Highlights of my Day... Monday, March 17

1. Another Monday, or so I thought. Although my Monday’s this semester are off to a wickedly awesome start, today was a Monday like no other. Upon reaching my desk and sitting down to have a silent moment by myself before I race off to my classes, I noticed something, a gift. Two gifts actually and a letter. A small cheese biscuit sat beside a bag of cookies and taped to the cookies was a letter from one of my students. I was flattered by his generosity and sweetness but what really got to me was a particular sentence he wrote. I don’t know how to explain it but it was almost as if he tapped into what has been burdening me these past couple of months and so it left me all coughed up at my desk.

“But please do remember that you have us right next to you”

2. Despite my reading students being sophomores and thus have already experienced various other English university level courses here at Dankook, the leveling in the class is very much varied. There’s a particular student in one of my classes today that continually sticks around after class and asks me to re-explain the homework and whatnot to him in Korean. I definitely am able to get by and express myself with the level of Korean that I’m currently at but explaining finer details like homework and assignment expectations is really hard. Today I came prepared though, knowing full well that this particular student would ask me for translations. I woke up extra early today to write out a Korean letter to him, explaining him the class assignment and to label my course syllabus for him with various Korean translations.

3. Our faculty’s office is moving and so walking into the office after class, it looked like a post war scene. Desks pushed around, desk dividers on the floor and boxes scattered about. I briefly checked out the new office and it’s really, really nice. It almost looks like an English hagwon (private academy) though but it’s cool in that they’ve made this whole new English wing in our building, equipped with an English café, what looks like a mini theatre, and a computer study area.

4. Frustrations hit home tonight when Q appeared to be rather confused as to why I didn’t understand what he was saying in Korean. On average I study Korean two, sometimes three, hours a day. During my holidays I studied an average of four hours a day and yet Q hasn’t even so much studied English four hours of English in the last year! It’s so frustrating too because he’s come so accustomed to me always flipping out my cell phone dictionary to translate something. I occasionally meet his friends and family and when I do he repeatedly tells them that I’m studying Korean and so they shouldn’t try to use English with me, and when he pops in work with me he doesn’t try to speak English but instead either speaks Korean to my coworkers (who don’t know Korean) or he stays quiet. And yet when I look a bit annoyed if he doesn’t understand a random English sentence or word I say apparently I’m in the wrong. He seems to think it’s OK that he doesn’t understand English but I supposed to fully understand Korean… how does that work? How is that fair? It costs me more than my rent every month to pay for my private Korean tutoring lessons, but the effort and time alone that I put towards my Korean studies are defintely consuming and draining.

5. And if that wasn’t frustrating enough, in mid conversation he just left my house. I can’t stand that – he knows that, too. I called in the hall to him and he told me he’s going boxing. When I showed up twenty minutes later at the club all eyes were on us. Q of course acted like nothing was wrong but I looked like I was on a mission to kill. I wore my “leave me alone” invisible sign on my forehead and so the guys proceeded with caution around me. What was I to do, really, address the issue there with all acting as an audience or act like nothing was wrong when I could clearly feel my blood bubbling in my veins?!

6. Q finished training without me... and everyone took note. I was in the ring working on pad work with Junior Mint and so when Q went to leave all heads turned to me, waiting to see my reaction. In the corner of my eye I saw him approaching the ring. “Amy, call me later.. I want to talk to you, is that OK?” he yelled out for all to hear. “Great, just great”, I thought. “Now you want to talk… Way to bring everyone into this stupid spat and make you look like you’re the all-so innocent party here, no thanks” I. I continued training as if I heard nothing at all. “Don’t you want to go talk to him?” Black Skinny repeatedly asked me. “I want to be sitting at the corner of Jane and Bloor right now but I can’t so I’m here boxing. Just let me box.” I answered and so that’s exactly what I did.

7. Leave it to Panty Boy Jr. to crack a joke and squeeze a smile out of me. “Let’s get it on baby!” he said as he leaned into me… hahaha. He had no idea what he was saying but instead was repeating some line he had picked up from a Hollywood movie or an English pop song. Panty Boy Jr. is notoriously known for his “I’m bringing sexy back” line, courtesy of a Justin Timberlake song, I’m not too sure what song he got this line from though… hahaha.

8. I thought for sure Q would be at my house when I returned from boxing or he would have at least texted me… nothing. I understand he walked out to avoid an argument but after knowing me for almost two years you’d think he would have clued into some key things, one being that I can’t stand when someone just leaves me hanging like that. It’s like hanging up the phone on someone, so rude. It wasn’t even a big situation or anything that started this, it never is, but he the fact that he left me high and dry to drown in my own frustrations, I thought it was so rude. It’s nice to know, sarcastically speaking that is, that while he can so leisurely pick up the phone or drop by his friend’s house to blow off steam and talk it out, I’m stuck here alone with no one but Mi Nam to turn to and talk to. Mi Nam, a dog. And not to discredit Mi Nam cause, well, frankly I think he’s better than a good chunk of people I know, but obviously it just ain’t the same. Canada has never felt so far away as it did today.

9. Trying to sit down and focus on my listening and pronunciation Power Point presentation for tomorrow’s class was close to impossible. What I wouldn’t give for Italiano here to come pick me up in his car and drive around downtown with me and a Timmie’s in hand.

10. I’m not an emotional eater, thank you God for that, but I am an emotional exerciser (if that’s even such a word) and I also tend to take excessive naps too when I’m upset or angry. I took it out at boxing and if that didn’t totally leave me sweating like a pig, upon coming home and still not hearing any word from Q I ended up taking Mi Nam for a jog and then I went again for a late night/early morning jog at 2am.

QUESTION OF THE DAY...
Is it so much to ask?

QUOTE OF THE DAY...
It's a strange world of language in which skating on thin ice can get you into hot water.
-- Franklin P. Jones