Trees Don't Have Hearts (Also I Don't)

Hello all.

I was too tired and upset last night to write my blog, so here it is now. It's been a really difficult week, and today was little exception. When you have 3 kids crying before second period even starts, and one of them rolling around on the floor to boot, it's Monday. 

We're getting close to the end of the year and I think everyone is feeling it. 

Anyway...

I painted my nails with magnetic nail polish and I love them.

After a mild spell, we felt the full effects of the winter that has not yet reached Buffalo. It snowed. A lot (by Seoul standards).

As you can see I am a fan.

Being Korean and using my umbrella in the snow.

It wasn't super cold so the snow was that really heavy, wet variety. My 12 minute walk to school was slippery and wet

My umbrella upon arriving

Everyone was excited for the snow. My 3rd graders came in like 15 minutes late, soaked and smiling. Thankfully we had an easy day planned.

It really snowed a lot! 

Snow makes, and I suppose always will make, miss home a lot. Especially after a long week full of temperamental students with no intrinsic motivation and bad attitudes, and some sill standards for level testing, and overall stress.

 So here's how those level tests work. We give them a conversation for each lesson. They memorize it. We show them the Korean, they tell us the English.

This is 3rd grade.

It's not my system, nor my coteacher's. I think it's a silly way to test it but what do I know about English.

Anyway, once they pass with us they can do the conversation in front of the principal and get a 1+ rank. Wooooooooooo.

It used to be that they could go to the principal anytime during the year, but this new principal decided that we had to do it starting Thursday and be done by this Friday, so just over a week. And we have to do it at lunch time...

So my lunch period starts when 4th period ends, at 12:20, on all days except Friday. Seunghee and So Jung are in similar situations since I tend to teach with them haha. So the testing for the principal starts at 12:40, and the students have to come up to the English room at 12:35 to get ready. Which leaves the 3 of us with a whopping 15 minutes to eat. Seunghee and So Jung take the students down to the principal. So Jung waits with them and Seunghee comes back and forth to me while I rally the last students and keep them practicing in the classroom and not destroying shit. Then on several days we all have classes 5th period, at 1:10, so I hate everything this week.

Also starting today during our 20 minute break between periods 2 and 3 the students have to go, so even better. Nothing like doing shit straight through the day with no break.


The principal isn't teaching so I'm not sure if she understands the strain it's putting us under, especially my coteachers , during the day. None of us have had any energy for the last 3 school days.

First up was 3rd grade, with almost all of the students eager to try.

AND THEN THIS HAPPENED.

A bunch of my 3rd graders went to take the test. I go easy on them when I grade them, since if I understand them and it's close enough to the grammar I say it's fine. So if the kid says "I rike tomato" (R/L is a notoriously difficult sound distinction for Koreans) instead of "I like tomato" or "Do you have a eraser" instead of "an eraser" in 3rd grade, I let it slide. They're getting the gist, and isn't a second language about communication, not perfection?

My principal does not seem to think so. She failed half of the teams for "pronunciation, enunciation, and intonation" since they don't sound natural.

Excuse me?

They're third graders.

Some of them started learning English this year. They didn't know the alphabet a year ago.

They spend 40 minutes a week with me. Then 40 with my Korean coteacher who is not a native speaker.

They are wildly uncontrollable and difficult to handle in class, and it's hard for them to focus on anything for more than 3 seconds.

They do not know the principal. They have never been in her office. They have barely met her.

These babies have the courage to go to the principal's office and to perform any number of the 7 conversations they've learned this year in front of the head of our school in their second language, and they're getting failed for pronouncing one word wrong or not sounding like native speakers?

I'm tearing up typing it out and thinking about it.

My coteachers were demoralized. So Jung was ranting to me that even her intonation sucks, and how can the principal expect this of them. Seunghee is worried that the students that are already having trouble are likely to get discouraged and try even less.

Great fucking way to encourage learning English. These kids have so much working against them. It's a miracle that they can remember anything at all, honestly. Especially my poor, hyperactive, make me want to strangle them sometimes, adorable third graders.

The ones that passed had stars in their eyes. The ones that failed could have filled the universe with tears.

I'm so livid about it. It broke my heart. Sure, in 6th grade you can start nitpicking the pronunciation (I certainly do. I make them practice leaving off the "ee" and "eu" endings common in Korean when they speak English) and intonation when they are about to go to middle school.

But not those third graders. Not those starry-eyed babies who will do anything to hear me say "good job" to them and who drive me up a wall with their endless energy.

Wow. I'm really emotional about this. Good thing it GOES ALL THE WAY UNTIL FRIDAY.

Sigh.

Gotta get back into the happy mood. How can I?

Anyway, one of the highlights of my week/time in Korea/life happened on Saturday.

Last week Tina messaged me about this:

For (most) those of you who don't know, Lee Joon is a former member of MBLAQ, a Kpop group we liked, and is an actor. 

I could fill up a million blogs with pics of him:

Also he has abs for days

He used to do modern dance in college, which always comes up and is hilarious because he's kind of a  spaz. .

He is handsome and spastic and funny. 

Originally we thought against it, as we don't follow his acting much these days and since he doesn't like to be reminded of his MBLAQ days.

Obviously we changed our minds. There were plenty of tickets left and we won't be in Korea forever. Plus, his little cat grin made him one of my first and biggest idol crushes. 

So we went.

Spotted on the way. a Spirited Away restaurant

 So we made it!

It was awesome. 

Me taking a selfie with Lee Joon's cutout 

The theater had all banners showing only his left side....

We had a fairly painless time getting the tickets and getting in, even getting complimented on our Korean haha. We got some swag

Fans, which we needed because it was a billion degrees in the theater.

 So the fan club made a song to the tune of "Isn't she lovely" because when you pronounce his name with Korean pronunciation it's Ee Joon (이준, the "L" is added in English because it looks weird without it) and to be respectful you add honorifics like "shee" to mean "sir" so when you pronounce it all "Ee Joon Shee" sounds like "isn't she."

That is as far as the lyrics made sense 

And his like theme is "26" because "Ee" means 2 in Korean and Joon in English is June and it's the 6th month. So his fan meeting was 26 and they were selling $80 hoodies that said 2wenty6ix.

You could leave gifts for him. 

 They did lots of fun things during the fanmeet. Showing pictures, videos, playing Bingo. I didn't catch all of it, but it was entertaining. He entered by coming in the side and throwing bags of gummy bears and when he got messed up throwing bubble wrap at people, then sang Walkin' in a Winter Wonderland in English.

His English is adorably good. Too bad he didn't use more.


There was time to take photos of him during the event and he of course acted like a spaz then too.

After it was over we were like yay $40 well spent, but then they announced there would be a high-touch event after! As we were exiting, we got to shake his hand. He had changed into his 26 sweater and was wearing his glasses, and had his little cat smile. Ugh he's adorable.

It was amazing. 

Here is my favorite piece of acting ever done by a human:

I swear I know you don't watch all the videos I post on this blog but for the love of god watch this one. You will not regret the 1:30 of your time. 

Very famously after this scene every variety show ever had Lee Joon say "You shouldn't do that."

This is too. This is among my favorite variety clips. Lee Joon, dancing to a girl group song, rips his pants and the ensuing reaction is amazing.

I love him. 

And here is some MBLAQ

"This is War"

"Mona Lisa" which is my favorite MBLAQ song and one of my overall KPOP faves of all time.

Sunday I woke up with the universe in the hand that I shook Lee Joon's with, but it slipped through my fingers as the day went on. 

We had to get to dance at 2 this week to work on Growl. We thought our teacher would help us teach Pau, who missed class, but she didn't. 

After an hour of running through and reteaching and relearning, we headed down to the basement studio for our class.

Weirdly, we were doing some old 2PM songs. And as I listened to them and remember what we learned, we did some weird cuts of the dances. Like normally we do a minute through of the dance, but we skipped around.

We thought we were only learning Again and Again:

which was trippy but fun.

But then we also learned part of Heartbeat:

We had previously begged our teacher to teach us Growl again instead, but she said no.

When we got to class, we saw why: all of the guys were there. We were like "man why do they want to learn this song so badly?" Then we started and it became clear about halfway through when we finished Again and Again and still had an hour... the music switched to Heartbeat, and all of the guys started doing the dance. They already knew it.

Wondering what kind of nonsense this was, we asked our teacher. Apparently, the guys needed a lot of help on their dance for the performance, but couldn't find a time to meet. So our class time got offered up to them.

I had a lot of fun learning the dance though, and I was excited to know it for the performance so I could watch better, and it's a cool dance, and it was fun for all the guys to see the foreigner class. So at about 5 we finished doing our videos and practicing our class. After 3 hours of dance, we were pretty exhausted.

My god I wish it had stopped there.

At 5 we started rehearsal for the performance happening at the end of December. After everyone did the opening number, the main teacher was not impressed.

Then things got worse. Much worse.

She called our team up to do the dance alone... or so we thought. She talks pretty fast and it's hard for me to catch all the Korean, but Grace (who is Korean American and generally our translator) and Tina (the second-in-command of translating) didn't know either.

The music started.

It was... Growl?

Caught off-guard and having just learned it last week and just teaching it to Pau and having spent 2 hours in between learning another dance, we sucked. Like really bad. We had no formations, barely had the choreography down at all, and were surprised by having to do it.

Some of the boys from our class were cheering and yelling for us as we do in our foreigner class, but that didn't sit well with the main teacher. She scolded them for it, then they had to go next and performed part of the 2PM routine we had just learned. 

After all of the groups went, we all got a tongue lashing. We knew the head teacher was mad, but when it came down to us it felt even worse. I didn't need to understand every word to know she was mad. And god do I wish I could have not known Korean for those few torturous seconds of being berated in front of everyone else. Though everyone got scolded, we were certainly the worst group and she addressed us last.

Apparently we appear that we don't take this seriously. It isn't just some joking around fun performance. We chose Growl and we should have known it better. We looked terrible. We need to take this seriously and practice more.

Now having just had the incident with our dance time being taken away to give to another group, being uninformed that we had to be perfect and perform Growl today, having given a million other song options we would be willing to to and having them choose Growl for us, and being scolded and told we suck in front of everyone was enough to make me almost quit. 

We had an hour to practice our dances, but with so many groups in both studios and all of us fuming at this bullshit, we went to find our teacher (who was not present to see the incident) and talk. While explaining to her, one of the other teachers (not the head one) overheard and came out to try and explain.

There's a lot of expectations on us since we're the foreigner team and everyone is impressed by us and likes us. In Korea, the more they like you the harder they push you (rolling my eyes to the back of my skull). The head teacher didn't know we had only learned it last week. Koreans and foreigners act differently. When Koreans think others did a shitty job, they don't cheer for them to get their spirits up like we do. It's just the first showing of these so it's okay we have time to get better. We just need to practice.

As this was all being explained to us in Korean and Tina was trying to explain all the reasons why we were upset, I lost it and started crying. I hated that I couldn't keep it in, but basically we were being told that we just had to practice more and we shouldn't be upset it's just a misunderstanding. I don;t take kindly to being berated in front of peers for things that aren't my fault. Our teacher hugged me while I cried and continued to try and keep our spirits up after but it was no use. 

In Korea we always make fun of how Koreans are always like "please understand our culture" or "please understand our unique situation" but they don't seem to be willing to consider that we have unique situations too.  

It's hard for us to practice during the week. Some people on our team live an hour away, and not everyone works in public school. How can we practice when the earliest we can all meet is unavailable? The other teams practice during the week already because that's when they have class. We have class on Sunday. Which got taken over by another group. We didn't even know it was imperative that we be meeting in the week at this point. Only half of our groups speaks any Korean and none of the dance teachers speak English, and they don't give Grace time to translate and don't even tell her information half the time.

After that disaster we went down to practice, but the life was gone out of all of us at this point. We'd been at the studio for over 4 hours and nothing was good. 

Finally our teacher helped us with the first half of the dance, but I don't even remember the corrections she gave us because I performed them so listlessly. 

Finally we had to, mercilessly, watch all the other groups go again and then perform our dance again.

Last.

While all the teachers watched and critiqued. 

We performed last and got laid into again, but this time they at least smiled as they told us we don't look like EXO, we don't look sharp or together, we need more practice, we were the worst group, etc... Our teacher stood with the others and listened and watched as we were told how much we sucked in front of everyone once again. 

The other teachers were even kind of giggling as they tried to be nicer this time and talk about our special situation and how it's hard for us to get together to practice, but it sounded really condescending and like they were trying to console a crying child. I didn't appreciate it being brought up in front of everyone who was giving up their Sunday to be here to practice. Some come from the Gangnam studio an hour away, so to bring that up for us in front of everyone felt like they just thought we were whining. And all of this was of course in Korean, so everyone around us understood more of what was being told to us than we did. 

It's okay, foreigners. You just have to practice more. We just want you to take this seriously.

Fuck you guys. Just because we cheer and laugh and aren't serious all of the time doesn't mean we don't take this seriously. 

I'd like to see how any other group would do with a difficult routine that they learned a week ago with no information that it was to be ready for judging the next week.

The boys have been practicing Heartbeat for weeks. We've seen them.

I would be lying if I said I wasn't crying now as I'm typing this. It hurts my heart a lot.

And I feel like there were too many things that led to us having a problem and it was too hard to explain so I just looked like a crybaby and we just looked silly

I feel betrayed. If they want to have a foreigner class, great. I love it. But we aren't just a trick pony for you to pull out and be like "look the little foreigners do kpop." You have to help us be good. You have to treat us like we are just as much a part of the studio as the Koreans. 

Our teacher kept telling us don't worry we have time to practice it will be fine, but I doubt she knows that we almost quit today. And today I don't feel like we can do it. I don't even know if I want to. 

I've never felt this way from the studio. I always felt included and welcomed, but now I feel put out and lost. I feel like an outsider.

Finally, after 6 hours at the studio, we were free.

I wasn't in the mood to eat but I knew I was hungry, so I stopped at Subway. This happened:

• 

  12/6, 8:48pm

  Francesca DiCillo

  Subway just fucked up my order and also didn't give me a drink even though I paid for it and there are other people and only one person working but I want my fucking drink
• 

  12/6, 8:53pm

  Christina DiCillo

  Ugh
• 

  12/6, 8:54pm

  Francesca DiCillo

  And then these guys came in and were high voice saying "hello can I get a sandwichee" as I was leaving

  I should have turned around and said something to them in Korean

  But I was already like at the door
• 
  

I did get my drink by asking for it in Korean when the girl wasn't busy but then the assholes came in. I still wish I had said something, but they were mocking English and laughing and I think I might have sobbed had I opened my mouth. So I just left and took the bus home and cried a lot before eating my wrong sub. 

When Growl came on my shuffle this morning I tried to run through the moves but it just brought tears to my eyes. 

This whole thing has been such a mess...

I cannot believe how different my mood is from Saturday. It was even hard to remember what I did this week because I can't think backwards past the weekend. 

Sigh.

Anyway, BTS's new song "Run" hasn't hurt me yet, so I'm still listening to that. I finally got to see the choreography, and I wanted to learn it, but it's hard to think of learning anything in dance class these days. 

Let me mope about this for a while then I'll be fine. 

Maybe the stars will align and something will turn for the better. But it's hard to look on the bright side when it's even dark when I wake up.

Signing off.