I was having one of those days where you really don’t feel like going into work. We all get them and I had finally just decided to gut it out and go. I had done most of the things that I wanted to do for the morning including talking to my mother and chatting with Carlo via Yahoo Instant Messenger. It is really nice to hear a familiar voice and we talked for about an hour and then it was time for me to head to work.
I walked up the little hill and scored a diet Coke (they only have two sizes, a 10 oz and a 1.5 liter, I go for the larger one) and then stopped to get a couple of the little rolls that I eat daily. It is rice in a seaweed paper with vegetables and some fish. They are only a buck a piece and I normally go and eat them in the park across the street from school before I head to work.
So I am lunching and all of a sudden this little pack of kids comes up and starts to ask me for a bit of the roll. Soon I have passed out half my lunch and I am left wondering who these kids were as they are normally not the ones who are in the park. But it was still more than enough for me to feel full and feeding kids is not the worst thing in the world for me to do.
I then walked into the building and up the stairs to the second floor where our office is and noticed that there are no shoes in the rack and that the wooden door is pulled shut. Normally the wooden door is wide open and there is a glass swinging door with “WELCOME TO OUR SCHOOL” emblazed with big green letters across it. In fact, I didn’t even realize that there was a wooden door until I saw Jennifer, the office manager, close up shop one night.
So I beat on it and there is no answer. I look around and there is no note. I remember that there was a phone call that I missed earlier in the day but I am certain that if something was up I would have been told about it.
Confused, I go home and start to make some phone calls from this list that I have and I get no answers. It is at this point that my mind begins to wander and all sorts of messed up thoughts come to the fore. Someone is dead. The school has gone bankrupt. I have no idea what is going on and there is no one to ask.
This sucks.
I then write an email to Amy Klee agreeing with her that Koreans are difficult to grasp (she used to work on their Airline) and how I don’t even know if I have a job. Maybe it had something to do with the kid who stabbed himself? I have no clue.
I fart around for a few hours and then finally decide to look for this coffee shop that someone told me about. I have a general idea where it is at and after about a half an hour I find it. It is on the second floor of this building and the doorway is rather non-descript which is why I had missed it in the past.
I go upstairs and it is very nice. Big couches, well padded chairs, nice knotty pine trim. They have real coffee and I am most pleased. They even have menus in English and as I read it I am stunned by what it says at the bottom of the page: THE CAFÉ ID IS CLOSED ON MONDAYS BUT OPEN FOR HOLIDAYS.
So today was a holiday and no one bothered to tell the American. Nice. My waitress goes over to the computer, pulls up a page and motions for me to come to her. It turns out that today is Founder’s Day and I guess that explains why I saw the Korean flags up and down the beach: silly me, I thought it was simply civic improvement. I thank her for going out of her way and order my coffee. So I guess I still have a job, which is nice to know.
After a couple of cups of coffee, the first real coffee I have had since I have been here, the owner comes up and asks me how I like his establishment. I tell him that it is just what I was looking for and then he mentions that he had seen my bicycle out front. Now he is very happy as we can talk bicycles for a minute and this makes me happy as I now have a place to go and drink coffee and speak with someone in English.
He even knew why I had the tires that I did and that my bike is basically an urban Hummer. He says that he goes in the mountains quite a bit and asks me if I like to go off road. I tell him why it is set up the way it is and that . . . Well, I tell him that I really don’t want to change out my tires but I’ll think about it. I don’t want to tell him that I am a total wimp; he can find that out on his own.
In the end it turns out that I have to go have a cup of coffee in order to figure out why the place I work is closed for the day. Later I get a phone call telling me that I was invited to go hiking today but that as I didn’t answer my phone they assumed that I had went somewhere for the weekend. Actually, when they don’t hear from me I think they (my boss and her husband) are convinced something tragic has befallen me. Don’t get me wrong, it is wonderful to have an employer who cares. It simply would have been nice if someone would have told me it was a national holiday.
Peace,
sh
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