With friends.
Choonshik, playing in a book.
I adopted a couple of baby rats. Was it a month ago? Two months? I can’t remember; I feel like I’ve never been without them. Their names are Minshik and Choonshik. They are the cutest little dudes in the world. They’re affectionate and ridiculous and sickly-sweet. And sickly. Minshik is pretty much constantly in the throes of a cold. I watch him closely. I give him antibiotics. I don’t open the windows for fear of a draught. I die of suffocation in the spring heat (maybe). The point is, I love him and his brother so dearly that it’s put me off the whole idea of having children. Not an idea that I was ever super ON to begin with, but having a taste of responsibility has killed whatever thoughts I might have had. When Minshik was really sick and sneezing all the time and wheezing with every breath, I couldn’t handle it. I cried and worried and felt like the frazzled, stressed parent of two hairy little whiskered babies. Too much, man, too much.
No regrets though. They’re pretty wonderful.
WARNING: THIS WAS WRITTEN IN THE EARLY HOURS OF THE MORNING UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF ALCOHOL. MAY OR MAY NOT MAKE ANY SENSE. MAY OR MAY NOT BE UNDESERVEDLY LIKENING MYSELF TO A REAL PARENT. MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE JUST BEEN LIGHTLY PISSED ON BY A RAT.
I’m still alive.
I’m sick, for the fifth time this winter. Man, you really don’t appreciate immunity until you have none.
Cheering me up are some pretty cute essays my students have been writing about their favourite people. Here are a few.
1. Mack:
“My favorite person is my mom. My mom looks medium eyes. medium nose, medium cm, almost is medium. And my mom is no thin no fat. My mom is medium. And have long curly hair. My mom likes not old. Vision is very good. And she has a lot of laughs. hearing is good. Also like a friend because play with me. loves not sweet chocolate and always look bright. I love my mom.”
2. Henry:
“Alice is good. Alice is my teacher. She is girl. She is big. She has long golden head. She has two fish. one fish has killed. one fish left.”
(The two fish are these plastic orange fish that used to be attached to my necklace. The students were were very interested in them, and very saddened when one broke off.)
3. Tom:
“My English teacher name is Alice. Alice teacher has Brown and short hair. And small, small Green eyes and she is short. She is young. so do nail polish and she is funny. so she laugh so big. She likes Big Bang. so she marry TOP, GD, Seungri, Daesung, Taeyang. But she marry TOP. This is truth.
Alice teacher is good teacher.”
Kid had to write a descriptive piece about a mouse. He obviously ran out of ideas and I really love his filler.
“Mice are look like hamster. Hamsters are cute but mice are creepy. Why? Why mice are creepy? That is mice aren’t hamster. but mice and hamsters all furry. Mice are live in a mouse hole. They are like cheese.”
Okay, so last night my friend and I went to see BIGBANG. LIVE. IN CONCERT. It was my first ever pop concert, and it was THRILLING.
Highlights:
- They had an awesome live band! The guitarist was like WWWWWUUUUNNN okay you can’t hear me doing that
- Taeyang ripped off his shirt no less than three times! He actually ripped it off! Tore it in half and everything! It was great but I didn’t understand why he kept putting on new ones ONLY TO RIP THEM APART when he could have just stuck with plain old continuous upper-body nudity
- There was fire and glitter and segways and big, crowd-surfing hamster balls, and a huge bike for some reason and Daesung flew above the audience in a slow way and people dressed up as white tigers and danced and then at one point Seungri shot the audience with a laser gun for some reason. Dude, is this what I’ve been missing out on by never going to pop shows*? I am disappointed in a lifetime obviously wasted.
- T.O.P. I was in the same room as T.O.P.: the prettiest man in the world. (I had some intense arguments with students today about whether that last fact is true, but I STAND BY IT.) Okay, and don’t be shocked, but he totally looked in my direction and it’s definitely possible that our eyes met and I was just too far away to realise.
- It lasted for two and a half hours AND they played all my favourite songs AND I’m going to stop talking about this now because nobody cares but me
*Actually, in retrospect, Iron Maiden put on a pretty comparable show.
One girl always yells “Teacher, I love you!” whenever she sees me. This has been going on for months, and then today, for the first time, she asked (rather sadly) “Teacher, do you love me too?”
I nodded. “Of course I do.”
In class later on, we were discussing cameras, and this same girl suddenly cried “TEACHER I HAVE CAMERA NOW, IN MY BAG”. I was like, cool, let’s see it. And she reached into her bag and pulled out…nothing. Holding an invisible camera, she started making clicking sounds and pretending to take photos of me. She pointed to her ‘camera’ with one hand and said: “Teacher, do you know? If you are stupid you can’t see this camera. But if you can see this camera, you are very very clever!” It was a pretty slick move, and it’s the first time I’ve seen the Emperor’s New Clothes attempted in real life.
Three of us went to Seoul Land on Saturday. My students had demonstrated for me how good Seoul Land was as far as Korean theme parks go. Everland, they said, was the best, and they raised their hands to head level. Lotte World, they continued, was a close second, coming in at about neck height. Seoul Land had them getting out of their chairs so they could slam their palms firmly on the ground. “Seoul Land is very very very very very very very worst.”
But we had free tickets, and thus no choice: we had to go.
It was actually awesome. I mean, imperfect, and freezing cold, but great fun. Apparently one of the rides killed a couple of people a few years back, and I can believe it. The best ride was this terrible one, where you get strapped into a seat in this sledgehammer-shaped thing that swings right up and around and then leaves you hanging, upside-down, in the air. No part of your body is left touching the seat, and you’re just gasping for breath, folded over this flimsy seatbelt and dangling there, wondering if this is a worthwhile way to die. It was amazing.
There were a lot of random, really positive experiences with Korean people too. A woman on the subway made sure we got off at the right stop, explained how to catch the elephant train, and told me all about her honeymoon in New Zealand. When we were waiting in line for one of the rollercoasters, we noticed that this kid had a really delicious looking potato slice skewer, which she offered to us when she overheard us talking about it. These two eleven-year-olds came up to me with a barrage of questions: “How old are you?” “Where are you from?” “Do you like Korea?” “Do you eat kimchi?” “Do you know K-pop?” They pored over the park map with me and rated each ride (warning me away from the murderous bungy jump). Their English was great and they were ADORABLE. I want them as students. Later I was approached by a much younger girl, who said very carefully: “Hello, how are you? What is your name?” Then she went on the sledgehammer ride with us. At the end of it we looked at each other and, unperturbed, she gave me the thumbs up. She was hardcore.
And now, for the sake of my dear parents, here is my apartment! I have annotated it for your own understanding, though with horror I suddenly realise that my dear parents are only going to complain that I chose the wrong colours for my words and wrote everything too small. These are valid complaints, and if I could change the course of history you KNOW that I would, but unfortunately this took me way too long to do and I can’t be bothered doing it again.
(Ah, okay, so the two comments on the left side of the first picture ARE pretty hard to read. The first one says “THE GIFT SHELF: full(ish) of gifts for those back home”. The second one says “THE CREEPING HORROR i.e. black mould”. That black mould really is horrifying - you should see how it stretches all the way back across the other wall. Gotta clean that next.)
Okay, brief updates.
- Went to Busan for New Years. It was ridiculous and ended up involving sand, vomit, broken toilets, broken ankles*, drinking games, sweaty dancing, arguments, missing people, secrets, lies, nudity*, buffet dinners. Good stuff.
- Got a new timetable at work and it is basically the sweetest thing ever seen by human eyes. Three hours of work on Tuesdays and Thursdays! I’ve lost my two awful classes and everything is amazing now. (One of my co-workers came to me the other day and said that her students had been telling her that they love me being their teacher because I’m funny and fun. And because I play games with them. I imagine it’s mostly down to the games.)
- I cleaned my apartment for the first time since I moved in. Guess what, I’m totally disgusting. In my travels beneath my bed and under the couches I have found a LOT of money and a LOT of missing undies. Everything looks awesome and strange now, as though someone has transplanted a new, rubbish-free, hair-clump-free floor beneath my feet. I feel like I’ve turned over a new leaf in my life, and I also feel like I’m going to be turning it right back within a week.
- Last weekend I got in an actual barroom brawl! Or rather, a clubroom brawl. That is, it was a brawl of sorts. Things got out of hand and punches were thrown! Learnt my lesson: I’m never going to knock a dude’s hat off his head ever again.
*Not my own, for pity’s sake
WHO IS THE THIEF?
(By Monica)
“Hello, I’m Sally. Can you help me, Mr. Tomson?” Sally asked of Mr. Tomson.
“Sure, What’s up?” Mr. Tomson said.
“I missed an expensive ring. I think a thief stole,” Sally said.
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. I can solve your case, maybe. Where did you stolen your ring?”
“It was in my room. When I came back to my house from school, the ring was disappeared.”
“Are you sure you locked the door?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“It’s strange. Do you live alone in your house? I will be clue.”
“No, I live with my dog.”
“Oh, I see. I think your ring return tomorrow,” Mr. Tomson said.
“Why? I had stolen my ring!”
“I think your dog ate your ring…Let’s check tomorrow.”
Tomorrow, Sally and Mr. Tomson discovered Sally’s ring.
“It’s my ring! But it’s little bit dirty because it was in my dog’s dung!” Sally said.
Talking nonsense with fifth-graders today wound up with me collapsed over my desk in laughter. When I lifted my head, my face was bright red and the kids started yelling.
“Teacher, like a tomato!”
“Teacher! A cherry!”
“Teacher, your face is apple!”
“Teacher, you are apple with hair!”
