My boys.

Yeah, so. Twenty classes a week. That's down from my norm of 27, including five that were all my own after school. Unfortunately, it seems Old Coteacher used her mad noonchi skills to suss that I didn't want to do after-school classes again, because I hesitated before saying yes. I hesitated because I still don't have loads and loads of confidence running a class entirely on my own, not because I didn't want to do it. At any rate, that ship has sailed and now I'm... 20.... aish.

Walked into my first second grade class today to find that the lesson I had prepared out of last year's book was completely useless, because the second graders have a new book this year. Nobody informed me of that, but you know.... that's cool. I roll with the punches. I've become an expert at it, in fact. My second graders are literally all excellent sports, and so I don't have any problems out of them, even when things get really rough. I explained the situation and then some virus prevention something or other kept popping up and interrupting what I had prepared on the computer, and the whole lesson basically turned into a fit of giggles, but it was cool because we were giggling in English at least.

My third graders continue to be suspiciously cooperative and chipper during class time. Lord only knows what's up with that, but I'm gonna ride it while I can. Today one whole class were grinning at me like a bunch of loons while we were doing the boring listen-and-repeat junk, and I just stopped in the middle, like, okay what the hell is going on? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. They were just happy to be alive. Who knows. It's going so well, in fact, that my co-teachers now freely come and go from classes, and it causes absolutely no little ruffles in behavior whatsoever. New Coteacher told me she feels flat out unnecessary. That's the way I would like for it to be, and hopefully that's the way it stays.

There's a new teacher at the center. Tonight, I came in and was going through the "no thank you, no really that's okay, no I'm not hungry really, I just ate a couple of hours... okay I guess I'll eat this since it's now setting in front of me" routine with the head teacher, all in Korean, when the head teacher shouted out to someone behind the classroom door to come out and speak English. He said I seemed to speak Korean really well, but I quickly corrected him, saying that it only seems that way sometimes. The head teacher kept pushing him to speak English to me, saying I was getting bored. He kept stalling out in a really cringe-tastic way, and I just kept telling him, I understand, I understand -- that's how I feel when I have to speak Korean. He actually speaks beautifully when he manages to finally come out with something. He's one of those in-the-head sentence composers, so he'll sit there for an absolute age, before a perfectly crafted and pronounced sentence sails out from between his lips. They're always more awkward to talk to than the ones who just go at it, one word at a time.

Next week, I guess, or sometime soon, we're taking the boys to see a movie together. The first suggestion was noraebang, but my face completely gave me away on that one (I'm not a fan) and that idea was quickly shelved.

Chanhee, Geonhee's twin, finally came back tonight, so I had double-trouble with the two sets of twins sitting in all together. They call themselves the "dream team". More like a nightmare, when you're trying to get them to hold the fuck still and learn some fucking English. They were playing basketball before they came in, and I told them they're not allowed to do that right before class anymore. It's just like having my boys at school right after PE -- there's a huge energy arch: HIGH HIGH HIGH, stagnant silence, asleep. Awful. We ended class with Chanhee doing some bizarre thing with his hand that I think was supposed to be a monkey and was apparently hilarious for reasons that escaped my comprehension. We got it on film, however, and I really wish I could get the damn video off my phone, because it's priceless.

I don't know where this rumor comes from, but it seems to follow me wherever I go. It came up tonight at the center, when both the head teacher and the boys asked me, separately, about my Korean boyfriend. Given that they're not in my neighborhood and can't see me walking around with anyone, like my students here do, I was completely puzzled as to how they came to this conclusion. Despite my best efforts to dispel the myth, the boys got a glance at a photo of me and Willie in noraebang together on my phone when they were going through the photo album, and now it's all been confirmed. By the way, Willie, you're really handsome and I'm really lucky. The entire school was under the same impression (I found out while talking to the PE teachers on the teacher's trip at the end of the year), thanks to a photo of me and some random some students had caught a glimpse of on my phone. How this got all the way back to the PE teachers, I don't even want to know.

Koreans and the obsession with the SO. They were puzzled as to why I wouldn't just tell them what me and my hangookin namjachingoo did for White Day yesterday.

Ubseoyo. Jinjjah ubseoyo. Cheoneun jinshileul malhago isseoyo.