Halloween, but I Can't Stay on Topic.

Tomorrow is our big Halloween party at my school. I still haven't really settled on a costume, even though it's 2 am the night before! HA! Actually, I'm sure I'll either go as a cat or as nothing. Most likely cat.

I stayed an extra 2 and a half hours after work tonight preparing the crafts for our craft room. We're making bookmarks, which I thought was a simple and easy thing to do. As usual, though, nothing is simple here. I had to work around two different paper sizes, which required a time munching layout that had to be designed. I hand-drew our school's logo on the master copy ten times. I thought that was a nice touch, thankyouverymuch, and also drew all the funky Halloween art to be coloured in and jazzed up by our students. Then the photocopier broke. Then the laminator broke.

These machines fit right at my school, which is falling right the hell apart. All the doors handles are broken from the kids playing tug-o-war with them between classes. All the cassette players are broken, including the one in the office that used to pipe out the same "Let's Chant" during every break and before classes. Frankly, good riddance. If I had to listen to "What's Your Telephone Number?" one more time I was going to flip my lid. Most of the chairs are broken from the kids leaning back or forward or sideways on them. It's rare that a day goes by that I don't have a student have their chair slip out from under them and they go crashing to the floor. I swear, one of these days I fear a kid's going to catch his chin on the table on the way down from a "lean-forward" slip and bite their own tongue off.

The toilet seat on the one "Western style" toilet is broken. The sink's been broken forever, so there's always a standing pool of filthy water in the middle of the bathroom floor. Which we all track back into the school. It's so gross.

I've gone off-topic. I was talking about Halloween.

I think tomorrow will be pretty fun! I hope! I put together all the activities and went shopping for a lot of the materials. Last year I helped a lot in the planning, but this year everything's been largely left up to me. Jane's been pretty helpful, though. I really like the woman. I like how she greets me with a hug. I like her sense of humour and the way she came in like a lion, rather than a lamb. Thing is, she's got a strong personality, as have I, so I think in the future we could have some conflict. If we do, I predict it will have something to do with her abysmal listening skills. Or her constant repeating of the phrase "you know?"
("I watched that, you know, movie with that actor, you know, the one whose married to, you know, that, you know, blonde lady with the, you know?")
NO, WOMAN! I don't know!!!!

She's not popular with the Korean teachers, and today bothered Judy so badly that in all likelihood tomorrow will be Judy's last day of work.

The new teacher barely speaks to me. I'm fairly sure the students barely speak English in her class. She has a verrrrryyyy laid back approach to teaching. She decided, in the middle of one of her Phonics classes the other day, that it was time for a 10 minute break. Suddenly I had her little student's faces all in MY window, sticking their tongues out at my students, until I roared at them to get back to class- only to find out that Gloria had told them to go watch TV. If she feels like she has finished her "lesson" she just lets the students go, regardless that the bell isn't for another 8 minutes. I mean, the littlest kids can't write the alphabet, you'd think she might be able to come up with SOMETHING to occupy them! I would have expected a little more PEP for a new employee, but she comes to school 20 minutes before classes start and does ZERO prep work or planning for her classes. She's out the door 3 minutes after the last bell rings too. And she's getting away with it.

Yesterday, across the street from my school, a grandfather became irate with one of the video games they have peppered all over the streets here for the kids to gather around and play. He beat it with his cane repeatedly. The loud THWACKing noise drew me to the window to watch him. A grandmother came up and argued with him for awhile and he screamed at her between lunging at the video game. The grandmother went away, and the grandfather got tired and lay down on the sidewalk and took a nap. For an hour and a half. Finally, the police and an ambulance came along and they heaved him onto a stretcher and took him away.

I expect that after he dries out over the weekend in the hospital he'll be bright and ready to step in as Judy's replacement. The kids can play tug-o-war with him while he naps.

I'm working at a circus.

Tomorrow will be fun, I hope. (Yah, I give up writing about Halloween.) It may very well not be, though. It's going to be the first time I've seen my boss since I had that little Monday chat with her. I think if she had her way - she'd never come back to school. I don't blame her. It feels like things are spinning out of control. But perhaps it's just me.