1/8: Rough weekend

So drat, a rough weekend made me fall off the blogging bandwagon, and I'm only just now getting back on on Tuesday. Actually, I think I just completely forgot about it on Saturday. I can't remember what I could have possibly done... Oh yeah! It was a wonderful day, but I just was doing stuff and then went to bed without giving it a second thought. 19 straight days of awesomeness cancelled out like that.

Whatever, the 19 days were still awesome, and life isn't about perfection--it's about striving to do the right thing, which I do. I've been in a lull for since Friday, but that happens, I guess. It's a fact of life. It's picking one self back up after stumbling that's what's important, and I'm doing that, by my bootstraps. It wouldn't have been such a big deal if I hadn't also decided to start eating as many snacks as possible every night. (Yesterday as a case in point: cookie, two donuts, and an ice cream cone, after fried chicken for dinner. Yikes!) And once again I was reminded that one snack actually tastes better than 5, because the guilt and frustration with myself for the following four undo the enjoyment I derived from the one delicious sweet. So I went to bed last night with renewed determination to get back to work, and did well today.

But first... the weekend. I taught at Beauty High School on Saturday, and it went really wonderfully. Sadly my one boy student had disappeared, not sure if it's permanent or not, but we had a music-themed lesson with Brandy's "Have You Ever?", and they were enthusiastic and seemed to really enjoy it. There was a lot of speaking in English, and that's all I ask, really. Then I took class pictures, which I'm hoping will help me learn their names. There's only 22 or 23, so what are twenty-something more names on top of the 180 I already know? It'll just make my life so much easier if I can just call on them at will, rather than relying on the cards. I can stop the chatter that way too. Plus, I want to know their names. I like them.

I'd received a text message at 7am proposing that I meet some of my graduated students from last year after school, but I was skeptical, as they'd proposed this 3 times in the past month and always changed plans. They're the kids from the pictures that I used to hang out with all the time, and I did miss them, so I was pleasantly surprised when they actually called me at 3 like they said they would. I napped from the time I got home at noon until when they called, then got up and put on clothes. We had some confusion on the phone about where to meet until they just showed up at my door. We went to lunch, which I treated, although they really enthusiastically tried to stop me from doing so. Then we went to singing room (YES!) for like two and a half hours, which was awesome. They'd also brought along two friends from new high school who weren't my students, and they were both really fun. One was quite good at English and nice, and the other one was just crazy. He looks me dead in the eye and says: "You... old."

Excuse me? Thankfully someone was able to intercede with "He means 'How old are you?'" Then he told me I'd lost a lot of weight (he saw me at the festival last year), so I said, "What? I was fat before?" which made him super embarrassed. My students were highly impressed with the improvement in my Korean comprehension (thanks, HW), and even more impressed that I could now sing in Korean, which made things more fun for everyone, definitely. They paid for noraebang, and one boy bear-hugged me in order to stop me from going to pay for the second hour, which was funny. (He's the one who's really tall and broad, who was never able to get the elementary school fare on the bus because he was too big.) They were all really cute, and I had a nice time. I ran into one of my favorite old students from the other school at noraebang too, and chatted with him and his friend for awhile.

Afterwards I met Tim for a super-delicious dinner of boneless fried chicken (and I wonder why I don't lose weight), then headed home, never giving blogging a second thought, for some reason. Damn. I also skipped exercise on Saturday too, and perhaps Friday, too. But I'd also done that for more than 19 days straight, so a day off wasn't that big a deal, really. I'm back on track now.

Sunday I think I spent most of the day in bed aside from probably meeting Tim and eating more donuts. I just couldn't get motivated to do much. That evil teacher from Science High School that made me cry during demonstration class, then took me out to dinner to make up for it, emailed me last week to ask me to proofread and help him revise his thesis thing. (I don't know what it's really for, but I know he's trying for a promotion.) It's 60 pages, but there's really only maybe 30 pages worth of text. The problem is that it's... got quite a few problems. It's not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm just unable to leave something I edit "good enough," so I'm spending a lot of time to improve this thing. Unfortunately, I'm also having to edit by hand, which is a pain, because I doubt he's going to be able to read my rewrites and scribbles very easily. But I finished tonight, so I'll be giving it to him on Thursday, and hopefully he's duly appreciative. It's about using debate in the EFL classroom, so it's at least pretty interesting. It's only possible because his students are really high level, but the activities he describes are pretty neat. (That's what's making this task bearable, really.) I'm going to ask if I can visit his debating class one time and see some of his students in action. It'd be fun to meet some high level English speakers.

Yesterday I also wasted a lot of time doing nothing but eating. That's not entirely true... I've been really productive at school and am way ahead of the game on lesson planning, but I wasn't doing well with my diet. But today was the day I finally got back in the game. I ate well all day, then not only did I resist the pull of cookies right after school, I actually went to the gym, which turned out to be really rewarding. Two of the new ETAs, Jackie and Caitlin, have joined the gym, and they had apparently set up a little appointment with the adorable trainer for him to show them a few things on the weight machines. I don't recall getting this treatment when I joined... I couldn't even get my own locker, for God's sake, but whatever. He did used to correct my form on occasion, which would lead to me giggling uncontrollably, and I think at some point he just became uncomfortable enough that he stopped helping me. (Or, I became ace at all the exercises. Unlikely.)

Anyway, today some girl came up to me and tried to ask me something I didn't understand. Actually, first she asked him if I could speak Korean, then addressed her question to me. I just didn't know what she was talking about... but it was something to do with LA, so it's possible that I just don't know whatever it was. But then trainer interceded with "She only knows a little Korean," so I gave him a wtf look and said, in decent Korean, "How do you know?" But really, he hasn't talked to me practically since I joined. He was duly surprised and chastened, and apologized, but I failed to accept. Then Jackie and Caitlin invited me to join their training session, which was nice of them. He tried to say something to them and they didn't understand, so he turned to me and tried to get me to translate, but I just crossed my arms and said teasingly, "I don't speak Korean."

Thankfully he got the joke and gave me a punch on the arm (what am I? a man?) So I earned the role of default translator for our session. In truth, I think I only understood what he was saying because I could intuit what he'd probably be saying, and most of what we did was emulate him, but he ended up addressing himself to me the entire time, which was cute. And just by virtue of experience, I did most of the exercises well, so he complimented me a lot in order to make up for insulting my Korean earlier. I deserve some props from this punk. I weighed like 50 pounds more than I do now when I started at that stupid gym with no elliptical machines. Hopefully this is the start of a new and beautiful friendship, but I doubt it. Afterwards I managed to ask him to show me how I could do an assisted pullup, and then he quizzed me about where I lived and I attempted to explain the concept of homestay. He was really confused by "with a family," and started asking if I was really Korean, which was ridiculous. When I first joined the gym I told my host mom how I was in love with the trainer, and she somehow found out that he had a "honey" (her words). Then I saw them together in town a few times, which was heartbreaking. But I suppose I can hope that they broke up sometime in the past 9 months. Maybe next time I'll gather the courage to ask him how old he is. He can't be older than 25, I would think. Also, he has braces and huge arms, neither of which I'm usually into, but they're adorable in this case.

"A strong will, a settled purpose, an invincible determination can accomplish anything, and in this lies the distinction between great men and little men." - Thomas Fuller