Slippery Slope

The past few days have been interesting. School's been going decently, aside from the fights the boys keep getting into, and today teaching all 13 at once went surprisingly better than I expected. I told them up front, if they were good they would get a reward, and if they were bad they would write 100 sentences. As a result, we got along pretty well this afternoon--but I will be glad when Yuria comes back for the field trip tomorrow.

That said, it astonishes me how we can expect so much of our teachers back home. With classes of 35, they're more like policemen than educators.

Blah blah blah, boring school stuff, boring work stuff, and then I texted Albert. Chris and Megan very much supported this endeavor (I think maybe out of boredom and amusement on Chris's part), so I sent it on Tuesday. Tuesday night, nothing. NOTHING! All night, then, I tortured myself with the memory of Tim Gannon receiving my school picture from some other girls with "I love you" or something on the back. He took it and stomped on it in the garbage can. It might as well have been my heart.

Wednesday, then, I was moping. Kind of juvenile, but I think when emotions are involved, we tend to revert back to junior high. That afternoon, I was sitting out on the front steps sunning (oh I had missed the sun, being buried in a coat and stuck inside all day), and Albert came and plopped his 6'4" (holy crap!) self next to me. We talked for a few minutes, and I thought to myself, Self, maybe there's just a language barrier. After physical therapy, I wrote again (using small words) that I was sorry he was sick on Saturday (thus concluding that I was the only one not hungover). Just as I got settled in with my fried chicken delivery an hour later (yum), my phone chirped with a note from him.

"I am okay ^^~ I can not English. I am a fool. I can not answer. I want study English!! Write 1 hour :( I am very very fool. Good night Kate (*^0^*)~~"

Normally I wouldn't go around broadcasting that, but it was really kind of cute. So uhm, mum's the word, okay? Megan helped me write a response in Korean (read: she wrote it down perfectly and then I typed it into my phone, haha), and I guess we're going to study this weekend. Hooray! I'm concerned, though... I hope he doesn't think I know Korean because we're in big trouble if conversation involves anything but items in the classroom.

In other news, I'm kind of a big deal in Korea. People stop to stare at me, walk up to peer into my face, and blatantly point at me. Boys chase after me to say hello (10-year-olds, not the datable ones), and at Home Plus I can draw a crowd as I buy kimchi. All of it I don't mind, except for the pointing. That's just rude! Today I was walking home from buying some unsalted, unbuttered, unmarshmallowed roasted sweet potatoes, and a group of four passed me. One literally gasped and pointed at me, telling his friends that I was a foreigner. Just to see what would happen, I gasped and pointed at him, without realizing there was a group of 15 high school-aged boys behind him. They all started laughing and the kid turned bright red with embarrassment. I feel a little guilty, but not enough not to publish it on the internet.

Hope everyone's keeping it real (and taking their pictures!)