Tuesday 11 May 2004

M7 And My Wife

Class chemistry is a continually fluctuating beast, and I find that a class I can't stand one month can transform into a really good class the next month. Sometimes the disappearance or addition of a student can do it, sometimes a change in textbook, sometimes just the passage of time.

M7 are a prime example of this. Months ago they were my most dreaded class. Rodger, Abraham, Paul and Phillip the four main rats I wanted to exterminate. Just as I'd got the class tamed, term changed and the class lost Phillip (and the very odd Fred, who I can picture murdering a hooker in later life) and gained some girls.

It killed the class and put me back to square one, with the class either clammed up in silence, or with insolent comments flying around.

But since that, they've come round again and they're great fun. Always at the verge of cheekiness, but I keep them in line and they're often quite funny. They like to avoid actual work and just chat as much as possible, which I encourage as it relaxes them and is better practice at the language than reading from their book, which they shut off from half the time. As long as they don't become silly I don't mind.

One of their favourite subjects of recent was my "wife". They occasionally at least feign an interest in my life, and they wondered if I was married. As I have a ring (my delightful owl ring I bought in New York) on my non-wedding finger I pretended that I was. This got them very enthused and they were desperate to meet her. I told them I'd try and arrange for her to visit the next week.

Of course, not actually being married meant that unless my situation were to rapidly and dramatically turn around, it was a promise I'd be unable to fulfill. But I led them on for a while, saying she was sick or working, and at one point I brought in a selection of 5 photos of girls so that they could guess who my wife was.

Three photos were of me with female friends, and two were random photos of two of the most unappealing woman you're likely to see. God knows who they are, but they appeared in my photos. One looks like a bloated and shaved gorilla, and the other one is this sweaty muthra of beastwoman, with greasy thinning hair. These women are of such low standard that I'd probably reject them even when drunk (probably).

Anyway, M7 loved this, and found the two less visually appealing women very funny. And curiously, they all unaminously voted for my wife being Sarah, that is, the Sarah that was in my final year of university and was a flatmate of mine briefly. I'm out of touch with her now, but she got all the votes, with neither beastwoman, Finnish ex-flatmate Heta or half-Malaysian Diana (selected because I thought I might fool the kids into thinking I was married to a Korean) getting a vote.

So they were very keen to meet my wife by now, but the odds of me even faking it were now low, given that I'd have to had shipped in Sarah. So I came in one day, they asked eagerly about my wife, and I informed them she'd been killed in a boating accident in Busan they day before. They all wondered why I seemed so happy about it, and I said simply "money."

Being Korea, they actually accepted this very readily.

Anyway, the topic of interest yesterday was who would win in a fight between me and Korean teacher Daniel. No decision was reached. Daniel seems a bit soft but he spent time in the army and the police, so may have some tricks.

Alas, I fear my M7 class may revert to it's old annoying form. They're merging with part of the disbanded T4 class, three loud girls. Two are ok, but then there's Annie, this wire-haired bag of a 12 year old, who talks and gripes incessantly, and won't be a good influence on the lovely students of M7.

I may do what Daniel does. Get the ruler out and whack them. I may not have military training but I can still injure a 10 year old if I want to.

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