I don’t think I’ve written about this yet on the blog, but Onya is now mine all mine. Me and my landlord had a passive agressive Korean-style fight, and then we had a direct western-style fight. It ended with me buying the dog for 30,000 won.
The Korean style fight went like this; during the day he would tie the dog to the fence, rain or shine, and she would have no access to food, and would just have to lie there or whatever. They were kind enough to provide her with chocolate milk, or at least that’s what I hope it was because the color of the liquid was light brown, but somebody should have told them that dogs can’t have chocolate milk because that will kill them. So maybe it was just sludge water after all.
When I came home, I would untie her and provide her with plain old water and dog food, and let her hang around the balcony. Then the next morning I would wake up and she’d be tied up again. So I would untie her again.
Finally on Friday night, the landlord’s husband caught me untying her again and he came out and started yelling at me. So I started yelling at him. We were yelling at each other in different languages, it was kind of stupid.
I called one of my co-workers and made her translate that I wished to buy the dog then and there. I offered 30,000. He laughed when he heard this. I can only imagine that this must be like if you took a goldfish home in a plastic bag because you won it at your kindergarten fair, and the neighbors offered to buy it for 30 dollars. Money in the bank!
So now me and the landlord are friends again, and more importantly, Onya is officially mine.
This week Onya had a very special surgery, the kind that makes it impossible for her to spawn any puppies. All the male doggies in the neighborhood will be heartbroken to hear the news tonight.
It was a necessary thing, although a very sad sad operation for my bank account.
- I’ve taken Onya out on multiple occasions to see how the locals react to her. The consensus is that overall westerners find her adorable and Koreans find her repulsive and monstrous. I was at the beach and Onya made a 4-year-old girl cry just by looking at her. The mother got mad at me and shouted: “dog! Very scary! Very scary!”
Shut your mouth, woman. Onya barely comes up to your knee and she stopped teething weeks ago.
Back to the operation: it was a mess. The vets did not speak English and instead of trying to bridge the communication gap, they just didn’t give me accurate or complete information on the procedure and the end result was that it appeared that they were trying to swindle me, which they might have been doing anyway.
An army of Korean dog-lovers spoke to them on my behalf, which was probably not going to make me their favorite customer. Their medical recommendations for the dog seemed to involve lots and lots of money, and by the time I got the dog home, we had mutual distrust and I won’t be going back there.
The last few nights have been extremely miserable. There is no way to tell Onya that she must spend the next seven days recuperating, instead of going about her usual active outdoor adventures. She changed positions every ten minutes or so and then decided at 6 am that sleepy time was over, and it was play time again. Wrong!
Actually, all of yesterday was miserable. While I went to work my landlord went snooping around my apartment, ostensibly to give me the electric bill, but then eventually wandering about and taking the time to let the dog out of her crate, so she could smash her water dish and eat a pencil.
My landlord called SCI to tell me that my apartment is too messy and that I need to turn the fans off. This man is not my mother. He has no business stepping foot inside my apartment unless it is to give me back the money he stole from me by blackmailing me for possession of the dog.
My landlord is a monster. If there is any justice in the world, Onya will grow up to be Clifford-sized and, in a fit of hunger, eat him for lunch one day.
Back at school, things have been equally stressful. As said before on the blog, I am being punished by some third-grade brats for not being the sweet motherly figure who left for South Africa three months ago. These kids don’t know what they want. They think they want me to be Joanne, but if I tried, it would be terrifying to them.
If I came into the classroom in a blond wig, spoke in a soft, high pitched voice, and tried to hug them, they would scream and run out of the classroom. They need to learn to let go and to tolerate a different personality set.
In the zero-boss environment of SCI, everything gets scrutinized and I’m pretty sick of this shit. I get it. Kids are sensitive. But every occasion that something happens that makes them sad or hurts their emotions or whatever does not have to over-analyzed on replay and turned into an event.
My students are discovering ever more ridiculous reasons to cry in my class.
This week, a student cried because she won a prize and the prize was…batteries. This made her cry.
Are batteries a stupid gift? Of course! (that was kind of the point, it was meant to be a joke)
But is there something offensive about this? Did I trigger a horrible memory? Is this another one of those dreaded “cultural differences”?
Whatever the case, I was told never to mention the incident again.
Yesterday, a student starting crying because it was raining outside. I’m not kidding.
I want some positive feedback. I want the hear that kids are enjoying my class. Doesn’t their opinion count? Like seriously, I know it’s school and shit, but I let them watch videos. Listen to music (English-speaking music yes, but isn’t that special?). Draw pictures. Play games. Whatever.
I try to keep the classroom environment fun and eclectic whenever possible. Surely there is SOME student out of the hundred or so that I teach that doesn’t mind being there? I want to hear from them.
The bad students don’t get to control or motivate the class. That’s why they’re the bad students. I’ll help them try to be good students, but they shouldn’t have the pull here. One bad day at school shouldn’t be enough to get a kid out of the school.
And why is it that teachers never hear of these incidences on the day they happen? Oh yes, I remember. Cultural differences.
Where’s my watergun? Dakota needs to shoot his landlord with soju…a straight shot to the head.
Culture Time 