It was bound to happen, and since I have The Worst Luck In The World, it happened to me. All of the tenseness and irritants and complaints at work finally boiled over and resulted in my boss having a one-sided screaming match at me. But this blog was never meant to be a place for me to complain about her rotten kimchi breath, 70s haircut, or bad business management skills (backhanded much? :)) so instead I'll focus on all of the good that resulted in her losing her cool.
My school staff held a meeting after World War: Director's Office went down and the final result was that we all realized none of us has a problem with anyone else and we're going to start showing it instead of appreciating in silence. This resulted in me attending my first 회식 (hweshik) Friday night. A 회식 is a company outing after work that's mandatory unless you have a REALLY good reason to skip out and involves lots of alcohol about 100% of the time. We took it easy on our livers and only had a couple toasts and played a drinking game over dinner, so we left happy but mostly coherent.
The strange thing is, even though it was business as usual this morning, it just felt different to be in the office with my coworkers again. Maybe Koreans are onto something with this whole getting-embarrassingly-drunk-in-front-of-your-peers-so-you-have-no-choice-but-to-get-along thing. At the very least it's going to make things more palatable for as long as I have to work for The Director.
Even better than the new camaraderie with my coworkers was the change in my students after World War: Director's Office . The meeting about her behavior afterwards caused me to miss one of my classes- my absolute FAVORITE class (seven 8/9-year-old boys). One of my Korean coworkers covered for me, but when the bell rang they had had enough and STORMED the office calling my name. Having missed me for even one class was enough for the students to realize something was wrong and, like my coworkers did by proposing a 회식, my kids decided to show their appreciation for me too. One boy, who I've talked about a ton here (SW) even confessed his love for me. He drew a picture on the board of him eating my hair surrounded by hearts, gave me a pokemon card, and has made numerous attempts at kissing me which I most impolitely declined. Kid's resilient though.
It was really nice to feel so appreciated by my boys after being railed for an hour and forty-five minutes about how I'm too young to be a good teacher, I'm unprofessional, I don't deserve any respect, etc. I was so angry the few days leading up to this past weekend, but sitting at my desk crowded by more children than I ever wanted to know in my whole life while they touch my face, play with my hair, or utter some semblance of English noise in an attempt at conversation before they just laugh and say "쌤 (teacher)" made me realize that it really doesn't matter what my boss thinks of me. My coworkers like me enough. My students like me enough. And I like them in return. My kids are doing their work, mostly trying their hardest to not be total messes in my class (and my GOD are some of my kids messes xD), and it seems to me that that should be what really counts to a "professional teacher deserving respect".
So I won't make this blog about my horrid Director and her total and complete ineptitude. Because it doesn't matter. SHE doesn't matter. What matters are the 26 classes full of students I work with every week; my wonderful coworkers who work so hard for so little and are still always good-natured about it.; the lazy basketball games I play with my friends on Sunday afternoons; the extra hapkido training for upcoming competition; and a little boy who loves his teacher so much he eats her hair and gives her pokemon cards. But still won't really do classwork without being threatened.
Hey, even 8-year-old boy love has its limits.
Monday, May 13, 2013
Monday, May 6, 2013
If You Don't Have Anything Nice To Say...
...say it in English so no one else understands you.
I openly admit to being the worst kind of person. Well, okay I'm not really a bad person I'm just...frank. This has earned me both titles of "refreshing" and "bitch". I say I'm just honest. What is a frankly honest person do to but fully utilize her foreign skills to say whatever she wants whenever she wants it?
I know that a big fear xenophobes have is that foreigners are talking about them in their native language. Well, who cares? Does it honestly hurt anyone if someone has a little laugh because your shoe is untied? I know enough Korean to know that people have talked about me while looking me in the eye and I promise the world didn't end.
So for that reason I felt no guilt spending Saturday night saying whatever I wanted wherever I wanted while out in public in mixed company. I was with a new foreign friend who shares my unfortunate sense of humor and bold realism, what else were we to do?
It started while waiting for some friends outside of a movie theater. Just across from us leaning against a cement wall was a Korean guy in skinny jeans, a leather jacket, shaggy auburn hair, just slouching. He looked 16 which I've learned means he's probably about 25. We waited for our friends for a hours (they were heading up from a day trip out into the city and weren't sure when they'd arrive), and in that time this guy just paced the corner and every time a pair of long haired girls walked by, he'd go up and talk to them, they'd blow him off, and he'd scuff his feet and look down with his hands his pockets, but ultimately move on with his life and wait for the next pair.
"Korean Aladdin at 6 o'clock." Says my friend.
"Ah, no way. He's totally a drug pusher." Say I.
"Or an organ harvester. Less likely, but more intense."
Korean Aladdin paced our shared block for two hours, never dropping his game. And for two foreigners stuck waiting for friends, creating his increasingly more detailed back story became the best game we had ever heard of. Would we have done it back home if it were an American guy? Most likely. But there's something very great and terrible in "getting away with" saying whatever you want.
No naturally this game continued over pizza in a window booth at a second story pizza joint.
The best part of the night was when a couple walked by below and the woman, who was wearing stupid heels, stepped onto a grated sewer cover. Her pointy stiletto went right through the hole and she fell to the pavement. Her boyfriend/husband fell all over himself to help her- took her bag, helped her stand, brushed her off. Even my friend and I had nothing snide to say, we were both worried she had broken an ankle. But then it happened.
While embracing his injured and embarrassed partner, the man looked up, saw us looking down, pointed, and proceeded to grin and then LAUGH. And then we laughed back. And she knew nothing about it (I can only assume he was laughing silently).
I have nothing inspired to say about knowing a foreign language and the verbal freedom it gives you. I'm sure there are volumes on the benefits of multilingualism: what it does for your brain, for your cultural awareness, for your ability to connect with people. All the science is there. But all I use it for is to point out when someone has a bad perm or a camel toe.
So the moral of the story is yes, xenophobes, foreigners ARE talking about you right to your face. But you're talking about them, too. And fair is fair. So just enjoy.
And I guess falling is universally funny.
And don't wear heels. Ever.
I openly admit to being the worst kind of person. Well, okay I'm not really a bad person I'm just...frank. This has earned me both titles of "refreshing" and "bitch". I say I'm just honest. What is a frankly honest person do to but fully utilize her foreign skills to say whatever she wants whenever she wants it?
I know that a big fear xenophobes have is that foreigners are talking about them in their native language. Well, who cares? Does it honestly hurt anyone if someone has a little laugh because your shoe is untied? I know enough Korean to know that people have talked about me while looking me in the eye and I promise the world didn't end.
So for that reason I felt no guilt spending Saturday night saying whatever I wanted wherever I wanted while out in public in mixed company. I was with a new foreign friend who shares my unfortunate sense of humor and bold realism, what else were we to do?
It started while waiting for some friends outside of a movie theater. Just across from us leaning against a cement wall was a Korean guy in skinny jeans, a leather jacket, shaggy auburn hair, just slouching. He looked 16 which I've learned means he's probably about 25. We waited for our friends for a hours (they were heading up from a day trip out into the city and weren't sure when they'd arrive), and in that time this guy just paced the corner and every time a pair of long haired girls walked by, he'd go up and talk to them, they'd blow him off, and he'd scuff his feet and look down with his hands his pockets, but ultimately move on with his life and wait for the next pair.
"Korean Aladdin at 6 o'clock." Says my friend.
"Ah, no way. He's totally a drug pusher." Say I.
"Or an organ harvester. Less likely, but more intense."
Korean Aladdin paced our shared block for two hours, never dropping his game. And for two foreigners stuck waiting for friends, creating his increasingly more detailed back story became the best game we had ever heard of. Would we have done it back home if it were an American guy? Most likely. But there's something very great and terrible in "getting away with" saying whatever you want.
No naturally this game continued over pizza in a window booth at a second story pizza joint.
The best part of the night was when a couple walked by below and the woman, who was wearing stupid heels, stepped onto a grated sewer cover. Her pointy stiletto went right through the hole and she fell to the pavement. Her boyfriend/husband fell all over himself to help her- took her bag, helped her stand, brushed her off. Even my friend and I had nothing snide to say, we were both worried she had broken an ankle. But then it happened.
While embracing his injured and embarrassed partner, the man looked up, saw us looking down, pointed, and proceeded to grin and then LAUGH. And then we laughed back. And she knew nothing about it (I can only assume he was laughing silently).
I have nothing inspired to say about knowing a foreign language and the verbal freedom it gives you. I'm sure there are volumes on the benefits of multilingualism: what it does for your brain, for your cultural awareness, for your ability to connect with people. All the science is there. But all I use it for is to point out when someone has a bad perm or a camel toe.
So the moral of the story is yes, xenophobes, foreigners ARE talking about you right to your face. But you're talking about them, too. And fair is fair. So just enjoy.
And I guess falling is universally funny.
And don't wear heels. Ever.
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