190.3

This time it has literally been forever since I last updated. I've decided to make a pact with myself that I'll update at least once a week, specifically on Sunday, and then more than that if I feel so inclined. I spent some time yesterday reading back over old entries, and I really like having them to look at... the little stories and incidences that I forgot, so I don't want to quit, because blogging is therapeutic and productive.

This is a relatively lazy Sunday evening... it's 6:16 and I've mostly planned the lesson I'm going to teach tomorrow. I'm having the post-festival party tomorrow, which will take up the last 15 minutes of class, so I've planned a short new lesson, though I'd also kinda like to play the Culture Jeopardy game I played at the other school last week. I guess I'll decide tomorrow.

Speaking of the festival... It's over. I was super-stressed for the past two weeks over it, but we had it on Wednesday, and things went off relatively without a hitch. As you may remember, I was really excited, if a little nervous, about being in charge of two song-and-dance numbers for the third grade classes. But as we got closer and closer to the big day, my co-teacher kept suggesting other ways I might be involved. She put me in charge of the first graders singing two English Christmas carols, which then led to me offering to teach myself how to play the songs on the piano so that I could accompany them, since instrumental music was difficult to come by. I remembered learning to play really simple versions of "We Three Kings" and "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" when I was ten or something. So last Thursday (t-minus 6 days before the festival), I put my good co-teacher on the case of finding me piano music for those two songs. She's awesome, and within minutes had printed out sheet music for me, so I took it up to the music room and started working on it.

Only to discover that I'd forgotten how to read music. I was able to remember how to read right hand (treble-clef)?, but I was at a complete loss for the acronyms I learned to remember bass clef, and I got flustered. My co-teacher came up to check on me and said, "Uh-oh. I think maybe this is too difficult." I was a little hurt, because I'd only been on the case for 30 minutes, but I too was worried. So she offered to get the boy student who played the piano at our festival to help me during cleaning time. That's also SM, the student who hit me in the face with the basketball, informed me that he prayed for me while I was sick, and generally is adorable. So during class she asked him, and he made a ridiculous face, probably because he was skeptical he could help me, since he's terrible at English. So I was like, "it's okay... I don't think he wants to." And she's, of course, like "No, of course he wants to. Don't you want to?" in Korean. To which he earnestly responded. "Yes! Happy!"

I was also skeptical, because Koreans don't even read music the same way we do. They obviously don't read it CDEFGAB, since they don't use those letters. So he came up to the music room, and was super embarrassed and awkward about having to sit next to me on the bench, and just started playing. GAH! I hate naturals! So he helped me come up with the notes for the left hand, and thanks to some translation from the co-teacher, answered a couple of rules about reading music questions I had. So Thursday I worked on "We Three Kings."

Then Friday I tackled "We Wish You a Merry Christmas." My co-teacher again enlisted SM to help me, this time during the free period at the end of the day. I felt bad about it, so I said, in Korean, "If you don't want to help me, it's really okay." But he just responded the same: "No! Happy!" There was lots of humorous awkwardness. He's the one I suspect wrote "Are you marry me?" on my birthday card. He's the king of our second grade, so his whole posse joined us in the music room, and one boy, whose English is a little better, translated a bit. One boy accompanied us on the guitar, which surprisingly, didn't help. Snort. We played it a few times duet style, then like a slavedriver he made me play it over and over. They dismissed the students early, at 4:30, so his friends were like, 가자! (Let's go!) But he said he wanted to stay and just kept saying "시작." (Start.) He either hates me or has a ridiculous crush on me, because he was so super-embarassed when he had to fix my hand, cause the left hand is all chords, and obviously couldn't just tell me what I'm doing wrong, so I just tried not to laugh at how nervous he was. His friend BJ, whose English name is Blair (curious choice), was like "Teacher... careful. He has girlfriend." I just laughed.

So I went home and spent most of the weekend in front of the piano. But I was having a hard time, because I got to the point where I could play both songs passably well at relatively normal speed, but I was super-worried. It wasn't just like a recital, where I was just playing, and if I messed up, shoot, but oh well. I was accompanying them singing, so I was so worried about having to play perfectly, or they would mess up. And I managed to get to the point you have to get to, where your hands just learn the song and your mind goes away. That's how piano always was for me... I just had to teach my hands, and my brain didn't get involved. 'Cause if my brain suddenly tried to reinterject itself during a fast part, I would screw up. But it was hard for me to just let my mind go away and let my hands do their thing when I thought about the thirty kids singing along with me and the 60 others, plus teachers and principal, who would be watching. So I was way nervous.

And Monday's "Uptown Girl" practice went really poorly (t-minus 3 days), which led to me bursting into tears. It wasn't entirely because of the performance. I was frustrated because the boys wouldn't SING. Someone, while I was at the other school on Thursday and Friday, had choreographed a dance for the boys to do, which was cute, and involved synchronized hat removal and stuff, but they weren't meant to DANCE, they were meant to SING. The girls were dancing. So I was frustrated when they just adamantly refused to sing 3 days before the festival. So I gave them their daily snack and said "Okay fine, do what you want. I don't care," and left. It wasn't a normal class for me, I was helping them extra, and they were irritating me. Plus, I was in a bad mood, and worried abut the piano, and frustrated with my co-teacher, so I knew I was going to start tearing up. I tried to leave before I did, but then I ran into a student on my way to my classroom, so they must have heard about it.

And perplexingly, the boys, who I was actually irritated with, were non-plussed. But suddenly I had like, six crying girls in my classroom. I was, needless to say, confused. I'm like: "Why are you crying? I'm not mad at you! Don't cry!" I couldn't get any answers out of them, they just stood there tearfully, so I gave them all a hug and wrote on the board, "I'm not angry with you! I love girl students! You worked hard! I am annoyed with boy students" in Korean, so they finally stopped crying. It was confusing, but kind of cute. I didn't eat lunch all week, because I was either feeling sick (previous Wednesday and Monday) or busy practicing (Tuesday) which led to my co-teacher worrying and helpfully telling all my students, who then proceeded to accost me "Camp eat lunchy?"

But yeah, I was much more laid back about the festival once I came to terms with it all on Tuesday, but I was still really worried about the piano thing. Wednesday was the big day, and it got off to a pretty crappy start. I woke up super early, it was totally cold, and I had two huge plastic bags of stuff on the bus, including my digital camera, camera charger cord, and so on. I got off the bus and thought I was ready to start my 25 minute walk, but then I felt something pull. I turned around to discover, to my horror, that half of my camera charger was closed in the bus door. And I proceeded to watch, in continued horror, as the bus took off, yanking the other half of the cord out of my bag, and my charger clattered along the pavement off into the distance. Devastation. Needless to stay, I started crying. It was 7am, and freezing, and now I had no way to charge my digital camera. Perplexing. Plus, connected to the charger was my only Korea-USA outlet adapter, which meant no using my laptop until I found a new one, which I imagined would be a difficult task in small-town Naju.

So I called Amy, had a nice cry, and then started walking. I got it under control before I got to school, and put on a brave face, because I really wanted the day to be great, especially for the kids. I practiced piano for awhile, then got caught up in other various preparations. We had the festival in our big lecture hall... so there wasn't a real stage... but there were a lot of decorations that reminded me of a high school dance, and a classy looking banner. Before the festival started about 5 of my third grade girls grabbed me and pulled me out into the hallway, covering my eyes as we went. I didn't know what to expect, since I made them cry earlier in the week, but then I was presented with a big gift box full of ludicrous presents. The 5 of them and two of the boys apparently put their money together to buy me a present, and it was adorable. One of the recent cool winter fashion trends in Korea is winter hats that look like animal heads, with long ears that hang down to your chest. So I have a sheep head hat, Winnie-the-Pooh mittens, a new diary, Minnie Mouse earmuffs, and last but not least, a pair of bright pink slippers, which they insisted I wear on festival day, to make them proud. They're laughably small, so my feet hung off the back about an inch, but I wore them for a bit. It was really sweet, and made me happy.

One of my biggest predicaments as a foreign teacher is this: I try really really hard to be good to the students and do things right and be a good cultural ambassador (ha!), but most middle school students are not at the age where they can even appreciate things like that, and even if they can, they have no way of telling me. But alas, the present made me feel like maybe I did things right. I'm getting really sad about my third graders leaving and going away to high school. :(

As for the actual festival... both of the 3rd grade dances were fine. They weren't life-changing or anything, but they were par for the course, or slightly better than the other acts, which was all I wanted. I'll have videos, as soon as my new charger arrives from America and I can upload them. I managed to play all of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" flawlessly, and made it through the first four verses of "We Three Kings" with zero mistakes. Then, of course, I fucked up on the 15th to last note of the last verse, so I just stopped playing. I was just so happy it was over, and it's fast and has both hands playing chords, so I knew I couldn't jump back in, so I let them finish up acapella. Whatever! It was over. I enjoyed the rest of the day substantially more, because I didn't have to worry anymore, and it was a nice day. After lunch I sat in the homeroom with 5 or 6 of my third grade boys and chatted for a bit. We discussed music, sort of, and I asked them what they wanted for their big prize. (I promised if they did well at the festival I'd give them a big prize.) They said... "No." Which I think meant, no you don't have to give us anything, but I obviously wouldn't take that for an answer. So they started making humorous suggestions. "Cellphone." "Kitten." "Baby crocodile." To which I responded, "No problem. I'll go to Africa this weekend." (In Korean, Africa rhymes with "paprika." You know, the spice.)

Then one student, who calls himself my boyfriend and greets me every morning with a cheerful "Good morning, girlfriend!" made a serious suggestion. (He also sends me text messages with all hearts, and is trying to convince me to take him to America with me over Christmas, so he can meet my parents, who he assures me will love him. He's a crack-up.) He said... "You... our... graduation... 오세요. (Come.)" And I almost cried. I said, "Of course I'll come to your graduation! Don't be silly. That's not your big prize!"

After lunch was the trivia contest, which was interesting, and the song competition! I'm not sure why it's called a song competition, because there was no winner. But recently I made the amazing discovery that our school possesses a Noraebang (karaoke) machine. It's housed in some room called the "Students Association Conference Room," which was actually part of the lecture hall. I'm not sure if it's always been there, but it might explain what my students do some times when I don't know where they are. But yeah, big-screen TV, full karaoke machine, microphones, the works. And it's got a huge selection of Korean and English songs (the same selection as at all the Noraebangs I've been to). So for the song contest, various students got up in front of the whole school (students and teachers), and sang. It was, in fact, difficult for them to get volunteers. One boy, who was one of the hosts, HB, is one of my favorite third graders, because he's just very kind. He sang first, and was cute. Then they rustled up a first grader, but after that it was everyone's friends trying to convince them to sing and no one singing. A few more groups went up eventualy, but then I saw HB coming my way and looked away. He gave me the look and was like, "Miss Camp. Sing. Please." I said... "No." He added puppy dog eyes. "Please." I said... "I don't know. Give me the book."

I knew I should, because I knew the kids would all get a kick out of it, but I was soooo nervous. Anyone who knows me knows that I can do a lot of things, but singing well isn't one of them. But I agreed. I chose No Doubt's "Ex-Girlfriend," because it's a low, fast song that I really knew all the words to. I was so embarassed, in front of 90 students and 20 teachers and random parents... my hands were shaking, but I just closed my eyes and went with it. The students were so amused to see me singing, and impressed about how fast I was able to speak English, that they very gamely clapped and cheered, so I didn't feel too dumb. Thankfully Noraebang isn't about singing well, it's about pizazz, which I happen to have in spades. Ha. Unfortunately, or fortunately, there's no video of my performance. It'll just be another awesome embarassing memory.

I was really relieved Wednesday night that it was all over, although it was awesome. But I had a bunch of lesson planning to do, because I still had to teach Thursday and Friday but hadn't had time, thanks to festival preparation, to lesson plan. I did a body parts lesson with all three grades on Thursday, which was pretty fun. I got some compliments via instant messenger from students about it, anyway. And this week was also awesome because I got to play BASKETBALL AGAIN! Last week had been a big disappointment, because I got all dressed in my gym clothes and went outside and waited after lunch, but then... no one came. So finally one boy who usually plays basketball came out and started playing soccer, and I was like JS, wtf? He said: "SM... no play." To which I responded, "what?" Because your 2nd grade king, SM isn't playing, no one is playing? And it happened again on Friday! This was at the same time that SM was helping me during cleaning time and after school with the piano, so when I asked him why he wasn't playing basketball, he said... "I am read a book." (Told you he couldn't speak English.)

So this week I wasn't expecting much, and I asked my co-teacher to inquire as to whether or not they were playing before I went to the trouble of getting dressed. She asked, and they, particularly king SM, promised (약속) they would play, so I went out after lunch. It's finally becoming too cold for my shorts and t-shirt. The other teachers were always terrified to see me in shorts and a t-shirt, but it was actually warm enough in the middle of the day (although it was cold in the morning and at night), especially when you started playing a sport. And I was happy, because we played basketball. I played against the king on Thursday, with one of my favorite boys, who's very fast and scrappy for the ball at the net, and we soundly defeated the other team. Friday I randomly got abandoned by the 2nd graders... the three of them teamed up and left me with the two first graders, who were short and injured, respectively. Plus, only one of them could shoot. So I was getting reamed pretty bad (like 14-3, I think) when SM finally made his appearance. He was strolling slowly out towards the court until I yelled, in Korean, the equivalent of "Hurry up and get your ass out here. I need help." So by our powers combined with the first graders we made a pretty amazing comeback and won, so I'm still undefeated. On Friday the sun didn't come out, so I was genuinely COLD. SM offered me his jacket about four times (he's the only one broad enough that I could probably get into it) "드릴까요?" ("I'll give it to you?") but I refused, because then he'd just be cold. Next week, I really will break out the track pants and jacket. Both because it's cold, and because the shorts are just embarassing. I get a lot of obnoxious comments, particularly from the third grade boys I often go bowling with. "Oooh... sexy. Oh my God. Who are you?"

Oh yeah, the best part of the body parts lesson was that as we played "identify the body part picture" game on Powerpoint, we also played "Name that celebrity." I found pictures of celebrities, mostly Korean, and cropped pictures of various body parts, so then the students had to guess who it was from just their eyebrows, or knees, or something. One class in particular was funny, because they just always guessed other classmates, or me. One kid was amazing... he got Angelina Jolie's lips and Eric Bana's forearms. What?

One of my second grade girls who I love was really sad on Thursday. I said goodbye to her as she was leaving, and asked her what was wrong, but she just walked away sadly, so I was worried. I wrote her a note on Friday in my limited Korean, that just said, "Cheer up, cute girl! I love you!" So after class she came up to me and pointed to the note and said "Miss Camp, thank you!" and then gave me a hug. It was nice.

Friday they dismissed the students early again, so they surprised me where I was sitting outside writing in my planner, and I had some nice conversations as they left. The second grade boys in particular were in a chatty mood, especially Blair, who I love. Whenever I start to talk to them in Korean he says "No! I am English. Speak English." So I do. He told me he wants to go to America over winter vacation for an English camp, and I told them, via him, that I was going home for winter in January too. Then I asked him what he wanted to do when he grew up, and he said he didn't know, but then they made fun of SM, pointing to him and saying "Him factory worker." He didn't understand what they said, obviously, so it was even more comical. I said, "No... model," but they quickly assured me he was not sexy enough. ("No! No sexy! Pat!" [Fat]) They hung around and chatted for like 5 minutes, which was nice. I'm glad that I really like them, so I won't be SO devastated when my third graders, who are my favorite students, leave.

This weekend we had a lovely but all-to-brief visit from Amy, and we watched a romantic comedy at DVD bang in Gwangju. I couldn't come to meet them until after my third grade party, which was expensive but worth it. About 2/3 of them came, and we all had lunch together at a nice restaurant in Naju, prompting one of my girls to send me this message, which made me really happy:

삼겹살파티!! 고맙스♥♥I am very happy about with you.I never forget today.Thank you, teacher.You are best teacher ♥♥당신이 있어서 행복해요.

I think the last bit means something like "you are, so I'm happy." Not sure. But it seemed sweet. Today I didn't accomplish much, aside from cleaning my room, laundry, and getting an unsatisfying haircut. I wanted the back of my hair short again, but I wanted to keep the front almost exactly the same, except a little shorter, because I really like it. But she made the front more than a little shorter, although she at least maintained the style I like. And the back is short, but not quite short enough. Alas. I also got a purple streak, which is really understated.

And now, passive-aggressive homestay moment of the week: Last week I was called by grandma for dinner, so I cringed a little. Homestay mom is awesome, and tries really hard to speak English, and knows which Korean foods I can stomach and which I can't, but grandma... doesn't. So she calls me into her room to sit on the floor and eat at the small table. And lo and behold, the main dish is... crab soup. Like, a whole crab. I don't typically eat seafood. I don't even eat crab legs at the Chinese buffet, let alone an ENTIRE crab. I just prefer not to have to fight through an EXOSKELETON to get to my food. And this guy was ridiculous. He was so big his legs were hanging out of the bowl. And there didn't seem to be much else in the "soup." So I just looked up at grandma, who knows zero words of English, and said, completely deadpan: "Excuse me, there's a crab in my soup." She had no idea what I said, and just looked at me, but it cracked me up, and made me feel better about eating only rice and spicy cabbage on the floor for dinner.

I can't believe it's December already. I wish time would slow down!