Week 16, Tuesday

G confided in me again that she’s still offended by the poor behavior of other teachers in the school.

To my great surprise she added: “I don’t like the way the male music teacher speaks to you. It’s old style. When he talks to you like that I feel uncomfortable.”

My first thought was VALIDATION! You know the various run ins that I’ve had with the male music teacher (please note he is a separate and distinct entity from guitar teacher). And you also know that Korean has various politeness levels.

The male music teacher has spoken to me with casual language from the very beginning. While technically it follows the rules of Korean politeness in that he is definitely older than me and has the right, these days it’s a bit rude to start off speaking casually with a work colleague regardless of age.

There’s actually a clip from a good Korean drama on Netflix “Romance is a Bonus Book” about this. The main character meets his older friend’s boyfriend for the first time who immediately addresses the protagonist with casual language. The protagonist thinks “he was rude from the very beginning”.

Well at least the kids are great! The second graders are getting braver as they near graduation and I receive more greetings every day.

Exiting the gym I ran into Weak Boy and Tank Boy by Lotteria. Like two gentleman they told me that the other was handsome. At the moment I was trying to step on tank boy’s shoe, two of my grade four girls passed by. “Oh teacher! Hi!”

I wouldn’t have minded eating burgers with them.

Most importantly, the day ended on the best note:
I’M GOING TO THE WAYV FAN CONCERT YEAYAHHHHH