Got up pretty early (for me), joined the lines of commuters boarding the subway, squished up against strangers for a few stops, got slammed around a bit as I exited the train with a lot of others at popular transfer point, avoided the long line of people waiting in lines to get on the down escalator and took the stairs instead, waited for next train to arrive, it came within 1 minute, got on board and had to stand for about 35 minutes, transferred again, then finally made it to the gym.
Ran at the gym for 45 minutes, showered and while finishing up my shower, the girl showering next to me splatters her shampoo right into my left eye, upon which I immediately have a severe reaction to, making my left eye turn as red as blood. I try to wash it out, but the allergic reaction to whatever chemicals were in her shampoo have set in, and now my eye is watering, stinging and hurting like hell. I finish up my shower, and dripping wet, still naked as ever I search in my backpack for my eye drops. I find them and immediately squeeze 3 drops in. A tiny relief is felt, but not much. I get dressed and blow dry my hair, then leave the gym.
As I walk toward the bank to pay some bills, a car turns into the crosswalk and nearly hits me. I barely flinch but am still annoyed. The sidewalks are always crowded in Seoul and those walking in groups don’t like to get in single file lines to make room for others, so I find myself stepping out into the street, off the sidewalk to get to where I need to. A guy’s cigarette ashes blow into my face as he walks by, letting his cancerous ashes go wherever. My eye is still watering and pink, but a little less pained.
The bank is not crowded today, but I still must get a number to wait in line. I have the same teller I have had the last 2 times, and fortunately she speaks some English. She speaks to me in Korean anyway and I just push my bills at her, hoping she’ll know I just want to pay them and keep this simple. Now she’s trying to tell me something about one of the bills, and I have no idea what she’s saying…so she reluctantly switches to English and says I can’t pay this bill because part of it is missing. So I pay the one that is still in tact and carry on with my day…
It’s time to mail a letter home, and again I luck out with hardly any line. ”Mi-guk” I say, as I push my envelope forward to the woman. She asks me something to which of course I don’t understand. Then she says slowly, “Ex-puh-ress-uh?” I shake my head, pay for the postage and walk to the train again.
I head toward work, pondering what to grab for lunch on this fine Friday afternoon. I’m sick of Korean food for some reason, but also a little low on cash since it’s the end of the month and pay day isn’t for another week. I ponder getting some ramen, but just cannot eat ramen either, so I splurge on 8,000 won Thai food and it’s delicious (as far as Thai food in Seoul goes) but it was confusing as usual to get them to understand I wanted tofu instead of chicken. I’d ordered tofu pad thai from this place before, so knew they could do it, but with different staff there everyday, the confusion begins all over again. Fortunately, it was fine, just a few moments of confusion and soon I was on my way with my nicely packaged pad thai.
I get to work, sit down, turn on the computer and the principal asks me questions about one of my classes, asking me to rank the students and say who is the best in the class. I find this to be a hard question, since all the students in that particular class have different strengths and weaknesses. Finally I submerge to the easiest way of ranking the kids and tell him who has the best test scores. I stress that while her test scores are good, her degree of critical thinking could use some work. This is Korea…and I hate to say it, but after 15 months of teaching elementary kids, I am finding that generally the creative ones have lower test scores and the less creative ones have higher test scores. I hate generalizing, but it’s true.
My eye, as I look in the bathroom mirror at work is only slightly pink, and just a teeny bit watery now. Good, at least it seems to be going away. Next time I shower with that girl I’m closing my eyes the whole time. Now I must work and assist with curriculum at this joyful hagwon. At least after work I can look forward to a relaxing dinner and drinks with friends.