can you feel my heartbeat?

it's beating for you.

did you know that I sometimes call Young-Gyung "언니"? did you know that she asked me to? do you know what it means?

did you know that I really wanted 9th grade to be the last time I played dodgeball?

did you know that I cheered for Robot Electronics the whole time, just because of 신철?

did you know that I stood and put my right hand over my heart like all the other teachers when they played Korea's national anthem?

did you know that all my favorite students fell down?

did you know that I only like 2PM when my students are dancing to them? did you know that I still only know one of the names of the students in dance club, even though I love them all? did you know that it's the "okay"/"I love you" student? did you know that his name is 마승호? did you know that I still don't know how exactly I should react when he (ridiculously, in very broken English) attempts to flirt with me and convince me to go on a date?

did you know that all my favorite students fell down?

did you know that all my mother hens kick ass at dodgeball?

did you know how frightening some of my students' mothers are when they've formed a circle around you, and they have a ball?

did you know it was cold that day, and none of us bothered to catch students smoking in the bathrooms?

did you know that they encourage me to drink alcohol at any/all school functions?

did you know that that's probably me screaming in the background? did you know that I've started the process of making my application to renew my contract?

아파도

I quite literally spent nearly my entire weekend watching the entire season (25 episodes) of Boys Over Flowers, a Korean high school drama. I finished the last episode at about 4 am Monday morning, and there was no sex. I knew there wouldn't be any sex, there never is, but there's so much BUILD-UP, it's FRUSTRATING. There wasn't even any TONGUE.

After I finished it, I slept for just under 2 hours before getting up for work. Korean high school dramas are clearly a dangerous thing in my hands.

I am now obsessed (OBSESSED!) with one of the soundtrack songs, One More Time. This is unhealthy on all levels.

my nails are painted approximately this shade

of orange.

My hair is slowly becoming long enough to pin back.

dunkin sisters

is what Park Mi-Ran calls me and the gossip girls, because we three go together to Dunkin Donuts (the only place where reasonably priced coffee is to be found) ALL THE TIME.

If we're not at Dunkin, we're brewing our own coffee in Im Kyung-Hwa's (#1) department. Today over coffee Kyung-Hwa told me that she is jealous of I Young-Gyung these days. Young-Gyung sits in the desk in my department that belonged to Kyung-Hwa last semester. I talk to Young-Gyung a lot more than I used to because of this, and to Kyung-Hwa significantly less. Only because of proximity, duh. I love Kyung-Hwa way more than Young-Gyung, though Young-Gyung and I are beginning to have our hysterical laughter moments.

Kyung-Hwa, I MISS YOU TOO. No one teases me about blind dates quite the way you do.

There's a new teachers' club, headed by Kyung-Hwa, called the "Well-being Club" (which apparently is code for "beauty club"). It contains nearly all of my co-teachers and nearly all of my favorite gossip crowd. I kind of hope we all sit around and paint our nails together. I legitimately hope it leads to me spending more time with the gossip girls again. I miss them.

oh no, I did something really wrong!

Remember the "OK!" and "I love you!" student?

I had him in class again last Friday, and he was rowdy as usual. He continued to be ridiculous ("I love you!" "Teacher, you are beautiful!" etc). I'm still not very good at dealing with those of my students who think the answer to surviving English class is flattering me to extremes. How can I make them stop being ridiculous without discouraging them from speaking altogether?

Anyway, the "OK!" guy is pretty hilarious, has a stable group of friends, and always comes across as very outgoing and confident about himself. On Friday, as he was having one of his usual bursts of rowdiness and demanded my attention once again, I felt it was safe to tease him a little. I do that occasionally with the rowdier students. (Is it wrong of me to do that?) My reasoning has been something like this: the rowdier students are sometimes/often being rowdy because they want attention from me. By teasing them, I am focusing my attention on them, and maybe that satisfies them. When they are being particularly rowdy, they often attract the attention of the entire class, and a slight tease usually makes everyone (including the person being rowdy) laugh, and it directs the classes attention back to me so that we can continue with the activity.

I never thought I'd said anything really hurtful. It was never my intention to make anyone feel bad, but simply to refocus the class. If a student says, "I love you!", for example, I might tease them by saying, "Oh, really? If you really love me, then give me candy" (holding out my hands in a cup to receive the candy). The response is something like "sorry!", at which point I feign disappointment and carry on with the class.

This strategy usually seems to work perfectly, and so it's become something of a habit. None of my rowdy students have seemed to be discouraged by it before.

So I teased "OK!" a little on Friday, and everything seemed fine. The class was split up into groups at the time, so the teasing was heard by him and the group of friends that he was working with. "OK!" laughed, his friends laughed, I laughed and redirected their attention back to the questions they were supposed to be asking each other. Everything seemed fine.

But today, "OK!" saw me coming out of the subway, didn't greet me and whipped his head around to avoid me. That's bad, rude even. School etiquette says he should have said "hello" or "안녕하세요" (which is how they would greet their Korean teachers). And usually, if "OK!" sees me in the hallways or in the subway or at my desk he always greets me and comes over to chat me up. So the fact that he ignored me means he is substantially angry at me.

Fuck, I thought, and then nearly started crying on the way to school. I really did wish he would stop saying "I love you!" constantly, but I never meant to hurt his feelings or make him angry or discourage him from speaking English. I'm sure I've annoyed some of my students before, but I didn't think I'd done anything to anger or hurt them. How do I fix it? What if I can't?

text message from the LG guy who delivered/set up my printer:

sometime nightfood together ok?? you cuti:)

YR GONNA LOVE MY FONDANT POO

I accidentally woke up two hours early for work today, and I'm spending the interval watching a show called "love love cake." @bird_esque @twcwar, my fondness for cake-making shows is entirely your fault.

Since I spent almost this entire weekend grunging about in bed, I watched a lot of TV. Top finds include:

1. Anne of Green Gables, dubbed over in Korean. It was at the blue-puffed-sleeves dress/Christmas ball scene when I found it. Hilarity ensued.

2. When I did the celebrities lesson, I found out about a new TV drama (called "Iris") that is all the rage with my students. Saturday, I found it. Starring Lee Byung-Hun, Seoul's current heartthrob.

These days, it's pretty normal for me to watch Korean soap operas while I'm making dinner/pretending to lesson plan/writing my blog in the evening times. And even though I understand almost nothing, I've gotten to the point where I know the characters from all of the most melodramatic shows, and can cruise channels for my favorites. (@bird_esque @twcwar new "smut" addiction?)

Cake-time is over. Pretending-t0-get-ready-for-work-time is now.

In other news, I am going through super-human amounts of mango juice and am no longer a vegetarian.

I ate chunky beef soup today. You know, just to see if I could do it. Also, chicken dumplings. Also, breaded fish sticks.

Okay, so the fish sticks were really hard to get down, and I didn't even attempt the fish steaks that were also being served. But the other two were pretty do-able. It was definitely strange to eat something that I've eschewed for so long (12 years, I think), but I wasn't disgusted, and I think a small, hidden part of me actually missed the taste of beef. None of it made me sick, or even gassy.

This doesn't mean that I've suddenly stopped loving vegetables and fruits above all else, and it definitely doesn't mean that I suddenly don't care about the health (both human and animal) problems involved in commercial meat markets, or about the environmental impact of large-scale meat consumption. But right now, learning about and trying different Korean foods, with a special emphasis on being respectful towards the co-teachers with whom I eat lunch, is simply more important to me. When my co-teachers commented on the fact that I had considerably more vegetables piled on my tray than proteins, I told them that I used to be a vegetarian, but that now I ate some meats. They were amazed that I could have grown so tall without any meat in my diet.

Next week, the 1st graders (i.e. 10th graders, in the U.S.) are studying comparisons in English, and I've begun to put together a powerpoint with pictures of myself, Michigan, London... and Mom, Dad, Owen, Sara, and Nora. Merely for purposes of who's taller, stronger, etc. Hope you guys don't mind. The students get much more excited about things when they get to hear about my personal life at the same time. :)

There are two options for how to get home after school: 1. walk in a straight line until I get to a subway station further away from the school (Sadang), or 2. zigzag up and down and across bridges for two minutes to get to the closest subway station (Namtaeryung). Yesterday, I opted for the simpler but longer route; today, I tried to challenge myself to find the closer subway station. No cigar. I was on the verge of getting lost, but I came across one of the eager B-level (the first grade classes are separated into English skill levels A, B, and C, A being the highest) first grade girls I met in class today, and her gaggle of friends. Popsicles in hand, they guided me to the station, succumbed to my plying them with English questions along the way, and waved to me when I got off at my stop.

It was rather fun, but I'm glad it was the eager-girl crowd rather than the rowdy-boy crowd. All day today, in various classrooms, I've been trying to come up with an authoritative way to fend off "Do you have a boyfriend?" "Do you think I'm handsome?" "I love you!" etc. Heteronormativity, you are inexorably approaching. How discourage him (them)?