Seoul Circa 1970

Talking with the school's vice principal is nearly impossible for me. He is an awkwardly shy man, who's soft voice runs through the Korean language fully expecting my ears can keep up. It's a constant struggle but over this half year we've developed a good relationship (mostly by not talking). My favorite catch phrase of his, "Let's go eat together" signals my lunch hour and it never comes soon enough. The other day while walking to the cafeteria he was trying to ask me about the heating in my classroom. I made a small complaint because I didn't know how to turn down the heat. This made him shake his head and giggle.

Luckily we ran into Mr. Bae at this time to translate because he then started off on a long story of teaching hardships and woes. In 1970 Seoul he would of loved to of had any classroom heat let alone too much heat. Before overdoing it completetly with his tales of walking to work uphill both ways in blizzards all year round. He told us about his largest class ever of 86 students in it. That's five short of all the kids in our whole school now. He made sure I understood this number repeating it five times in Korean before echoing my shocked and very high pitched 86 back at me in English. Seeing as we were talking about my heating issues I just thought, with that many bodies in a room do you even need a heater? Man what a whiner.