Yesterday, before leaving work, my new main co-teacher, Ms Lee (no relation to my previous main co-teacher, Ms Lee) told me that we would have no class on Tuesday, because the kids were taking some kind of important test. This is common enough. So I was planning on coping with yet another day of “deskwarming” – so soon after getting back into the swing of things with regular classes.
When I got here this morning, she came over and told me that we had classes today after all. I had materials prepared, and so without comment I helped her get ready for class. She asked me, “How did you know the schedule was changed again? It seems like you already knew. I only found out last night by text message at home.”
I explained that I knew that the schedule would change again. She said, “How could you know?”
I answered, “This is Korea, so I just figured.”
She found this embarrassingly funny.
I think classes went fine, this morning. I love the new group of first-graders – who I knew in kindergarten last year. And the new second-graders are my old, beloved, hyper-rambunctious first-graders.
Meanwhile, the school’s administrative office is playing a lot of kafkaesque “imcompetent control and oblique obfuscation” games. I’m trying to ignore that. The kids are awesome.
Day: March 7, 2011
Caveat: Stormtroopers
[broken link! FIXME] I've been surfing a lot of visual arts and graphic design sites and blogs. One I found recently is called "love all this," and there I found a link to a person who took 365 photos of star wars stormtrooper figurines (one a day for a year) and posted them to flickr. I began surfing through the pictures, and found myself inexplicably moved to laughter but also even poignancy and pathos.
Like any good visual narrative, it's easy to "read between the lines" in the characters' actions and postures, deducing feelings and mental states that obviously aren't really there (since they're just plastic toy figurines, after all). I found the whole thing genuinely compelling.