Saturday

It's Saturday, and the World Cup is finally here!

South Africa held off Mexico for a 1-1 draw, and France and Uruguay duked it out to a goalless draw as well.  So far my bracket for Group A is holding up well.  I don't want Mexico getting any wins, and I didn't want France to beat Uruguay, or the other way around.  I'm hoping for a France/Uruguay advance out of that group, leaving Mexico in the dust. 

Tonight are three great matches.  First up is South Korea v. Greece, which the Koreans should win handily but will still be great fun to watch since I'm in Korea.  Then the Argentinian match - I'm really excited to see how Maradona handles Messi and whether or not he blows it for the Argentines. Won't catch much, if any, of that match, however, because we're probably going to see our friend Jasper doing another Flirtphonic set in Hongdae.  Finally, the big match: USA v. England.  I've been excited about this matchup for months.  It begins at 3:30 a.m. in Korea, so that part is not exciting, but I'm staying up for it regardless.

In non-World Cup news, my worst student was kicked out of the academy; we had no classes Thursday and Friday, so I got a mammoth amount of writing done; and we leave in one week for Hong Kong. 

One more bit of information: my novella was accepted for publication.  You can see all 36,000 words in print in the Fall 2011 issue of Kaleidotrope.

To send you off into the weekend, here are two pictures from class: 

The first is one of my favorite students, Amy (her English name), because she's really smart and really, really cute - how many Koreans have dimples, after all?  Her schoolbag is hilarious, which is why I took the photo.  She was confused about why I was laughing.  Eventually, I drew a map of the US on the board, outlined Texas, and said basically that it means they hate everyone else and that everyone else hates them.  Which isn't what it means, but is still basically true.  Plus I'm the teacher and I can spread whatever mistruths I want to.

The second picture is from one of my other favorite students, Paul, who is terrible at English, reportedly a genius at math, and routinely stands on his chair to beat on the ceiling. He's an odd one, but I actually like him becase his misbehaving is funny. He likes to say things like "I am genius. I am handsome. I am rich-ee."  This picture is what he drew on the whiteboard between classes.  It's something like a very muscly Yoda with an attitude problem, I think.  This is even funnier because their Korean teacher came into the class just before me to yell at them for being loud, saw the board, and had no reaction to it at all.