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.

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The Angry Girl

I have been in this place for over three weeks and it is still entirely foreign to me. On days in which I am not fed at school I find myself eating triangles (despite knowing their true name, I will continue to call them triangles mostly because my coworkers get a laugh at it). I have put a decent effort into learning Hangul if only so that I might be able to order a simple meal or two at the place next to my apartment.


Tonight, I walked into that place with my Lonely Planet in hand. The lady behind the counter looked at me and smiled. I looked at the menu on the wall and decided that this was not the day and just pointed to one of four photos of food they had above the kitchen.

Tteokbokki. I’ve had it a few times before but everything tastes a little better when you order it on your own. This was after all the firs meal that I had ordered what wasn’t a pizza or Mc. Donalds. Sure, I was still pointing at a picture but at least it wasn’t a recognizable picture.

Actually, it is more of a snack or a side than a meal but it hit the spot while I ate it sitting on my floor. Tteokbokki is a dish of pressed rice cakes, veggies and sometimes fish cakes in a spicy red sauce. It is not so far removed from a pasta dish at home and the rice cakes have the texture of gnocchi so it didn’t seem so foreign.

While three weeks has not been nearly enough time for me to learn the true names of the students at my school, it has certainly given me time to see their personalities. The prospect of standing and teaching a bunch of kids was daunting to me before I came. A lot of people at home have been given the impression that I hate kids. I do not hate kids; they intimidate me. I do not know why this is, but I never knew how to interact with a kid of any age. This, if nothing else, is being remedied.

I like all of the kids here. They are all hilarious beyond even that Kids Say the Darndest Things: Foreigner Edition level.

There is Clara who continues to come into the office and sit down next to me and give me candy or gum. Once she offered me a hunk of her dried fish. I would have politely accepted it but I had already politely accepted dried squid from the director’s wife and had just thrown it out the window when nobody was looking.

There is another boy who is just a bit younger. I do not even know this boy’s English name, but every day he comes into the office and plays with the magnetic darts or wants to play “Rock, Scissors, Paper.” We could be in the middle of class and I will just barely make eye contact and he will be shaking his hands ready to throw down rock. He always throws rock. He is hyper as hell but he is one of my favorites.

There is a group of three older girls that always ask me questions that they forget to translate into English and then laugh as I stare at them. Usually, they ask if I am married or if I have a girlfriend. Today, they asked why my hair looked so funny.

Then there is another girl in the same class as R.S.P Boy who hates me beyond anything else in this world. When I first had Angry Girl in my class I thought she was terribly shy. She would rarely answer any questions, seemed miserable playing any games, would not sing and simply never looked me in the eyes.

Being extremely shy as a kid is something I can relate to. Heck, I am still shy. I never pushed her to sing, and I never said anything to her about speaking up. I tried to be nice to her.

Over the past three weeks most of the students have warmed up to me. As they filter in through our sliding doors they always walk by my door and say “hello,” as I sit there and wave. Angry Girl will turn her head and walk by despite my waving.

Turns out, this girl is not shy: she might be evil.

It started with the Weather Game. The Weather Game is an incredibly lame game played on a board made of paper, with a big die made of paper. It is a simplified game that is something like Pictionary without any of the fun stuff. In turn, each player rolls the die and then moves their piece (usually an eraser) to the photo that matches the weather condition on the die. Needless to say R.P.C Boy loves this game. We played one round and he kept playing. Having nothing else planned we all kept playing. At one point everybody’s attention was turned elsewhere and Angry Girl smashed the paper die and threw it to the floor in one motion. She then acted as though the die never existed.

A few days ago I was standing in front of the Smart Board as the class came in. Each kid said “hello” to me. When Angry Girl came in she simply looked at me and said:

“No Hello!”

No smile whatsoever.

Her mannerisms give her away too. When a kid has a question or wants something repeated they will usually say something in unrecognizable English or in Korean. Angry Girl will just point at me and tap the desk with her fingers twice. Also, I kind of figured out she hated me when she flung a small glass of water at me when nobody was looking. Nothing vague about that one.

In an effort to make friends with her, I handed her a piece of gum a few days ago. She took the stick and demanded more, to which I obliged because I did not want her to stab me in the neck with a pair of scissors or something. She walked off with 5 sticks.

Honestly, I do not care if this girl hates me. I do not hate her and actually think that she is funny and at times I can’t help but crack up when she does something outlandish. On Friday we were demonstrating the concept of giving. The other kids “gave” me their pencils or books.

“Teacher, here is my pencil / book / bag / etc.“

When it came time for Angry Girl to give me something she looked around her desk until she found a piece of garbage.

“Here is some trash,” she said looking terribly pleased with herself. Point is, it was hilarious.

The reason I tell you all this is because I got my revenge. She walked into my office to find me chewing my last piece of gum. Without saying so much as “hi,” she walked over, held out her hands and said:

“Gum.”

I looked at her and she was not even smiling. To this I (a 25 year old man to a 10 year old girl) responded by spitting my gum out into my hand, holding it up and saying “here you go.”

“Ugggh! Teacher, you dirty!!”

Am I proud of myself? Yes. Yes I am.

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