Never a dull moment at the Sehgyeh Wehgukwoh Hagweon, Part 1

Jeez. You guys. You'd think I died or something. I'm okay. Really. Dad, don't send the Red Cross after me. What I am -- what I have been for the past month -- is wiped the hell out. September has been monumentally busy. And, so you know and have fair warning, it's not getting any better this month.

I'm not really sure where to begin. Rather a lot has occurred. Really, kinda everything has turned upside-down in thirty days.

Okay, so, work. I'll start there, since that's about eighty percent of my life these days. I think I mentioned that the sked got all gnarly on me. It looked basically like this:

6.35 am: Pour myself out of bed and into a nice pair of pants. Try to remember if I washed my hair yesterday or the day before.

7 am: Intermediate conversation. I've got a book and 14 people to entertain with it. For an hour. At, I repeat, 7 in the morning. Thank god for the vending machine iced coffee. A buck for two, and I can at least feign coherence. Most of the time.

8 am: Three hour break. Go home, wash my hair (or not), and back to bed for another couple of hours until

10.35 am: See 6.35 am. Second verse, same as the first.

11 am: Adult beginners. A couple of absolutely darling ajumma (housewives). They complain about their neglectful husbands and tell me I'm handsome. If only all my classes were like this.

12 pm: Four hours for lunch. That's right, I have a 7 o'clock class, three hours off, an 11 o'clock class, and then four hours off. I guess this is to make up for getting to get up at 10 for two months. So, lunch, class prep, probably another nap. Or news, which I've been using to cheer myself up -- in the vein of "It may be rough, but at least I ain't in America." (Seriously, why are you worrying about me? Aren't you too busy hoarding gold and lynching Congress?)

4 pm: The Gauntlet. The way middle/elementary school classes work is that we alternate classes with a Korean teacher. So I have a main class on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and a second class on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It used to be that I only had to dread MWF, when I had my fifth graders, who were widely acknowledged as the worst class at the school. Now, with my new middle school class at five, I have probably the worst middle school class, too, albeit in a different way. Silent. Surly. And, thanks to Haseyo, from whom I inherited these kids, spoiled by the cash bribes he ended up resorting to. I've tried it a couple of times, but I always feel a little, er, dirty. Hasn't helped me anyway. Going to class feels like walking out to the parking lot at night and seeing five guys sitting on your car. Quiet, hostile, and expecting money. It is an ugly scene.

6 pm: TOEFL prep. Things have improved. I have some measure of rapport with them now. But the book is ridiculous, at least for a handful of thirteen-year-olds. It's proficiency tests for college, for god's sake. A lot of it is note-taking and outlining and serious essay-writing, and all (ideally) under a time limit. There's listening stuff, conversations and lectures and things, and they speak so fast it's hard for me to take notes. And it's mostly about boring college topics, too. It's all so advanced that I'm not really teaching English in there anymore, I'm mostly teaching writing -- stuff like taking notes and summarizing information. I've started bringing in a lot of independent stuff, articles and things. One day, we watched clips from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and I asked them to tell me what was going on. In some ways, I'm kind of back to where I was in June, winging it and hoping I can figure out what this class is supposed to be. But at least now I have some idea what I'm doing. Weirdly, this has become the class where I most feel like a teacher, not just giving information, but imparting knowledge. It's still rough; everyone in there is dog-tired and sick of class, and no one can write a decent outline (except me -- I've been getting a lot better at it), but it actually feels like we're getting somewhere, even if it is slow and exhausting. My dread fear is that one day I'll actually figure it out, and then my schedule will change, and the class'll go to some other teacher who'll have to start all over again.

7 pm: Adult beginners again. Thankfully, I end my day with a class I adore. Then it's take-home gimbap, maybe some downloaded American television (Battlestar Galactica is still the best thing on; Prison Break somehow keeps getting trashier and more entertaining; Fringe, the new J. J. Abrams show, blows white-hot chunks of suckiness, but I watch it anyway), maybe an hour or two of Spore, shower. Bed.

And this is every day. Jenn, you were right, this place is a boot camp. And this is just the schedule. This is not including the further drama, the girlfriend, the news, and what all. But these are stories for another time. Probably tomorrow.