Taught

(you are a runner, and I am my father's son)

"Twenty, thirty, forty,
twenty, thirty, forty,
twenty tired teachers teaching English."

So goes a little song they teach the Kindergarteners at my school. Well, I'm not sure if they teach it to them or not, but they all seem to know it. And the lyrics have never been truer then they are this week.

Not that there are forty, thirty, or even twenty teachers at the school - in fact, that's the problem. See, last Friday Don was late for work. He missed the first class, then the second, and by the third, they decided to check on him. His apartment was empty. No people or clothes anywhere. Herein lies the infamous midnight run.

See, the midnight run is basically where a complete douchebag decides that they don't like Korea and / or their job, and they run away, like a child after a fight with their parents. Since they're breaking their contract, and probably owe the school a bunch of money, they figure they can't warn anyone that they're going to leave, so they disappear like a loved one on Unsolved Mysteries.

Who could leave these kids? I guess the whole ordeal of living in Korea and teaching kids English can be intimidating, but these little characters are saccharine wonderful.

Of course, because we're short one teacher, the rest of us are working all the harder to pick up the slack. Incidentally, I got back one of my favourite classes - one that I'd lost to Don - and they were really glad to have me back. Then when I explained that I was leaving Korea for good in just over a month, they we're all disappointed and such. I still haven't explained that clearly to my Kindergarten kids. I'm not sure how they'll take it. I know I'll probably take it like big fucking baby, though.

Emotional digressions aside, it was teacher's day this week. I got scads of presents from the students, including a few bottles of wine, no less than eight handkerchiefs (the first eight handkerchiefs I've ever owned), and about a billion pairs of fancy, nicely-boxed socks. I also got a few other niceties, including gift certificates, and a cool homemade cellphone charm that a student made just for me.

More adorable were some of the cards I got, with cute kid writing thanking me and randomly professing love. My favourite was a card from a new Kindergarten student who thanked me for 'taking care of' her. I'm not sure why, but I found that one all touching tingly, or whatever it's supposed to feel like when people get emotions.

Speakings of feeling things, the air here is thick with heat and moisture. It's also raining a little bit lately. Reminds me of monsoon season here. So hot, but pouring, torrenting, loud, angry rain. You walk indoors, glad to sheath the umbrella, but then it's so hot and wet and people-y in the air that you just feel like running outside again and letting Seoul's cool acid rain soothe your skin.

It didn't rain Saturday night. It rained all that day, so I brought my umbrella, but ended up leaving it somewhere or another, glad that I didn't need it. It was a good night, too. Me and Ben and Bora went to a shellfish restaurant that had a dirt floor (makes for wonderful atmosphere, I promise).

After a bucketload of fresh mollusks, we got some more drinks, then headed to an odang bar. There we were met by Bora's curiously co-named sister Sora. There we ate tasty odang (a kind of fish cake type substance) dishes and imbibed bamboo soju right from the chute.

As the evening came to a close, I opted not to share a cab, and instead to stumble home and take scads of pictures along the way. Luckily (almost surprisingly) I knew and actually followed the most direct route home (only 2 subway stops away, but that's a task at four in the morning under such conditions). In fact, I'd have even made it back reasonably quickly if I didn't stop every ten footsteps to take pictures.

I'm actually pretty surprised with how well I can find my way around in Seoul now. I mean of course you can get around on subways with maps and such, but on the trillion tricky trails known as the streets of Seoul, things are much more confusing. However, I can manage to tell whether a cabbie is taking the right route home. Of course, I wouldn't really know how to argue with him about it in Korean, other than to ask "Where are you going?" and then swear a lot.

Then again, I guess that's about how I'd deal with it in English, anyway.

Of course, as familiar and my surroundings get, they'll never stop being strange. Just a quick stroll around my neighbourhood gives a few head-scratchers, for instance. Just up from my apartment are a few strangely-named establishments.

First, we've got Underwear Story. I'm not sure what sort of tale underwear has to tell, but I'm guessing that, much like the people who wear them, once undergarments get so old no one really cares about their shitty stories, and they just want to put them away and forget about them and let them smell like mothballs.



Then right across from each other, there's a clothes shop called Giraffe girl and bar called White Chicks. Neglecting the obvious height jokes, I'll suffice it to say that given that it's a new bar in a slightly obscure location, it's very possible that White Chicks has never actually had its namesake step through the door. The real question, though, is where the hell did they pick these names?

Or, for that matter, how do you manage to put something as ridiculous as "Love Virus" on a shirt? While I'm sure the honesty is appreciated, I don't really think burning pee and the need for antibiotics are the sorts of benefit a potential mate would choose to advertise on their chest.