Monday, December 22, 2008

Shanghaied

Going to Shanghai next week for another Chinese Christmas...

Then back to Korea for three weeks to teach English camps...

Next stop after that is the Philipines for about a week...

Me and Matt are gonna meet Sam and Lana there...



Ju ga lay?????

Here's something that happened a few weeks ago... Below is an email I wrote to my mom about it... Rather than write about it again, I'll just post that email...

So, last week I'm teaching my last afterschool class of the day.

It's 4:30 and I'm about to start class when this crazy woman and her ajumma friend bust into my classroom. The woman starts yelling at the boys and then slaps 1 boys in the face REALLY hard. I run back to try to stop her but before I get there she slaps another boy just as hard. These boys are only in grade 4.

I really just didn't know what to do. I don't know the rules in Korea. I dont' know if I can push this lady out of the room, etc... So I just room to find the Mrs Park (my Korean co-teacher was still in the classroom but she was stunned).

So, the Mrs Park and a few other teachers run back to my classroom and take control. It was unbelievable! She was an expert. She was telling the crazy mom to shut up and she just commanded everyones respect.

By now, 5 or 6 kids are crying because they are so afraid of this mother of this girl Angela. Angela is also in this class. Her mom said the boys tease her daughter and sometimes steal her shoes after class. But, Angela never told any teachers about this she just told her mom. So her mom came to school to kick some ass or something.

Mrs Park tells her to apologize to everyone and if she leaves right now, it will all be over. So, she apologizes to the boys, to my co-teacher, and to me. But I didn't really want her apology and I just ignored her when she was speaking to me.

Anyway, Angela quit that class so that shouldn't happen again....

The only thing I heard from the mom that I understood was Jew-ga-lay...

It means "Do you want to die?"...