Today is Parent's Day at my School

I'm wearing a tie. I feel like a monkey in a cowboy suit.

Nothing spectacular happened with the parents really. I got to meet them, and I got to practice my Korean (since many of the parents' English is about as good as my Korean).

The funniest thing that happened is that I got a compliment. Yes, that's funny in and of itself, but let me explain why it's funnier than just that: Jennifer, my co-teacher for my youngest class, was talking to a couple parents so I decided to walk in and introduce myself. Before I could speak, Jennifer said some stuff in Korean to them. The parents responded with "oooohs," realizing this was the guy their kids make fun of at home. So I went ahead and introduced myself to them anyway...in Korean.

Jennifer's response was, "Oh, he's been taking lessons and his Korean is getting very good." She said it in English. Now, I didn't think anything of this at the time and just smiled and excused myself to get ready for the next class. It occured to me a few hours later what had happened: she told them my English was good in English. Based on talking to them a bit in English, I seriously doubt they understood Jennifer. I'm sure Jennifer knew they wouldn't.

So why would she say it then? I have two theories.

1) She wanted to compliment me and wanted me to know I was being complimented without saying it directly to me. Perhaps she said the same to them later in Korean, but she wanted to make sure I knew she thought my Korean was good before I had to trot off.

OR

2) She wanted to say my Korean was good to only me, meaning the mothers probably wouldn't think so, and she didn't want them to understand for fear of embarrassment. If that's the case, it was probably more to get me to trot off to that next class than anything else.

I'll pretend it was option 1, :).

Ryan

(Jennifer, if you read this, it's all joking. I promise.)

R