Day 25

The following was taken from my EAP Angel Report. I'm getting 1 unit for this, folks. It's about 9 units too little.

Sometimes, it's hard to accept that you're not meant for the job that you thought you would be for. When I saw that EAP Angels had a volunteer opening at the Ewha Women's University Childhood Center, I jumped at the opportunity. When I was in high school, I worked with kids ages 4 to 8 for three years. Working with young kids is something that I find very gratifying. I thought, “This is going to be really great.”

As soon as I walked into the door of the classroom, I realized that I was going to have my work cut out for me. The biggest difficulty, and the only difficulty was that my Korean language skills are extremely limited. I just started learning Korean in class just a few weeks ago. All the children were so young, which meant that their English skills were probably just as limited as my Korean skills were.

One thing that I find interesting about kids is that you'll never know what they're going to say next. It seemed like when I entered the classroom, I was entering another world. It was somewhat intimidating to be around them. All the kids were chattering away and I knew nothing. Even though I was older than them, I felt like a stranger who had no idea what was going on. It's frustrating when you're supposed to be helping someone, but you can't even understand the language. I tried my best to read books in English to them. We also made some rice cakes.

But as much of a stranger I felt, I also felt very welcome. To me, these kids were very different from the kids I was with during high school. They were much more well-behaved for their age. One boy would take me by the hand and show me to the bathroom. I thought that was really sweet, considering I'm a tall stranger who could have easily scared him. As a guy, I'm a pretty rare sight for these kids. In a way, that does make me feel somewhat useful, but I know that I have to do extra work in order for it to pay off. Although the first day was pretty frustrating, I'm still very determined to put everything I can into the job.

To be honest, I'm surprised I was able to get through the day without passing out. Last night, I attempted to get a cell phone. It was literally in my pocket, ready to be played with when they realized that I'm still a minor in Korea and can't have a cell phone under my name. Everything was extremely confusing because the workers barely spoke English, but they were really nice to use (i.e., they gave us a lot of free stuff, including a box of ramen). But the good news is that I can get someone else to open the contract for me. The workers made jokes that Krissy had to be like my mom. So I will be getting a phone soon. It's waiting in a bag for me at the store.

I also did one of my favorite things last night for the first time: have a conversation that lasts (almost) until sunrise. Frank and I had a pretty epic, monster-sized talk that lasted 5 hours. It didn't seem like that long, but I guess time and conversation fly by at the same rate. In the end, I slept at 5:30am and had to wake up at around 8:00am for my stressful volunteering job. I haven't slept since.

"Good looking people always get more attention."
"... Huh?"