Death By Football

This World Cup is killing me. And not just because the games have been, on the whole, pretty dreadful, and that the damn vuvuzelas make it sound like the entire female population of South Africa have left their vibrators on simultaneously. I am a man who needs his sleep and this World Cup is depriving me of it. I'm turning into a zombie. The games kick off at 8:30pm, 11pm and 3:30am respectively and, with a huge dose of Sod's Law, all the England games and most of the other games I want to watch are starting at 3:30. It's killing me.

This afternoon, my fatigue manifested itself as a fit of manic laughter at the most inopportune moment as I was sat judging an English competition at my school. This mostly consisted of kids discussing issues that are 'important' to them or, more realistically, ones that show them to have strong moral fibre. We had a speech about the school's annual rose festival for example, and one on the importance of learning English and Korea's need to globalise. And then there was the girl who sang a High School Musical song backed by her mobile phone. Watching a terrible singer trying their hardest is one of the most awkward things in the world, and I couldn't stop myself from giggling. As I looked away and tried to hide my grin, I saw my friend Eun Mi covering her face with a piece of paper and literally crying with laughter. It was terrible.

I'd only just recovered from this when a group of children came out to do a performance of Hansel & Gretel. It was rather boring and mostly muttered and my mind was starting to wander when I heard something that grabbed my attention. The word Hansel had been Koreanised into 한젤 (Han-jael) and had been annoying me anyway, but one of the girls who was performing kind of mispronounced it and it sounded an awful lot, to me at least, like she said handjob. Maybe it was because I was tired, I don't know, but for the rest of the performance all I could hear in my head was Handjob & Gretel, Handjob & Gretel and I was pissing myself laughing. Nobody could understand what the hell was going on and the kids must think I'm a right nobhead. But it's not like I could say, 'Sorry guys, carry on. I just thought she said Handjob & Gretel and that is hilarious to me.' Handjob & Gretel. It's still making me smile 2 hours later.

I also had the opportunity to rub Korea's 4-1 pounding by the Argies in the face of one of my students today who likes to remind me on a daily basis England's shortcomings. He's a pretty lazy student, cocky, plays on the football team and the girls love him. He doesn't ever speak English to me, or Korean for that matter, unless we're talking about football. And this only started after the England-USA game. I've been opening most of my classes by asking about the previous day's games, and on the Monday after we drew with the US, I did the same.

"Yeah, England were not so good on Saturday. I think we'll be okay,"  I said.
"Maybe not"  says the cocky kid who never speaks.
I said, "Yeah, we just need to beat Slovenia and Algeria and we'll be fine."
"Yes teacher, you have to win," he said, fixing me with a menacing glare. "Or your World Cup is die!"

Little shit.

So today, I started the class and wandered over to him.

"Did you see the game last night, Min Su?" I said.

He didn't look up.

"Korea didn't do so well, eh? You must beat Nigeria or your World Cup is dead. Not die, as you previously said to me. Your jive talk was grammatically flawed."

Min Su, looked up at me with an expression bordering on pity and closed his textbook, which was only open in order for him to draw what appeared to be some cartoon breasts on the inside cover. He stretched his arms out above his head and yawned, before scratching his scalp with his pencil. Then, with his other hand, he removed his glasses from his face, fixed me with a smirk and said,

"Yes teacher. But I'm very handsome, right?"

The girl sat next to him swooned.

Cocky Little Shit - 2
Andrew Teacher - 0

I need to get more sleep.

Love, Smithy x