Welcome, March 2nd; the first day of a new school year in Korea! It's a new season and there is a fresh batch of grade 7 boys who welcome me to the school with screams as though they are all Justin Bieber fans and that I am the Bieby himself.
If only cowbell could cure this particular fever.
This, first day of the 2011 school year, was full of fun things. Some of which fall into the "Things I Will Miss" category while other things (and people) will belong in the "Things I Won't Miss" column. I will of course miss the waygook-fever and the fact that my new Vice Principal is an ex-English teacher who will understand me when I am sent to him with all of my questions and concerns by a co-teacher whose biggest job seems to be saying "oh, really?" whenever I tell her that I don't speak Korean. To her credit, she does this rather well.
I will not miss the incomprehensible lack of logic and/or organization that characterizes my daily life in a Public Korean Middle School. No, no I can't tell what my schedule is after sitting in on the staff meeting conducted entirely in Korean; no, no I don't think that it is a good idea to replace the only English computer in the school with a Korean one the day that school starts and leave the boxes from the new one and remnants of the old one strewn about the English lab. Yes, yes I do think that the previously mentioned action renders my desk-warming time, during which I was supposed to plan this semester's classes, even more useless than its very name suggests. Everything that I saved on that computer is obviously gone, baby, gone. And, though I honestly didn't do any planning over the break, I had 10 months of powerpoints and lessons from last year on it, so I'm still chalking it up as a loss. A huge one. One that might drive me to drink.
It seems worth mentioning that as of 5 p.m. on this, the fateful first day of a whole new year, I have yet to be given any direction as to what I am supposed to be doing today, this week, or the rest of the year. I have missed lunch because there are no bells today since the schedule is different. Isn't a different schedule a good reason to employ the use of bells? No, probably not. After missing lunch, I got a call on my hand pone from my co-worker (not co-teacher, never my co-teacher) asking where I was and saying that he was looking for me. Cool. You know where he didn't look? The only place that I ever am. Bitch ain't got nothing on Nancy.
