Kids and Blood

The first week of real life (or as close as you can come to it) is nothing but a blur with peaks of excitement and valleys of total fear. Albert picked me up each day so I could arrive at the 1pm starting time. The earliest he ever arrived was around 2pm.

Each day he said the same, “Thomas, I am very sorry. I am very tired from drinking.”

Often left in my room with nothing but The Hobbit to occupy my time. I would have played solitaire on my computer but it was having trouble holding a charge and I was beginning to stress as it would be my main means of communication with home. It was during these mornings of idleness that I felt bits of homesickness and the twangs of melancholy.

The school is something to see but would be hell for a migraine sufferer. The walls are all neon green, orange and yellow. The glass doors slide open with the touch of a button and a trekkie wush! which is supremely satisfying. There is a wide open reception area with two giant flat screen televisions! There are four classrooms, one of which being a computer room with several very fancy computers with Skullcandy headphones. Each room is equipped with a Smart Board and speaker system. The teacher’s office is a tiny little room with strange angles and two computers. This is my favorite place to be.

In this office is Han, myself and another girl whose name I forgot because I am an ass. In a week the other girl would be leaving to pursue her major and I would be taking over her computer. Boram sits at the computer in the reception, next to the receptionist, a funny lady who finds it absolutely hilarious when I try to say anything in Korean. There is another girl as well, a younger receptionist, who turns up at random points in the day. What she actually does at the school I can not say.

My first week involved standing next to a proper teacher and reading passages of The Little Mermaid (the original version in which Ariel actually dies and becomes foam in the sea, to little kids who would then repeat what I had said back to me. There is not much to mention here as this is the extent to which I have taught. I don’t talk to kids, I talk at them.

I did, however, meet the three boys. If they weren’t so hilarious they would have been kicked out of school a long time ago.

I stood next to Han and watched the Little Mermaid Lesson go from simple recital to one or all of the boys standing up and punching each other, dancing or simply opening the classroom door and running away. At one point, all stood up and switched seats. If you try to give them a quiz, they will cheat. Try and stop one of them and the other two will just walk out the door while you are not looking. Bad teacher that I am, I can’t help but laugh.

This happened a good deal later (I am a week behind in this thing and am trying to get caught up for when I have the net) but it is related. I was standing in the room before Boram came in to teach and I watched the goofier of the three boys manage to tie his hands together with balloon ribbon. Take it to mind that I watched this and did nothing about it. When Boram walked in ready to teach he tried to take the papers he was given and write on them but he had somehow made some pretty solid handcuffs and could not move one hand without the other more than 3 inches away. Finally, Boram got pissed off and had to cut them off with scissors. I, meanwhile, could not stop laughing.

One morning, instead of taking me to school Albert took me to the hospital. I knew this was coming but I didn’t much appreciate being hoodwinked. Here, I was given my check-up to complete my paperwork. We started off with an x-ray of my chest. From there we followed a line on the ground to a room where I was weighed, measured and given a blood pressure test. Another line led us to a room where they would take some blood.

The first attempt to find a vein did not work. The young guy, perhaps an intern or some kind of psycho, asked if I felt faint and then tried again. Despite his efforts of simply wiggling the needle around he couldn’t get any blood to come shooting out like he obviously wanted to see. At this point the called over a girl who took her turn at jabbing me and tried to make small talk about the Red Sox.

“Success!” she said like she had just won a carnival game.

After this I had to pee in a cup and try and hold swabs on my arm to keep blood from getting on my work shirt all at the same time. After which I put the cup in the wrong place and had to watch my boss walk around with a cup of my piss for a while until he got it all sorted out.

Eventually he bought me food and I told him that we were almost even for the stabbing and the blood on my shirt.