the most important eraser

Standard activities to kill time before the next class.

Guest blogger, Matt Marx

A friend and fellow UW-Madison graduate posted this on his blog, and I thought it was funny, unique, and a hell of a lot better than anything I could have come up with.  I asked him if I could share it with people who read my blog, and he agreed!  So, here is a funny story about jelly beans.

The Dangers of Jelly Beans

 

Dec8by Matt Marx

This diary excerpt, torn and smeared with blood and jelly bean remains, was found in the halls of Hamhyun Middle School in Siheung City, South Korea.  Readers beware:  Some of the content is graphic–and stupid–in nature.

Day 4:  08:44 LST

What drives the hellions to such madness?  What dark thoughts do they harbor, twisting their hearts to such insane cruelty?

In my many hours of solitude, I’ve often thought about The Swarm.  It’s been the only activity I’ve had  to keep my sanity, which is under constant assault from the jeers of the enemy.  And yet, answers still elude me.

Holed up in a freezing, abandoned classroom, my supplies are now dangerously low. Perhaps hope is in the shortest supply. I’m surviving on a jar of what has started this whole ghastly ordeal–a jar of Jelly Beans.  If I could only turn back the clock four days….my god, four days? Has it really only been that long?  I feel as if I’ve been on the run for a year.  I  look back at the naive fool I was, thinking I could brighten the student’s dreary exam schedule with jelly beans, newly arrived from home.  I grabbed the jar, and left the warm embrace of the heated teacher’s office into the adolescent chaos.  As I entered the arctic hallways and into the realm of the conch, I met with my first group of students.

And my doom.

Their cheerful eyes darted from mine to the jar, then slowly back to mine–and then they changed into something else entirely.  The smiles never left their youthful faces, but their eyes…I shudder to even remember…their eyes suddenly became monstrously old–gleaming with hateful avarice forged from the fires of primal wrath. I saw my own death reflected in every pupil.  The hallways suddenly seem unbearably hot from the greed burning through their gaze.  I ceased to be their teacher–or even human–and became a mere obstacle to sweetness.

41 flavors. 41 reasons to kill.

I don’t remember much after that.  I do know I miraculously escaped, torn and bloody, into this classroom.  My accursed tomb.  I think I perhaps used some kind of distraction.  “Look over there!  What’s Girl’s Generation and Super Junior doing here?!  And they’re giving out free cellphones?!”

But the ruse is up. I hear them closing in, and every one of the demons in the school–oh god, their eyes!!!– have been alerted to my presence. With my last shred of sanity being chipped away by The Swarm’s war cries (“Teacher!  Nice to meet you!”), I now realize it’s only a matter of time.

The din is now ear-piercing, and it’s only getting louder.  They’re at the door. Strange–when you accept the inevitable, a warm peace enters the body.  A welcome feeling in the frigid airs of a South Korean classroom.

Well done, Matt!  It's funny for all of us that know the ridiculous lengths that these kids will go to for a 1/2 inch square of chocolate.  The zombie-like description of the students is great, and their war cry of "Teacher! Nice to meet you," is spot on.  For most of you it is just a well-written and funny short story.  For us it is our every day life.

Hope you enjoyed the story!  


-keith

keeps

they play for keeps here in korea.

student murders overbearing mother.  student forges grades to make her believe he is a top 100 student in Korea.  She expected #1, but in reality he was around 4,000th.  crazy.

FTA update

Thanks to by buddy, Nate, who posted this on facebook.

my faborite part is about the sledgehammer.  #politics

FTA

Perhaps this will change in the near future, but so far the US media (cnn) has done a poor job of covering an outrageous story that occurred in S. Korea recently.  I assume most people have heard about the Free Trade Agreement that was finally agreed upon last month regarding a handful of countries; South Korea was one of the countries included in the FTA bill that passed through our Congress.  However, it still needed to go through the approval process in South Korea.  There has been fierce opposition to the bill in Korea by the minority party, or the Korean version of Democrats.  I had been shallowly following the korean news about it recently and misinterpreted many of the headlines when they read "opposition party prevents vote on FTA."  When they say they prevented the bill from being voted on, they meant the KDs (korean dems) physically blocked the vote... can't vote if you're not in the building!  So, for today's vote there were security forces to prevent the physical blockade of representatives. Today, the GNP (elephants) members called an unscheduled session to vote on the measure. The Repubs didn't even have the courtesy to even mention it to the KDs (sounds like a play straight out of the wisconsin republican party's play book).  When the KDs found out, they understandably went apeshit.  I'm assuming I'm missing a handful of facts on this because I don't speak Korean, but it also appears that a KD let off a tear gas canister next to the Speaker's podium.  In the end, the GNP, who have enough of a majority to pass the legislation without the dems, skipped the whole committee process, and brought it to a vote immediately.  It passed w/ 7 nay-votes.


Tip of the hat to you if you made it this far.

Recently there was a Mayoral election in Seoul, which is used as an indicator for the upcoming Presidential election.  If things continue the GNP is in for an ass whooping in 2012.

In Keith News, my schedule is again changing...  Really annoyed by this, and it started to show today.  Oh well, I suppose it's more likely to happen again if I don't let it be known that I don't appreciate the volatility in my schedule.  Starting in December I'll be teaching my littlest students only twice a week, not four times.  Kinda nice, but now that I've got the hang of it I'd like to have the extra income.

Well, it's feedin time here, and I'm about to devour a bowl of traditional korean porridge.  NOM NOM NOM.

-keith

confirmation

I received confirmation on a previous suspicion.

This note was left for me on my whiteboard after walking out on a game of apples 2 apples after the girls admitted to not picking my card because I am the teacher.

hi mom, hi dad, hi josh