I’ve just returned from my school’s camping trip to the beautiful mountains in Hongcheon and all I can say is waht the fuck is up with Speedos® in this country? Ok, save for one boy, all the boys were rockin’ the Speedo®. Adside from that, camp went pretty well. Since none of my students went, I was sort of auxilary staff. Most of my time was spent babysitting the one kindergarten student from our school who went. She was content with catching grasshoppers most of the time, or swinging on a swing. At night, Darrell and I had to guard 6 boy students. They were rather retarded however, so in an attempt to clean the room we were staying in had to play games such as “Who’s Underware is This?” (We would hold up an article of clothing with a stick and bellow, “Who’s underware, shirt, ect. is this?” until someone claimed it).
Games for all the students included “Chicken Catching,” in which teams of students had to grab as many chickens as they could…it was something you could never get away with in America.
Speaking of “you can’t do that in America,” on Friday night we had a monster bonfire and launched crazy fireworks into crowds of children…FUN!
During one point I was asked to teach my school tae kwon do which was fun. Later when the students had to present something in a quasi-talent show thing, I returned with a hastily thrown together tae kwon do demonstration which the kids did. They got big applause (from the Korean owners) when I had them face the audience and bow. Anyhow we got some decent applause, and I got to do some things I had not done in awhile, TKD and performing in front of others. When I got up on stage and got the mic in my hands, it was just like old times…
Speaking of old times, and tae kwon do, this camping adventure was a lot like the Pai’s events of my past…the schedule of events changed roughly every hour, and no one knew what was going on. Most teachers were pissed, but for me it was par for the course. As soon as I learned that multiple branches of Kid’s College would be involved I was like, “a schedule will be doing us no good!” This turned out to be entirely true. Like tournaments, and Pai’s picnics before it, this trip suffered from too many chiefs and not enough Indians.
Final point: The staff from our school is the best looking, healthiest, and youngest looking of all the schools. Every other school had at least one middle aged overweight smoking guy, and in many cases were staffed entirely by that demographic. I was the youngest staff there, and was closer in age to the students than most of the other teachers. Which leads to the real final point: this weekend I obtained a fan club. First off, once I did tae kwon do with them, all the boys in my school were my buddies. However, at some point a group of teenage girls from another school got crushes on me. One of them was the director’s daughter from another school, so she kept talking to Ashley (my director’s daughter) about me. It was fairly rediculous. Today there was some totally random events involving these girls. First off they tell me that I’m handsome when I was walking somewhere. Later on all the schools were lined up and those girls were talking to Ashley in Korean. Ashley told me that they said that they loved me, causing a girl fight to break out. Their fat 30-something teacher looked sad. Finally, as we were all departing, they wanted to take their picture with me like I was a movie star. It was insane!
Speaking of insane actions caused by Korean teen girls having crushes on white teachers, there is a girl named Sophia from Darrell’s class, and she clearly has a crush on him. Because of this she acts oddly. For example she went and got him coffee, and recited, “Beans, beans, the musical fruit…” in front of all the schools (which is basically a story unto itself). Well Monday, kindergarten is back…boo! Peace out braw!
The new teenage witches…they thought I was cute. Eh eh eh. This was taken during summer camp (August 2003).
