They Call It "Payday" Because They Make You Pay.

A Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of students getting excited and participating should have tipped me off...the God of Balance was just waiting to smite me. As the first payday of my "adult" look-at-me-I-have-a-full-time-job life rolled around, I thought today might be my first moment of Korean glory.

No, life calls it "payday" cause it makes you pay.

This specific toll came in the guise of 6 consecutive classes of 40 sixth graders staring at me like dead fish. I probably could have chucked my whiteboard marker at a kid's forehead, right between the eyes, and not gotten a reaction.

"So who is stronger? Ironman or the Hulk?"

:: blank stares ::

"Who has a cooler cape? Superman or Batman?"

:: inspecting fingernails, sighing, slipping into comas ::

"Who is scarier, Wolverine or...um...me?"

:: blink of recognition ::

"Teacher!! Teacher scarier!!!" :: a few laughs ::

"OK. Good! So repeat after me! Teacher is scarier...than Wolverine!"

:: blank stares ::

Come on, the topic was comparing superheroes! I even showed the intro to the X-Men cartoon! An average of maybe 5 kids/class had done the homework...that just seems like bad odds. All they had to do was draw 3 superheroes to compare in class. I mean, you could just draw a dot or something and call him Speck-Man...whose power is being too tiny to see. You could have brought in a spaghetti stain and called it Fire-Cloud Invisible Woman...whose power is...being indistinguishable from leftovers. If you're going to be lame, at least try to be creative about it.

My co-teacher informed me later that they thought that the content was too easy. But when I introduced harder words and more complex sentences, the reaction was the same. Except they smelled a little worse, as it was after recess. As the day came to a close, I kind of just wanted to follow suit and nap at my desk. But no, I had to try and complete an internet bill payment for my utilities. Two extremely frustrating hours later, I was somewhat informed that my bills might be taken automatically from my account, but on the other hand, they might be being subtracted from the previous tenant's account still. So we really didn't need to have spent the last 2 hours doing what I was doing.

And finally, 4:40 rolled around. And I was free. I got out of there faster than I ever left school while still a student.

On the plus side, as of today, Dathan and I have a net value hovering somewhere above 5 million. That's right, we are high rollers. Of course, if you convert that number into USD, the effect is somewhat less impressive.

But this is Korea ...so I guess you can say we won.