Drinks At The Boiling Point, A Love Confession, And What Really Matters

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.