Confusion:The Great Equalizer

Generally, foreign/native speaker/waygook teachers spend about 60% of their time not having the slightest clue what is going on. This is due to both the language barrier and the fact that we are pretty low on the food chain. On any given day, we might have cancelled classes, extra classes, a holiday, a random workshop, all classes are 5-minutes shorter or longer today for some reason.... whatever. As frustrating as it may be, you have no choice but to accept it and chalk it up to being the one person in the whole school who always seems a bit dense, especially when asking for the 12th time, "I don't have any classes today?".

Yesterday, when I arrived at school, the head teacher told me "Wednesday, Thursday, changee". Okay, so the schedules for Wednesday and Thursday are switched. No problem. Then, in the first period, the Grade 2 teacher (who is currently the bane of my existence, but it's okay, because it's a mutual thing...) arrived with his crowd of urchins. But wait...I see them first period on Wednesday, and this Wednesday was really a Thursday, when I don't see them until 12:00 (Ha! Just try miming that to an ajosshi who thinks he's king of the world!). Then, in the 2nd period, both Grade 3 and Kindergarten arrived and I had to explain to my darling kindy kids (who were all hugging me) that there was no English today. And... well, you get the idea. All day, I either had classes that were 5 minutes late because the teachers forgot to send them to me, or classes showing up at the wrong times.

The Korean teachers didn't know about the schedule change, but I, the waygook, did. For the first time in over a year, I actually got to appear like I knew what the heck was going on!