Just another evening in the office…
Picture this.
It’s 6:10 pm and I’m waiting for the students that are late to my extra class. Six of the early students are already sitting and chatting with me before one of them tells me that class will end early today. I send her down to talk to the main teacher for a time confirmation, though I easily believed her, for upon my entering the dormitory tonight, the entire downstairs was filled with colored balloons. “Party tonight! Third grade… exams finishee, University…” were amoung the explinations I received while blowing up my own balloon and bopping another one at a student as she screamed and ran behind me to bop another balloon at me from behind.
Side note, the students are the ones that let me know if anything is happening. It’s rare for a teacher to fill me in on the events before they are already underway.
Back to the classroom. We receive confirmation of early dismissal time, 7:30 pm for the party. Happily, we all decide there isn’t enough time for a worksheet and, with much rejoicing, decide to play Bingo and Catch Phrase. Tonight we played Exercise/ Sport Bingo, followed by Animal Bingo, followed by a rousing game of Catch Phrase.
My extra classes are generally a really great time.
Bingo usually goes as follows: brainstorm as a class, completely fill the white board with words, individually fill out a 5 x 5 self- made Bingo board. When we’re ready to begin, I walk around the room with a recently emptied pencil case, newly filled with little slips of paper that have the freshly brainstormed words handwritten on them. Each student picks a word and has to say it. Fun every time.
Catch Phrase is just like the catch phrase you play with your friends on Friday night, and is basically one of the most fun games in the world. I brainstorm new words for the studets every time, put them in a self- made envelope and watch my class of adorable high school Korean girls speak in English and get enthusiastically, wildly excited when the clock runs out on the other team.
Finish extra English class early. Clean up scraps of paper. Leave the room and the dorm is swarming with excited, screaming girls. Enter an elevator filled to the brim with students, me in the middle. Lots of giggling. Ride down four floors. Still surrounded by giggles. An occasional mystery poke. More giggles. Not sure what to do once we reach the main floor, I manage to find one of the teachers nearby.
She grabs my arm in a sea of students, and says, “Hamburger…”
I giggle, “What?”
“Yes, hamburger… go to office… on your desk… hamburger. Please eat.”
I’m still giggling. This is so goofy. “Hamburger?”
“Yes, hamburger! Hamburger. Please enjoy hamburger. On your desk.”
Still laughing, I thank her and ask if she will join me in the office (though I’d rather stay with the giggling girls and join the party…) and, “No, I stay. You enjoy hamburger.”
So, short brisk walk back and I arrive at my teacher cubicle desk to find, as promised, an individually prepackaged hamburger and a miniature can of Pepsi soda pop.
I’m not completely sure when it was decided that a hamburger was an appropriate snack, especially after already eating two full meals today (and I mean huge, full, and inappropriately stuffing meals) … but, when in Korea? Eat Western food as the Koreans do?
Hah! False.
The truism is as follows: When in Korea, avoid Western food at all costs. Do your best to avoid eating that sloppy, soggy white bread with ketchup, corn pieces and hot dog slices, folded once on itself and stacked high in a tray with dozens of other “pizzas”.
Do your best to avoid Korean imitations of American candies. Korean skittles, though they sound like they might be skittles when you give the bag a test- shake, are actually rock- hard sharply neon- flavored citrus and taste awful. They may or may not crack your teeth upon chewing. Chocolate will not melt in your mouth. Though Krunkie candy bars are a little bit like a Crunch bar, and will satisfy your immediate cravings for chocolate, they won’t satisfy in the long run. Hard candies will probably taste like ginseng and make your burps taste funny for the rest of the day, unless they taste like grape, in which case they are amazing.
Rice and red beans are used for desert purposes and make delicious cakes. Consequently, since rice is the familiar mode of sweet desert, wheat products will be treated as a delicacy item and will most likely be completely loaded with sugar. Sugar white bread. Sugar coffee. Other super- sweet sugary things I can’t remember at the moment because it’s time to end this excessively long footnote, pour out the rest of this mini- Pepsi and make my way home. Hooray! Home.