Day 182: NOT A Reccommended Cosmetic

This week has totally just flown by! Last week went by like frozen molasses dripping in an ice storm, but this week was like 'blink and it's gone!' It's Friday already and the weekend is almost upon me. Hooray! I'm going away this weekend again to Busan with Michael and Eric and am totally looking forward to it.

My week has totally just flown by...until this morning... For whatever reasons all my pre-schoolers just all collectively decided to become little holy terrors today. They've been pretty good all week, especially the last few days, but today it was like they just released all their non-listening-to-teacher energy all at once. We weren't even like five minutes into class and already the drama was unfolding. My first three blocks were filled with plenty of crying, fighting, throwing of pencil crayons, tattle-taling, and my personal favourite of the day - spitting in hair. Oh, how lovely!

The shit *really* hit the fan when fourth block came round. Fourth block is Activity Block and is the 40 minutes of the day when all the kids complete some kind of arts 'n crafts project that the Korean assistants have put together. It's normally a really great way for me to end my morning with the kids because not only does it involve no prep at all for yours truly, but it's often kinda fun and I enjoy interacting with the kids as they let their creative juices flow via crayons, scissors, and glue.

Oh, glue...

*rolling my eyes*

Every once in a while the Korean teachers, bless their sweet and well-intending hearts, come up with an activity that is completely inappropriate or ridiculously difficult for the kids. Today was one of those days... The kids today had to make this paper cut-out of a hot air balloon, but they had to glue TISSUE PAPER (Hello! Why would you give tissue paper to a five-year old? *I* can barely handle tissue paper alone!) using glue sticks to their paper, and then later cut it out and fasten some string....ugh.... It was a complete disaster!

First off, there was paper *everywhere* all over the classroom. Little shreds of the stuff was just covering everything. This would NOT be fun to clean up later! And the scissors they had wouldn't cut the paper properly, so it was tearing and not coming out nicely, making the kids cranky. And then trying to glue these little bits of tissue paper onto the sheet....it was just not happening. In the middle of all of this tissue paper madness one of my girls, Rachel, had a bunch of tissue paper stuck to her gluestick. Suddenly realizing that her gluestick looks a lot like a stick of lipstick, she began 'applying' the sticky tissue paper to her lips...

"Teacher, look! Lipstick!"

I looked up in horror to see bits of tissue paper stuck all over Rachel's mouth, and she had the biggest smile on her face. Next thing I knew ALL the kids thought that this was the coolest thing ever so they all began to do the same thing. I had twelve kids all using their gluesticks as lipstick and I had to quickly and desperately put a stop to this new found game. OH BOY!

By the time this conundrum got sorted out there was only like five minutes left in class, and not even half the kids had finished their balloon yet. They all panicked when they realized that it was time to go and so they began madly racing ahead with their projects. And then a couple of them started to cry when they realized that they just were not going to get it finished in time before the end of class. Man, this activity was a disaster!

Luckily the rest of the afternoon flew by and then it was time for me to head home. I packed up a bag for the weekend and b-lined it to Seoul Station. Michael and Eric had already bought a reserved ticket for me so I just had to pick it up and then hop on the train. I boarded the 10pm KTX and sailed on down to Busan. I rolled into Busan just before 1am and gave the boys a ring. They were already at a bar so I caught a cab and then met up with them.

We spent the night drinking at this cozy little hole in the wall called Zip and it was really cool. I downed a couple Tom Collins (I needed them in order to decompress after the Gluestick Fiasco) and then we decided to head across the street for some karaoke. I've never ever done karaoke before (if you've heard my 'singing' voice you'd understand why) and have always avoided it like The Plague in the past, but hey after a couple TC's, I become a lot more agreeable - and bold! We spent the rest of the night drinking beer, munching fruit, and even sang a few songs. Michael & Eric sang a couple Korean songs, and then actually managed to convince me to join them for our rendition of The Tide Is High and Uptown Girl. (okay, I have to confess, I actually *requested* the latter, just for old times sakes!) I sounded absolutely terrible up there but it was a blast nonetheless!

Way too many drinks later it was time to head back to the hotel. I *think* this was sometime around 4 or 6 in the morning...it really is all quite the blur... Thank God Michael and Eric had already been there and were leading the way cause in my drunken stupor I had no idea where I was. I don't even remember the cab ride there, or getting into our room, or going to bed...