Winter's Back

Two days ago I left work to the sun owning a huge piece of the sky. It made the day feel a lot like a young spring day just learning how to tease people into shedding layers of clothing. This morning, I left the house to a good half inch of virgin snow carpeting the stairs of my villa.

When I got off the subway to catch my bus to work there was a nasty traffic jam lining the street. When I saw the number of people waiting for buses and my bus no where in sight I doubled back to an earlier stop so that I'd get a seat on the bus. I caught the bus at 8:20 and we inched our way to my school. What normally takes 20 minutes today took just under two hours to get to school.

Koreans have a hard time obeying traffic laws at the best of times but with snow falling, it was a complete free for all. Intersections and lights were completely ignored by all including the police who were three cars in front of us. At one point with the bus owning the intersection and the light asking cars in the other direction to proceed one man exploded out of his car, slammed on the bus door and laid into our bus driver with a string of insults.

I was an hour late and had missed my first class but nobody said a thing to me because I was the first teacher there. I did feel bad because my sixth and fifth grade students all waited for me and instead of going home at 10 they wanted the class to start and stayed an hour later. Being Friday today's lesson was to finish watching Home Alone so I gave one boy five bucks to go to the market to get the class some snacks to make up for mother nature's rage. Most kids choose to stay warm at home so I combined my second and third classes together and again we watched the movie. There is nothing better than watching Home Alone with a group of kids who'd never seen it before their laughter was infectious and made for a great day.