Day: January 31, 2009

Today we had the semi-annual speech contest. I was there as a “judge,” and a coach for some of my students, and also “emcee” for the second round. Jeez… talk about conflicts of interest.
I managed to compartmentalize, and hopefully I was as objective as possible in my judging. I was feeling shafted when one of my hero students, Jessica, didn’t make it to the second round, as I thought she’d done amazingly well, but then I learned that she had in fact placed second out of everyone in the first round, but that her mother had withdrawn her. Hmm… the motives of parents are indeed obscure, at times. Sarah-teacher reported to me that Jessica was in tears over having to leave without a prize despite her excellent performance. I felt bad for her, but better that at least in this instance, it wasn’t hellbridge who was being a collective jerk.
I was proud of Willy (who I quoted just yesterday). And little Dahye didn’t do badly, though didn’t advance to the second round. There was a bittersweet moment, because I’ve been trying really hard to help Dahye feel sufficiently confident to stand up in front of adults and peers and give a speech: she’s a tiny 8 year old with near-perfect English, but is terribly shy. But I heard she did pretty well… I wasn’t there because I was judging a different group.  After the first round, waiting for the announcement of the 20 students who would advance to the second round, she ran up to me and declared, “it’s like a prison in there!”  She was referring to the “waiting room” that her group of kids was in.  And she grabbed my hand and held on.  And at that moment, two 6th graders, Sydney and Eunice came up, and said, “Oh, teacher… is that your daughter?”  I think they were joking, but it was very sweet:  Dahye just grinned up at me with big eyes.
After the contest was finally over, the prizes given out, the parents herded out, teachers and staff and “guests” (corporate types from hellbridge corporation) went out for a late lunch.  And as is my custom, when the soju (Korean rice vodka) started flowing, I demurred, “술 안마셔요” (sul an-masheoyo = I don’t drink alcohol).   They were so impressed with this bit of Korean, but they were of course dumbfounded at my rejection of alcohol — foreigners in Korea have a reputation for being heavy drinkers.  It isn’t really true that I don’t drink… but Koreans are so hardcore about drinking that I find it easier to simply pretend I don’t do alcohol when socializing with them, as I’ve never been one to hold my liquor well.