A Wash - What My Day Was

And what my rug needs.

Mondays.

Suck.

Pretty Much. After an uneventful, but pretty relaxing weekend (I was asleep for most of it,) I was actually kind of looking forward to getting back to work today. I taught my 1st bunch of intensive classes in the morning, and then met my Pharmacist for lunch. He's charming, and the soon doobu jighae was delicious.

Then back to work, where, as usual, the classes get progressively more challenging, and I get more tired as the day drags on. We've got a couple of boys in a couple of classes that are uncontrollable. One of them has grown so much since I started teaching, he's actually a couple inches taller than me, and I'm the tallest adult at the school. He's 13 and really strong. He's not even intimidated at all by the big boss, who is his regular Korean teacher. And with me? Forget about it. I could hear his screaming at the top of his lungs in the classroom next door as I was trying (and failing) to control my own class. I should just record a tape and hang the player around my neck and hit play as I enter the classroom. I'll teach my lesson over top the sound of my own voice hollering "SIT DOWN. STOP SPEAKING KOREAN. SIT DOWN. STOP SPEAKING KOREAN. SIT DOWN. STOP SPEAKING KOREAN,..." It's like those trucks that ride around the neighbourhood selling things with their speakers blaring out some yelly sing-songy Korean.

Between classes I head back to the staffroom where my co-workers speak only Korean, yukking it up and not including me. I should have a pull-cord attatched to my back which runs out just as soon as I enter the staffroom. Ten minutes later the Korean teachers can give it a good pull, and I'll head out to my next class, press play on my cassette player, and proceed on with my "I'm not a real teacher, but I play one in this asylum" routine. The K-teachers only usually speak English when they have some question to ask me about English, which happens a few times a day. Today I'm feeling used, and my misery is compounded by the fact that it's not like I even really want them to try speaking English more often and therefore include me in the conversation. I don't even want to hang out with me, I'm so grumpy. Even when I am privy to the conversation between the teachers I have to stop myself from rolling my eyes.

I've just written a few more paragraphs, but have veered off into a topic I didn't even realize I was going to write about. So I'm going to double post.

Continuing with this post, however, it's just to say that with the exception of a very nice lunch with a very nice man, today was pretty much a wash, and a fairly crappy way to start the work week.

I bought some ingredients to make some doobu kimchi; I'm loving tofu these days, but got unmotivated about cooking once I got home. So I made a big bowl of popcorn and ate half of it while watching,....wait for it,...."Garfield."

I had to stop the movie after about 15 minutes into it though, and try to collect the tiny shreds of self respect I had left. I remember hearing about how Bill Murray had not been asked back for Charlie's Angels 2 after he had made disparaging comments about his co-actors and the quality of the script. I like Bill Murray, and thought he was trying to demonstrate some professional integrity or something like that. But then he goes and voices a fat, obnoxious, poorly-animated cat.

In the short while I watched, I noticed that Garfield has no asshole. No wonder he's so fat, 4 trays of lasagna and no hole to expel them out of. He should come and hang out a day with MY fat cat, who can instruct him on how to crap on my once again freshly laundered rug 5 times before I come home. I opened my apartment door tonight and there was shit everywhere. He'd walked through it, so tracked it all around the place. No wonder I didn't feel like cooking after the clean up.

I sound bitter. I am. Bitter is boring. Luckily, the sun will rise tomorrow morning and I'm going to consider Tuesday as my do-over Monday. And I'm going to be Jelly-bloody-sunshine if it kills me.

How's YOUR week so far?