Meeting My Teachers: Part 4

Let's meet more coworkers!  That's always fun, right?

The woman on the far left is the biology teacher.  She doesn't really have a nickname.  Just the biology teacher.  I like this woman.  She's kind, treats me like a normal person, and is nice to students.  She also speaks a little bit of English and isn't shy about using it, which is always nice.  She has a young daughter who is about 10 and told me that her daughter really wants to meet me.  This made me feel like Beyonce so then I liked her even more.

The man in the middle isn't at our school anymore.  His nickname was Angry Bird 2.  I didn't give him that nickname.  He was always nice to meet but one time I did see him hit a student.  (Not a hugely uncommon thing in Korea...I can elaborate more if you want me to.)  One time he printed out photos of me when I almost died at a Korean amusement park and gave them to me.  That was very nice of him.

The woman on the far right was the Japanese teacher.  I loved her.  She was so kind and friendly and normal.  She and another teacher (the Chinese teacher) both really helped to make me feel comfortable at school.  For a while, we would all meet once a week to kind of do a language exchange.  But mostly just to hang out.  Also, they went with me on a school field trip to Gyeongju once, and it was a lot of fun.  She has since left the school to live with her husband and raise her newborn baby.  I miss her.  She was a really nice person.   

More people!

The man in the top left corner used to monitor the students as they came to school in the morning and always, always said hello to me (in Korean) in a really strange way.  Kind of like saying "Hel. Lo." every morning.  I did not enjoy it.  One day during a school assembly he said the informal form of hello to me and I found it to be a bit rude so I just said it back, which was also rude.  He was not my favorite person.  I don't even know what he taught.

The man in the top right hand corner is so kind!  He wore a suit every day to work and learned a little bit of English so he could talk to me.  He always smiled at me and was very friendly.  He left our school to go become a vice principal at another school.  

The woman in the bottom right hand corner was the school nurse.  She has a daughter at the school who is lovely and incredibly bright.  The woman herself could be a little overwhelming though.  She was nice and took care of me when I was sick, but she also was the type of person who liked having a foreigner around as an accessory.  And she had a habit of coming into the office, saying "I want coffee" and then watching as a younger teacher prepared it for her.  I didn't like that too much.  But she was nice to me and always says hi when I see her in town.  She now works at a school in a neighboring town.  

The man in the bottom left hand corner got saved for last because he is the best.  His nickname is the Collar Popper.  Because he frequently wears polo shirts with the collar popped on them.  Like a frat boy.  He's a nice guy and the students seem to like him a lot.  Whenever he enters a room he says the tough-guy military version of hello.  He also wears a lot of expensive name brand clothing.  When I once did a lesson about describing people, I had students describe a teacher and make their classmates guess who it was.  He was understandably a popular choice.