My sister studies baseball

About a week and a half ago I agreed to sit for an interview with two of my very bright young Korean pupils for the school newsletter.  The presses have run.  Marvel at the English language funneled through the Korean brain and then poured like concrete back into English to sit on these glossy never-bio-degrade pages forever.  Here are some excerpts of how they see me seeing myself. 

How many people are there in your family?

First, dad, he is a P.E. teacher for twenty years.  He used to play in his university.  Second, my mother she works in Sales for International Tea and Coffee.  She runs Marathons too.  I have a younger sister who is now studying baseball abroad in the United States.

What is your favorite subject and why?

History was my favorite during the last year of high.  The reason is that I was interested in the world., and had wonders about it.  Coming to Korea was my first step to the world.

How is Korea different from your homeland?

In Korea, there isn't much bread as Canada, and I miss them a lot.  People are different too In Canada, I can see a bunch of different races, but I rarely see them in Korea.  Well... lifestyles are somewhat similar.  People do the same thigs for the same reasons.  For culture, there are more things related to tradition.  Compared to Korean schools, Canadians schools wear less school uniforms.  Also, there are less regulations, so student can do whatever they want to do, such as dying their colour in green.

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Good night breads, I miss you.

Korean Fairy Tale

Once upon a time there was a class of fine and intelligent Korean children who, pushed only by their love of education for education's sake, decided to enroll in volentary, suplimentary, English classes after school.  Their teacher was an ugly troll from Canada who always wore the same miss-buttoned shirt and sometimes drooled. 

One day the troll ambled into class on his impossibly bowing legs, babelling and drooling among other disgusting things.  The children treated him far better than he deserved, as they always did.

"Please share with us your knowledge for the day," they sang like ornate chimes.

"Humpty Dumpty," the troll spat, though the children did not flinch because they had a silent graceful strength. 

"Explain this please," and the children leaned closer when so many would have leaned away.

The troll went on to explain, in poor grammar and syntax that even the children could tell was a butchering of an already slovenly language, all about Humpty Dumpty: his climb up the wall and subsiquent fall, the conern and failure of the King's horses and men and the fact that he was an egg.

The children were deferencial beyond a fault, but as the troll closed his story they were filled with righteous purpose and spoke like a volley of cannons.

"That is preposterous.  No Korean King would ever waste time with an egg.  Our royalty had a sense of priority and this story offends their memory and our young minds." 

With these brave words the troll was vanquished to his slimey cavern and, unimpeded, the children mastered English by the following Tuesday.

 

Iron Maiden or...

My after school class starts at 3:40, but I won't know how many students will be in attendance until 4.  The foolish ones who come on time are subjected to my poor tastes via youtube.  I am an utter failure as a DJ.  In terms of recall I am nearly unable to list twenty songs without being reduced to Iron Maiden or 90's pop.  It was in tribute to the sour taste of middle school nostalgia that I queued up this tower of power: Everybody (Back Street's Back)

There reaction?  Lyrically, acoustically, they love it.  Visually these eighth graders were so frightened by the Thriller ripped costumes that they covered their eyes and demanded I minimize it.  When I refused, one girl threw up and the lady-janitor followed me back to the class when she caught me rifling through her closet for paper towels.

Eat your vegitables children, mind your parents.  Backstreet's back hiding under your bed, alright?

Be my stewart to your wild urban sprawl

Such is the strength of this marvelous peninsula, that even should we try and insulate ourselves, its rich cultural experiences will find you.  They will fucking find you.

After school I am jubilant.  On the average day I coast home on a cross between the feeling of a job well done and the comparison I make between the length of my stride and the children's as they mill outside the school in front of various shops and academies.  I buy either a large bottle of water, a small carton of milk or an icecream sandwich in the shape of a fish.  I smile a lot and bow more than the old gentleman who is constantly skulking around appreciates. 

I do a bit of this sort of thing and then I retire to my appartment

Twice this week I have happened upon a woman helping her child piss in the street.  Indefinate article 'a'.  Not the woman who helps her child urinate in the street, but two different women with needless detail to include different children.  In the first case the child was about five and his mother hauled down the front of his pants as he stood over top of a gutter grate in the center of the Y junction that I take a right on to get home.  The second time the woman cradled her two or three year old daughter in her arms, the little girl's knees squeezed under her chin as her feet kicked over her mother's forarms.  It dribbled after me on the side walk, tendrils slowly breaking new ground as a fresh puddle does on an otherwise dry day, until I took my right at the Y junction. 

For dinner I abstain from fish, rice and kimchi but consider pissing out my window.  You're growing on me Korea; you're growing in me.

I've already had Mono. I hear you can not get it again.

On Wednesday I informed my teachers that I was sick. 
"Oh yes," one of my coteachers told me, "I also have a cold.  My nose is running."

"Mmm," I replied, my tone chosen so as to acknowledge her as a brother in arms.  "I am staggered by dizzy spells and my eyes desperately want to come out."

"Ah, I have just the thing for you," she said.  "It is an old Korean proverb.  I don't want to leave you in suspence, so I will tell you now that the message in the end is to study harder.  It goes like this-"

I rudely interupted her by selfishly submitting to a coughing fit that continued for the twenty minutes that remained in lunch.  When I awoke from it my throat was still seized, and I could taste the blood from my broken nose which I had managed to embarasse myself with when I slumped out of my chair from an inability to breath.

After I made a formal apology, we walked together to the clinic to get my teacher some medicated tissues for her sensitive nose-skin and perhaps have a doctor see to my growing lesions if there was time.  On the way, my coteacher put me to ease with questions and assumptions about my belief in god. 

With her tissues procured and a few minutes remaining, I was allowed to go before the doctor.  A prescription was written for three days worth of standard cure all horse pills and the physician asked me if I'd like a shot.  I was all set to recieve the vaunted Korean insta-remedy, but when the needle was proffered I had to mask my disapointment.  As it turns out, their policy is to save the valuable medication for patients they deam "not whinners" and I was to be given a shot of air instead.  Patients in Korea are informed before hand if they are expected to benefit from the placebo effect.  In this way, failure to benefit from the ruse-medication is known always to be the fault of the recipient and not the care provider.  In my case, the placebo effect was likely the only thing that kept the airbubble injected into my veins from killing me.  For the rest of the week I sweat profusely, buckets of what smelt strongly like gasoline.  The children forced me to do their homework and threatened me with small flints, which they scraped ominously in their pockets.