Crazy Kids; Status of IM China

C: Good morning!
S: Good morningggg
C: How are you today?
S: Iiiiii'm fiiiine/So-soooo.
C. Gooood. How's the weather?
S: It's sunnyyyy/It's cloudyyy (depending on the 10 minute period - it fluctuates like crazy here..)
C: Yes, it's sunny! Yayyy (Big smile). What day is today?
S: It's.......Mon..Fri...Wednesday! Thursday!
C: (What day IS it? Crap...I shouldn't rely on fifth graders learning English to convince me which day it is...)

A bit of an insight into my daily life. Don't worry - my classes aren't as boring as I make them sound here - but this is the daily greeting that I do with every class every day. Sometimes I sing parts of it to make it more interesting...but that is mostly to amuse myself...haha...just kidding. I do whatever I can to get the kids more involved. Sometimes I dance a bit too. I think they like that/like to make fun of me thinking I am cool. Whatever gets them involved in any way possible is cool with me.

I jotted down a few things that happened in class today so I could have a few things to say about class. Normally, no matter how entertaining, I always forget the day's amusements by the time I get home. The three things that made my A list today were the wet-head, the womanizer, and the boy who gave me money. You know, and today wasn't all too much different from any other day. I actually have some really fun experiences. Although things like the wet-head...I don't get to enjoy too much, because the other teachers don't think it is as funny as I do...granted they have to discipline them (not that I don't, but they have their ways and I don't feel comfortable imposing mine until they seem to be comfortable with me doing that...my method will probably be either pushups or wall sits - I got the wall sits idea from a fellow EPIK teacher (Thanks Lilani!)) but I don't think this was a situation where I would dole out punishment. If it got out of hand I would make him do pushups maybe - because then he wouldn't/shouldn't have enough energy to act out. ANYWAY. Why don't I just tell you about it rather than dancing around the subject. It's not much of a story actually. Some kid in my 4th or 5th period class comes into the room with his hair soaking wet. Make that his entire head and face. He was dripping...water all over his glasses. It was amazing. He is a special one - a few classes ago when he was standing in the back of class (I think for being late) and we were singing a song, he busted out some pretty sweet dance moves. He is a cutie. Haha. But he may end up being abnormally strong by the end of my time there if I have to start disciplining. Which I hope is the case. I hate just standing by while my co-teachers give out punishment. I feel lame. Plus it's not as fun. :)

The womanizer. Haha. We are in the middle of class, and some kid (I actually know his name - one of the 4 or 5 kids whose name I know, because part of it is the word for 'swimming' in Korean) says "hey, woman!" HAHAHA. I'm sorry. If someone said that to me in the States I would stare at the in the eye (anyone - not just a 5th grader but a man of any age) and give them a long, hard dirty, confused look, and then maybe smile and walk away. But this kid - hahaha - I mean, at least he is using English... I couldn't not laugh. But then I said, no! That's bad! Don't say that. I am still smiling and laughing though...so I make an 'X' with my arms and say 'no', and then I forced my lips into a frown with my fingers...haha. That was fun. "Hey, woman!" Hahaha. Where do these kids get these things? The thing is, that he isn't hearing that from adults or other kids...he either heard it from TV or a movie, or he just made it up on his own. I hope it is the latter. Especially if that is the case, he probably didn't mean it in the womanizing sense that women might take it to be in the States (of course it depends on the tone accompanying the comment), so it's cool. Haha. Good times.

This one isn't really funny, just freaking awesome. One of the kids in my 3rd or 4th period class came up to me and my co teacher before class with a handful of money. I saw a Euro (I thought...it might have been a coin around the Korea-area that looks like a Euro) and was wondering what was going on...and saw he had coins from all over the world. I was soo excited!! He opened his hand and says "America money!" and points to a nickel. Apparently his neighbors (or parents, I couldn't understand what they were trying to explain to me) just got back from a trip around the world (partly around the world). He motions for me to look at the coins, and then my co-teacher tells me that he wants me to have one..!! So I am looking...there is one from Hong Kong, a few others from other Asian countries (I kind of skipped past a bunch of them, looking for ones that looked compeltely foreign to me...plus we didn't have much time until class started...) there was one from Malaysia!!! I wanted to take that one...but then I saw one with an alphabet which I didn't recognize. It might be ...hmm, I was just thinking the alphabet looked a bit like cyrillic but looking at it again it definitely isn't...but I took this coin because I was intrigued and wanted to find out where it was from and what the alphabet was...so that will be my adventure for tomorrow... :) But how amazing is that!!! This boy gives me and my co-teacher a coin from another country from his parents' or his neighbors' trip around the world! Geez. I am so lucky!!! What a sweet day. :)

So...IM China... (Oh I forgot to write in my last blog - I wrote in the title about my coach being an IM director - yea...apparently for the last 9 years he directed Ironman Jeju...but resigned last year because the IMG (International Management Group...I think...), which is the corporation (corporation? I am guessing here) which takes a LOT of money from Ironmans which are Ironman Hawaii Qualifiers. Basically, they allow athletes from these Ironmans to qualify for the World Championship in Hawaii every October, and because of that, they take lots and lots of money. And apparently my Coach decided that they couldn't keep paying IMG because they just weren't making enough money to be able to pull it off. So this year is the first year in 9 that IM South Korea is not a Hawaii Qualifier. BOO!! I was wondering why that happened! But it is SO crazy that my coach was the director of that race!! Wow. Craaaazyyyy. Man. Wow. )

Anyway. I talked to my co-teacher today about taking time off for the Ironman. I didn't write about this conflict earlier because...well, I didn't. But basically I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to take time off for the race...because teachers in Korea basically don't take any personal days unless their families are extremely sick or something extreme like that. I thought it said in my contract that I had 7 vacation days during the school year and 7 during vacations, but I checked the contract yesterday and apparently it is 7 during winter vacation and 7 during summer vacation...!!! Ahh! So I checked to see if any other Ironmans were offered during my breaks...and...I can't believe it, but there aren't any! MAYBE Ironman Switzerland will fall on the summer break but I think it might be before vacation starts. Even so, that would be almost 10 months away, and I don't want to have to wait that long...might as well wait until I get back to the States and then I wouldn't have to pay an insane amount of money to travel from Korea to Switzerland for a few days... But I talked to my co teacher today and said I went over the contract and realized that I was mistaken. I was about to tell her that I would talk to the principal and forego my 14 days of vacation for 3 days in April so I could do this race (I could get by with 2 but that would be pushing it, and if I am going to give up all of my vacation days I might as well try for 3 days)...but then she said that it shouldn't be too much of a problem (actually they had pulled out the contract earlier that day and were discussing it...just to make sure that everything was being abided by...and that I knew of the terms in the contract...so contractual conversation had been taking place about a half hour ago with my co teacher and the Vice Principal). She said that even though things are written in the contract, the Principal has discretion to allow or not allow certain things that are not stated in the contract. I just don't want to push anything. I really like my schools and the people there and I don't want to get a bad reputation. I mean, it would be fantastic if I could just substitute vacation days for the days I want to go to China, but I am fully prepared to give up all of my vacation. Pasha. Vacation. Who needs that? I don't - if it means that I can go to China and have the time of my life and kick butt in my second Ironman, and not let all of my training go to waste. Anyway.

The cutest thing just happened to me but I can't write it here...sigh. (I actually just sighed and put my hand on my heart. I have been doing that a lot here...sigh, again.) Anyway. I'm off to go suck up some more Korean culture on this wonderful Thursday night, because I don't have school tomorrow because of the national holiday. YAY. :)