There is a bunch of stuff lined up that I haven’t blogged about this month.

Coming back to Korea after break, Winter camp, a brief bit of vacation, several meltdowns of “what do I really want from life/everything is changing OMG” sort, a head cold, a stomach bug, Valentines Day with friends, etc…

My internet has been spotty at home. So I don’t have a lot of pictures just now. They’re all still on my computer at home and not on the Internet.

Today I’m back at work. There is no work for me to do, and everyone is pretty much ignoring me. All the teachers from, as far as I can tell, the entire school have gathered in the second grade teacher’s room to discuss the scheduling for next year.

I’m not sure if that means they are making the schedule, or discussing what they need from the schedule to present to the “schedule-making teacher”. I had this “schedule-making” teacher idea from the start of last school year when I looked at my schedule and told my English teachers that someone must hate me. I had almost all my classes on Thursday and Friday, and very big chunks of time for planning. They told me it was the “schedule-making teacher” who did it. There is also a “nursing” teacher and a “counselor” teacher at my school. So that’s really not an unusual title as far as my school goes.

I’ve got no idea what next semester’s schedule will be like. I probably won’t find out until Monday when everything begins again.

Some of my students are at school today. The didn’t say hi to me, although they said hi to the other teachers. Actually they “greeted” the other teachers. They all giggled and greeted me when I called them out on it though. Greeting is a big point in Korea.

On the front doors to my school it actually says (in Korean and I’m too lazy to run down four flights of stairs to type it properly) “have you greeted today?” among other suggestions for being a good student.

At this point, I’ve taught all the third graders (last year’s second graders) and second graders (last year’s first graders) but haven’t met the new first grade students yet. Two thirds of these students should be greeting me. ::teacher glare:: Actually they all should.

The co-teacher in charge of me is gone today, she’ll be in at 3ish. Today is her last day. She’s being transfered to another school. I’m really going to miss her. I don’t think this was an easy job for her because she’s not a very assertive person, and trying to communicate American culture to Korean administrators is a hard job for a person who isn’t assertive. Heck, it’s hard for anyone.

Despite that she’s filled this year with sunlight for me. It’s been a joy teaching with her. She’s answered all my Korean questions patiently, and I’ve been happy to answer her questions about English. I really appreciate that she tells me when I talk too fast, or when she doesn’t understand a word. I told her from the beginning that as long as she told me if she couldn’t understand me, then we could work around that, and I would only respect her more for that.

Many of the teachers I’ve met here are too scared to lose face and tell me those things, which can make it very difficult to work with them.

She’s endlessly positive and always striving to improve herself and help others grow. Although I think she’s a little too forgiving, I really respect her and she loves her students very much. She’s been a breath of fresh air and I doubt I would have enjoyed this year of teaching half as much without her. I’ve learned a lot from her.

She’s one of those people I feel an instant connection to, and despite her being 10 years + older than me, I feel very protective of her. She is a good person, as good as they come, and she’s had to deal with a lot stress because of me.

I know that’s her job, and she chose to be the Native teacher handler, but I still felt really badly when she was trying to communicate between me and the administration (just doing her job really) and the vice principal was so mean to her that she broke down in tears.
That’s where the protective comes from. The woman was doing her job, back off. *huff*

Right. Anyway. This next month and my last at work, is going to be a lot of cleaning/sorting/packing/tossing stuff out at home, planning (for the things I want to do in Korea before leaving and for a trip around SE Asia, whee!), and saying goodbyes.

Bring it on. ^^