Saturday, July 14, 2007

TYPHOOOOOOOOON!!!

I'm home alone and our first typhoon of the year is bearing down on us. K is off playing with her friends, and I'm eagerly awaiting the torrential rains and gale force winds that will whip the bamboo grove next door into a writhing screaming privet of doom!
Actually though, where we are, all we'll get is the rain. All weekend. All three day weekend. And yesterday. And Thursday. And Wednesday. Weather is awesome. K did laundry thursday morning. It ought to be dry by monday or so. Damp, I say.

Monday, July 09, 2007

What a day.

Not too terribly busy today, but I taught what has to be the worst class I will see this year. Its a group of 4th graders who are consistently off the freaking wall. Most of these kids were really good last year, but they seem to have been mixed together with the right combination of intelligence, rambunctiousness, and irreverence that a good teacher can harness and channel into a really crackerjack bunch...unfortunately the teacher they got has chosen to let her class run her, as opposed to running her own class. The result is absolute chaos...the wilder ones mill about the classroom actively ignoring any attempts to impart knowledge to them, they fight in the aisles...and that class also has one of the two socially retarded kids who wander in and out of the classroom screaming and kicking and crying and generally disrupting everything.
We were trying to play a game similar to musical chairs today, and so the kids were sitting in a circle, I was in the middle, explaining the rules, when one of the little bastards decided to "kancho" me, which means jamming his index finders into my rear end. The Kancho is great sport amongst the elementary school kids, boys especially...but is clearly out of bounds for perfoming on the teacher....except for these kids apparently. Their teacher did NOTHING, so I decided to mask my rage by playfully pretending to sit down on the little bastards lap. He squirmed, the chair collapsed, and we spilled into the floor. I felt like an ass for having lost my temper, but the little bastard was more subdued for the rest of the class, and the kids geehawed and did a good job with the game, so I guess I won a round. I guess.

Friday, July 06, 2007

Yup. Its hot.

The rainy season is in full effect here in the LotRS, meaning horrid humid muggy fatmans underpants weather until about the middle of July. We're enduring it as best we can, but the weather makes for difficult sleeping. We have AC in the living room, but the bedroom is au natural. After a week of waking up dripping wet at three in the morning, we got a fan. Problem solved, right? Wrong.
Fan Death!

Its a ridiculous korean superstition, or urban myth, or what have you.... but K adheres to it as well, as does her mother. Which means that I get my fan cut off at about 3 am....so I wake up sweating at about 5 instead. It is an improvement, but not so much as I'd hoped.

We're headed off to Kobe for the weekend with her mom and dad. I'm not especially thrilled, seeing as how Kobe is a Mecca for Japanese tourists because of it's international flavor...the same flavor that makes it a bit dull for international travelers. The food should be great though, and Daddy is picking up the tab...so I'm gonna make the best of it!