Highlights of my Day... Monday, March 30

1. Great, now not only does Italiano call me “Mrs. Robinson” but now so does one of my coworkers… hahaha. In my defence, I’ll say this, just because I’m older and am a teacher now doesn’t mean I can’t do it all in style. I love my jewelery and clothes, and yes, 9 out of 10 times I’ll pick style over comfort.

Acquired Nicknames of my Past & Present (that I remember):
Baby Bear
Henryetta
Mercedes
Blondie
Spaz-owski
Poo
Chameleon
Bere-Bum
Flipside Girl
Su Hyun

2. It’s been pretty cool and very self-rewarding to have taught some of the same Dankook students for a couple of semesters now and there’s one particular student that continually fascinates me. He went from being this bad boy, MP3-listening student who sat at the back of my class and who tried every means possible to get out of volunteering, participating and doing work. This semester marks our third class (maybe even our fourth class) together and now he won’t stop talking… how ironic, I love it!

3. During silent reading class, I approached this very same student… let’s call him “Golden Boy”. When I asked Golden Boy what he was reading for my class he showed me his article. It was clearly beyond his level so I suggested he use one of my extra articles. As it turns out, however, he’s been studying this article everyday for the past week and he’s set it in his mind that he’ll conquer it… wow, mad, mad props to him for that; that’s awesome!!! I tell ya, at that very moment I couldn’t have been more proud of him.

4. Today’s class article was titled “I Cut the Cheese” and yup, it was about tooting and yup, I felt rather silly talking to a room packed with university students about tooting.

5. When I asked for a volunteer in class, a student responded with “a volunteer to toot?”… hahaha. Gotta love Korean students… kids may say the darnest things but my Korean students say the funniest things… hahaha.

6. Tang is convinced that the label “Trouble Maker” should be added to my list of acquired nicknames after Little Miss I-Deserve-A-Kick-To-My-Head showed up for boxing tonight. Note, I keep on changing her name and I apologize. She’s the girl that some months ago wiped my dirty gym sock on Junior Mint’s face… ya, now you remember her. Anyways, my means of dealing with her lately has been to ignore her despite a couple of teammates of mine who are quite consistent with egging me on, insisting I just punch her. I can’t just punch her though… gosh no.

7. Maybe I am a trouble maker though. I’ve been thinking about it lately and yes, I think I am somewhat a troublemaker. I’ve been raised by two parents who are quite opposites when dealing with situations. My father is the calm, cool, collective one but my mother, God bless her soul, she’s a strong-headed Polish/Austrian who’s not shy with expressing her self. Both my parents have a strong and very definite set of beliefs but they both go defending them in opposing ways. I use to be more like my mother in how I reacted to situations but now I’m more of a balanced mix of both. Living in a country where I didn’t originally speak (and am still learning) the native language, where everything is really not what life use to be like for me in Canada, has taught me a great deal of patience. But I still have those “invisible do-not-touch buttons” on me that if pushed, will and do bring out the more aggressive, very open, very honest side of me.

8. What I said to that Leechard Hair Shop girl the other day was my brutally honest opinion of her and some may think it was inappropriate of me to say it, I think it was somewhat inappropriate too to a bit, but sometimes people need to hear the brutal truth and need to be put in their place. OK, fair enough, I definitely put her in her place but maybe I should have placed her there more gently. I know that now though, but at the time I was too preoccupied with trying to relax myself and refrain from literally knocking her into her place, like with my fist.

9. Guess what?! Boxing rankings in Korea came out today and guess who is number four?!!!... ME! Yup, I am ranked fourth in the Korean female flyweight boxing weight class! This is awesome news for me in that my sponsors are going to be all over this like white on rice but bear in mind that it also brings up the fact that there are so few currently active female boxers in Korea. My opponent this past February is in 2nd place. Mind you, they don’t even have a current female flyweight champion in Korea which only proves how tough it is to score a scheduled fight…. Damn. Both exciting but frustrating. Never the less though, I’ll happily take fourth place and gladly reap the royalties of it.

10. Despite my ranking however, it didn’t get me out of getting my daily beats from Junior Mint and his four-foot long beat stick that apparently seems to be my new training “partner”… ouch!!!

QUESTION OF THE DAY...
What do YOU do with the past?

QUOTE OF THE DAY...
Experience is not what happens to a man. It is what a man does with what happens to him.
-- Aldous Leonard Huxley