Monday, August 24, 2009

Ju Eun Saves the Day

Greetings...

Well, I'm just over halfway through my summer vacation. I've got another week to go. I've enjoyed my time off quite a bit. Even though I didn't "do" much, it was nice sleeping in and being thoroughly relaxed 24 hours a day. The Woody Allen retrospective was a lot of fun. I only missed one of the films but I also saw "Annie Hall" and "Manhattan" twice. It was a slight pain because it's a 30-40 subway ride from my place and the heat has been plain nasty. One might think that the air down in the subway tunnels would be cool (being underground and all) but you'd be wrong. It's stale and muggy. The subway cars are always air conditioned but they really make you earn it by waiting.

English camp was a lot of fun. The 3 weeks went by nice and quick and it was more enjoyable than regular class. The most interesting experience was my week with the 1st and 2nd graders. We don't teach 1st and 2nd grade during the school year, so it was almost like the first day of school all over again. My "rockstar" status has been steadily fading the past couple months so it was fun to be the center of attention again. I was concerned that we'd have trouble communicating--their abilities are even lower AND I didn't have Mrs. Lee or Lucy there to help translate. Luckily, I kept the activities and lessons simple enough that it wasn't a problem.

One time, with the 3rd/4th graders, we were doing a little "picture dictation." I'd say, "Draw Mickey Mouse" and they'd draw Mr. Mouse on their own mini dry erase boards. After drawing a few other Disney characters, I said, "Draw me." So they did. After a couple minutes, they start raising their boards for me to see. All of them were classic depictions but this one kid won the grand prize. He was a typically quiet boy, kind of a loner with a splash of rebellion. He said, "Teacher, teacher!" and when I looked over at him, he held up his board. Apparently, he doesn't think too highly of me or he's got quite a sense of humor because he held up a picture of a steaming pile of excrement with a fly buzzing around it. It was such an awesome moment that I couldn't help but laugh.

Another, more pathetic story. This is about a little 1st grade girl named Hyang Mi who I dubbed Hannah. Picture this: a tiny little girl, 2 sizes smaller than the rest of her class, all smiles and happily sitting in the front row of the class. I knew from the first 5 minutes that I was going to enjoy teaching her. One day, she had a really rough day. We were up in the auditorium playing Color Tag and, as predicted, all hell broke loose. What started as one game of tag with me being "IT" and the rest of the class running turned into a dozen separate games with 12 "ITS" and no one had a clue. Somewhere in the melee, Hannah apparently got hurt because another student brought her over to me, weeping. She looked like a week-old kitten lost on the sidewalk, wide-eyed and shaking. I sat her off to the side to recover and we eventually called it quits and went back to the classroom.

Later, we had ourselves snack time and cartoons. During the breaks and snack times, I would show them old Disney cartoons. With the cartoon running and the kids quietly smacking away on their goodies, some commotion began around Hannah's desk. She had that "sidewalk kitten" look again and a couple kids were surrounding her, laughing. She couldn't open the wrapper on the Choco Pie...if that's not the most heartbreaking thing I've seen in a while, I don't know what is. Here's this kid: weak, quiet and sweet and all she wants in the whole wide world is have this delicious treat while watching cartoons and she can't. I swat the laughing kids away like pesky crows and open the wrapper. You would have thought it was Christmas morning the way she grinned and chomped down on the Choco Pie. I sit back down at my desk and a couple minutes later, there's more commotion. This time, she's got chocolate and crumbs from ear to ear--she looked like Heath Ledger in "The Dark Knight." I swear, I think only about 10% of that Choco Pie actually made it into her mouth. The rest was decimated and scattered on her face, her dress and her desk. Not only was she unable to open it, she didn't even know how to eat it! You know, all kids go through that stage when they eat sandwiches and keep biting in the same place over and over until it's all over their face but this girl is 6 or 7 years old! The worst part of it was the look on her face looking at the kids laughing at her. She knew why they were laughing and she knew it was pure embarrassment. So, for the 2nd time that day, Hannah broke my heart. I cleaned off her desk and took her to a sink just outside the class room. I washed her face and dress where she had gotten chocolate on it. Man, oh man.

The short film I made with my after school class is actually getting done. We finished filming quite a bit ago and I've just been lazy about it. Actually, I felt like it was a disappointment and was just too depressed about it to finish. Of course, I was too optimistic about how it would turn out and about how efficient it would be working with screaming kids who don't speak my language. I was very close to telling Mrs. Lee and the students that my hard drive crashed and I lost all the footage. But, one day, I got a text message from one of my students, Ju Eun, (remember how they stole my phone to get my number a while back?) asking about the project. She wanted to know when they'd get to see the finished product. I officially felt guilty at this point and found myself going over the footage on my computer. I came across a clip of Ju Eun--it was a botched take, she just started laughing, but that was all the convincing I needed to see it through. I'm plugging away at it and it's turning out better than I thought. I'm glad I didn't give up.

I also recently passed the halfway point of my time here in Korea. 6 months to go and, as Rob predicts, I think this 2nd semester will go by in a flash. Now we'll be counting down to the end instead of counting up and I'm hoping to ride that momentum like body boarder riding a wave all the way in.

Stay tuned...

-B$

p.s. Here's the clip of Ju Eun that brought the project back to life.

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