18: Hot and Steamy

It was a hot and steamy Monday night, but most nights lately are. Well, they're hot and steamy. Monday still only comes once a week. Anyway, it was hot and steamy, and I was recovering from a mildly frustrating day of small children going wild and bigger children being unresponsive. I was up in my living room, playing my guitar, feeling much more relaxed than I had earlier, when suddenly James appears. He tells me that the director wants to talk to me. I was concerned, especially as I didn't feel that that day was anywhere near my most effective at work. Maybe it showed more than I thought. Thoughts such as these assailed me as I made my way down the dark stairway.

We entered the school, and like the stairway, all was dark. The only light appeared to be coming from a small lamp in the director's office, next to her computer. She sat silhouetted at the table, watching us approach. Or, at least I assumed she was watching. She was silhouetted, so it was hard to say for sure. We arrived in the office and she motioned for us to sit. As we sat she said something in Korean to James. It was short, and I'm assuming to the point, because afterwards there was silence. No translation. No speaking whatsoever. We sat there, looking at one another, and when that became too much, at other, random, things. The director said something to James, again. He nodded, then asked something. She turned around and pulled a thick envelope out of a drawer. She faced us again, tapping the envelope against her fingers, looking at me and smiling. I was thoroughly baffled, and slightly scared, at this point.

Then the phone rang. I jumped a bit. The director answered it, said a few quick things, then got up and left without saying another word to us, taking the envelope with her. I asked James what was going on. He said not to worry, that everything is being sorted out, but wouldn't elaborate further. I still didn't even know what needed to be sorted out.

The director returned. She strode rather purposefully into the office, resumed her seat and placed the envelope, which seemed to have gotten even thicker, on the table. She smiled at me and slid it across the table to me. I looked at her, then at James, then at the envelope, then at my shoe, then at her again, and shrugged. I took the envelope. The envelope stuffed to capacity with cash.

She said something to James, who prompted me to count, "to make sure its all there." I was still a bit confused, but it suddenly dawned on me. I was getting paid! I had figured that wasn't going to come for another week or so at the earliest. The whole Mafia payola scene still had me a little off balance, and I wasn't at all sure what was in need of sorting out ealier, but I went ahead and counted it. It was all there. A full months pay, in cash, in an envelope. A good way to end a moderately bad day.

The following day (today), I went to distribute that cash to those fine institutions that temporarily funded my education. It was either that or my first born son, and really Keegan, you don't want to live at the bank. No toys, and they frown upon arts and crafts with the currency. So they get my money instead. Getting it to them was a process, to be sure. I had to fill out transfer forms, try to remember the address of my bank (who remembers that stuff?), some running back and forth between the bank and my house for ID, bank addresses and such, and a whole bunch of other fun stuff like that. Thankfully, after a half hour or so that was over.

On to teach. Teaching today was much better than yesterday. One of my favorite things about student workbooks and textbooks is the use of names for people. I love it when somehow they happen to stumble across the name of someone I know. Now, I'm not talking about just a first name. That's nothing. But when a first and last name come together, it's pretty cool. Especially when it puts that person in a scenario they could never possibly be in. In this case, we have one Nocash Jones (not someoneI know, if anyone is curious) being interviewed by the police who are looking for his best friend, one Mary Cleaver. It seems she's on the lam in Australia for unknown crimes. How is old Nocash these days anyway, Mary? Hope you're enjoying Australia.

Well, back to that hot and steamy business mentioned earlier. I also mentioned that this was the rainy season in a previous update, right? Yeah, well, what I thought was the rainy season before was actually the tail end of a typhoon that apparently killed some people in the north part of South Korea and a couple of others in Japan. The rainy season itself arrived a few days later. I was a little suspect of how that storm didn't count as part of the rainy season, but I was assured that "the real rainy season" was starting a few days later, specifically on Thursday the 24th. It's nice to know the weather is so well scheduled here. Well, we're now nearly a week into the "real" rainy season and really, it should be called the cloudy and humid season. Or even more simply, the wet season. There has been very little rain, but one still ends up soaked right through when they go anywhere outside the 5m radius of a strongly blowing fan. Actual rain would be quite nice right about now.

So, once again we are up to date. One final thing though, I got a few responses about the email with the addresses in it. After discarding the ones that laughed at my feeble attempts to get entertaining packages in the mail, there were ones that pointed out that not everyone has Korean language settings on their computer, so that version of the address turned out rather strangely. I'm going to try again on this blog thing (those of you who don't view the blog will now get my addresses emailed to you a second time). Likely the same thing will happen, but it's worth a try, plus it gives my address more exposure and thus the higher likelihood of someone sending me something. So here they are again, my addresses in English and Korean:

Teacher Steave
c/o ELC Foreign Language Institute
Milyang City, Gyeongsangnam-do
Sammoondong 219-26 (4F)
South Korea
627-805

교사 스티브
배려의 E.L.C. 외국어학원
경남 밀양시 삼문동 219-26번지 (4F)
남한
627-805

And there you have it. Until next time...

Steave

Oh yeah. I mentioned something about troubles seeing the blog site. I haven't heard back from anyone saying they're having a problem, so I'll assume it's just me. I can still post, and that's good. But if anyone is putting up comments, I can't read them. That doesn't mean stop doing so, but maybe you could email them to me as well as post them? That'd be super. Thanks

*** edit ***
it's been pointed out by my Korean friends that I had spelled Steave wrong in Korean (which I thought was funny as they had spelled it wrong in English, but its not my name anyway, so no matter). Instead of ㅅ팁 like I had before, its 스티브, which if you are familiar with the way Korean reads, turns a one syllable English name into a three syllable Korean name (seh-ti-beh, with the accent on the middle syllable, as they say it). So yeah, I sure wrote a lot for such a minor correction. But don't forget to mail me stuff!!!