How to celebrate a 12-hour time difference birthday, and other more troubling difficulties.

I naturally celebrated my birthday on the day of it here, though what I kept thinking was, technically since I was born in the US and they're a good 12 or so hours behind, it was technically not yet a full year since my last birthday, yet I was feeling and acting as though it was. Kristina, I think rightly, said that it all meant I would have to celebrate my birthday for 2 days, rather than one.

My birthday wasn't great, simply because I just don't like where I work. We're gearing up for graduation for the 7 year-olds, so they'll no longer be coming to the school in the mornings. Kiara has been in charge of this cluster-fuck, and rehearsals have shown me it's going to be just that. Some of the songs the kids still don't know, even after probably a good 3 months of learning the songs. (So Anna, the vice principal I give more detail about below, decided meant the kids should sing ANOTHER song, because that won't cause any problems at all!) I was assigned the task of getting the kids lined up for going on stage for their various performances, which went as well as everything else does with me telling them what to do: mostly no one listening. At this point I'm not quite sure how I cannot exert any sort of authority over the kids, since most of them are fine the few times I have classes with them, and I don't feel intimidated or worried or anything like that. But the fact remains that lining up took at least twice as long as it should have when I was the US teacher in charge of this task. Kiara realized her mistake, so now I'm in charge of the slide show, and Sara is in charge of lining up the kids.

Anna is the assistant principal of the school. Before my working there, Kiara gushed about how awesome Anna is. Naturally I think she's a bitch. Because, really just across the board anymore, and especially after this past week, I have determined that when Kiara says something, I should do the exact opposite. We teachers were in the office and Anna was telling me something about the lines. I told her I was now doing slides and Sara was doing that. Anna asked when that happened, and now Kiara had to apologize for not keeping Anna updated on this. Why it would be that big of a deal to her, I couldn't tell you, but then Anna really does show signs of leaning toward micromanaging, albeit only occasionally. Anna asked why, and naturally, Kiara, having all the bluntness of an Asian and none of the subtlety or diplomacy of a Westerner, explained it was because I couldn't control the kids as well. Ok, I mean I say all of that about Kiara, particularly because I think in most cases among Americans, when there are others around, one tries to be a bit more circumspect in their criticisms, but the fact is that... that's the fact of the matter-- I can't control the kids! Nevertheless, I remain as galled and a bit angered and confused that Anna's response was to turn to me (remember, most of the teachers are in the room too) and says, "Oh, so you FAILED." Well, firstly, failed isn't quite the right word for this. But in any event, I was pretty shocked and, as I said, galled, angry, a bit embarrassed, etc.

I have heard often of how blunt and downright rude Koreans/Asians in general can be. Any teacher will tell you that if you usually wear makeup to school, and then one day you don't, the kids will spend the day saying, "Teacher! You are ugly today!" We're not sure if it's because they don't have the vocabulary for plain, if they don't have that sort of terminology in Korean, or if it's just in keeping with saying things that most Westerners would find a bit rude because that's just how things are. I knew of this. But I can't tell you how knowing it doesn't really mitigate the shock of it when it happens to you. What's worse for me is the added concept of Asian saving face, which is the concept of denying responsibility for a bad thing, which can include blaming the person who discovered it, or lying, or both, anything to keep you from having to say, "My bad," and, even more crucially, "Let's fix it."

So all in all, my knowledge of some of the cultural idiosyncrasies that one encounters in Asia (including the bumping into people without an acknowledgement of it in China first, but a bit here too) does not necessarily make it easier to take.

All of this has led to Anna finding other teachers to come help me get Elmo class to practice their graduation speeches. All the other classes have theirs down, but Elmo sure as smeg has not. On the one hand, I appreciate it because they are a bit better-behaved with Koreans, yet at the same time Eric, for example, acts just the same with them around as he does with me, so I continue to not feel quite so ineffectual knowing that it's what everyone there deals with when it comes to them. On the other hand, I feel like a bad teacher because I don't have sufficient authority to be able to have Elmo speech practice time on my own.

So all of that was this week as well, not all on my birthday. My birthday had its good moments:

Drawings from Clifford's Lydia and Jessica, who shocked me by remembering it was my birthday and deciding to make these during draw time

and bad, but I believe the worst moment of my birthday (not week) was when I was leaving and waved goodbye to the new owner Hetty, whom we all actually like. She was on the phone but looked like she wanted to say something, so I waited. Apparently, in the continued spirit of showing me how little I can rely on any of the Americans here, both past and present, is that the sheet with what I was told had the school's mailing address for the immigration office to mail my ARC card to (they mail it to the school, and I'd been wondering how much of a wrench the 3-day holiday Feb 9th had thrown into my getting the damed thing, because I'd been waiting a while) had the address wrong, so the post office sent it back and I had to go back to immigration to pick it up. 

Hetty told me to talk to Anna about seeing if I could go during the day on Thursday, but I have an hour class with a kid at 5, so my going at around 2:30 wouldn't have gotten me back in time. Not knowing if this would take as long and require the usual waiting, I left my damned apartment at 6:30 on Friday morning to get a nice early ticket.

As luck would have it, it only took 30 minutes to get there, and I was actually the first person there. Luck also had it that this was the day the office wouldn't open the doors for us chumps until 8:50. So I had a GREAT TIME standing outside in February for about 2 hours.

When we were let in, we found the ticket machine is not working. It took the office a leisurely 10 minutes to start manually handing out tickets, and another 5 to start calling us. I was pretty at a loss of what to do-- do I need to go stake my claim as #1 in line over by the gate to the staff desk areas? Eventually they started serving us ticket-holders. I explained the situation to a woman, and she told me to go across the office to get it. I wasn't sure if she meant across the immigration office and hallway, or just across to the little office where they have the 2 women manning a desk by the photo booth, so I went there. Naturally, they had no idea what I needed, even less because they don't speak a word of English. They directed me to window 8, to the woman who'd actually helped me get my paperwork in. I went over, explained, and she just shortly said, "It isn't here." I was like, "Uhhh, wha-!? They told me it was sent back here." "It's not here," is all she said again, a bit angrily now, before making clear I was dismissed from her line.

So now I'm frantic, because where is that FUCKING CARD so I can get a fucking SIM card and open a bank account and feel  like a human being?! I went right back over to the first woman, and now she definitely pointed me out of the office and into the hallway. I was both relieved and feeling idiotic because had I just looked while heading over to the original office, I'd have seen a sign in English that said, "ARC Card Pick-up." But then, it's always stressful going there, still wasn't sure if the line would be respected on our way there, and then the lack of the ticket printing machine really threw us all for a loop. I took a number, which was the next up, and can now, FINALLY, FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY say I'm an official legal alien in fucking South Korea. Oo da lolly.