The Fabulous Adventures of Week (-36)

Danger! Danger! I'm starting to believe they mean it when they say I'm going to Jeju Island with the EEP kids in January. They bought a plane ticket for me yesterday, and today Terrie was making specific plans about who'd be responsible for which group. I chose 1A because their English is the best, so I'll be able to communicate with them, but it also means I'm in charge of Jeffrey Dahmer and the girls who never shut up. Still, Jeju is called "Korean Hawaii"...it's a bit of a stretch--it'll be plenty cold in January--but I'll still be glad to get there and I'm looking forward to doing something fun with the kids instead of just making them dread my existence. I wrote it in pencil on my calendars, and I've been wary of actually planning on it, but I'm getting frighteningly optimistic.

Proud of myself for resisting the allure of a Tony the Tiger mug AND a fleece blanket, and buying the cheaper cereal I actually wanted. Proud of myself for going to HomePlus at all...it's a very long walk on a very cold night.

Seoul has been extremely cold this week. (though I guess nothing like y'all in New York are getting) I had to turn on the heat in my apartment, at last. So the floor is hot most of the time, which is often nice and sometimes annoying. I have to be careful where I set things down, especially since I don't really have any tables, so the floor is the default receptacle. Not having a dresser is actually proving to be a plus. The only thing I don't get is that the bathroom isn't heated. With the size of my place, it's not as if it gets cold in there, especially since it has no outside walls, but going from the toasty main room floor to typical tile temperature is a bit of a shock.

The bathrooms at school fare no better. When I went in during EEP last night, I heard water running and noticed that the faucet hadn't been turned off completely. BOTH faucets, in fact. Damn kids...but wait. Fortunately, I avoided causing a major crisis by cottoning on that they were running on purpose, to keep the pipes from freezing. 'Cause it IS that cold in there.

The corridors, too, required some attention this week. The steel staircase and bridge on the temporary building gets a nice icing, so one of the pink & green construction blankies has been laid across, trading the security of not slipping for the very real hazard of tripping over the wads at either end. The water filters on each level also proved dangerous--lacking cups, the kids just turn the water on and stick their heads under...what they don't catch pools on the floor. I don't know how many people took an unintentional skate before someone finally salted the halls.

This week was the end of EEP, at least until the new school year starts in March. No more 12-hour days--yay! No more fat supplementary paychecks--boo! The school did allot us teachers $100 to go out drinking in celebration last night.

If I eat another rice cake, I'll gag. As high school placements are announced, jubilant parents are drowning us in the traditional Korean celebratory food. With the texture of Dots, the taste of flour, and the glycemic index of a doughnut, I'm not a huge fan. Actually, some of them don't taste like flour alone. The gift boxes come with a flavor variety, and they're a lot like Bertie Botts' Beans--some have chestnuts or other nice things; others you need to discreetly spit out FAST. I've got 2 on my desk now--one's been rolled in sawdust and the other is a seaweed green. I'm ALMOST curious enough about the green one to try it.

I've been having the kids write letters to Santa. Not free-form--I am learning something--but a fill-in-the-blank thing where they have to say what they want, why they deserve it, and what they're going to leave for Santa. Korean kids have Santa, but the rest of it is foreign to them. I had to explain that American children usually leave cookies for Santa to eat, and even with that, the stuff they promised to have out for him was a hoot: some had the general idea with ice cream or chocolate; several offered socks or cash, one wrote "love and a picture of me", and another thought a razor would be appropriate.