last day at Reading Town

I woke up the morning of Friday the twenty-sixth of June with a slight hangover. The previous night we'd taken Kevin out to the sogogi restaurant. Andrea and Melissa, two other foreign teachers, came too, as well as Jeff. So there we all were, partying hearty at our favorite restaurant until closing time. Then we bought some more booze and went back to Adam and Elaine's and kept it up until four o'clock. It was a blast, but tiring. I woke up at eight, looked at my watch, mumbled something negative under by breath and went back to sleep until nine, when I saw fit to get up. I had errands to run. First I received a visit from Jacob (to determine what needed fixing around the apartment; I'd told him that the light was out in the laundry room and the panel had fallen off the switchboard). Then I went down to the bank, paid some final bills (the ones from last month; this month's were subtracted from my paycheck), and put together a fruit basket for Jacob and Lily down at Homeplus. That having been done, I went into work. Picture this: the teacher's room, with Kevin sitting at my desk correcting papers, the once-gigantic stash of candy on the top shelf dwindled to almost nothing, and kids clamoring at the door like usual. That was pretty much my last day, organized chaos. First, let me say that I think Kevin is and will be a much better teacher than I. He has prior experience, and he's game. He was stepping up to the plate even as early as yesterday and starting to teach, and his methods are tried and true. The kids, having difficulty pronouncing the word "wave," were immediately corrected when he taught them the v sound and then taught them to ignore the e (writing it on the board as "wav" helped). I see now that I was never really creative or imaginative (or strict) during my tenure at Reading Town. I think Kevin's going to be a breath of fresh air for Jacob and the parents. I think the kids will still miss me, though. Remember how I said they were clamoring at the door? The ones who weren't doing it for candy were repeating this: "Teacher! Miguke gaji maseyo!" That literally translates to "You can't go back to the U.S.!" They were asking me to stay. Little Eileen, who's always looked at me as if I'm some kind of zoological curiosity, was hollering the loudest. Classes were pretty chaotic, too. Aside from their usual demands for water and use of the bathroom, the little kids kept asking me if it was my last day. Their eyes widened and their mouths opened when they saw me nod or heard me say "yes." I think Bad Arthur finally repented. He slipped me a voucher on his way out of the door. Leslie demanded twice the usual number of "one-two-thlees." Mary, in AP1-5, desperately wanted to play rock-paper-scissors (kawi bawi bo). She plays for keeps, too: losses are punished with two fingers to the forearm, usually moistened with one's breath and delivered at high speed. My arm's bruising up nicely. But everybody wanted my phone number or e-mail. I felt like a movie star as I scribbled on countless Post-It notes and scraps of paper. (Just this morning I got an e-mail from Helia, a precious little girl in AP-1, who asked me how I was doing.) I can't describe to you the feeling I had when I was filling these bits of paper out. I've said goodbyes en masse before. I survived the final yearbook-signing frenzy in high school. But this was different: these were kids, and I was an adult. I'd spent a year with them, teaching them, playing with them, tickling them, laughing with them, yelling and screaming at them, whacking a few of them over the head with textbooks and dispensing more than a few noogies. And furthermore at the terminus of my time in Korea we'd be separated my 5,000 miles and an entire ocean. There was something intangibly different, more emotionally charged and bittersweet about our parting. The very fact that they wanted to remember and keep in contact with me, a teacher, a foreigner...well, it touched me to the very soul. And that's not even mentioning some of the letters and gifts I got. Christy shyly came by the teacher's room and gave me a wrapped gift (with the words "bye bye teacher" written on it in marker). It turned out to be a build-it-yourself music box shaped like a church which plays "Silent Night" when you turn a crank. The letters are no less precious to me. I finally did crack up (like I was predicting I would) that final evening after work, when I opened young William's letter and read it. I got as far as "I will miss you" and almost broke down right there. Even now, writing it, I'm feeling the tears welling up...it doesn't help that I'm such a sentimental ham. Classes were a bit more subdued than usual (they were a bit shy around Kevin) but for the most part they were still their old selves. Little John kept playing with paper instead of listening when we were reviewing for the test (when Kevin was reviewing; that class I just sat back and let him do his thing). As a result his scores were quite bad. That boy's never going to get his head out of the clouds at this rate. But the rest went along just fine. Kevin and I did a joint review and then administered the tests, and (helping me out marvelously) he corrected some tests as well. TRP2-1 was a bit of a trick, since nobody had done their homework (as usual), but Kevin stepped up once again and put the fear of God into 'em. In a very authoritative way, totally unlike my usual thrashing and comically indignant manner, he informed them that starting next week homework would be done, and done well. Incomplete homework was unacceptable, he stated quite clearly. The message got through. Even Ken, a rather surly reprobate at most times, sat up and said "Yes, teacher." XT2 was fun, as the two of us coached Albert though creative sentence construction (compound-complex sentences, no less). Debate class was a shambles, as nearly everyone was out studying for school tests and only Sarah, Albert, Catherine and Lisa showed up. But we still split them up into teams to marshal their arguments for the great debate. The topic that night was "Is it better to spend the money you earn or save it for a later date?" Not too hard, right? Uh-huh. The actual debate itself was unstructured and desultory. Everyone sort of stood up, gave a few disjointed statements, then sat back down again and goofed around. It was fun, though. All in all it was rather a confused sort of day, not without its rays of hope for the future and a glut of poignant moments. The goodbyes were the most difficult. It was even harder after the last bell rang, when I gathered all my belongings, took one last look around the teacher's room and the lobby, and walked out. It was perhaps fortunate that I wouldn't be spending the evening alone. I was slated to meet Brian at the Local at 10:30. I invited Adam, Elaine and Jeff along, and Julia and Gaia came too. I called up Tonya (the new South African girl) and she promised to come as well. YES! I'd sworn to introduce Brian to an eligible young foreigner and now I finally managed to come through. We all had a splendid party at the Local, talking and laughing and even having a rock-paper-scissors tournament (same stakes as Mary's game, in fact). Then we went to WaBar for a bit, but that's where the exhaustion kicked in, and in the end I had to call it. I fell back into bed and slept until ten, when I awoke and began writing this. And now I'm just sitting here, waiting to move my stuff out of my little studio apartment to Adam and Elaine's (who have kindly offered to look after it for me while I'm roaming around Korea), thinking to myself... Did I really do all that? Yes. Was that real? I hope so. Will I ever see any of those kids again? Of course. I have to come back and buy more snacks for Bella. 나는 모든 나의 좋은 학생을 사랑해요.