I went to the coffee shop tonight to write an essay for a fellow foreigner who is doing a dissertation paper on teaching English in Korea or something like that. I love writing and I kind miss writing essays so I figured why not contribute to society instead of holing up in my room playing sporcle quizzes.
I'm really sick, so I bring a role of toilet paper with me wherever I go in case I need to blow my nose. While I wouldn't put it past 95% of my kids to give me diseases, I blame this particular sickness on one particular child. Mr. Shawny-pants. Shawny-pants, as I like to call him, did me the kind injustice last Friday of gathering up spit in his mouth and then taking my curriculum paper and slobbering allllll over it. And when he was done, he ripped it in half. Now I come in an hour early to work to write up my curriculum. I needed that paper. So I took the slobbery ripped up paper and brought it along to my remaining classes. (Gross I know, but arguably not as gross as the walking germ infestations that are children). The best was when other students would pick up the slobbery ripped papers and say "Teachah what? Teachah whaaaat?" and then I'd tell them what happened to it. Lesson: don't touch my stuff kids. he he.
(Sidenote: Koreans hate when people blow their noses in public, yet they have no problem spitting everywhere at all times. In stairwells, in corridors, you name it. Boys, girls, women, men, children, everyone does it, it's the thing to do. It's gross. They have no problem very audibly coughing up a lung and mustering a loogie full of mucus, but blowing your nose...now that's taking it too far.)
Anyway, so I'm at the coffee shop, blowing my nose and writing this paper after a long sick day of attempting to control over-worked, hyperactive children when a cute little kid comes over to me. First he just looks at me. Then he comes over to me. Not knowing what to do as he stares at me and my computer, I hand him one of the chips I was eating because he was a little chubby and all chubby kids want snacks. Right?
Well, right, but I should have known that once you feed them, you're never rid of them. So now the kid starts speaking Korean to me so I say "Hangul, Chogum" which basically means "I only know a little Korean." And then he's all "ok" but then continues to talk a mile a minute to me in Korean. So to divert his attention from the fact that I'm smiling and nodding because I have no idea what he's saying, I try to look up a computer game for him to play on my computer. But, nothing is interesting to him. He is bored with my computer and he is bored with his legos that he brought over to show me and he is starting to take interest in my used tissues. So I tell him "noooo grooossss" and I think he gets it, but then again you'd think he'd understand not to touch them after watching me use them. But kids are gross, and they give me diseases.
Even on my few hours off, the unwanted kid magnet that I have, manages to bring on the children.
I had a small Haitain boy (who spoke no English) hand me EVERY bag of candy in the CVS I was in the other day. Here I am, sitting by the pharmacy with a PILE of candy on my lap and I'm saying "Thank you, now let's put this one back" to which he smiles and nods his head and hands me some orange slices, a bag of bullseyes, and a whole rack of licorice. Then when he left, the woman at the pharmacy called my name and I tried to stand up with all this candy on my lap which of course was unsuccessful. The look she gave me was indescribable. I didn't even try to explain.
ReplyDelete