"Maak Teachuh!"

So at the school, they call me "Maak Teachuh." Which is kind of like a title I guess, as there's also "Amy Teachuh" and "Brian Teachuh" and so on.

So yeah! Today (Sunday) is my first day off since I got here- I have no idea what I'm gonna do! Even still, it's a much needed day off, as the last few days have been crazy- and not just from the whole 'moving to the other side of the planet' deal.

Y'see, this week has apparently been the busiest week of the year at the school. It's the last week of their class session, so they spent most of the time practicing for a big graduation ceremony (more on that later). As a result, there wasn't really much time for showing me the ropes- which is fine. For the most part, I would either shadow one of the other teachers...or, one of the Koreans would say "Maak Teachuh!" and have me cover for some class whose teacher was sick. Which was fine, honestly- even if nobody really knew what said kids were supposed to be doing. Sometimes I didn't even get five minutes prep time before. It's pretty nuts.

And then, on Saturday, there was the graduation ceremony- which was ridiculously chaotic. The term 'herding cats' comes to mind. For example, one of the little skits the kids were putting on was the Three Little Pigs. But...the costume rental place only sent one pig costume. Oops. As best I could figure, there were about two dozen (maybe a few more) kids altogether. Each kid was in about three little performances like a skit, or a song & dance number. I couldn't help but wonder about the appropriateness of having first-graders sing "Summer Nights" from grease, but I figure they're not that familliar with the musical in the first place, so...yeah.

In any case, 3 costumes X 25 kids equals seventy five costumes to keep track of, which was a bit of a mess. Cleanup didn't take THAT long, but I think my experience in theatrical logistics may be more useful than Stanislavsky while I'm here.

This said, while things were crazy behind the scenes, the actual stuff on stage went off very well. The kids did great, and had a good time- and their parents just ate it up. Lots of cameras and clapping and so on.

Regardless, they keep telling me things will be better next week, once they'll have the chance to actually work me into the schedule. So yay for that. I'm also peeking at my contract- if we're going with the original dates, I'll be able to leave right before next year's graduation mayhem. Mwa ha ha.

So after we cleaned everything up from the performance, we went out for dinner (read: drinking). Which warrants a post of its own!