Brand New Day

May 31, 2010
Day 87 of 365: Friday sucked. Hard. And since there are many ways that something can suck (though far fewer ways for a Friday to suck), I'll tell you what it wasn't first: It wasn't a sad kind of suckiness, like when a student cried at school or a dog gets hit by a car. It wasn't a frustrating type of sucking, where I just couldn't figure something out or couldn't communicate effectively with the natives. It wasn't overwhelming, where I had too much on my plate to deal with. It wasn't an injury/illness related, homesick (well maybe as a side effect), or boring kind of sucky Friday. What this last Friday actually was...was embarrassing. It was angrifying. Furiating. Painful on a psychological level (yes, I am aware that I am making up words because spell-check is telling me so). I got pwned (Gamer term. I didn't make that one up).

Last Friday I was basically tag-teamed by my two co-teachers on what a bad job I've been doing as an English teacher. This blew my mind because all I've ever heard for the last 3 months is how I've been doing a great job and the kids love me, etc. Mixed messages? Check. Lost in translation of a verbal beat-down? Check. Wanting to throw a desk out of our 4th floor English classroom window? Check. There are only a few categories of people whose occupations bestow upon them the power to scold a grown man. A cop or a judge can do it. Been there, hate that. A boss can do it and so can a mom. Now I know that a Korean co-teacher can do it as well. I'm sure you'd like to know the details of the massacre, but that would be too much to read. I'm not going to say some correcting wasn't needed; I've only been doing this for 3 months. The problem was that they knew that I've never taught before, but they still let me go on this whole time doings some aspects of the job in the wrong way without saying anything. My pride told me to put up a fight, but it probably would have made matters worse, so I just took the beating instead.

The day never got better afterward. I had just gotten blown up, and the best thing that I can say about it was that at least it was on a Friday. That night I had some praying to do, because I was suddenly in a situation where why co-workers didn't really trust me to do my job correctly, I can't escape because I'm obligated by contract to be here for at least another 9 months, and every person who really cares about me is on the other side of the world. Literally. Sometimes we feel like the only way that God can hear us is to pray a super-spiritual prayer that can move mountains, when all we actually have to say is, "God, move that mountain.". If He wants to do it, He will. Otherwise, no amount of effort on our part is going to get it done. In my case, the only way I could communicate how I felt was to pray, "Lord, make me right.". Maybe I've been going about some things in the wrong way since I've been here. Some I've known were wrong, others I've had no idea about. I just prayed that He would make me right in everything.

This brings me to Saturday. As you can see, I don't really have a picture that would accurately depict the essence of today's entry. I guess I could have taken my camera out mid-thrashing to capture my 2 co-teachers taking turns going to town on me, but I didn't think of it at the time. Oddly enough though, I feel like this cover to Amazing Spider-Man #546, appropriately titled, "Brand New Day", sums things up pretty well. This comic was actually in a care package that I received a few weeks ago from my life-long friend Jason, so I thought I'd give him a little shout-out here. Thanks, brother. Saturday really was a brand new day for me. I was still hurting from Friday, but it was good to know that I had a couple days to get over it. Every weekend for the last 2 months I'd been exhausting myself by going 100 miles a minute in order to do and see everything I possibly could; often spending up to 12-13 hours each day in Seoul before making the hour long train ride back to Ansan each night. This weekend I just took it easy. The weather was perfect and I just enjoyed the day. I realized that sometimes bad things happen for a good reason, and in the grand scheme of things, what happened on Friday wasn't so bad, it just felt like it at the time. There's nothing that I can do to change what's happened during the first 3 months, but I can do things differently from here on out. There's a lot more for me to say about last weekend actually, but I think this is good enough for now. Maybe a part 2 coming soon...