Really. Not even a real cow. I woke up, this morning, from a dream in which I was pretending to be a cow on stage, in a silly cow costume.
Perhaps this is how my subconscious deals with the anxieties around performance and managing children, in the context of yesterdays huge open-house and bigwig inspection, at work? I'm not averse to being silly – I've donned many a mask or goofy hat or wig during teaching time. But dreaming about it, in an otherwise amorphous setting, is a bit unexpected.
I may meet my friend Mr Kim later today, but at the moment, I'm feeling unmotivated. I will just relax this morning, I guess.
Yesterday went OK. I met one of the important people from the power plant, which provides so much of the supplementary funding that makes this otherwise poor rural school amazingly wealthy. He had bad teeth and bad English. I shook his hand and said "만나서 반갑습니다."
There was a funny moment when I was meeting some of the kids' moms. Ms Ryu introduced several of them to me, as they sat around a table eating green-tea cookies and chatting about who-knows-what. She said, "This is Ha-jin's mom, and this is Gyu-tae's mom."
"Oh, Gyu-tae," I cried out. "Oh, my, god," I added, reflexively – because Gyu-tae is a behaviorial challenge of the first order. The woman seemed to understand that reaction, though, because everyone just started laughing, including Ms Ryu. Gyu-tae is a great kid: smart and big-hearted. But he's never, ever, under any condition… still or focused. When I have him in my afterschool class, I probably say things like, "Gyu-tae, sit down, please," or "규태야, 그렇지 마세요" [Gyu-tae, don't do that] once every several minutes.