Day 70: TGIF

All I can say is THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY!!!

Next to my week when I first arrived in Korea, this week has probably been my most stressful. Between trying to track down my boss for a few days, and then finally being able to sit down with him only to find out about the big changes coming up, and basically deducing that the coffers are close to running dry here at REI, and then my HELLISH morning with the kindergartens this morning, I am *SO READY* for the weekend! And a stiff drink on top of that! Oh bartender, where art thou?

Here's what happened this morning with the kindergartens. My class with the 7's were all fine and dandy, and then came my class with the 5's. Now as much as I love my 5's, they are certainly a handful even on the best of days. They're SO YOUNG that their attention span barely lasts more than a minute, and they rarely understand anything I say to them. (a: they understand VERY little English, and b: they just don't want to listen) so because of this there is *always* a Korean in the room with me. Laura is the kindergarten teacher at my school who is always there to help me with the 5's, both with translating what I'm saying, and also just to take care of the class. She is like a mother to the little darlings/hellions in that class and I really depend on her. Trust me, you do need two teachers to run this class even though there's only four students in it.

Well when I walked into the class today Laura was nowhere to be found. Thinking that she was just busy with something at the moment, I waited a few minutes for her to show up, but she never did. So, not wanting to distract her with whatever she was doing, and confident that she would show up 'any minute' - and also wanting to prove that I could run this class on my own - I started it without her. It was a rocky start right off the bat. The kids' prior class to this one is a colouring one, and you should try and separate a 5 year-old from their crayons when they *really* don't want to! It ain't easy! Three of them complied but one of them broke out into a screaming/bawling fit and began to throw her papers around. Lovely. She calmed down a few minutes later though and in less than five minutes she was happily placing her coloured stickers in the right spots for my lesson. All seemed to be going well at this point - I was holding things together alright.

Well it was all a very precarious balance and about 2/3 of the way into the class all hell broke loose. The kids just seemed to telepathically unite and decide that they had had enough of this lesson and that it would be more fun to run amok in the classroom. Billy (the girl who had pulled the Mariah Carey breakdown when I took away her crayons earlier) bolted out of the classroom and I had to chase her down the hall and drag her back in. She just seemed to think this was a big game and it was a struggle to get her back in the class (they may be little, but they're fast and squirmy, those 5 years olds!) I attempted to calm things down, and did manage to get them all to sit in their chairs again, but trying to restart the lesson was like trying to start a car engine in -45 C weather. It just wasn't going to happen, try as I may.

This is when things got REALLY BAD. Billy made another bolt for the door, but this time I managed to grab her and prevent her from escaping out into the hall again. She was protesting profusely in Korean (meaningless to me, but it's all she can communicate in) and I thought she just didn't want to come back to class. Turns out that she *REALLY* had to go to the bathroom and was mere seconds away from peeing her pants. If it wasn't for the lucky timing of another teacher who just happened to be walking by, and heard her pleas for the bathroom, she probably would've peed her pants right there on the spot. At this moment I turned and looked back into the class to see Terry bawling his eyes out for no apparent reason, and Fred and Chris chasing each other around the room running and screaming....

Seriously, at that moment I just about lost it...

WHERE THE FUCK WAS LAURA!!!???

I took two seconds to take a deep breath, calm myself down, and just plunged right into damage control. I comforted Terry and he stopped crying (never did find out what caused the tragedy) and managed to at least slow down Fred and Chris, who weren't going to return to their seats for love or money or candy or stickers. Billy returned a minute later, (dry, thank god!) and basically at that point I realized that returning to the lesson was a lost cause. I was pretty pissed off that I was left on my own in the one class where the students understand me the least. The rest of the class was then just spent 'killing time' until that elusive bell finally rang....

That class was the longest half hour of my life!

On my way out to lunch (right after this class) I passed by the office to see Laura in there doing...photocopying!!!??? *THIS* is the dire emergency that kept her out of my classroom and left me abandoned against the 5 year old savages? What the fuck!? In all honesty I actually wasn't mad at her - Laura is super nice and always extremely helpful in classes. If she was in that office doing photocopying I'm sure it's because she *had* to (most likely an order from higher up, ie: Steven) It was another example though of how stretched things are becoming at my school. Another episode like this and I'll be ready to tear a strip off of someone. This is no way to run a school. What the hell is going on at REI this week? My once-awesome school just seems to be falling apart at the seems in the last two weeks!

Again, all I can say is Thank God It's The Fucking Weekend!

AND WHERE'S MY DAMN DRINK???

:-)