Friday, February 13, 2004
Hot For Teacher
On Wednesday, I left my hair loose when I went to the ELC's supplemental showing of the movie based on Nightjohn. It's not a day we normally have class, I was in jeans and a sweatshirt, it was late in the afternoon, I didn't think anything of it. No less than 3 of my male students proceeded to tell me that leaving my hair down made me "more beautiful" and that I should do it more often. It'd just be cute, except most of these students that I think of as being so young are actually my age or older than me, which is very strange to realize.
Today, a student asked if he could see me after class. Since I spent yesterday conferencing with another student about semi-serious culture shock issues, I was expecting more of the same. February is just all around a bad month to live abroad in the northern hemisphere, after all. Turns out, he just wanted to give me a box of Valentine's chocolate. This is even odder when you understand that in Japan and Korea, on Valentine's Day, boys never give anything to girls; it's always the other way 'round. I guess he caught on to American customs quickly. Or something.
Graham tried to say it was nothing by saying that his students all tell him he's handsome when he combs his hair differently, which made me feel less weird until I observed his class yesterday and saw that besides the two middle-aged married men, all of his students are young Korean women of the giggly variety. Mark is starting to wonder if he should be jealous, or perhaps start showing up around my classroom with a proprietary air.
Run!
Well, that was interesting. We were sitting in the Panera near one of the entrances to the Lansing Mall, finishing our soup and talking about one of Mark's computer science professors, as I recall, when suddenly there were sirens and someone ran through the doors and down the entrance hallway. We both thought, "Oh, sirens and you pretend to run from them, haha." But then two policemen ran through the doors as well, and yelled, "Which way?" The parking lot was full of police cars. We still have no idea what it was all about.
On Wednesday, I left my hair loose when I went to the ELC's supplemental showing of the movie based on Nightjohn. It's not a day we normally have class, I was in jeans and a sweatshirt, it was late in the afternoon, I didn't think anything of it. No less than 3 of my male students proceeded to tell me that leaving my hair down made me "more beautiful" and that I should do it more often. It'd just be cute, except most of these students that I think of as being so young are actually my age or older than me, which is very strange to realize.
Today, a student asked if he could see me after class. Since I spent yesterday conferencing with another student about semi-serious culture shock issues, I was expecting more of the same. February is just all around a bad month to live abroad in the northern hemisphere, after all. Turns out, he just wanted to give me a box of Valentine's chocolate. This is even odder when you understand that in Japan and Korea, on Valentine's Day, boys never give anything to girls; it's always the other way 'round. I guess he caught on to American customs quickly. Or something.
Graham tried to say it was nothing by saying that his students all tell him he's handsome when he combs his hair differently, which made me feel less weird until I observed his class yesterday and saw that besides the two middle-aged married men, all of his students are young Korean women of the giggly variety. Mark is starting to wonder if he should be jealous, or perhaps start showing up around my classroom with a proprietary air.
Run!
Well, that was interesting. We were sitting in the Panera near one of the entrances to the Lansing Mall, finishing our soup and talking about one of Mark's computer science professors, as I recall, when suddenly there were sirens and someone ran through the doors and down the entrance hallway. We both thought, "Oh, sirens and you pretend to run from them, haha." But then two policemen ran through the doors as well, and yelled, "Which way?" The parking lot was full of police cars. We still have no idea what it was all about.
