Electric Paul

God Bless you Korea, and your random spattering of holidays for me!
I have just been informed that I have the afternoon off (no classes) tomorrow off (Grade one middle school entrance exams) and Friday off (not sure why). It's so strange, because they are so strict about some things, and then they just say "Hey, go home now, we don't need you, and won't need you for two weeks."
Jessie's school of course is another story, and expect her to attened the entire week, with classes or not, and actually just threw her three extra classes today even though she usually has no Wednesday classes normal, and she was not informed until this morning. I'd be going out of my head in that situation. I'm pretty lucky that I have pretty progressive co-teachers/VPs who realize that I spend most of the day typing on my blog when I'm done planning, and they'd rather I did that at home.
This is quickly turning into a rant, even though that had not been my original intention.
So, I have taught two days now of this strange limbo week in the middle of holidays. Yesterday went pretty well, but in class I got the most reaction to my new jawline length sideburns and shaved head, which I had forgot I had, but it was still new and shocking to them. They don't really know how to react to sideburns, because most young people have to gell their normal hair down and comb it in front of their ears to look like they have sideburns. I just tell them "It was really hot in Thailand", which explains the short short hair, but not the sideburns, but it doesn't matter, because they don't know how to follow up.
They just dance around going"E-Paul, E-Paul", which means "haircut", even though I had originally thought they were nicknaming me "Electric Paul".
My lesson consisted of asking "What did you do on your winter holiday?" (with it written on the board, of course, for those students with poor listening skills, staring into a hideous void for about a minute, with not a single answer coming, and then saying "Well, I travelled to Thailand!" and launching into a slideshow.
Mostly they enjoy the picture of me in the butterfly cutout and the monkey cutout, which I made kid-friendly with a blackbox over the moneky penis. They would not have cared, but I think it is hilarious to have a black box and a painting of a monkey penis.
There is another picture of me in the Chinatown market in Bangkok where I look like I have quite a belly (accurately) and it looks like I am pregnant. One of the girls at the girls' school yelled "Three months!", which I think is pretty funny. I was allowed to go home at noon (after lunch, which was a surprisingly non-offensive stew), and I ran into most of my grade six girls on the way. They were going to the girls' school to write their Grade one entrance exams, which I sincerely hope are more of a formailty than anything. They were all excited to see me ("E-Paul, E-Paul") and to hear that I would still be their teacher at the girls' school. I also found out (good news) that I will be working mostly with Mr Lee this semester, and that I will only be in one or two grade one classes with Mr Hyun. Mr Hyun is really nice, but he just is not very helpful in the classroom.
Maybe it'll be easier to be friendly with him when he isn't fumbling with his help all the time.
We got together with the Ryus last night, and they really seemed to like their little elephant from Thailand. They also had a pizza waiting, which was from what is probably the better pizza place in town, but unfortunately after a week of gourmet wood fire oven pizzas in Ao Nang, it just didn't cut it. I wound up having a bagel for dinner when we got home.
I'm back at the boys' school today, and I am reminded of the frustration, as the computer didn't work in the classroom, and almost spoiled my lesson. But finally, it worked, and luckily, we didn't have to play hangman all day.
I'm actually pretty happy today, and I have all this time off now, which is great, AND there is a teacher dinner this evening, which is sometimes fun (recall the social studies teacher's remark "I don't know how to love you!").

That's all for now.