Dayquil and Spanish-speaking Koreans

The Spanish-speaking Koreans first.
I have met three in the past week. This is strange for two reasons, I suppose: the first is that the push to learn English is much stronger than any other language, so to find someone who speaks Spanish better than English, well, it's a bit weird. The second is that I have learned that I can carry on a simple conversation in Spanish much easier than I can in Korean. This is very frustrating.
The two situations. One, I met a very strange cab driver who even started singing in Spanish. Quite strange. But the stranger experience was the one I had today: I ran into a couple of Jehovah's Witnesses and talked to them for ten minutes in broken Spanish before I realized what they were getting at. Wow. Very interesting.
Now to get back to the whole YMCA/graduation thing. Well, I caught a cold or the flu early this week, so by Tuesday, I was taking some of the wonderful Dayquil that Megan had sent me last Fall when Dad came to visit.
Good thing, too.
Picture Donnie Darko with the Wizard of Oz dwarfs all in graduation caps and gowns. It was so strange, chaotic, and stressful. During the practices, nothing seemed to go right, everyone seemed upset about every little detail, and all I wanted to do was sleep. Strangely enough, by the end of the graduation night, the parents were all smiling and happy, I got an armful of flowers from a couple of different kids, and everyone seemed content with the celebration.
Today was the last day of classes for the year, and once again, I am changing my schedule next week. It doesn't seem too bad, but I had kind of grown accustomed to my classes and life. No such luck. Pretty much everything is different.
Well, officially six months down, and six months to go. The excitement never dies. We have said goodbye to the two foreign teachers and another three Korean teachers this week. It's been a tough week.

Happy Birthday, Mandy

We are embarking on the special time of the year when Mandy can claim to be two years older than me--it lasts four months. Happy birthday, dear, sweet, Mandy. I miss you.
The new chapter of excitement at the school: I hung around this morning, enjoying my nice, quiet Saturday with very little to do. I waited for the serviceman to hook up my new internet (I think this is not working), I drank lots of great coffee, and I caught up on some emails. Fantastic.
As I was headed out to the store to pick up a few things from the store, I saw a strange new face. Sure enough, there is a new teacher: Matthew from South Carolina. He seems very pleasant and interesting, but I have no idea what he will be doing at the school. We are loosing two teachers already, but one of the new teachers is not doing a thing, and many of the other teachers are working less than the standard thirty hours.
Weird.
So I spent a couple of hours briefing Matt on what to expect and what is going on, but he will have to go to school to figure it all out.
If he does figure it all out, I think he should write it all down, draw some diagrams, make some charts, schedule a class, and clue the rest of us in.

It's fun to stay at the YMCA

And so the saga continues.
Well, life at ETS/CAIS is seriously an ongoing soap opera most days. I think I'm getting used to it--frankly, I think I enjoy being on the sidelines having some interesting characters and drama to think about and write about. Sometimes, I enjoy observing all this craziness, and other times I find it ridiculous and a bit draining. Either way, it's really quite amusing.
The quick update: the school is still over-staffed, one of the new teachers still is only teaching two hours a week, two teachers are leaving next week, and supposedly two more teachers are arriving next month. The teacher that left two weeks ago is planning to come back to Busan, but he will probably get a job in a different school.
Now for the best part. The morning kindergarten is generally very chaotic. They spend a few hours at the school and then go to their regular school after--so no wonder they are pent up little balls of crazy energy. These little six/seven year olds are graduating (the school year ends at the end of February), and there is a huge production for the kindergarten--partly for the parents, partly for marketing, partly for photographs for yearbooks and advertising. It is quite a production. Each of the classes are doing a ten minute play, a song, and a bit of an introductory thing. We've been practicing for four weeks, and the graduation is next week.
To top it all off, all the kids and the teachers are getting together for a song/dance routine at the end of the ceremony.
Yikes.
YMCA. I'm not kidding.
Because enrollment is a bit down, there are only about fifty kids and eight teachers (I think), arranged into three lines. We started out doing a bit of easy marching, some Saturday night fever pointing, and some hip swinging.
Not complicated enough. David (a teacher that has been at this school for five years) says the choreography rivals "The Phantom of the Opera." A few weeks ago, I thought he was exaggerating.
Then, we added in a complicated shuffling of lines during the song so that each line of children can be at the front of the group at some point in the song. Filing along the sides and going to the back. Not too bad.
Then we tried filing along the middle to the back--this involves splitting all the lines of children in the middle so the front line of children can march to the back row in two perfectly straight rows. This is so horribly difficult with seven-year-old children. None of them understand what it means to stand in a straight line, and barely any of them know their right from their left.
This isn't complicated enough, either. Some leg movements and more complex choreography were added today.
Wow. I'm tired just thinking about it. But boy is it entertaining to watch the other teachers singing "YMCA" along with distracted kindergarteners.

A funny dream

I had this strange dream: a dream in which I was surrounded by love and gifts. I was warm and happy and contented. Everything was so perfect.
OK. It wasn't heaven, but it was Hawaii.
Everyone is so good and wonderful, and I miss them so much. Coming back was really difficult, but I'm here.
But as hard as it was to get on the plane, this week has been tremendously easy and quite nice. I sort of thought that I might have forgotten the few words in Korean that I knew, but I didn't. I still can speak enough to take a taxi back from the airport to the ghetto. Also, I am now working thirty-one hours a week (well, plus an extra five to ten for planning), and this is a huge step down from the forty plus I had been working.
And perhaps the biggest change was tonight. After I left school tonight at six-thirty, the air was a little different. It was very cold, below freezing, but something was different that I had not experienced leaving work. The sky was still a little light in the west. Only in the last month have I gotten off at six-thirty, and only the last couple of nights have I noticed this faded light in the sky. In another couple of weeks, I will be walking home in the daylight. I find this so encouraging: I am making it through this mild winter gradually. And, I hardly blinked, and it is Tuesday already.
Time passes so quickly here, this adventure must be keeping me busier and more active than I can even imagine.