The Angry Girl II

The weeks keep coming and going at a pace that is rewarding and alarming. Today marks my 80th day in Korea. Before I came here I spent a long time watching Michael Palin try to circle the globe following the way led by the fictional Phileas Fogg in 80 days without an airplane. I watched this series knowing that I would soon be leaving on my own adventure. Though my own trip would be longer than 80 days I wondered how I would fare and set that as my first benchmark.

So far, so good.

I have come to the conclusion that Korean schools are just as full of bullies as are American schools. It is pretty easy to tell when a kid is using brute strength and emotional abuse to strong arm another person into fear and anxiety. The bruises may fade but the mental anguish can last quite a long time.

It is hard for teachers to say something about the bullies sometimes, particularly when it is the teacher being bullied. Yes, I am talking about myself. I have a tormentor and she is 10 years old.

I have mentioned the Angry Girl before. She is often the topic of conversation amongst my coworkers and I as it seems that she scares the living daylights out of all of us. We have many names for her but her English name has become the Angry Girl because we felt bad calling her the Evil Girl.

In the beginning the Angry Girl was content with petty candy extortion. She would walk up to my desk, lightly smack my arm and then hold out her hand and wait for me to give her a few pieces of candy. If I didn’t have any candy I would put some garbage in her hand and she would give me another light smack and walk away.

The Angry Girl right before she smacked me
for taking her picture.

Sometimes, she would come up and make a typing motion with her fingers and say “Lady Gaga” or “Ke$ha” indicating that she wanted me to pull up a photo on the internet. I don’t like doing this because both of those people tend to have some pretty raunchy pictures that pop up but, well, I don’t want to die so I do it. She then smiles and says: “I hate Lady Gaga!” and walks away.

Last week she had a tiny sharp piece of metal in her hand. She walked up to me and pretended to be interested in what I was doing on the computer and then proceeded to rub the edge into my shoulder until it just barely hurt. She then smiled and walked away.

Once when I had her in class she tried to erase my tattoo and when the eraser wasn’t working she used her fingernail.

Anyway, general consensus was she either hated me or had a crush on me. Either way I thought she was hilarious (I still do, actually).

Last week I was sitting at the computer when I felt that familiar slug and she indicated that she wanted me to look up Michael Jackson. As I was typing I knew exactly where she was going with this but I figured she probably spent a significant part of her night thinking this one up so I went along with it.

“He die,” she said, her lips curling into her trademark super-villain smile.

“Yes, he did die,” I said.

“You die!” She said. Yep, saw that one coming and I am pretty sure thats the end of the “crush or hate” conundrum.
Still, there are times when she seems to like me. No, that’s not true. There are times when she seems to hate me less than somebody else in the room.

I was trying to teach her class which consisted of her friend, a new girl, and a boy who constantly picks on the new girl and has a loaded vocabulary of English and Korean swears. On this day the boy would not leave the new girl alone and I could not get them to shut up. I was getting frustrated and starting to get a little frazzled.

When I passed by the Angry Girl tapped my finger and made a hand movement that seemed to say that she wouldn’t tell on me or think any less of me if I just pulled back and decked the boy. In fact I think that might make me OK in her eyes.

She had been absent for a while and school had become a little bit stale. A new teacher started at the school today. She seems to be a nice Korean girl. I was talking to her as I saw the Angry Girl walk by the door and I mentioned that the little kid hated me. She laughed and asked me why, to which I shrugged my shoulders. She then said that she didn’t believe it and I walked out of the office to grab a cup of coffee.

I saw her as a shadow in my peripheral vision. By the time I turned my head I saw that maniacal grin as her feet left the ground. For a split second I thought I was going to get a hug. Then I realized that was probably not going to happen and that I would likely be dead in a second.

When I say this girl's feet left the ground I mean it. She jumped about three feet away and went totally airborne so that in addition to her own ability to induce pain she would have gravity to back her up.

I wish I could say that it sounded worse than it was. The whole school was quiet and the new girl looked as though she might not be sticking around for the rest of the day. I wish I could say that but the fact that I spent 30 minutes with a perfect red copy of her right hand on my arm would make that an utter lie.

Hopefully things don’t escalate too much further into the realm of shooting and stabbing.

Anyway, I've been feeling pretty lazy as far as photography goes so I started a little photoblog.  I am trying to put up a photo every day.  Check it out if you want!  Head this way

Things I ate today: No idea but it was spicy as hell.