Your BELLY

Certainly, living so close to my school is a benefit. It's five minutes or under on foot, and my proximity to work was a concern of mine before I moved down here after the orientation in Seoul. I had the idea that the Daegu Metropolitan Office of Education would possibly toss me and some other teachers all in an apartment building and leave us on our own to figure out how to best get to work. I imagined shitty scenarios of having to figure out a bus system and sit through 45 minute rides, or spend 20 minutes walking everyday. Fortunately the DMOE, my employer, and that of the other native speakers who got the job through EPIK, just assigns us a school and leaves the housing up to them. I say fortunately only because things worked out well for me. Whoever at my school was in charge of hooking me up with an apartment did a good job. It is close, as I have said, but it is also relatively new, as is my school and the entire neighborhood I live in and around because I am on the edge of the city where all the development is pretty recent. My apartment is also a decent size. It's would be small in America, except for maybe in New York City, but compared to the pads of some other native teachers, I really lucked out. I have a kitchen that has enough room for a nice table with four chairs that was kindly furnished for me, and my bedroom which is accessed by two large sliding doors from the kitchen has a good sized bed and enough room for a small couch if I ever come across one. The bathroom is pretty small but I also have a storage/laundry room.

My apartment is pretty nice, and like I said, certainly convenient, but I guess the proximity has a downside too. Namely that of having my students everywhere around the neighborhood, and having some trying to follow me home. These two kids, Sang-gi (left) and Sang-kyung (right)



and another friend ran into me as I was walking home the other day. Sang-kyung kept saying I needed to memorize his name, so I practiced it a couple times. When I saw him today and snapped the above photo, three days after he had me memorize it, he asked me what his name was and covered up his name tag. Fortunately I had just taked the photo and zoomed in on it and read his name off it cause I didn't remember. Ha, sucker. Sang-gi, who has serious ADD and speaks little more English than "Your BELLY, show me!" managed to ask where I was going, half in Korean, half in English. I noticed they changed the direction that they were walking in when they saw me, and after I responded I was going home and asked them where they were going, of course they said they were going to my home too. "Party" and "tour" were a couple of words they managed to spit out in English, plus "Your BELLY" one or two more times. That's actually pretty funny, every time I see Sang-gi, that's the first and usually the only thing he says; he want's to see my stomach for some reason. At least he remembered one vocab word from the English camp my school held on a Saturday about 6 weeks ago.

I just kept walking as these kids were shoveling fried ramen into their mouths and jabbering on in Korean. They asked where I lived, do I take a bus, a subway? I live this way, no I don't, and no I don't. I could have just lied and walked around until they got tired of following me but I didn't want to. I got to my apartment building and opened the door to head up to my floor, and had to physically block the pesky little bastards from squeezing into my building. "No. Go home." "AHN-i-yo." I got halfway up the stairs and they tried to sneak in behind me, thinking I wouldn't see them. I held out my arms and flapped my hands like I was shooing them away which was a mistake cause that's essentially the gesture Koreans use to say "Come here." I got them out again and finally watched them leave from the landing after a couple minutes of loitering around the outside of my building.

So now they know what building I live in, but not which apartment is mine. There's only six apartments, being a three-story building with an art studio on the bottom, so I guess it wouldn't be too hard to figure out. Only a couple students actually know which apartment is mine, and that's cause they live upstairs, but they're cool. One of them brought me some grapes as a gift one night, and their mom is friendly and wouldn't let them bother me. Plus they don't have ADD.