Essential Learning

Taught my students how to read palms this week:



Figured they were experts after my 15 minute tutorial and let them loose on each other. Looking at their own hands they probably expected to be told they'd marry a beautiful woman or handsome man; be insanely rich; and live a long, fulfilling life. Must have been a shock to hear their friends say, Haha, loser, you will no job have...you live Seoul Station [i.e. panhandling]...you lonely guy never make marry...you die soon! TFG I was there to arbitrate: No, no, no, you'll get married to a nice lady but you'll both be kimbab makers. It's not all sunshine and unicorns, you know.

DHB

Touching moment in class this week:



Homeboy there is severely autistic, so obvs it's easy to imagine what happens when you put him in a general education class full of adolescents from a country where "crazy" is one of the most offensive things you can call a person. Most students just accept him for who he is, but there are the laughing murmurs when he participates in speaking activities as well as that one D+ all-star who can't help but goad him into an outbreak, which awesome because now my floor is going to be mopped after class.

Brings up some larger issues about special education in Koko. I can only speak anecdotally but basically there's such a stigma attached to any form of mental disability that many parents prefer to stick their children in regular classrooms rather than enroll them in special ed. Arguments one way or the other, but I'm not qualified to do much other than drop the same lesson on them as everyone else and hope they can make some sense of it. Maybe if I knew more Korean I could tailor my pedagogy, but I don't, so I pretty much limit myself to making sure the other students are n-i-c-e to each other.

Or more specifically, n-o-t m-e-a-n to each other. Like I said before, most students are generally respectful, but there are some who just can't resist the pile on. Like an incident last year where one girl decided to unpack all her emotional baggage by being particularly nasty to the girl sitting next to her as well as roping a friend into her mean girls club so they could both tease her relentlessly throughout my class. Because of the Korean it took me awhile to figure out what was going on, but once I did I asked another teacher to help me intervene. Her response was to explain away the first girl's behavior by telling me it had less to do with cruelty and everything to do with a seizure the girl getting bullied once had during class and that now the other students are afraid of her. So I flipped my shit, parents were involved, blah blah blah. This all resolved itself a few weeks later when that same teacher came up to me to say she had great news about the girl getting harassed for her mental disability. I was thinking, cool, the girl deserves a break, what is it?

"Homegirl is transferring to a new school. We don't have to worry about her anymore."

So...ja, that.

Now the photo above: Students were put into teams for a lyric relay where one student at a time runs across the room to read from a sheet taped on the wall, remembers as many lines as possible, then returns to tell the team scrivener what to write. Homeboy in the picture was confused by all the ensuing noise and tried to hide in the corner of the room, but then DHB went over to talk him through the commotion, led him over to the lyric sheet, and walked him through the process. He started to wander off a couple times but she would just put her arm around his back or touch his arm and he'd immediately calm down in a way I'd never seen before. I was so moved I gave her five merit points, whatever those are good for. Hopefully she can redeem them for influence over the rest of us.

Haaaahhhhhwwwwwt

Monsoon season officially started this week and I've already gone through three umbrellas. Cool though, because humidity season started last month and I can use the reprieve. I'd try to explain the weather here but 50% of Sasha already did last year, so why say the same thing but with a lot more uhhhh, durrrr, ummmm? The only thing I'll add to hers is that it takes seven minutes for me to walk from home to school, which is right on the edge of that get to work without being a sweaty mess zone. Every morning I make the final turn before school comes into view and I'm still Arid Extra Dry with a hint of Axe Body Spray (I have friends from the east coast, yo) but by the time I've passed through campus gates a line of sweat has formed along my hairline that threatens to turn the sidewalk below into class 5 whitewater rapids. For the realz, people without a life vest or proper head gear have died walking too close to me in the summer, and not just because of any stank azz stank. Here's a photo of me...



...during the winter. Multiply that by 1.8, add 32, decide between °C and °F, have a pee in the kiddy pool, eat something spicy, drink hot coffee through a straw, and now you know what I look like from early June through mid-September.

Uncle Rico

A photo I recently found of me during my high school glory days:



Yes, nearly everyone in the mid-90s had a 10+ megapixel camera as well a blog they could immediately upload their photos to. And yes, I did live in a part of Michigan that was 147% white even though there was a Korean high school the next town over. We would have won state senior year if coach let me play quarterback, or defensive end, or even with my sister's dolls. If only, right?

Man, a Chanteuse

This week's bit of Korean No, for the realz, yo, this totally isn't staged is your standard Susan Boyle fairy tale that repeats itself every time some So You Want to Be a Gorgeous Football Music Person Who Sings Lounge Musak is reincarnated in a new country.



Maybe homeboy's story is entirely true but the whole exchange was scripted and then edited to manufacture a response from anyone who watches. I know this because I have a piece of paper taped above my computer reading: YOU ARE A CYNIC, YOU AWESOME THING! But whatevs, sometimes I enjoy a scripted whaaaah since I have no feelings of my own. I used the tears scraped from off my cheek to clean this vexatious dust off my keyboard. Effing dust, man, seriously.

Anyhow, Korea and all, so the one country in the world (that I've lived in) where YouTube comments (or the Korean version thereof) actually hold influence over an entertainer's career. Entirely funny because any video on YouTube featuring a black guy, or a black cat, or a black doorknob, or even black letters will have below it a series of comments that invariably devolve into a re-enactment of the Civil War, at least as far as the words people use to refer to other people they don't like are concerned. The Korean online community is really no different, except here those same people dropping 한국말 epithets are referred to reverently as netizens, and rather than ignore them celebrities go so far as to jump off very tall buildings whenever they read mean things written about them by anonymous douchebags in eastern Seoul basements. (Imagine if Lebron James played basketball here, eh. Then again, that guy will probably get cancer of the ego before he'd ever think to navigate a Korean web portal.) But sometimes the netizens write nice things about anonymous people and they're suddenly afforded a measure of recognition, so good luck to homeboy up there. 

Blah blah blah I just wanted to post this video because sometimes I like saccharine things.

For My Sister, Like She Cares

For some reason my sister loved the Chicago Bulls while we were growing up. I liked them when they beat the Pistons then hated them when they beat the Blazers. Michael Jordan was too good and I've always been a hater.

But now I live in a rocking chair, have fake teeth, and tell everyone what it was like fighting the Japs over there in Normandy, so this bit of Lebron is the best ever because we see him on the telly now now is just an excuse for me to shoo some punk hipster kids off my lawn.



This comment settles the whole Jordan vs. Lebron debate for me:

When Michael Jordan got divorced his wife got half of his stuff. Currently Michael Jordan's wife has more rings than Lebron. Just saying.

But really, I just like how a bit of music makes this question more important than it actually is, or how it implies sustained dramatics throughout an entire 15 year career. I'm surprised I didn't cry.

Bingo

I found out what polio was on a jungle gym in the 2nd grade when some kid started calling me disease. Same exact joke ever since, so it's only fair that I finally get in on the action:


There was a farmer had a dog...P-O-L-I-O...P-O-L-I-O...and Polio was his name-o.

The punchline comes when student who wins stands up to yell, I have polio! Sounds cruel but they will one day become doctors if 소아마비 (so-ah-mah-be) is a question on their English for Medical Students vocabulary test.