Just call me Santa Teacher!!

I meant to tell you last week, when they first asked me, but I was sidetracked by the ramblings of life. I'M GOING TO BE SANTY CLAUS!! Yes. I will be working on Christmas Eve, but it seems that it will be more of a fun day than anything else. I lurff fun days at school. Don't get me wrong, every day is a fun day, but I'm talking days filled with festivities and little scheduled programming.

Last year on Christmas, there were only three teachers, one of which was a guy, Adam. Adam, dressed as S.C, went to each of the kids' houses and gave 'em a present (I saw pictures and the kids were so happy) in the early morn'. That was when the school first opened up and there weren't that many kids. Now we have close to 100 and no guys, so we're going to have party fun times up on the 6th floor, and I get to wear a costume. I love dressing up and making people happy.

Amy Teacher asked me. And have I told you about her? Oh! She's so great. Yeah, I think I've said good things before. I didn't tell you though, that when I dressed as the Penguin for Halloween, she, Sunny and Katie couldn't contain their laughter and each clapped and posed for a picture with me. Ever since, Amy always tells me that I should be a comedian; my Western ways in her conservative Korea has her in stitches on the daily. She clapped and laughed when I said, "Yes! Of course! Oh, thank you!" and then she smiled and said, "You should be a comedian." And I looked away, shooed away the idea with my right hand and said, "Oh, stop." She's pregnant with a boy and will be leaving us at the end of December :( this place won't be the same.

Back to semi-relevance! One of my friends, Elaine, was telling me about how she had her fiance, Patrick, dress up as Santa for her private lesson kids one year and even though they only met him one time before, for five minutes, they still said, "Hello, Patrick Teacher!" when he came in, and when it was time for Santa to leave, they turned to Elaine and asked, "Oh, does Patrick Teacher really have to go; can't he stay a little longer?" So she's pretty convinced that I'm gonna get called out, but I'm thinking with full costume, beard, hat, pillow stomach and all, that I should be okay. Right? Kids are kind of dumb. I mean they're smart, but the thinking process seems to glaze over when presents are involved... then again, they weren't all that excited when I was the Penguin for Halloween, I thought maybe it was because they were costumed up, too and probably also because I didn't have any candy... I also thought they'd be the best behaved students in the world... yikes - they've shattered all my preconceived notions of them thus far, so yeah, they're gonna know it's me... especially if I'm there in the morning and not for the festivities... I'll let you know how we pull this one off.

So, that's in one month. On Monday, 11/30, I'll have been here 3 months. And on 12/26, I'm going to CHINA! Ch-ch-ch-CHINA!! That's right, I'm gonna Penguin all over the Great Wall. Whoa, I'm going to the Great Wall. That's weird to write, and it doesn't really seem real, but nothing really has these past few months.

SANTA CLAUS OUT!