My students are trying a new strategy to make sure I’m not lonely. Instead of asking me if I have a girlfriend, they are just telling me straight up. A recent conversation:
STUDENTS: Teacher, girlfriend?
ME: Yes I have one in the USA (a safe answer).
STUDENTS: Teacher you lie. (ouch)
ME: No, I don’t lie, her name is–
STUDENTS: Teacher, you have girlfriend at Yale. (surprise!)
ME: What?
STUDENTS: The tall girl with the glasses. (who?)
ME: Who?
STUDENTS: Robyn teacher! (Ohhhh. Sorry Robyn, but…..tall? I guess to sixth graders everyone is ‘tall’)
ME: Oh, okay. Sure, whatever.
I really do enjoy the students’ attempts at matchmaker. It’s like arranged marriage in reverse, where the kids choose who the adults will have to be with. I wonder if relationships would work out better this way.
I’m also wondering if the students gossip about their own little Alternate Universe Yale, in terms of who’s ‘dating’ who and what’s going on with the teachers.
One of my students saw me yesterday and ran away. Another student saw me later on and started dancing with me in the street. I like the second student better.
Earlier this week, as the title suggests, I decided to sport a new look in honor of ‘Movember.’ I went up to Jeju City on Tuesday for what I thought was going to be a really fun “mustache party,” but by the time I arrived most people had already left and I was the only person who had a mustache.
The night turned out to be eventful anyway. Someone tried to start a conversation with, “so…….you like books?” Later on, I tagged along for someone’s birthday party and tried some chicken gizzard, which had the distinctive taste of something you would only eat at 2 in the morning on someone’s birthday after some drinks.
There was going to be some dancing and karaoke, but then drama happened, and that just ruined everything. I did wind up crashing at the apartment of another guy named Aaron. That was kind of fun.
At the mustache party there was a drink called the “Big Unit.” Up until Tuesday, I did not realize that the big unit signified anything other than Randy Johnson (who is ACTUALLY tall, by any standards, and actually kind of scary). The commercial for GEICO where Randy Johnson gets into a snowball fight is pretty hilarious. Anyway, now I know what the “other” Big Unit is. I feel indifferent about this new knowledge.
Speaking of baseball, someone tried to “explain” to me about what Moneyball is. I know Moneyball. I’m sick and tired of Moneyball. I would like to see the movie, just so I can confirm what I already know, which is that whatever merits the movie might have as a STORY, it is so completely fake and unrelated to what actually happened in real life that I don’t think I’d be able to appreciate it. I remember thinking after a time that the book Moneyball was a bastardized version of real life, and the movie is supposed to be a bastardized version of the book, so that makes it twice removed from anything in reality.
In the film, Brad Pitt plays Oakland Athletics’ GM Billy Beane.
Billy Beane is not my lover. He’s just a man who claims that I am the one. But the kid is not my son. (ba da ba da ba)
Anyway, here are some mustache pictures:
Culture Time 
Eeks. You just need the bike, the tatoo of the narwhal and a leather jacket with a skull on the back.
Please get new sunglasses.