😂 When a Thank-You Video Becomes a Crime Scene

 

So… here’s what happened today at my school. 

I wasn’t invited to the end-of-year teachers’ celebration dinner. Yep, me and all the other subject teachers — the only ones left out. Not the first time, but for some reason, this time it felt personal.

Enter my kind-hearted 3rd grade homeroom teacher. Feeling sorry for me, he and his wild, energetic students made a heartfelt “thank you” video — celebrating all the fun moments we’d shared this year. It was sweet, genuine, and absolutely adorable.

I’m in the admin office, quietly adding winter vacation days on the computer, with my co-teacher, when the VP starts calling in homeroom teachers to hand them small gifts for their hard work. Subject teachers? Nope. Not invited.

The 3rd grade teacher proudly tells her about the video his students made for me. He’s smiling, full of energy, radiating joy. And then…

VP deadpans: “Where is OUR video?”

She gestures toward herself and the head teacher.

The teacher’s smile immediately drops. The glow of joy? Gone. Poof. Vanished. His energy? Sucked into a black hole of confusion and embarrassment.

Then she takes a step toward the office door, dead serious, and says:

“Get out.”

No smile. No humor. Just… Get out.

He doesn’t want to leave — that would be catastrophic in Korean school culture. So he quietly slinks to another corner, makes himself a cup of coffee, and tries to survive the awkwardness tsunami.

Meanwhile, I’m sitting at my cubicle, jaw open, blinking like I just walked into a live-action soap opera. I could not believe what I was seeing. 

Jealousy? 

Pettiness? 

Meanness? 

All in response to a sweet, human gesture.

Lesson learned: kindness can apparently be hazardous to one’s career. And yes, at that moment, I realized with full clarity: this witch HAAAAAAATES me.

So, what’s a teacher to do? Keep your head on a swivel, maintain your sense of humor, and maybe invest in a small invisibility cloak for the next office drama. 

Ha ha.

"allegedly"

 

🙏 A Quiet Prayer for the Children

There is a male teacher being quietly transferred from school to school across Jeollanam-do.

The pattern feels eerily familiar — like the way certain institutions once moved problematic figures around instead of confronting their behavior. It reminds me of how the Catholic Church once handled priests accused of harm, sending them elsewhere rather than stopping them.

I don’t know the full story, but I know this: when adults look the other way, children are the ones who suffer.

I pray for the safety of every child — that they may be protected from anyone who would misuse their trust or their touch.

Silence protects predators. Awareness protects children.

Trump and MAGA woke me up this morning

Yesterday, 6:30 a.m. — I’m on the city bus, half asleep, doing that classy commuter head-bob against the window. Life is peaceful. Birds are singing somewhere. I’m practically meditating.

Then suddenly — BAM! I open my eyes and Trump is staring straight at me. Like, full eye contact. On a giant banner outside.

I nearly had a heart attack. The bus makes a left turn, and I swear even the driver sped up to escape that gaze.

Let’s just say — it’s not every day you get personally awakened by politics.

Ha! Needless to say, I stayed wide awake for the rest of that ride. ☕🚌

Delicious lunch 10/15/25

 

Delicious lunch October 15, 2025

Delicious lunch today 10/17/25

 

Delicious lunch today October 17th, 2025

Early morning walk to bus stop

 

I was lucky enough to catch the sun waking up slowly this morning while walking to my bus stop.

Such a breath taking scene. 

Learn to be grateful for the small, amazing things that happen in our lives.

Caffeine gum

 

A Korean woman gave me caffeine gum this morning at the bus stop.

This is a good idea for a competitive country as Korea.

They not like us - Grade 4 lesson

 

Grade 4 Lesson: “Is This Your Pencil?”

Today’s English lesson video for my fourth graders started innocently enough. The story takes place in a Korean tourist shop.

A Black boy asks the shopkeeper about the price of an eraser — it costs 500 won, about fifty cents in U.S. currency. He realizes he doesn’t have enough money, so he quietly leaves the store, looking disappointed. Moments later, a Korean boy buys the eraser and proudly hands it to him outside, surrounded by their classmates.

Fifty cents.

On the surface, it seems like a sweet lesson about kindness and sharing. But beneath it, there’s something uncomfortable — the quiet reinforcement of a familiar hierarchy. A subtle reminder of who is portrayed as the “giver” and who must be the “receiver.”

After years of teaching here, I’ve seen how these narratives slip into children’s materials — not always with bad intent, but often with unexamined bias. These small stories teach big lessons, and not always the ones we hope for.

As an expat teacher, I’ve learned to choose my battles carefully. After so many years, some days I just don’t have the energy to challenge every stereotype. So I take a deep breath, remind myself that awareness starts in small conversations, and move forward.

If old lessons of superiority persist, then it’s our job to rewrite them — with awareness, empathy, and respect at the heart of every classroom.

If superiority is the story they insist on telling, I will insist and keep writing new ones — with empathy as the ink and awareness as the page.

￦25,000 not delicious fish

 

$25,000 fish, not top shelf, not high quality, just a holiday price.

Pee here

Urinate here.

Bathroom signs in a local restaurant.

Marshmallow artwork

 

Fun idea for Summer Camp - marshmallow artwork. You only need markers, toothpicks and marshmallow. Students get very creative with just these items.

Sweet.

Grade 4 ~ What are you doing? Drawings

 

These are my sweet Grade 4 classes' drawings of the lesson "What are you doing?".

Some of them are very talented.

Not sure if those are her hands below or her feet. I think they are her feet with socks on. Ha ha. I love it!

What you want vs your wallet

 

I would never purchase this bright lemon car above but I would actually like to buy a newer version of the Scooby Doo van below. The current driver even has a portable fan attached above the steering wheel. 

Can't get any more Flinstone than that, right? ha ha

All Black SUV

 

In love with this all Black Genesis SUV.

I walk past this beauty ever morning right before getting to my bus stop.

Just GORGEOUS! 😍 💕 

🌧 Rainy Tuesday morning

 

A very quiet, sweet, rainy Tuesday morning.

I love heavy rain. The Earth is having a shower and allowing us to join.

It sounded more poetic in my head, LOL.

🌿...and then there was one...

 

So… my voodoo worked.

My work nemesis — the co-teacher who backstabbed me last summer and with whom I’ve been co-parenting a classroom for the past fifteen months — unexpectedly filed for long-term disability retirement.

She’s been on prescription painkillers just to get through the school day. And while part of me feels sympathy for her, that feeling is tangled up with the memory of betrayal. Empathy doesn’t come easily when trust has been broken.

What surprised me most wasn’t that she was leaving, but how she left. She refused to tell the students — not a word of goodbye after sixteen years at this school. No closure, no explanation, just… silence.

I felt bad for our students. So, I told them a small lie — that my “best friend in the States” was very sick — and asked our fifth and sixth graders to make her get-well cards.

Sixty-eight fifth graders and eighty sixth graders eagerly drew, wrote, and signed over a hundred cards. Their kindness touched me deeply.

The day before she left, right before the long Chuseok break, I gave her the bundle of cards. My friends said she wouldn’t care. But when I handed them to her, she seemed genuinely surprised — maybe even emotional.

I didn’t do it for her. I did it for the kids — to give them a quiet kind of closure she wasn’t willing to give.

My friends and husband were quick to remind me that she would never have done the same for me. And they’re right. She’s always been self-centered, always absorbed in her own world. But that day, I chose to act for the students’ sake, not for hers.

Now that she’s gone, I mostly feel… empty. Not happy, not sad. Just done. Maybe that’s what healing looks like — not fireworks, just quiet detachment.

So yes — my “voodoo” worked. And yet, I still extended a bit of grace, even when I didn’t feel like it.

Because in the end, we all have to decide where to spend our energy — and I’m done wasting mine on people who don’t care.

Good luck in your next chapter, Ma’am.
And as for me — I’ll keep moving forward, lighter than before.

“Sometimes closure isn’t a conversation. It’s peace in your own silence.”