A quotidian day

I just got home from school. I walked in, took off my cardigan (which proved suffocating after ten this morning), set a litre of water boiling -- to drink later, since the tap water is rumored to be unpotable -- rinsed a handful of cherry tomatoes I bought on the way home, opened a Pilsner Urquell and sat down to write.

I realize you know little of my daily life, so because today was so average, I find it apt for sharing.

Since we've started at the current time, let's work backwards from here. I bought the tomatoes at a roadside truck selling at least 10 different native fruits and vegetables (and kiwis and bananas from some far-off land). They cost 5000won ($4) for about three kilos. That's enough to feed me for a week, if I make sauces every dinner, eat some at lunch, and snack on them like I'm doing now. Produce is cheap here, so long as it's grown in the country. Beef, on the other hand, is not. There's not much space for cows so they demand a premium. Tariffs and protectionist policies (which I heartily approve of) keep the Korean ranchers from being undersold by the American Meat Machine.

On the way to the tomatoes I passed a number of other street vendors selling maternity and baby clothes, cell phones from some national Telecom, and more, but I wasn't paying attention. I met a number of students on the way, in groups of twos and threes. Most of them just yelled, "Samporduh!!" and waved, while a couple of them asked how I was and replied to my query, "Finethanksyou?"

I have two favorite student interactions. First are the ones where I ask them a question in Korean and they answer in perfect English. For example, the third grader I saw today who, when I asked her "Odie ga-yo?" (Where are you going?), gave me a look of puzzlement, and said as clearly as an American kid, "My house."

The second favorite interaction is where they ask me obvious questions in Korean, like, "Weigookin?" (Are you a foreigner?) Umm... probably?

For the last four hours of school following lunch I did two things: 1) I emailed a couple of people and chatted with my parents, my girlfriend and a friend in Iraq. 2) I read about how to make Japanese ponds -- my first project on arriving home in Covington is to reform our prodigal backyard. (Prodigal, as in it keeps coming back in horrible shape.)

[On a side note: since Tomatoes are semi-poisonous, just how many of these things can I eat before I suffer their negative effects?]

For lunch I ate PB&J, a banana and a chocolate bar. Which is a bit juvenile, but I didn't feel like exerting effort. I read a chapter of Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake as well.

In the morning I had four nearly identical classes in a row. I started each class with my co-teacher, saying Hello, and What's The Date Today and those sorts of things, while I loaded the CD from the national curriculum. I administered a reading test to the few students who were away at science or water-rocket launching competitions yesterday. Once the CD loaded, I clicked on various videos and we asked the students to explain what they saw / heard. I gave a pop quiz on one of the longer videos, with mind-rending questions like, "Where was the boy?" (Possible answers: gift shop, toy shop, New York City, the USA) and "Why didn't the boy buy the toy helicopter?" (It was too expensive. He was in the Statue of Liberty gift shop -- what'd he expect?)

I'd arrived at school just after 8:30, gotten up just after 7:30 and slept last night around 4:30 (with the summer heat comes insomnia). Breakfast was frosted flakes composed of 74% corn (the rest is...?) and soy milk.

Back to the present: on the docket for the evening: maybe meeting friends after they get off work from the hagwons around nine tonight. In the meantime, putting some finishing touches on the beta of my new website, http://sharearchy.com, watching the rest of From Here to Eternity and practicing my French.

Yes, French, because it's just about time to depart this country -- perhaps for good, perhaps not. And French is a useful language, not to mention it's easier than Korean for a native-English speaker.