Hannukah and a Classroom Striptease

This was a bad week for school discipline. One of my students decided during the middle of a class that he was too sexy for his pants, and answered the question of whether he wore boxer or briefs for everyone who did or didn’t want to know.

In case he forgot there was a teacher in the room, I let him know very vocally that this was inappropriate and a pretty fast one-way ticket to see the director of the school. As it turns out, nobody in positions of authority were downstairs, so I gave Jinhee a call.

Here’s our conversation:

Aaron: “Jinhee, a student just pulled his pants down in my class.”

Jinhee: “What? What happened?”

Aaron: “A student pulled his pants down in my class!”

Jinhee: “Well…were there any girls around?”

Aaron: “….No.”

Jinhee: “Oh. That’s okay then. Cultural differences.  Just let him go back to class.”

????????????????????

Since this wasn’t really what I wanted to hear, I took him up to the third floor office so he could get reprimanded by the boss’s wife. Here, the student denied everything, and then we got THIS exchange:

Aaron: “I saw his underpants!”

Boss Wife: “What color were his underpants?”

Aaron: “White.”

Student: “Nope. Sky blue. See, you didn’t see them! Teacher you lie!”

Ugh.

At that point I just left the student there and went back to my class. Later on he came back and apologized, explaining that this is not considered to be ‘unusual’ to mistake a classroom for a Chippendales.

Despite the fact that nobody seemed to consider this inappropriate, I’m calling Bullshit on cultural differences. A classroom, even a hogwon classroom, is not a men’s locker room. Unless you’re playing Strip Hangman on the whiteboard, I don’t expect any clothes to come off in my classroom. It’s also really cold this time of year, people should be adding layers, not shedding them.

Besides, there was a girl in the room. I’m very certain the CCTV camera is a woman. And the eyes of the CCTV never close.

In grander news, I hosted an early Hannukah party this Thursday, and it was a great success. Hannukah doesn’t officially start until next week, but I was impatient and besides, is it ever too early to get into the holiday spirit? I spent almost the entire week preparing to turn my apartment into a place that humans could live in. It was a very ambitious project, but eventually I succeeded.

I also finally got my gas fixed, and took the first hot shower in my apartment since I arrived. This had to be one of the top 10 best showers I’ve ever had.

On Wednesday night, I stayed up until 5 am peeling potatoes to make latkes. I also met my neighbor for the first time since I’ve been here. She was angry because even though they’re allowed to leave their garbage on the landing, when I tried to do it, this was considered to be rude. My neighbor was so angry she screamed at me in a language I didn’t understand my whole trip down the stairs. I hope she got some satisfaction out of this.

The holiday package I received last week turned out to be quite useful. In addition to latkes and shrimp rolls (whatever, it probably wasn’t a kosher kitchen anyway), we spun dreidels, drank wine, and some people were forcing my Beaker puppet into doing unspeakable acts. I found Beaker hiding under the couch the next morning. Also, after enough wine and beer, people were throwing 100 won coins and popcorn around my apartment.

I woke up the next morning to a disaster area, and it took a full two days before I summoned the courage to clean it all.

Also at this point I’d like to give a shout out to my co-worker Charlotte, who ended doing the majority of the cooking, and even though she was dainty with the oil, the popular consensus was that her latkes were delicious. Her work did not go unnoticed, and I award her 300 glamor points for the effort.

I’ll put up photos of the party, and my visit to a seashell museum, in a later post.