This week has been a little frustrating. Exams begin for my students on Monday, and for the third years, they are quite important. I haven't taught them at all this week, since my Korean co-teachers are borrowing the classes to do intense reviews. For my first years, I planned a two-page review on the idioms, opposite words, and the past and future tenses. They actually did the worksheets quite well, even though they were pretty overwhelmed at first. I like these kinds of classes, where my co-teacher and I can hop around from student to student, giving them a little individual attention. We just walk around the classroom, keeping the lazy kids on track, answering questions, helping with spelling, etc. My supervisor was supposed to visit my class today, and I was praying she wouldn't come for class 1-1 (they were so bad last week that they got a verbal lashing from my co-teacher that lasted for a good 10 minutes). She actually never showed up at all, thus sparing me from a little extra stress.

So basically, I've only been teaching two classes a day--that's an hour and a half of work. I'm always finished before 11:30, but I have to stay at the office until 4:30. It's been mind-numbing at some points...I have no idea how many times I've refreshed certain topics on Soompi. Other than that, I've watched three episodes of Gossip Girl, studied a little Korean, chatted with a co-teacher, and updated my cyworld.

Speaking of cyworld, mine has gained more traffic than usual over this week. Two of my students in my JA have had my cyworld address and it's never been a big deal. After going to the KB B-Boy show with those eight students, that number increased. From there, they showed their friends...who showed their friends...who showed their friends. Some of my giggling students actually came to my class a few days ago and said, "Teacher...in 6 class...we looking at your cyworld!" Embarrassing. Really embarrassing. I've been locking up stuff away from them since the beginning. The pictures of me and Dean, for instance, are blocked, so are the pictures from clubbing/bars on the weekend. They've been commenting and scrapping up a storm, though. Yesterday, when I logged on, I noticed that one of the students had made comments on about fifteen of my pictures. Intense. I've been updating like crazy, though, out of boredom. Today, I went on icanhascheezburger.com and the failblog, and put a bunch of those on my cyworld.

Oh, how awkward. The principal was just standing by my shoulder, watching me type. He is perpetually smiling--it's pretty funny. Anyway, I took out my earbud, smiled, and bowed. And, as usual, he smiled back and said, "I don't...speak English." And, as usual, I smiled, nodded, and said, "That's okay." Then, he said something about "working hard." Er...except that I'm on Soompi. *whistles and looks around innocently*

Also, one of my JA students dropped by my desk a few minutes ago. She's the one who comes by about twice a day to just chat. Anyway, she pulled a cute notebook and a wooden easel notebook holder from her bag and gave it to me. I was really surprised, since it's not my birthday, Teacher's Day, or anything like that. When I thanked her and asked her why she was giving it to me, she simply said, "Well, because...I like you!" She's so, so painfully sweet and she has such amazing potential. One thing that sucks about leaving in a year is leaving a semester before her and her friends graduate from middle school. I'm going to feel like crap when I have to leave halfway through their school year.

So tomorrow is a national holiday in Korea! No school! Dean, me, and four other girlfriends are taking the KTX down to Busan. It's time for the international film festival, so the city will be chock full of Korea's most popular celebrities and tons of artsy indie filmmakers. Dean and I bought some sparklers for the beach at Homeplus yesterday. Two of our other friends are mixing giant bottles of mimosas for us to sip on the journey down south.

Ok, no pictures today--I haven't really taken that many recently, unless you count the dozens of pictures I took of my cat a few days ago. I figure my next post will have oodles.

This title is Better by Regina Spektor

If I kiss you where it's sore

will you feel better?