Clever Title about Bad Weeks that is Somehow Vaguely Hopeful

Hello all!

This will probably be a short one, as my life was fairly uneventful this week.

Well, it wasn't uneventful, I would just rather not remember that it happened. It was one of the most stressful weeks I've had here. The last couple have been difficult, but this one took the cake.

Since I have to teach 22 hours and I have 21 hours of actual class, every other Thursday So Jung and I do a club activity. Ours was putting on a play in English. Other groups do music stuff or cup stacking or crafts, or whatever. So Thursday was the performance of the club activities. This means that every waking moment this week was devoted to rehearsals and making props. I love the kids and I love my school and I adore my coteacher, so it wasn't a burden to help. But it certainly made the week stressful. I wasn't able to plan my lessons fully with So Jung, and the substitute for Su Hyeon left when she finished classes, which is not great for coteaching.

I also had a surprise make-up class to add on Wednesday, so I had to teach 6th, 3rd, then 4th that day. Phew.

On Thursday the performance time was at hand. We had to wait with our group in the library, and of course we were like act 7 of 9 so it was like babysitting all day. We had to do the play twice because the room isn't big enough to hold the whole school at once.

So my babies performed the traditional story of Heongbu and Nolbu. Nolbu is rich and mean, Heongbu is poor but nice and good. As traditional stories go, with the help of magic and animals (a swallow in this case) the poor get rewarded with riches and happiness and the rich man gets punished.

So Jung was terribly nervous, since a bad performance would reflect badly on her. The kids did not disappoint! They were awesome. The principal attended the first performance. Thank god.

I had the job of hanging up the background. During the second performance I was having trouble getting it to stick to the wall and I was certain it would fall during the performance. It did. The kids did great. It was hilarious. While I was recording the show, I looked over to the other teachers who were watching. They laughed when the backdrop fell down. I was totally embarrassed because LITERALLY EVERYONE SAW ME PUT IT UP. After the performances we had lunch, and the phys ed teacher came in and looked at me and So Jung and burst into laughter. Ha ha.

Oh well. It was fun and funny and I am glad it's over. The other teachers were surprised with how involved I was in the performance (I was miming the dances to the kids too) and since I had done my hair with a new headband they had thought I would be performing too HAHAHAHHA NOPE.

I got lots of compliments and Elsa comparisons. I braided the ribbon from the headband into my hair.

Here are some pics of my students:

The Swallow and the Monster 

Nolbu's wife. I cannot tell you how many god damn times we had to retie their hanboks

Me with the "swallow" (penguin...) hat feat. one of my adorable third graders peeking out from behind me

Guess which family this is. Yup. The poor one.

Rich babies.

My club babies with their costumes and props. And the stupid background of houses that couldn't stay up for 10 minutes.

It was fun!

I really liked working with such a small group of kids. It got to a point where I was irrelevant since they needed direction and, pressed for time, So Jung directed in Korean. But I think it was good for some of the kids to just chat with me. A lot of them are 5th grade and I only see them once a week, sometimes less, so it was good for them. One day they told So Jung that they couldn't leave to make props because they had to keep talking to me. I was pleased. Even if they were only asking me things like "Do you know EXO? Do you know Super Junior? Do you know Australia? Do you know (proceed to name other countries or list the names of every member of a kpop group)?" Or asking me what kind of makeup I wear. Or how old I am. I was pleased because they were really trying to ask me anything in English, and they are adorable kids.

Anyway, here are some other random tidbits from the week:

The stairs in my school have some English expressions. These are my favorite because why???

Some days I have no idea what I'm eating. 

USB foot warmer. Awww yisss. 

Friday was also eventful. The substitute left, and the old English teacher returned. She's awesome. She's very sweet and good with the kids. We had a student throw up in one of our classes (welcome back, amirite???) and she (having just had a baby) missed exactly no beats in cleaning it while I continued the class. The kids and the teachers were so excited to see her again. I hope they have that kind of reaction when they haven't seen me in a little bit. Alas.

Tina and I also went to Costco on Friday! I live not too far from one, so we figured it would be good to scope out in case we need bulk things. It was crowded, but not too bad. We took the wrong buses twice on our way home, but we got some good things.

LIKE THIS HOT DOG OM NOM NOM

On Saturday I cleaned my apartment and wallowed. We have English camp coming up soon. I was told that I had to plan it, from scratch, last Friday and that I had til the end of November. Well KOREAN SURPRISE!!! On Thursday (less than a week after being told about it) I was asked to have a plan by Monday. So that took up a lot of my weekend. I was panicking about it because I had no idea what to do. I was meeting up with Tina and Sarah to go see Mockingjay part 1, so I was crunched for time and also feeling really anxious and anti-social.

Thankfully Tina and Sarah were able to help me pick a book and come up with a basic plan. Then we ate ddeokbokki (the rice cakes in spicy sauce that are quickly burning their way into my heart) and went to see the movie. 

It was awesome! I loved it. It was so good. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time. I also haven't read the book recently enough to be nitpicky about it too much. I do think they lacked some character development with Finnick, Katniss, and Gale, but overall it was really well done. Sarah, Tina and I had time to analyze over tacos before I caught the last train of the night back to my area.

Overall, the week was really stressful and to be honest it's still stressing me out. I have some things that console me, though. 

I am back on the Dracula train. I have had this song "Life after Life" stuck in my head for days.

WE'RE GOING TO SEE MBLAQ NEXT WEEKEND YEAHHHHHHH. I'm obsessed with this song too: Mona Lisa. It's fantastic.

AND LAST BUT ABSOLUTELY NOT LEAST I JUST PUT IT LAST BECAUSE IT ONLY CAME OUT 3 DAYS AGO:

"Good Boy" the new single by Taeyang and G-Dragon from the group Big Bang. Seriously I cannot stop playing this song. It's hip-hop, so it's not everyone's cup of tea. But still. The song was released on November 20th. As I write this, it's November 23 at 9:17 and the video has 4,644,888 views. That's absurd. Almost 5 million views in 3 days. The song is awesome. G-Dragon's hair is not, but whatever. The song is so catchy and I love it. It makes me so happy. 

That's all for now. I hope this week is less stressful than the last. I hope everyone has a good Thanksgiving! I miss home especially now, but I have Tina here and we've made a bit of a family over here, so I should survive. 

Peace out! And may the odds be ever in your favor.