Every Other Thursday Rips Me Apart

Despite the title, this post will most likely be more about Wednesday than Thursday. I was going to write it yesterday, but I wanted to wait just a little bit longer for accumulation's sake. Just warning you.

So yesterday was Wednesday. Woden's (Odin's) day. The god of wisdom, war, and death. So why, then, do we call it hump day if it's a day of wisdom, war, and death? Doesn't seem very consistent, English language. I think we'd do better to call Saturday Wednesday because it signifies the death of a week. Instead we call Saturday Saturday because it's the day when, traditionally, we all eat our babies to prevent them from overthrowing us. Anyway, I'm not drunk, I promise. I'm more tired than anything. But, I'll get to that.

Wednesday morning was the first day of my newly introduced "weekly broadcasts," wherein I introduce an English topic and teach some new vocabulary for about 5 minutes before classes begin for the day. I even get a student assistant, which we had try outs for. Anyway, I did my thing. I taught the kids some slang. "Hey, what's up?" and the answers you can give for such a question. It's weird teaching to a camera because you get no feedback about whether there is understanding or not. Oh well. Afterward, I got the obligatory, "Oh, you rooked so handsome on the TV this morning. My students were bely happy." I expected that. What I did not expect was, "You rooked arike Bluce Wirris on the TV." Bruce Willis? Is my hair falling out quicker than I thought it was? Hey, he's badass enough. I'll take it. What happened to Brad Pitt? I guess I'm Brad Pitt in person, but Bruce Willis when I'm on TV? What am I supposed to do with that? I'm going with an amalgamation. I will henceforth be referred to as "Blad Wirris." I think it has a nice ring to it.

My Woden's Day classes were pretty standard. A couple of students even knew how to respond when I came at them with, "Hey, what's up?" I took an hour of leave to go to the post office in the afternoon to mail out some packages (look for them in a week, Mom and Sara. Sorry, everyone else, it is not your time yet). I tell you what. It's expensive to ship things across that Pacific Ocean.

The real excitement came at about 3 PM when, for National Teacher's Fitness Day or some crap like that, all the teachers gathered on the volleyball court to throw down. I am not that good at volleyball. The male Korean teachers seem to breathe volleyball. Even our 60 year old principal was out there with the best of them. I can volley a ball when it comes to me, but there's no way I can set it or spike it given an ability test. Hell, half the time when I serve it goes wildly opposite of where I intended it to go. Anyway, I held my spot with those volleys and eventually our team won a best of three series. We celebrated by drinking beer and eating dumplings in the cafeteria. How cool is it to drink beer in an elementary school cafeteria? On the coolness meter, I graduated from protozoan to purple sandpiper. If you consider the scope of the Earth's general food chain, that is a huge leap. I feel like I deserve some kind of diploma or something.

Although I wasn't cool enough to be invited out drinking afterward with the rest of the male Korean teachers, I'd like to think I declined their offer due to a previous engagement to help my neighbor with her medical school homework. Maybe that's why the coolness meter leapt so far. It takes extra suavacity to drink beer with the boys (and girls) and then go and tear up some Korean medical school homework.

I know what you're thinking, and I was thinking that too. Why would she want my help with her medical school homework? She wants me, I know. Actually, as it turns out, her medical school reading is all in English because English Speaking Land is where all the cool doctors hang out. My job was to help her understand complex words and concepts regarding this reading. Among the things I had to explain: what the hell irrigation fluid is when it comes to anemia, distilled water, stippling, and the concept "before something has had time to develop." How do you explain that last one without using any of the words in the initial phrase? Anyway, it was kind of taxing, but I think I actually learned more than she did. That medical school stuff is hard. So, pay it forward, folks. Good deed done.

Thursday, or Thor's Day as all the other purple sandpipers call it, was kind of rough. I had six classes, 4 different lessons. The last one was the teachers' training course, which I teach all mybyself. I was well planned, but it showed that my lesson was too easy for them. They're all super smart when it comes to English, so next week I'm going to let them kind of lead the lesson more. I think flexibility is the way to go here. Let them come in, be laid back, and go with what they want to learn. My job will be to give guidelines, theme, and rules. The real underlying problem, which is my terrible little secret, is that I don't know their names so I feel weird calling on them to talk. Like, "Hey, you. Stand up and tell us a story." Some of these people I talk to semi-regularly, and I feel like such a megadouche not knowing their names. I heard their name once and immediately forgot it. It's Korean and I've never heard of the name before, so it's like hearing a word in a foreign language that you can't even really comprehend the pronunciation of and then expecting to remember it. You're not going to.

Anyway, six classes takes it out of a guy, so I've been tired most of the day. At least the kids did their Thriller dance for me again today. I guess it's every Tuesday and Thursday? I'll let you know when I figure it out. Plans for the weekend? Please, purple sandpipers don't need plans. They make history on the weekends.