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.