SPORTS DAY!!!!

Unlike the last update this title is slightly deceiving.  You would think it would be about sports.  Well it kinda was but really wasn't at all.

Sports day is basically a day where there are no classes and the kids compete as a homeroom class against each other.  Here's where the deception occurs.  They don't actually play any sports!!!!  Just lame competitions that all the kids can participate in. Even though they do lame stuff, sports day is one of my favorite days of the year.

This year was my second sports day.  Knowing that I would have no classes I decided to partake in some alcoholic beverages the day before.  So when I arrived at school that morning I was hoping of taking a quick snooze for the first hour or so.  However, this mission was not completed.  Some lovely 3rd year (ninth grade) student made me a cool name tag thing that I could hang around my neck.  She barged into my room where I was attempting sleep and gave it to me.  Interruption number 1.  About 15 minutes later when I had probably finally fallen asleep, I got a call from my co-teacher saying that I should go outside for sports day with her...yay!!!

Whatever.  I've taught classes hungover, I can do sports day hungover.  As some of you who have experienced a hangover know, you can get hungry.  Well thankfully on sports day the students love to bring food to eat and share.  And I love to eat and eat that food too.

Let me explain the set up.  Were outside in a big rectangle area about the size of a soccer field.  And surrounding the field is where all the students are sitting with their homerooms.  So basically what I did was walk from homeroom to homeroom in search of snacks.  And since I'm pretty much a rock star at my school the students are more than willing to give me some food.  Mission eat breakfast successful.

Ok back to the "sports" portion of sports day.  They have a few different competitions that they all compete in.  Most involve a jump rope.  Why?  I have no idea.  But ya jump rope.  They have one thing where they have a huge jump rope and about 5 kids at a time have to run and jump 5 times in unison.  Then the next group of kids will come running in and jump 5 times.  This continues until all the kids in the class have finished.  Sooooo entertaining (sarcasm).  So ya the competitions are not exactly what I enjoy about sports day. 

What I do love is walking from homeroom class to homeroom class stealing food and messing with kids.  It makes for a wonderful day.  And because I'm a rock star, if I come to the kids homeroom, its basically like a rock star has arrived.  I get VIP treatment to the best seat, best snacks, and best everything.  Me likey.

Towards the end of the morning I decided to sit down next to some of the 3rd grade girls.  These girls happen to have had a huge super soaker squirt gun.  My memory was triggered to a few hours earlier when different 1st year (seventh grade) students had shot me with their tiny squirt guns.  I didn't mind.  In fact I enjoyed it cuz the weather was really hot that day and it helped to cool me off.  However, even though I enjoyed getting squirted did not mean I was not going to seek my revenge on this little kids.

So with huge super soaker in hand, I walked over to the 1st grade section of the area.  Pointed to each individual student who had shot me, they were pretty much surrounded by other students in their class and had nowhere to run.  I preceded to destroy around 15-20 kids who had shot me earlier.  From there I turned evil and thought every kid was fair game.  Now I'm not saying that I shot every 1st grader and started a huge squirt gun fight, but maybe I did...Sorry for Partying?
Oh apologies to the homeroom teachers who I accidentally got involved in the squirt gun fight.  Actually Sorry for Parting this time, but not really.

Face painting!!  Some lovely 1st years girls were painting each other with little cheers and chants. They asked if they could paint on my forehead.  Sure. Why not?  So one of the students decided to write my name on my forehead in Korean (브래디) in black face paint.  She also added her class number (1-3) so everyone could know who I was cheering for. 

So with that done I walked around to the different homerooms.  Most students were not too happy that I had chosen to cheer for class 1-3.  Ummm I didn't.  They didn't believe me.  I wouldn't either I guess.  Anyway, some other 1st years attacked me and erased the 1-3 from my forehead so it now just had 브래디 on it.  I'll get back to this later.

It was about lunch time.  Lunch is ahhhhhh...ok i guess.  But sports day. Ohh baby.(sarcasm)  I guess it was a little better than normal so I shouldn't complain.  At lunch is when I realized that I had "accidentally" involved some of the other teachers in my water gun fight.  They "complained" to my co teachers about it.  But secretly they loved it.  It was really hot that day.

After lunch was the only time in which I was actually interested in any of the sports stuff.  They had 2 pretty cool events.  The first was tug-o-war between the different classes in the grade.  It was actually cool and of course each class wanted me to cheer for them.  I dont remember who won but seeing the boys in that class, I wasn't surprised at all.  If those kids don't become sumo wrestlers I would be shocked.

The last event was a sprint relay race.  There were 6 different races.  1st, 2nd and 3rd year boys and girls.  The race track is surrounded by all of the different homerooms.  Ok so there are 12 homerooms per grade.  So half boys and half girls.  So thats six kids running at a time.  And in some of the areas between the inside of the track and the homerooms there is maybe room for about 3 kids to squeeze.  This made for some very interesting races/collisions.  Is it bad to say I laughed when 3 girls slammed into each other??  Whatever, I had already attacked teachers with a water gun.  The relay races and tug-o-war made for an interesting afternoon and a wonderful end to sports day.

At this time I walked back to my desk because I needed to get my stuff.  It was there that I remembered that I had my forehead painted.  In case I need to remind you, I am a ginger.  Gingers get burned very easily.  It was hot and sunny all day.  As you can imagine even after i had washed 브래디 off of my head, you could still see that someone had written it on my forehead. 

The rest of that weekend every Korean knew what my name was...

How rich are these kids???

The title pretty much sums it up.  If you have followed my blog you realize that I teach in a pretty wealthy area.  The kids aren't rich but their parents are loaded and probably give them whatever they want.  Sometimes I can tell how rich these kids are.  But most times I don't even realize it.

Recently I had one of those moments where I pause and think "How rich are these kids??"

This story isn't exactly PG so if there are any children (or grandmas) reading this blog, you've been warned.

A common bodily function is to release the waste in your body through your bowels.  Aka pooping.  Well normally I have a wonderful poop to start my day.  It just really helps me to focus on the day.  In addition, at my school there aren't separate toilets for teachers and students.  That alone can make for some very interesting situations that I will discuss at a later date.  Anyway, back to my shit...hehehe.

Oh another side story, for some reasons the kids don't like to flush the toilet after they do their business.  And yes its as gross as you can imagine.  However, they remember to put the seat and cover down.  Its as if someone taught them that putting the cover down makes the poop disappear.  Korea, everyday an adventure.

Ok back to my poop/rich kid moment.  One morning I walked into the stall to do my thing.  The cover is down as always and this 'lovely' smell is coming from the porcelain God.  I open the cover knowing what I will find...or do I.  Not only was there a log waiting for me, some student must have gotten himself into a predicament.  Because as i looked into the toilet I saw 5 different 1000 won bills (equals $5) floating with the rest of his business.  Yes, the answer is yes.  Some kid literally wiped his ass with money.  You could even see the little turd stains on them.  I was so stunned.  I thought about taking a picture for proof but trust me you didn't wanna see it.

"How rich are these kids???"

Basketball "Class"

Hello my long lost friends.  I have been told I must blog or the Korean government will be informed about my gingerness.  Apparently its illegal here.  Pshhh racism everywhere I go. 

When I first arrived in Korea I had pretty much no American friends here.  I'm not complaining just stating a fact.  Anyway, about a year after I got here the Americans started flooding in.  With that came one of my good friends, Jeremy.  This Jeremy guy works at a high school here and somehow convinced his teachers and school to let him do an after school basketball class.  He then convinced the school to use a 2nd native teacher for this class.

He asked me to do it and I thought it would be a fun way to earn some extra money.  So basically once a week,Wednesdays, I go to his school at the end of the day and have a basketball "class" with about 20 kids at his school.

Now you are probably wondering why I say "class" with quotation marks.  Well, when we first started doing the class we would practice English and do basketball drills with the students.  That lasted about 2 weeks.  Now all we do is show up, split the kids into teams, and play basketball.  Very educational. 

Actually I should say that the students in his area are not really good at English and probably can not afford extra English classes (most students do this) so having me there is an extra white guy they can practice English with.  There are some outgoing kids who will talk to me, even if I can't really understand them, and I try to seek out the shy kids and talk to them a little.

So basically, once a week I have a basketball "class" and pretend to teach for a little over an hour.  And they pay me.  Ya my life is rough.