Oh, man. I think I'm gonna have to offer a "Craft" themed camp next go around!

Thankfully, I’m feeling like I’m slowly but surely getting better at this job – just in time for budget cuts, natch – and last week was probably my professional peak, in terms of being a super-awesome-cool English teacher. I did a detective / murder mystery themed camp, of which there is a gigantic thread over at waygook.org, and of that megathread of posted materials, I used maybe…1%. I have unfortunately developed this sick aversion to using other people’s materials these days, even though it would save me so much time and sleep (what an idiot I am).

The one time I did end up using someone else’s stuff, though, it ended up being way too difficult and the students, who had loved every second of camp up to that point, started complaining bitterly. It was shocking, the change in attitude, and I sincerely felt bad about totally harshing the kids’ mellow* by introducing this extremely difficult, not-fun activity that was vastly different in tone to everything else we had done. It was my fault: I had been utterly wiped after prepping a week’s worth of materials, that involved: 1) creating a semi-realistic looking crime scene, complete with tape, hair extensions and blood; 2) requesting voice recordings from my friends back home as actors for a murder mystery “investigation”; and 3) taping envelopes with secret codes all over the damn school, pissing off the lurking security adjosshi who patrols the building after hours. So on Friday, I just went with a cryptogram activity posted by another teacher. I had incorrectly guessed that the students would be game for some crazy Da Vinci Code cracking nonsense; well, maybe they would have been, if it hadn’t been super hard and badly formatted. I actually sincerely regret that because it was the one sour note of a completely and utterly awesome camp. The kids were way into it, I was into it, and we were all a little sad when it ended. With my co-teacher’s help, I went through the feedback left by the students (in Korean, so they could give more detail), and a frequent comment was that “this camp was not a waste of time.” Though perhaps a bit clinical and cold-sounding in translation, this is probably the nicest and most validating complement I can get from burned out Korean middle schoolers. These kids guard their free time with the tenacity of dragons.

This week, I’m midway through a Superhero themed camp with my 8th graders. I chose the theme last summer, during the conclusion of my Greek mythology camp. One of my loyal camp attendees shouted out, “Marvel and DC!” and so the theme was decided. It’s going a little less swimmingly, as the students have been out of school longer and so the 8th graders seem to have forgotten a lot of English in the interim. Plus, I’m just not that jazzed about superheroes. Murder is definitely more up my alley (I guess that’s why my students love me, ha). I’ve been doing my best to bring up my own enthusiasm level, by showing up the first day in my Halloween wig and some Wonder Woman style bracelets fashioned out of foil tape. Still, I have to admit that I’m not feeling it as much this week. Hopefully the students don’t pick up on this.

Once this week is finished, then…I pack my bags and hop on an airplane, bound for…home. Home. Where is that again? Even though I talk regularly to my friends and family through the magical ether (net), it still seems like a distant memory. That was another life, a life in which I wasn’t staying up at odd hours pasting hair extensions to a papier mache ball dripping with fake blood, for the sole purpose of provoking a reaction from 13 year olds. Who was that person, who lived in Lawrence and used to go out to bars, and do things, and have actual conversations with other adults? What was she like? I guess I’ll find out in four days.

*for the record: these kids were not that kind of mellow. In case any education officials are reading this blog. Everything’s legit up in my English Zone!

Eli sometimes says he’ll grow up and be Adult (responsibility-wise, not porno-wise) after the end of the world. I think that entails settling down, buying a house, and working a job with a dress code, or something. He also says maybe he’ll do this after he turns thirty-two. Both of which are slated to occur this year. (I’m thinking maybe he’ll need to find a new deadline…)

Here are my resolutions, in order of urgency:

1. FIND MY PASSPORT, OMG, WTF. I’ve torn my apartment apart looking for the blasted thing. I think it’s in with a big stack of papers at school. My co-teacher asked me a couple times to bring my passport back to school so the secretary ladies could…I dunno, make another copy of it. I don’t know why they couldn’t just use an old copy, since it’s not like it changed in the last year, and now I’m ultra grumpy because it’s totally THEIR fault I’m a disgusting mess and can’t find it. I’m hoping some kid didn’t just see it lying around and walk off with it as a souvenir.

2. On a related note, clean my work space – both at home and at school. Right now, on my table, I am typing next to: a double pack of batteries, a cake decorating kit, origami paper half-way fashioned into a 3d snowflake, an empty tin of cookies, a flyer for my students’ NYE rock concert (awesome!), a sock, credit cards, a knitting project, my winter camp roll list, and feminine hygiene products (not used. I’m bad but not Courtney-Love-levels of terrible). I can’t even fathom how I’ve managed to rack up so much clutter over the course of 15 months in another country. I might just have to set it all ablaze when I leave. (Maybe North Koreans will take care of that for me!)

3. Blog more often than once a century. I say this every year. Ha!

I definitely want to write more letters, but I feel bad forcing people to decipher my handwriting. Maybe I should include a kind of cryptogram key to help the receiver out.

5. Work on music. Part of the clutter I’ve managed to accumulate while here includes musical instruments (yes, more than one. I know, it’s sick). The guitar I strum with occasional frequency, but the keyboard…yeah, that thing. It’s been standing up on one end, gathering dust. Every now and then, I feel bad for it and rotate it so that it’s standing up on the other end. I think I’ll purchase a stand for it, and that will magically make me start playing it more, because buying more things is always the solution.

6. Learn more Korean, so that I can at least have one transaction in public that doesn’t descend into a terribly lengthy game of Charades or Pictionary. If I feel that I am leaving the impression of mere mild mental retardation, that will be a major success.

I’m sure there are more resolutions I can create and not follow, but six is a good number. Happy New Year, everybody! If you’re near a Koreatown, try and eat a big bowl of ddeokguk (rice cake soup) to herald the new year:

Simple and delicious! Recipe at maangchi.com.

Today, after 7th period, all the students convened in the gym for a concert. “Oh, the students are performing again?” I asked my co-teacher, thinking it was a little repeat of the smashingly entertaining school festival we’d had in September. “No, it will be parents.” Zuh? I guess the parents of some of the 7th and 8th graders started a band, and decided to entertain the kids, in a mandatory way. One of the 9th graders whined to my co-teacher that she didn’t want to go, and my co-teacher responded, “You must.” (Of course, she bailed – convenient business away from school, I suppose).

I strolled in a few minutes after 3:00, as it is a Korean teacher’s prerogative to arrive fashionably late to everything (especially class). A few of the 9th graders strolled in with me. Henry, who is probably my favorite student ever, is this kid whose favorite trick used to be playing guitar with his teeth. Then he did it too often, I guess, and when I asked him if he was going to do that for the school festival, he rolled his eyes and went, “Teacha! Very very hurt! Pain!” (I guess he’d been asked one too many times.)

I sat at the back, with the few other teachers who hadn’t made other excuses to duck out, and the homeroom teachers, who were tasked with getting the restless students to stop hitting each other for a few minutes. The parents walked on to the stage and picked up their guitars. Yes, they were a rock band. I expected something like a choir or a classical concert, or something – actually, I really had no preconception of what a concert by parents staged in a middle school would really look like. There is just no similar analogue to that happening in the States. I just…can’t even picture it, as a hypothetical. Even the one girl I saw who kept slapping her friend with a folder every five seconds – even she was a much better audience for the parents than any middle schooler would be back home.

Anyway, the parents picked up their guitars and immediately launched into a song, an old-ish Korean rock song that I have heard so many times since arriving here. Henry, who sat behind me, groaned really loudly. “Every band always THIS song!” he said, and made a motion as if to strangle himself. He would alternately rock out with his buddy behind me, and then complain loudly about how boring the parent performance was. He was awesomely catty and bitchy, and I was nearly in tears from laughing at this kid. At one point, he leaned over and whispered, “wait a minute – soon, friends coming, and we burn this place down! YEAH!”

These are the only parents who should be allowed guitars. (Yes, I may actually be sadder about their divorce than I was when my own parents split up. )

The parents’ concert was really fascinating and bewildering, from my perspective. One of the students’ mothers sang a poignant, hyper-emo ballad, in English, and though she sang well enough, it felt a little awkward: yo lady, what are you doing baring your soul to these monsters? I guess it’s different when you birthed one of said monsters, but still, the other ones don’t have familial obligations to sit politely through your show. At one point there was a brief intermission with a magic show, and Henry just could not stop freaking out about how bizarre it was. “Magic show??! In concert?! Why? Very very mistake!” and between the weirdness of it all, and Henry being hilarious, I just about died laughing in that gym, and it really turned around a day which had been kinda shitty. I am definitely going to miss these 9th graders when they graduate and go off to high school, especially Henry.

Henry, by the way, invited me to a concert that he and his buddies are putting on, at the end of the month. He’s going to play guitar (not with his teeth), and he promised me two American pop songs, “so you can understand and enjoy!” and kept insisting that it would be a billion times better than this totally lame parents’ concert (aww, poor Moms and Pops! They honestly weren’t bad at all – it’s just that you surrender any semblance of “cool” when you birth a child). Henry talks a big game, and I’m totally looking forward to it. In all sincerity, really, I can’t think of a cooler place to be on New Year’s Eve.

I found out from a student – Tom, in fact. I didn’t have much time to react to this pretty impressive news, on account of all the other students clamoring for my attention. I asked my students what they thought was going to happen, and their answer is the same as everyone else’s: “I don’t know.”

According to the Times article, Kim Jong Il apparently died two days previously, and the announcement was not released until today. That does confirm the suspicion that I and many others have about Kim Jung Eun, the dynasty’s successor – this kid is so not ready for prime time. My hope and my worry is that the regime will absolutely crumble and disappear as a result of this newly created power vacuum. Ultimately, it’s good for the people of North Korea to come out under the thumb of this brutal and horrible dictatorship, and join the rest of the world.

I have my doubts as to whether or not South Korea is economically ready to absorb the impact of a sudden influx of refugees – perhaps the most destitute people in the world, no less. I also fear the last, desperate actions of a dying regime. Perhaps it’s not the best time to be living quite so close to the 38th parallel.

May you live in interesting times indeed!

The other part is that I just don’t know how to do it. I never watched my mom putting on makeup when I was growing up, because I was busy writing stories and plotting new and horrible deaths for my least favorite toys. I was what you would call a “total loser” in middle school and didn’t have many friends to ask for advice. I did wear eyeliner once; I think it was Halloween, and I was probably trying to be Courtney Love or something. I remember Lauren and Emily, the popular bitches in my French class, telling me, “oh, your makeup looks so good.” I was caught off guard, and actually felt – flattered! Then I went to the bathroom and saw that my eyeliner was all smudged; half of it had somehow smeared over one eyelid. They’d punked me again. (I’ll reiterate my earlier wish, that they are happy with their fourteen kids in their double-wide trailers now). General fear of looking a total fool has kept me from even experimenting with eyeliner, to the point where I don’t even understand the physics of it. You’re supposed to draw around your eyeball with a pencil? How do you do that without it hurting?

When I want to look like this:

I end up looking like this:

Can't sleep...clown'll eat me...

Because I don’t want to induce nightmares for the people who I encounter in every day life, I just go natural. This hadn’t bothered me a whit until I came to Korea. Appearance is of utmost importance here. Nobody dashes out to the grocery store in their PJs and flip-flops – well, except maybe the occasional foreign teacher who just got here. She’ll be properly shamed, soon enough. Plastic surgery is rampant; almost everybody gets the double eyelid procedure at some point. It’s pretty weird NOT to wear makeup here. My co-teacher panicked and made me put on some of her lipstick on Photo Day (which she had not, by the way, bothered to warn me about in advance). She did this in front of some of my students, and they were clamoring for me to put on eyeliner and eyeshadow as well. But there wasn’t any, so when the photo is published, my lips will probably be a bright red gash in a bland oval. Nice!

So anyway, today I felt like taking baby steps into the world of makeup. First milestone: BB cream. For those of you outside Korea (well, all of you who read this blog), here’s an explanation of BB cream by the wonderful folks at Eat Your Kimchi. Basically, it’s like a miracle serum that fixes everything wrong with your face. Even things you didn’t know were wrong with your face. I was a bit hesitant about buying makeup here, as I am several shades darker than the darkest shade ever showcased in advertisements (translucent gray), but I decided to go have a look around the many makeup stores in my area.

(Fun fact: the word for “restroom” in Korea literally translates to “makeup room.” This probably accounts for why there are mirrors everywhere in a Korean public restroom, including one positioned on the stall door, hanging at eye level. So you can check yourself for blemishes while you eliminate. I guess that is efficient multitasking).

I went into the first of the eleventy bajillion makeup stores in the area, and of course it took the sales reps awhile to find the shade of BB cream that is closest to my own, which is kind of nutmeg. (My skin still remembers the lovely beaches in Vietnam). When I checked out, they gave me free samples, as these stores always do – a benefit of shopping in Korea. You get free random shit whenever you buy anything! I got some powder and a few face masks, which are these creepy masks that make you look like Jason from Friday the 13th, but transform your skin into smooth silk. I put one on, and after a few minutes my eyes were kind of stinging, which is maybe a giveaway that hey, something ain’t right! abort! abandon ship!, but I was busy cooking while looking like an axe murderer, so I paid it no mind.

I eventually pulled it off, and washed off whatever noxious cancer chemicals were roiling around my skin cells, and looked at myself in the mirror. Alarmed, I double-checked the label on the packet, and sure enough, I had ripped right through the word in big, bold capitals: “WHITENING.” I am NOT going to take a picture of myself in this state, but trust me when I say that I can pass for an extra in the next Twilight movie*, if it stays like this: white face, contrasted with much darker neck and rest of skin. Not a good look. Thankfully, I have a turtleneck that I’m going to be wearing to school tomorrow.

I know I'm American and all, but this is a look for the birds, not for people.

One kinda big thing: Eli is not renewing his contract with the worst elementary school in the shittiest little “town” in Korea, so he’ll be going back to the States in two weeks. He’ll spend the holidays at home, avoiding the Korean winter, and then he’ll come back and hang out with me for my next year – possibly getting a hagwon job, or maybe even just lingering around on a tourist visa. It really hasn’t sunk in that he’s leaving. I’m hoping this time the temporary separation will be a bit easier, as I’m somewhat established here and have a good social support group. Still, it’s going to suck to be once again on the other side of the planet from him.

Teaching is going all right. My anniversary of teaching came and went without much fanfare. One thing that’s changed since last year: the amount of student traffic in the English Zone has increased exponentially.

Here’s my routine now: I go to school a solid half-hour earlier than my posted “start” time, since my grade 1 boy pets arrive on the bus around that time. They hang out in my class and chat before my morning conversation class. During lunch time, I have approximately fifteen minutes to zoom over to the other side of the school, wait in line, and hoover down the contents of the metal lunch tray (which is SO much more edible than it was when I first started). Once finished, I book it back to the English Zone, where my grade 1 girl pets are waiting outside the door, demanding “Quiz!” Then it descends into chaos, as I write the day’s riddle or logic puzzle on the board. Some girls start barking random answers and declaring “I don’t know!” and “Another quiz!” while the others cover up all available white board space with marker scribblings trying to work it out. Occasionally grade 2 and grade 3 students will wander into the fray, with questions of their own.

I prep for lessons during class periods in which I am not teaching (luckily, I still have those). I often have to eject the special ed student, Timmy, in order to use this time, which I feel kinda bad about. But otherwise I wouldn’t be able to get anything done!

Overall, things are still going well. The behavior of the 1st graders has gone quite a bit south, though my favorite of the 1st grade classes is still generally pretty good. The class I have the most trouble with actually has a lot of my favorite students in it. One issue is that for both times I meet with them, it’s either the last period of the day, or the next-to-last. That was one of the first lessons I learned – whichever class I have last in the day is just plain going to suck, no matter who it is.

But the main thing is that almost every single girl in that class has no fear at all of any teachers whatsoever (save maybe the gym teacher). All the girls were five minutes late to my class today, which, according to one of the boy students, was because they were protesting my co-teacher. She is not very popular among the students, to say the least, but she does play the role of “bad cop” nicely. A few of the girls lingered behind in my class to solve a riddle I had put on the board, and when I mentioned that they’d better get going to their next class so as nto to be late, one girl said, “it’s okay. Last class is our homeroom teacher. We not scare.” What do you do with kids like that?

The grade 2s are good, for the most part, excepting one class which has a pretty bad reputation for noise and discipline issues throughout the school. That class also has some of my favorite students from that grade. Not sure what their deal is exactly, but once again, individually, the students are fine.

The grade 3s are suffering from hardcore senioritis, but they’re still trooping along, and vastly superior in temperament to last year’s hellions. We’ll see how they act come December, though.

Bullying and social isolation is on the rise, or I’m noticing it more. One of the grade 2s used to be really energetic and enthusiastic, raising his hand in my class a lot, and generally had a very sunny temperament, but then he got a low score on his English test and got booted to the remedial class. Then I didn’t see him for the rest of the semester, but he worked hard, got his grades up and now he’s back in my class. In my class, though, he sits by himself, and I can tell a lot of the stuff goes over his head. I try to slow it down for him, but it’s tough, as the other kids in the class are pretty good at English, and have had a lot more practice listening to me. Today he just sat off in a corner with his head down. My co-teacher mentioned he’d been having some issues with his friends, and one knucklehead helpfully chimed in from across the room – “it’s he’s fault!” I decided not to force him to do the worksheet today, but I wish there was something more I could do to make him feel better and more confident about English again.

Then there’s Jerry, a kid in the “bad” 1st grade class. He’s shunned by all of his classmates, and they often crack jokes about him. If I show a pig or a doofy looking dude in a ppt, as is often my wont, then one of the students will point and shout his name. Even my pets give him a hard time. Today, when chatting with them, I mentioned that they weren’t being very nice to Jerry and that they should really lay off, which was met with protests – “but he started it! He was being weird and a jerk,” etc. I wish I could figure out how to protect students like Jerry. I can’t stop everyone from picking on him – most students wouldn’t be able to understand me if I lectured them all about tolerance and empathy, even if I could come up with the right words to convince them to be a little less shitty to a fellow human being.

Off to bed, and then to another day in the field. Hopefully more coherent and interesting updates to follow. Really, my life is only 99% consumed by school – there’s an exciting 1% that I will write about someday!

Paragliding dude and me, trying to hide my abject terror from the camera.

As always, I’m hitting the snooze button on publishing a proper update post. Need…more…sleep…

If only my lips had really looked like this! Then I might have been cooler in middle school.

Nevertheless, Nary’s comment made me think: what if I did go back? I would be better equipped to deal with things at my current maturity level – well, maybe. Would I really want to go through all that social isolation and horrible kids making fun of me again? I certainly couldn’t stop other kids from being mean to me, and would I really want to re-live having ice thrown at me in the hallway in sixth grade?

Back then every minor incident, amplified through the lens of teenage drama, seemed like it was the worst thing that would ever happen to me. I’ve heard other people’s grade school war stories since then, and mine absolutely pale in comparison to some of the trauma out there (kids can be so horrible). Doesn’t mean I particularly want to go rushing back to being small and defenseless, but this time at least I know that “it’s no big deal, I can survive a little wounded dignity” and whatnot. Also, now I’m old enough to know that maybe those kids were just…kids. The teachers who were mean to me, now, those people have some ‘splainin to do, but the kids at my elementary school in the immigrant ghetto probably had enough shit to deal with in their homes.

Remember when Lindsay Lohan had red hair and acted in movies, instead of falling down drunk all the time and throwing wine glasses at people? Get it together, girl!

Some time back in kindergarten, or maybe first grade, there was a huge group of Vietnamese girls who shunned me for whatever reason. I can’t say for sure, but I think the genesis for my whole selective mutism thing was this group of mean girls. Anyway, one of them got booted from the group for some infraction or whatever. I remember walking around the dusty playground, and hearing her voice behind me, calling my name, asking me to wait up. Somehow I knew she wasn’t trying to mock me. She just wanted someone to hang out with, since her buddies ditched her and all. I pretended that I hadn’t heard her and kept walking.

If I could go back and change a thing, I would turn around. Maybe I could have had a friend in school.

Then there was Stinky Irene, a new kid in the 3rd grade. True to her name, she smelled bad and her clothes always had smudges of dirt on them. She was kind of pudgy, with red hair and a face full of freckles. I was fully in the throes of mutism by this point – I probably wouldn’t even have talked at gunpoint – yet I still found a way to make fun of Irene, by pinching my nose whenever she was near. I don’t know why I was such a bitch to Irene. Well, actually, I do. Stinky Irene’s arrival in the school meant that I was no longer the worst kid in class. Secretly, I cherished this. That meant I should have been nicer to her, but my new “advancement” was tenuous – I had to keep from being associated with her. Hence, the nose-pinching.

If I could change another thing, I would have left Stinky Irene alone. She had enough problems as it was, without the weird mute girl piling in on the mockery.

I can’t control other people’s behavior towards me, then or now. I can change my own, though, and hopefully I can also try and convince my students to be a little better to each other.

Halong Bay was nice. Very touristy, though. The whole time I couldn’t help but compare things to our little nook in the Philippines, El Nido. The view at Halong Bay is spectacular enough to rival the Philippines, for sure. You look over this breathtaking scene: faraway mountains cloaked in ghostly fog on the ocean. But then you pan to your left or right, and there’s another boat (or five) full of tourists, and when you dock you get in a long line that wends through what might once have been a magnificent cave. The people running the show thought it wasn’t quite splendid enough to impress the tourists, so they’ve lit it up with garish neon lights that make it look like a cave themed Casino. There are people at a desk set up with laptops there to answer your questions. Our tour guide couldn’t really answer too many questions about the cave, or provide much information beyond pointing out certain stalactites and stalagmite growths that resembled either animals or genitalia. Yes, he really did point out a rock dong to a tour group that included my mother, a grandmother and a nine year old. They run the tourists through that cave, and then there is another cave next door that is a bit better, that most tourists forgo because they are tired after being shuttled through the first bit. There aren’t any of the tacky colored lights, but there is a giant stage built at the entrance for musicals and such. (if they ever make a musical of batman’s origin story, it’s got to debut there). Emmy and I opted to go alone in this cave, and we were given the stank eye and the sexy eye by some hillbilly Viet dudes in the tour group in front of us. “They think we’re…they think we not virgin girls,” said Emmy, who understood what the Vietbillies were muttering.

Between that, and all the “fuck you, buy my shit” attitude that we get from vendors here 98% of the time, I am reaffirmed in my decision to teach in Korea and not here. I think I’m better prepared for Vietnam now, but still, some things are tough to adjust to. Some friends of mine had visited Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, and had admitted to me that Vietnam was their least favorite leg of the trip. I was maybe a bit miffed on behalf of my parents’ mother country at the time, but now I get it.

I do like it here, the food’s the best in the world, and the countryside – outside Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh – is lovely, with clean air and not as many motorcycles. Still, I can’t believe we’ve only been here for two days. My poor mom has really been through the ringer – I dragged her all over Seoul last week, and then we came to vietnam and immediately left on this nine day tour of all of Vietnam. Purely for my benefit, since I had wanted to see the north. Now I’m not sure if my mom and I will last another seven days on the road here…

1. Lockers. Especially on account of the thief, my students felt most annoyed by this difference. They stash their belongings in these tiny cubby holes, big enough for their shoes, a pencil case and a few books. They have keys, but they’re kind of like the keys to diaries back home – a bobby pin could easily serve the same function. Hence, a rash of thievery.

I probably should have pointed out that at least a wimpy kid cannot be shoved into a cubby hole, but I didn’t. Let the grass be greener on the other side!

2. Exam placement in the semester. In American schools, or at least the ones I attended, finals were placed at the end of the semester. You took your finals and then you were out for break. At least, that’s what I recall from the Stone Age (the era my students think I am from). Maybe there was a day or two after finals, but I don’t recall actually learning anything in that post-exam time.

In Korean schools, finals happen, and then there are two or three additional weeks of classes. The kids are insane and really not receptive to learning much of anything. Basic child psychology would tell you this. However, the schedule is the schedule and rules are rules. We can’t do movies any more (or at least I can’t, apparently because my co-teacher effed up? That just seems wrong), so I’m going to have to come up with ways to distract my students from the fact that they hate life, they hate school, and that (right now, at least) they hate MY class.

3. No janitors = bathrooms from the seventh circle of HELL. Why are there no teacher’s restrooms? WHY?!