Drool



Until recently, there was a class of three boys at my school. They called themselves Simpson, Kai, and Bell. They were known collectively amongst the teachers as the Three Monsters. When they were together they were impossible to manage without screaming at them or calling in for reinforcements. Nobody gave them homework because they wouldn't do it. Options were limited because they threatened to quit the school if separated.

So, it each day it was a lesson in what a king might feel if his subjects decided suddenly to become anarchists and criminally insane at the same time. They are no older than 13.

Crazy as they were, I did not hate this class. It was slow going, for sure; it took me 10 times longer to teach them anything because I would spend half the time begging them to stop talking / calling me tomato / having hair fights, but they were often funny.

They are all goofy and that is what wins me over. One of them is a bit more malicious and another is a bit more clever but they have this absurd way about them that makes me laugh, even when they are obviously insulting me.

Hair fights are pretty popular with them. I have mentioned this activity before, but it is when you pull out a strand of hair and stretch it out against another person’s hair- first broken hair is a loser. It is perhaps the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen. When they bore of deciding who goes first with Rock, Paper, Scissors they will shout “hair fight!” and then start pulling out hair until they get a good piece.

Anyway, they were finally separated with our switch to 50 minute classes and nobody quit. Two of them are still together but they are thankfully much more subdued with the breaking of their unholy trinity.

This is a story about Simpson. I have been here for nearly a year and I have only seen him wear two different pairs of sweat pants. Usually he wears blue, but sometimes gray. When we were learning “what is he wearing?” his partner would always say he was wearing the same thing he always wear. He also seems to own approximately 4 shirts that he wears on a weekly basis.

Of the three he is the goofiest and seems to be less evil than the others. He often answers in a variety of voices. Once he tied his hands together with some string and had to be cut free. He is awesome.

A couple of days ago he came into class saying that he had been sick. No, he didn’t say that. I asked him why he was tired and he pretended to projectile barf on the floor. Throughout the class he kept falling asleep. I would see his eyes roll up, his head would go down, and then he would jerk back awake.

It was funny. Once, when he was out for a few seconds I did a monster impression and scared the hell out of him. He then looked at me like I had just punched his mom.

He then put his head down and drifted off again. I tried to stop him and keep him in the conversation we were having but he just turned his head to the other side.

He was out cold. I kept asking him questions and he just lay there slumped on his desk. He was not faking.

So, I decided to let him sleep. It was just a review class anyway and this kid looked like he was dead.

I played a game with the other student. It wasn’t even an English game. At one point I took down the clock and we tried to convince Simpson that he had slept for hours but it didn’t work. Finally, right at the end of class he sat up and tried to look natural as though he hadn’t been sleeping. The strand of drool was running down his mouth, onto his shirt which fell past the pool on his desk and on its way to the drool on his pants. He tried to wipe it but soon saw the sheer volume of it on the desk and his pants. He looked around and saw the two of us staring at him laughing.

I then made him wipe it all up. It took two tissues.

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Humidity

The weather in Korea is becoming exceedingly hot. It is not even mid June but already temperatures are hovering around 90 degrees. What is worse than that is that a humidity hangs about that I am not used to. Weather extremes were always a point of pride for me as a resident of New England with often brutal winters (ice storms that change the landscape for years) and summers were generally hot as hell thanks to the humidity. This humidity, though: good god.


I was told upon moving into my new apartment that I would soon be purchased an air-conditioner but to this I shrugged and told my director not to worry too much about it. I hope he knows that I was just being polite because official summer has yet to even arrive but my apartment is unbearable.

I leave my sliding door open when I am home and that seems to work well enough to steal an occasional breeze to circulate stagnant air. However, thanks to crappy wiring, the screen does not seal firm against the door so any bug clever or lucky enough can fly in unabated. To my luck, a smallish spider has set up watch at the to of the opening so that I have not seen more than one elaborately marked moth and one mosquito (who pent an entire night biting me, little bugger).

For a while, when I was at school I would close the window in an effort to keep the heat out. After today, I will not do this anymore. Frequently, these little Korean studios develop a funky smell. It doesn’t smell terrible and seems to come and go but it’s origins have to be the pipes that carry toilet and sink water to god knows where. I do not know for sure but Korean pipes don’t seem to be as efficient at carrying away waste water. In fact, most Koreans seem to employ the “wipe and toss” method when it comes to the toilette so there doesn’t seem to be the pressure for businesses to strive for nice smelling and clean bathrooms.

Anyway, I returned to my place today and opened my door to be greeted by what might have been the smell of a hundred dying zombies. I have no food to rot and I am generally good about taking out my trash so the smell is a mystery to me. In any case, a weekend ago I walked to Uptown and purchased a boatload of incense that I burn almost constantly.

They smell like grape children’s Tylenol. I hate the smell but it beats the alternative.

Each room in school has a ceiling mounted air conditioner that is made of shiny white plastic, turns on with a chirp via one of three remote controllers. Now, I won’t bore you with details about fancy air conditioners but these things are awesome. The bigger units, for example, have several flaps that are constantly opening and closing to distribute cold air evenly. They are efficient and futuristic enough for me to pretend I am on some Star Wars space ship. Thing is we barely use them.

The school is pretty well insulated and the windows aren’t usually open all the way so the temperature is generally reasonable, but it still tends to get a bit warm and stuffy. Perhaps adult Koreans have more of a heat tolerance than I do but that has yet to be picked up by the kids, particularly the Three Monsters.

Classes with them have become more and more difficult, though just as hilarious. Every class that I sit in with Han teaching involves her having to force them to do anything but lay their heads on the desk and every other word out of their mouths is “ice cream?”

For a long time they demanded that Han bring them ice cream. When that didn’t work they tried their hand at extortion.

“They told me that if I brought them ice cream that they would behave for the week,” Han told me.

So, she brought them ice cream that they devoured. They then welched on their end and went back to being little monsters.

“They tell me,” Han said, “that the ice cream was not delicious enough.”

The Three Monsters have become so desperate that they no longer ask Han to bring them ice cream, only that she end class a bit early so they might go out and buy their own ice cream.

This doesn’t usually happen as it is hard to get through any material when you have three boys screaming ice cream at you. The goofier one (the one who tied his hands together with balloon ribbon) took things into his own hands.

A week ago one of the AC remotes went missing. It wasn’t a big deal but we were left having to look for the remaining controllers whenever we wanted to turn on the air conditioners. Assumedly, the missing remote was beneath papers or books in the corner of one of the offices.

Today I was sitting in with the Three Monsters before Han came to class. It was stuffy and Han had already refused to turn on the air conditioner. I watched as the goofy one pulled the missing remote from his pocket and turned it on himself. Turns out he had been doing this for the past few days whenever he felt it was too hot to effectively give you a headache.

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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.

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