Magic Time = Tragic Time

Spring has finally sprung and the weather in Iksan is awesome! Temperatures have reached mid-70's the past couple of days which feels amazing. I was wearing a heavy coat and sweater and still feeling cold only a few short days ago.

With the weather improving comes the YELLOW DUST! Yellow dust is just what it sounds like... dust that comes from China's Gobi Desert and falls on South Korea. The dust only last about two weeks, but everyone wears face masks and tries not to breathe it as his heavily polluted and contains toxins! WOO HOO! Exciting!

Despite the scary yellow dust, it still feels great to be outside and in the warmth of the sun. There is a lot of humidity here and I'm told I haven't even seen the beginning of the humidity. The heat is also making the smells that I have encountered here worse. Jason and Mark asked me what I thought about the smell of Korea. I said, it's definitely different! Sometimes stinky. To which Mark had to ask, Does it sometimes smell like raw sewage? YES! That's because it is raw sewage! I can't imagine that smell magnified by heat... ew.

The warm weather is also having effects on my Magic Time students (the 8 year olds). God love them... because I cannot. They have been SO bad the past two days that I have reduced to screaming at them. In just one short class, about 45 minutes, I had to take away three stacks of Yu-Gi-Oh cards, one drink and a ball. Yes, a ball. One of the kids decided he would take a ball out of his bag and pelt another kid in the head with a ball!!! What the french toast was that kid thinking! I took the ball and made him sit in the corner... yes the corner. What I really wanted to do was push him out the window.

Today they were not listening to me and I was reviewing what we had covered over the past two classes. They were talking to each other and blatantly ignoring my requests and dirty looks. So I did it, I screaming "LISTEN!!!!!!!!!!!" They jumped back and their shocked little faces knew I had reached my breaking point! The rest of the class ran smoothly, but they are on punishment mode so tomorrow they will just write sentences over and over and when they ignore me they will be sent to the office. Which will scare them as Korean adults are VERY rough on the kids.

After class I went back to the English Teacher office and looked at Brandon, one of the teachers, and said, "Magic time feels like a physical beating!" Jason said, "That's why we call it Tragic Time."

Pray for me and pray that I have patience and that I have the strength to discipline the cute little dudes. I know they are good kids and want to please me, but I just have to beat it out of them! ha!