Singing Along...

On the way to my friend's house last night the taxi driver put in a cassette tape of American music. He looked in the rear view mirror and asked, "You like old pop?" I nodded and suddenly the tape began to play. The Beatles. The Righteous Brothers. The Carpenters. Buddy Holly. And I started humming along. The driver started humming along. Then we both started singing along. It was just me, an old mix tape and my Korean cab driver singing... Only in Korea!

Well, more chaos at the hagwon. Two more Korean teachers quit. There has been some internal struggles with the head Korean supervisor and the two teachers decided to leave. They both offered to stay until a replacement could be found, but the supervisor told them to leave immediately. It is all a bit ridiculous. It feels like my hagwon doesn't think more than 30 minutes into the future, so it is constantly making decisions without evaluating any of the consequences. Nonetheless, I expect more disruption. But, I'll just ride out this wave too. Afterall, I'm an English teacher in Korea; a country that is currently in need of 20-30,000 more English teachers. Job security is not a concern. But, if I do this again, I am going to work fewer hours, teach more private lessons and teach kindergarten or preschool at a small hagwon. That is the way to do it! If you know how to work the system in Korea, money practically grows on trees!

However, the price you pay is your health. In the past four months I have been more sick than in the past four years combined. Largely because of the pollution and yellow sand. When I first heard of yellow sand I didn't give it much thought, but that stuff will get to you. And the pollution... it is bad bad bad. Every few weeks I get this old-man cough where I wheeze and huff my way through the day. Not to mention, everyone smokes indoors in bars, clubs and restaurants. I've lived in CA for too long and have become quite spoiled. If I go out dancing for the night and suck in that smoke for six hours, I'll be coughing and hacking the whole next day. Lovely.

I just finished a book that I found pretty interesting and entertaining. It is called, "The Know-It-All" by AJ Jacobs. It is about a man who read the Encyclopedia Britannica from A-Z. It is witty and filled with lots of useless information. My next book is "The Art of Travel" by Alain de Botton. Hmmm... It made some best seller lists somewhere.

I taught little Chloe today. I went into the class and was disappointed when I didn't see her with the students. I closed the door behind me and sat down on the floor with the kids. Then I heard a tiny tapping and scratching on the door and the Korean teacher opened it... Chloe was outside and too small to reach the door knob. She looked over at the class, looked right at me, exploded in a giant grin and ran to sit down next to me. There are very few ego boosts that compare to those moments. Everyone else can go jump off a cliff because at least Chloe thinks I'm a rockstar!

Oh... and we were learning about animals today. I pointed to a picture of a spider and Emma (another girl who is more precious than words could convey) started singing "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and tried to do the hand motions from last week. She remembered!

Finally, do you remember the scene in the movie "The Wizard of Oz" where Dorthy starts down the yellow brick road and all the Munchkins surround and her and follow her to the edge of Munchkin Land? When I leave the classroom, I am surrounded by my own Munchkins. I always wave goodbye and the boys jump up and follow me all the way to the door waving and shouting, "Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye."

Like I said... I'm a total rockstar!