"We are not allowed!"

The J is somewhere between here and Canada, probably closer to here, heading home. She came by this morning to bring me her DVD player (um, score HUGE) and I had to make the rule that we couldn't cry. I just can't be all crying and stuff and then have to walk to work, although I did sniffle until I ran into Lindsay/Crista/John. But still... I don't think it's hit me that the person I've seen almost literally EVERY day since she got back from Canada in October isn't gonna be around anymore. It's not real yet. And let me just say, it's a damn good thing I had to get off to work this morning, or the whole goobye scene would've been dragged out forever and I'm just not into it. So... She's gone and a new era begins.

It's a damn good thing she left, too, because yesterday I witnessed THE most ludicrous thing I might have ever seen. Afternoon classes start at 3:00. At 3:15, kids were still wandering around without a single CLUE as to where they should be. I THOUGHT I was teaching one class of kids, after I'd been asked which class I would prefer to teach, and so I'm trying to gather them up and get them going while I'm trying to figure out where my ESL class has got off to, so I can give their new teacher the test I made for them. Then this whole group of boys is standing outside my room (NOT the class I thought I was teaching) so I direct them to the room I THOUGHT they should be in, and oh no... I was wrong. Someone changed my class without even THINKING about telling me. Awesome. Plus, before this whole ordeal, I was supposed to have a brief meeting with Liz to talk about what I was supposed to be teaching for the next three hours, and did she show up? No. By the time she was ready to talk to me, the bell had rung and I had to go pull three hours worth of work out of my @$$. Sweet. I have 20 minutes a day to talk to someone, and they're not even around to tell me what the hell is going on. Again, awesome. I'm pretty sure every Korean I work with has an IQ so low that Forrest Gump is a genius in their eyes.

And if this small story wasn't proof enough, today at lunch, as I'm heading to eat, I see three tiny little boys running in the hallway. Now, lunch has JUST begun so there's no way they were done eating. So I chase them down and manage to decipher that they need to use the bathroom. So we all go to the bathroom together, and somehow another kid shows up and joins us, and I get them all peed and washed (these kids have a day and a half worth of English at this point) and back in line, and we go to their room (one was even directing me, so cute!), but one crazy kid (I really think there's something wrong with him...) runs off and went his own way, but we all ended up at the same place. I open the door, and the lunch teacher is just serving food like the kids weren't even gone. It's a class of 7. Four were gone. And she didn't seem to notice. And even if she LET them go to the bathroom, a)they'd just been about 5 minutes before to wash their hands for lunch so they shouldn't have had to go and b) you don't let four 4 year old boys go to the bathroom by themselves in one group. ARE you retarded? Really. Seriously. And let's just say it's not even functionally retarded. Just plain STUPID. I don't know if I can handle another full year...

Anyway, I'm just gonna keep on keepin' on and doing the best I can. Really, what else can I do? And the new kids are REAL cute. It's a little bit awesome. :)

Much love.