Clueless? Just smile and bow.
Brief but awesome tale of my last fifty minutes:
Picture this. Me, sitting at my cubicle desk in a sea of teacher cubicle desks. My desk faces the wall in a cluster of five desks. Two cute, younger teachers are at the desks facing mine, Mr. Choi sits at the desk beside me. We’re desk buddies. The art teacher sits at the desk that is added to our cluster of four. She always wears very bright clothing. One of her favorites is an electric blue tanktop covered in a lacy black sleeved shirt, with the tanktop extending almost into a skirt. Another especially eye- catching combination is her hot pink pants with some ruffly, artsy shirt. Her makeup, though not overdone, is definitely more colorful than the other women’s.
So, here I am, Thursday afternoon, finished teaching four of my classes. I’m currently making a word- search for my extra classes this evening, of “Words That Are Really Fun, like Booya” and searching my brain for cool equivalents of “awesome”, “neat”, “rad” and “super”. Suddenly I am broken from my tired, half- concentrated half- facebook chatting stupor to realize that everyone around me is standing. Not only are they standing, but the office has been flooded with thirty extra people. Commence bowing. Commence speeches. (Further my confusion.) Commence introductions. Commence the scattered placing of huge boxes of things on the center table. The boxes, from the looks of it, contain dozens of yellow bottles of some sort of unidentifyable drink, and they look lovely when placed next to the platters of food. (Wait, platters of food? Where did those come from?)
Continue bowing. All the teachers in the room are standing in greeting of these thirty intruders to our office space. Continue bowing and, just as suddenly as they entered, all the offending intruders exit.
Unsure, I continue to stand. After a few awkward moments, it feels safe to sit. I sit.
Ten minutes later, somebody walks around and puts a small brown bottle with a yellow label on my desk. Next to it they place a strange bar. They walk on.
It looks like a gooey rice bar with… beans? And maybe a dried fig? Or a cockroach. And… red beans too? I thought they were raisins but pretty sure they’re beans. Red and green beans. I smell it and my suspicions are confirmed. Beans! Rice! Nuts! Fruit? Not sure whether or not I’m allowed to eat it, and I have no clue what’s in this yellow bottle, but it’s almost time for dinner so I probably shouldn’t spoil my appetite.
I never have a clue what’s happening around me, but generally its pretty awesome.
Signing out, until the next random clueless encounter….