Sep 12, 2012

Where are the Men in Black?

I'm officially a registered alien! Insert Men in Black joke here. After two weeks of waiting in limbo, I was finally able to pick up my ARC today.  That picture is what I looked like after waiting 2 hours to drop off the application



I've blurred out my registration number so you creepers can't steal my identity/health insurance. 

This means I now have health insurance (just in time--I think the germbags/angels I hang out with all day gave me something), I can get a Korean bank account, and I can get... wait for it... a working phone! It's weird being in a country with one of the highest cell phone-per-person rates in the world, and still having to say to people, "ok, meet Friday at exit 9 of the Hongdae stop at 8. I'll wait for you for 15 minutes."

On the teaching front, every day brings a fresh hell (ahem... I mean surprise). I taught my first after school class on Monday. My beginners are almost all first grade girls, and they're angels. My intermediate class, however, consists of 5 ten-year-old boys. I turned my back to them for 5 seconds, and the next thing I knew someone was on the floor, and someone else was crying.

So that was fun.

Yesterday, the same student who cried during after school threw a massive temper tantrum during 3rd grade. He flipped over a desk, hurled himself against the window bars, and was screaming incoherently (at least, it was incoherent to me. It was probably understandable to the myriad Koreans in the room.) Coteacher and I rushed the rest of the class out as quickly as possible and called the student's homeroom teacher. He was still flailing about when she came, and then he grabbed a pencil and gestured like he was going to stab himself in the eye with it. I think he has emotional problems that the teachers may have neglected to mention to me.

I was in absolute shock. I had no idea what to do, and was afraid trying to do anything would just make it worse. Thankfully, Coteacher and the student's homeroom teacher jumped in and were able to eventually calm him down. We finally got him out of the room. I suggested to Coteacher that we skip lunch and get a bottle of soju instead. She laughed. I think we're bonding.

I had my after schoolers again today. The beginners were as good as ever, aside from a few boys who insist on causing problems. As for intermediate, the boy who threw the tantrum was noticeably absent. The rest of the boys were as stoked to be there as any 10 year old boy would be to sit in an English class after school.

I'll get through to them eventually. I'll go all Dead Poets Society on them if I have to.



No comments:

Post a Comment