The last day of June is here and officially there are now less than two months before my contract ends. The morning started with me actually applying eye shadow. I had to brush dust of the palette that fell into disuse while my poor eyes were plagued by yellow dust. If the rainy weather and lessening pollution trend continues, I’ll be back to get an eyelash perm as soon as I can. I gathered my hair into very un-Korean milkmaid braids and on a whim, detoured to the coffee shop. I missed my girl! I didn’t register this until later but when I first came in, her mask was pulled…

After buying a new toilet seat and flushing one of the screws down the toilet, I had to laugh at my life. But the shock didn’t end there. During lunch C turned to me and said, “I searched the two numbers you sent me and searched for them on KakaoTalk.” (When I had those issues with that crazy guy, I screenshoted the twenty calls he managed to make from two different numbers before I blocked both.) KakaoTalk is the primary wifi based messaging app here, much like Whatsapp. You can make as many accounts as you want although people usually link it to a phone number so they don’t get…

As I dried myself off in the communal shower, a woman set up next to me and with a friendly, open face asked where I was from and if I was the teacher. Friends, I do not know if this was the masked woman from the dumpling duo of yore. I imagine it’s another mom and they’ve all conspired to ask me questions individually and combine intel at the end of the week. She then asked if I was 20 대. Now here’s the thing, no matter how many Korean words I learn there’s always one more Chinese origin or formal or written-only or slang version thrown at me right…

I haven’t seen the former fourth graders in weeks so when I entered the classroom it was equivalent to a WWE ring: they screamed my name and shouted hello. Star student Amy, the one who drew me a portrait on the first day, gave me a Capri sun from her backpack and later showed my a postcard of BTS Jimin taped inside her notebook. After lunch, C made all the students who did not complete their homework come to the English room and finish it there. There was one boy who sat not doing much so I sat down next to him and ended up helping him through the entire…

Now that I’m actually (kind of) teaching again, I feel revived. C let me plan and execute the full lesson for fourth grade on Tuesday which went over smashingly. For the first ten minutes of class she handed out a worksheet and instructed students how to glue it into their notebooks lest it get lost in their backpacks. The last fifteen minutes were miiiiiine. I reviewed vocabulary rapid fire using various family photos from the internet; Hyunmin’s family was one of them. Hyunmin is a famous Korean model, the face of No Brand Burger, and a child of a Nigerian father and Korean mother. He speaks only Korean. Even though…

Asia Time pushed me down then extended a hand to pull me to my feet.

Today was a flurry of teaching courses, lesson planning, and oh yeah dizzying life choices. In the midst of researching visas and language programs I asked C where I could shred papers and she told me the office staff room or the teacher’s room. “Oh. Then the teacher’s room.” “Why?” She nudged “Um uh I,” I spluttered and added, “give me a minute I’m trying to think of the nicest way to say this,” which made her laugh. “Is it the makgeolli?” She asked. Not quite. I unloaded the whole story of my time in the makeshift office, the drunken encounter, the subsequent ignoring. “And the young woman– she can…

I only wanted to cry three separate times today so… progress? I came into 6-1 with the plan to match their energy lest I be more depressed and tired from their lack of interest. I wanted to say something sharp and mean (and true): when you act this way, I wonder why I ever came to Korea in the first place. I didn’t say that of course. 6-3 was thankfully more alive and my spirits were partially restored. I have not seen Weak Boy once which means he either transferred schools or is staying at home. There’s no trio without him. Tank Boy has been looking especially down in class,…