My birthday was something that all the kids and teachers knew about, as it was part of my introduction presentation for the whole of last week..... add to the fact that it was announced over the school radio (something I have to show you in a later post-but basically at my school, all the classrooms have audio visual so that the principal can address everyone in the morning, or when a new foreign guy has to say hello and make a speech to the entire school! Some rooms even have video camera's so that parents can go online and check their child is in class, so im a little reluctant to consider throwing anyone out atm.... in Korea, mums rule when it comes to school!)....im going off topic here, but it just reminded me of how the teachers all walk around with MASSIVE canes for hitting the kids.....some teachers hit the kids during my class, but not really that hard-or so i thought until last week when I was walking past the maths room and saw this kid get a total smackdown...BOOM! The maths teacher is this huge guy and im pretty sure he is unaware of how strong he is! But hey-all I can do is watch & keep my mouth shut!
Sorry, where was I..... so Friday comes and im looking forward to it. 2 of my favorite students (yes, I have favorites!) Jenny & Sunny (2nd graders) had bought me a card and present, these girls are sweet and they always ask if im okay and bring me a glass of water before class and offer me food. Then as the day went on, more and more students were bringing me gifts and cards....i was truely humbled (I will post a few letters soon). I had 2 marriage proposals and lots of 'happy birthday' songs.
Even the mute spoke! Sorry, the mute.....well there's this girl that works in the office and her job is to help teachers, u know, do the photocopying etc....i thought she was a bad student being made to do chores at first but last week she started waving at me, but never speaks.....ok, she can't speak english, but I never hear her speak Korean either! So the Friday of my birthday we ended up walking to school together....she just smiled a lot and kept hitting my arm playfully...but no speaking! So today, I decided to write everything down on paper......"can you photocopy these" she took the paper to read and proceeded to write on the paper "how much do you want Cam, I can do it in 10mins, iv just got a meeting to go to.....happy birthday! By the way, my name is Young Ran, i'm 22 years old and was wondering if you can teach me english?" I kid you not, her writing is PERFECT, but because the Korean education system requires students to read and write from the age of 3, and not speaking or listening until high school and university....we can only communicate on paper! I find this bizzarly satisfying!
So back to my birthday weekend.....several love letters later, I was suprised to find Jennifer at my school waiting to drive me to the indoor theme park at Lotte World, got there around 6pm, but it closes at 11pm so had a relaxing time....it was actually better than i thought-it also has an ice rink and shooting range.
It might be ideal to point out at somewhere between orientation and my birthday, I lost my camera so sorry for the lack of pictures....will edit later! So at around 11pm, we went to meet 3 of our Korean friends at a nice bar in Guro Digital Complex....didnt realise Ji Sun had got me a cake and the entire bar was cheering for me after the music was cued! They got me drunk on Soju (anyone not familiar...it tastes horrid, but gets u wasted!)....and that was the end of that night!
Today was my first time for trying out my new lessons, had to give some of those 16yr old boys a good talking to, play fighting in class is not taken lightly by myself....having said that, i dont want to send them to the home room teacher, because that's an automatic smackdown! And I had to confiscate a few items from girls today (binoculars and a mirror-which they will not see again until christmas!).
So thats enough for now....ooooh - i tried to check my balance on my UK account and the machine swallowed it....so i pushed the button next to the cash machine (it was inside the bank), 10mins later, the bank security show up, turn the cash machine off, open it up from the back and give me my card.....at 9pm! SICK! If that happened to me back home, that would be pure hassle!
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