Asian children--an excellent source of MSG!

I used to hate kids, but that's because North American children are ugly. Don't believe me? Check out these photos. I've already started shopping for luggage with which to bring a few of them home. Now taking orders!

First, Junior 6 students. Here's Amy. She's punk fuckin' rock (although has no idea who or what the Ramones are). She's a complete klutz, so of course she has decided to refer to herself as "graceful!!!" every chance she gets. She has the manliest voice in the world, and is always coughing like a fifty-year-old chain smoker. If I was certain that she didn't have some horrible disease, I'd say it was pretty funny.




This guy's Andy. He's the one I've dangled by the ankles for not doing his homework. Among his favorite English sayings are "What the shit!" and "I will kill you mother bitch!" I taught him the proper way to conjugate the verb 'to suck'. (FYI: I suck "really bad".) He once asked me how God could be so crazy as to make one human being so handsome, intelligent, and funny all at once (referring to himself); I assured him that God was merely compensating for the fact that he's 150 cm tall, which elicited a hilarious burst of profanity and violence from him. I accidentally gouged his eyeball with my thumb when he tried to tackle me for telling him the wrong answer on purpose on a quiz (just because I wanted to see him go berserk). He's a grade six, and is shorter than all of the girls in his class. I'll miss him when our classes get all jumbled up when the new term starts in January. It's the fucked up kids that make the job worthwhile.



The following kids are in my Junior-2 class on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Yoda in the green hood is Luke, who is pretty smart for a ten year old; the close-up of the grinning goblin-esque girl is Flora, who is prone to fits of barking (I think she thinks it's funny, and after awhile I think I started to get the joke); the girl smiling with her hands up is Josephine, who is so adorable when she begs me to stop beating her for mispronouncing simple words; the girl pointing is Suwan, who has never met an English sentence she didn't like ( "I AM SUWAN!" "Spiders is pretty!" "Strawberries are older than my house!" "Teacher scares me when he drinks too much during class!"); and then there's a group shot of the girls in that classroom doing their best impression of a bunch of Korean kids.







The last group of photos of kids are my Monday-Wednesday-Friday Senior-3 class, who are the same age as the Junior-2's above and two years younger than the Junior 6's at the top. (They don't sort them by age, but by ability here, and then try to keep kids of the same age and ability together to create a more comfortable classroom environment--works pretty well.) Dude doing the peace sign (which in Korea has nothing to do with peace, but simply means "KIMCHI!", which is their word for "CHEESE!") is Hank, who is a year younger than his peers and smarter than all of them. In the group photo of boys from that class, the kid to Hank's left is Alex, who lived in the States long enough to learn lots of fun words! "Hey teacher, what's a pussy? Really? Are you SURE it's a cat, teacher? Are you REALLY sure?" Or "Hey teacher, is it bad to call somebody a motherfucker? Why? I know what mother means, but..." He pretends to be epileptic a lot too. (At least, I think he's pretending... and if he's not, his parents don't care enough to notify me of any medical problems, so whatevs.) The girl with glasses is "soju face", a.k.a. Michelle. Her mom brings me snacks, like eight baked sweet potatoes (umm... yummy!...?!). Michelle is prone to banshee-like eruptions when she gets stuff right, and for the past week she has been throwing ping-pong balls at everyone, playing a one-player game of dodge ball. (Halfway through a test, I'll be marking some essays, and I'll jump three feet in the air when she screams "YEEEEEEAH!!!! I HIT YOU, YOU'RE DEAD PETER! STUPID!" She's a lunatic, and thus one of my favorite students. Every time one of my friends walks into my classroom to get something or tell me something, she tells me that they're a harlot as soon as they leave and that I should not be their boyfriend anymore. She informed me that girls who wear short skirts will never be able to have babies, and that girls who eat sushi with boys who are not their boyfriends are "BAD!" Methinks her mother is the real lunatic there. There's also a group shot of that class.






Finally, some photos of co-workers and the place I work at. Tasha is the Korean girl sitting behind a desk, who is my partner--she deals with parents and yells at the kids in Korean when I don't feel like punishing them, but luckily for her, I ALWAYS feel like punishing them. Dylan has the ear piercing. He's been married for a year and a half, and plays a mean guitar. Sarah is the one making the disgusting face, which is her greatest talent. She's the one that organized our upcoming trip to Thailand. Andrew is the guy sitting by himself. He's from San Fransisco, so you know what that means--yep, he's an American! Jimmy is the guy with glasses. The Korean dude doing the hand thing is Sae-Hun, who does menial office bullshit tasks for us but is a really nice guy about it. There's a picture of my staffroom, and one of the path I take through a park to get to work (which, much like everything else in this country, looks better when covered with snow). And, one photo of myself pretending to work while one of my kids pretends to be a photographer.











Woah, that took a long time. Expect lots more photos when I get back from Thailand.