Kissing makes babies

...and all that jazz!

I handled my first case of inappropriate touching in the classroom today (except, of course, for dong-chim, because it's standard to let that shit slide). The issue was with my pre-K students, 5- and 6-year-olds. It's a small class of 9 children, but they need individual help, so I trust them not to burn the classroom down for several seconds at a time. I came back around the table to help a boy and wondered for a moment why I hadn't noticed he was left-handed before. It was because his right hand was in a girl's tights. Well, hell. This isn't in the teaching manual!

I told him to stop, moved his chair further from hers, and kept a closer eye on the two of them for the remainder of class, telling him to stop as necessary. I told the kid not to do that at school but didn't want to punish hiim, yell, or otherwise give the kid a complex about touching girls. After class, I notified the teacher who acts as the go-between for the native and Korean teachers that someone needs to talk to these kids, someone who isn't me.

I'm hoping this was the right action to take. Have you other teachers dealt with this before? How did you handle it? (Now the other native teacher is referring to this kid as "The Molester." Sad lol.)

"The Stupidest Angel" - Two thumbs up- a laugh out loud read. Love it!

"Slaughterhouse five" - Pretty OK. I recommend it to Vonnegut fans.

John Steinbeck's "The Pearl"- A beautiful little parable. I really enjoyed this one.

Amazon Associates' wonked out formatting - thumbs down.

My new hobby

So my downstairs neighbor smokes in our no-smoking-upon-30,000-won-penalty building. The smoke comes up through the floorboards and wakes me at night. Aside from being fucking disgusting, it's illegal and rude.

At a loss for what to do, I stuck a note on his door, composed with the aid of Google translate, asking him to quit smoking because I'm sick and cannot breathe and it's a no smoking building with signs posted on every floor. I know Internet translators are notoriously bad, so I kept it simple to get the point across and completed it with a stick figure dying of smoke inhalation illustration.

Well, he wrote me back on the back of the same sheet of paper. I can't read Korean, but he's still smoking, so I guess the reply is obvious. 

So I've taken up late night jump roping just before bed time. It's not as if I can sleep anyway, and it doesn't aggravate my cough any more than the smoke does. And it's not half as annoying as choking someone to death.

He banged on the ceiling a few times but never came upstairs, so I plan to stick with my new exercise regimen at least until I move into the new apartment. Maybe I'll add some jumping jacks, kickboxing, jump squats, and the like to my routine. Any other suggestions?

Edit: From a friend: "the letter reads something like this according to my girlfriend: We are not smokers and we have never smoked in this building. Please don't misunderstand us, but we are not smokers. Also they are moving out at the end of the month."

So wtf with the smoke coming up from my floor, then? And I guess I'll stick to jumping rope during the day. :0/ *Feeling perplexed*

Oh happy day

I get to move into the departing teacher's apartment! I get to move into the departing teacher's apartment! *HAPPY DANCE*

Less than 24 hours ago, I had been seriously contemplating pulling a midnight run.

Over a staff dinner for the departure of two teachers and welcoming one new one (more on that later), the director announced that I'd be moving into the departing native teacher's apartment and said, "Hopefully the new teacher [who will move into your apartment] will be a smoker." Good God, I love Korean logic. I feel really bad for the guy, but that's hugely outweighed by my effluence of joy right at this moment.

My new apartment is in the same building, two floors down, and the window faces east, so it will be a lot cooler than this one in the summer. And there's no mold! Or smoke! And the toilet works! And there are sheets! I'll be leaving a lovely view of a junky neighborhood, two windows on adjacent walls that allow a nice breeze when it's nice out, enough mold to condemn any building in a developed country, and an asshole neighbor downstairs who smokes like a chimney, and hopefully the resulting swollen tonsils and hacking cough that consumes the first half hour of my day.

Based on the departing teacher's departure date, I could move in as early as Monday. Which means I need to start packing now. I took this picture a few minutes ago:

Back to the departure of two teachers and arrival of one. One Korean teacher left this week and one arrived. One native teacher leaves after tomorrow and...three of us remain to cover a workload better suited for five or six teachers. Super! The new native teacher doesn't arrive for at least two weeks.

It is physically impossible for us three to teach all the classes- and the director even changed the schedule so I'd have to teach two different classes to two different grade levels at the exact same time. I informed the appropriate person that I could try to bilocate, but it might be messy. The schedule has since been amended, but there are still six classes throughout the week that the director will probably have to teach. Poor kids. She's hard.

It will be a rough couple of weeks, but I'll at least be able to sleep at night, and I expect that to make all the difference in the world.

Jimjilbang fun

Or "Hand check!"

I picked this up for 1,000 won and just have to share.

Shanghai Girls

This is the story of two sisters sold into marriage, trying to escape Shanghai as the Japanese invade. I liked some of this book, but not enough to say I enjoyed it overall. *Spoiler* There's a pretty graphic rape scene early on, which really bothered me. Most people have no problem reading depressing fiction because it's fiction. The book is fiction, but that event is not. It happened to many people and still happens. :0( Anyway, the descriptions of the setting are very vivid, which is great. But the ending feels so unfinished. :0/ I'm not going to recommend this book to anyone.

Space-time continuum relevance at work

After observing another teacher's class this week, our director instructed him to spend more time focusing on the storybook without sacrificing time spent on the workbook. As our classes are set at a very strict 40 minutes with no room for adjustment, the teacher wondered if the director totally lacked a grasp of physics and how the space-time continuum works.

But I speculate that the director is instead so advanced as to understand time is only a human construct, little more than a figment of the imagination, and so she is pushing us teachers to break free of the esatablished laws of the universe and strive for enlightenment.

You never know.