Four times a year, Korean middle-school students undergo the grueling trials and tribulations of exam time, which they call 내신 (nae-sin, which I think might translate more as "transcript building" than "exam" per se). During the month preceding the exams, the hagwon schedule changes and they go into an intensive test-prep period. As a foreign, non-Korean-speaking teacher, I am viewed as useless for this enterprise, which I desultorily concede – it's due to the fact that the quarterly English exam is mostly written in, um… Korean. Which is to say, it's a test of English grammar and vocabulary, in which all the "meta" language (how to answer each question, the grammatical descriptions, etc.) are all in Korean.
Anyway, the consequence of this is that I get an easier teaching schedule for a few weeks, four times a year. After the long, dry, hard-working winter, today my nae-sin semi-, mini- vacation started, and along with it, we had a weird, almost summer-like thunderstorm, which felt quite eerie and alien in early spring, and after a precipitationless 4 months of Siberian winter.
My middle school students pause at this window we have, now, between the staff room and the hallway, in our new building. They gaze at me sulkingly, with the forlorn faces of hunted animals.
Seokho poked his head into the doorway of the staff room.
"Do you miss me already?" I asked, joking.
"A lot," he sighed.
"Four more weeks!" I tried to offer, as upbeat as possible.
I finished posting my term grades and glided home in the rain, feeling as if a burden had lifted.
In fact though, I miss the middle-schoolers, too, when they descend into memorizationland. The whole middle-school teaching thing has grown on me, I guess. The little ones are fun, and I like to play, but the middle-schoolers offer opportunities for communication.
[daily log: walking, 6 km]