Movies, Minwoos and run-on sentences.

My life is so stupidly, colossally busy at the moment. Outside of work. Inside of work, it's all movies and nonsense. Oh man. They are so fucking cute during movies. Now. If you put on Wallace and Gromit without giving them a choice, they will whine and bellyache for nearly the first half of class about how it's a baby movie Teacher! We are not babies! But. If you give them the option of watching Wallace and Gromit, amongst several other distinctively less babyish options, they will overwhelmingly vote in favor of Wallace and Gromit. And then watch it with their mouths hanging open for the duration. Even without subtitles.

They will also:

• Move seats so that they can cuddle with their favorite friends during movie time, sometimes resulting in a whole pile of boys sprawled across each other.
  
• Shout out every detail of every second of the film if they've seen it before, just to prove how ahead of everyone else they are.
  
• Make really dead obvious comments almost continuously, such as, "Oh, he's drinking tea!"
• Make a really huge deal out of anything even slightly gross the characters do, even though they do way grosser things all the time.
  

I've also found Grade 2's Minwoo. His hair is... I don't even know. I don't know how he hasn't been literally beaten for it. He doesn't understand even the slightest bit of English (just like Minwoo), so when I ran into him outside of school last weekend, and his ear was red and swollen with a new gauging, I asked him about it in Korean. Today when I came in, I gave his hair a good once-over and told him the PE teachers were going to kill him if they saw it. He turned around and started trying to force some other kid to ask me if I speak Korean. I don't really want the boys knowing the full extent of what I can understand and say, just because the B level students will really give out for me to explain things in Korean if the Korean teacher's not there (and they never are). They'll get so consumed with begging me to speak Korean that they won't concentrate on just trying to understand my English. Which, sometimes they legitimately can't. But usually they can. If they try.

So. I just smiled and asked, "Why are you asking?" in answer. A few other students turned around and smacked at the Minwoo-like's puppet who had asked the question. "She's a foreigner, idiot. She doesn't speak Korean." Minwoo-like didn't quite understand what had happened, and was getting angry, so he went to smack the other kid to make him ask me again, but I just caught his eye and smiled and shook my head. He did a big, pretty boy grin and let the subject drop.

I don't know why one or two of those boys from the worst group in every year will take a shine to me out of fucking nowhere, but it really has saved my ass. I usually have a pretty love/hate relationship with the boys in these groups, and there are sure to be a few who just don't like me. Or, probably, any other teacher. But having those couple of strongholds with the stronger members of these groups keeps me from having to deal with their behavior directly. I'm sure I'd work out a way to deal with it, eventually, but it sure is nice not to have to.

Anyway. What else is going on? Monday night I went to the center to teach Taeyoung, who is fucking lovely and adorable. Tuesday night I worked my ass off making chocolate truffles to give to the mothers yesterday as a Christmas/goodbye present, as our class was meant to end last week, but they felt unprepared for that, and wanted to go out for lunch yesterday anyway. So we did that. And I bought an oven. And tonight I may bake a pie? Even though I've never baked a pie before and don't really know how to, because now I have an oven and I sort of feel this pressure.... Tomorrow night I'll head to Dating In Korea's to beat the Christmas traffic and try to see.... well, I don't know -- something about idols at midnight?

I know. Run-on sentences. My life is a run-on sentence at the moment. Things should slow down for like a second after the New Year. I hope.