sad

There's this one class I teach. There are 4 kids in it, but 3 of them always show up late or not at all. So for most of the time it's just me and this 15 year old girl, YR.


That sounds like it could be pretty brutal for me, but if there's one thing I've gotten good at it's talking to teenage Korean girls. Wait, that sounds bad. What I mean is that I've come a long way from having absolutely no idea how to relate to them in class or what to possibly talk about with them.

One of the main topics of discussion when I find myself speaking 1 on 1 with a teenage girl is music. There are loads of K-Pop boy bands, and it seems like each girl has a different favorite. Here's YR's favorite. I swear these are all boys in this group:

That one blonde haired guy who looks most like a girl? He's 16.

Anyway, back to YR. We've become good pals over the past couple of months because pretty much for 80 minutes a week it's just her and me in a room talking. I've taught her since I started working here, but for the first 4 months or so there were other kids in her class, and like a lot of kids she is extremely hesitant to speak in front of her peers. When it's just us two she opens up and actually enjoys getting to practice English.

Last week she didn't show up for either one of her classes, and neither did her younger sister, whom I also teach. Come to find out her dad recently died from a sudden heart attack. I feel terrible for them. YR is a year away from high school, her sister will be in middle school before too long. It's sad.

They were both back in their classes today. As much as I wanted to give them my condolences or provide some kind of solace to them, anything I could've said would've just be too clumsy and difficult to articulate. So we just had our normal classes. They seemed in good spirits, though there were moments when both of them had the thousand yard stare going.

I'm not sure what else to say about this, or why I've said any of this so far. I guess I just want to acknowledge in some way that I'm feeling for them, since I can't do it directly. I also really wanted to show you guys that music video.

Man, this is 3 posts in a row of depressing subject matter. I'll try to get on to more carefree topics soon.