I played the word association game Apples to Apples with my delightful students for an hour and a half, then I handed out prizes and fed them loads of pizza. We laughed a lot, and I gave them some of the good-natured teasing that they always enjoy. And that, dear reader(s), was my final day of teaching at my middle school. So concludes two and a half years of teaching in South Korea, a job I wasn’t really prepared for, and a job that the training I was given didn’t prepare me for either, but I ended up really enjoying. Perhaps it’s no great feat that my first job acquired out of the service industry and when I was twenty-four has been the best job I’ve ever had, but still, there it is.
I don’t leave Korea at all prepared, or interested, in continuing teaching. I’ve been told that I’m a natural teacher, which was kind, and if I am I get it from my mom. But I intend on it staying natural, raw, not at all educated. A friend asked me how I’ve grown, intellectually or emotionally, and I of course can’t be asked to sit in judgement of myself, that’s for them to do. Elizabeth graciously offers to not judge me even if I’ve regressed. Oh she’ll get hers. What I do feel is more easily aggravated and more willing to display it, perhaps an addition to my character that wasn’t necessary. That’s a function of being a teacher because confrontation is demanded daily and often. Yesterday I went to two stores that sold electronics and yes, cameras, because I wanted to buy an extra camera battery and a new camera case. Neither stores sold them. In the last store I said, for nobody’s pleasure, “What the hell do you sell here? Fluffy bunnies? Do you sell fluffy bunnies or electronics?” If any of the sales people have a background in English, they may have been quite confused about what they heard. Also, displays of displeasure are uncommon here, and for good reason, it makes interactions far more pleasant. But it came out anyway, in part, because half an hour before I was buying coffee and the woman grinding it didn’t understand “French press” and couldn’t change the size of the grind, though the machine had numbers and clearly said it could. But no, 4 only. The coffee was far too fine to work in my French press, and I stashed it behind some junk food and didn’t buy it. Mess with Ms. Grumpy’s coffee and the rest of the evening I’m easily angered.
I am scott free for the remainder of January and all of February. I’ll be cleaning my apartment, packing up my clothes and possessions which won’t be donated or trashed and shipping it to my parent’s home, and, of course, what I’m really looking forward to, my eleven day trip to Thailand with Maria. My dreams these days have become entirely relevant to what I’m thinking about: home and my vacation, with strange things added into the mix, like telling off people I know and jousting.
