the center tonight and he instantly got more comfortable once it was just us. The older head teacher is always on his case about rough housing with the boys and teasing them too much. But he relaxed when she wasn't around. The boys love to tell me over and over again that he's a "richee" man with a BMW (which I highly doubt), which makes him go positively purple in the face. They also felt free to tell me an extremely animated story about how the head teacher got hit in the face with a basketball last week and apparently flipped her shit. Tact is not a strong point with this group.

Geonhee is having the hardest time ever not driving me absolutely crazy during lessons lately. He's no longer nervous around me at all and just keeps a constant chatter of Korean going on underneath whatever I'm doing, which is extremely distracting when you're trying to teach in one language, and involuntarily listening to another. He also insisted that he cooked dog for his family last weekend. Which is a huge lie, for anyone who's not a teacher in Korea and may not know. Jeongwoo is also a drummer, which is nothing but bad when he can get his hands on two pens at the same time. The way they both voluntarily offer up their necks for my punishingly cold hands once they get going, before I even reach for them, has me thinking there's some attention seeking involved in the behavior.

I've officially been granted the day off on Friday to go to Busan, as long as I don't go abroad, and luckily, Busan is not abroad. Thanks, VP. For giving strange and unnecessarily pointed answers to simple questions. Nobody needs to know that the only bus available was for 7 at night. I've got a few bills I've got to get to the bank and pay before I go, anyway.

Now it's time for this 할머니 to hit the sack with a little Hunter S. Thompson, before another grueling day of three bullshit classes begins.