last night

Last night was weird.  On my way home from meeting my friend for dinner, I encountered two strange things.

1.  While waiting to transfer to line 6, I saw down on a bench.  A few seconds later an older gentleman sat down next to me.  I proceeded to look through facebook on my phone.  I heard the man start talking and assumed he was crazy and was talking to himself (as a lot of old people do tend to do).  Unfortunately, I glanced his way and realized he was, in fact, talking to me.  He then opened his CORN icecream (shaped literally like a corn on the cob and probably corn flavored) and tore it in half.  (shock! horror! this old man is trying to give me half of his icecream bar with his bare hands)  I tried to kindly refuse by smiling and waving both of my hands in an effort to get my point across without speaking.  He kept pushing it towards me while I waved my hands.  I finally said, "no, thank you," thinking he would realize I am a foreigner and run away.  He just kept talking in rapid Korean, holding both pieces of the icecream bar and snickering about something I didn't catch.  He continued to talk to me about who knows what while I tried to stare at my phone screen.  He then asked me in Korean where I was going and I tried to answer in English, "my home."  Luckily the train came a few seconds later and he got up to throw away the icecream wrapper and I ran away to a different door.

2.  On my walk home from the subway station, I spotted a man sprawled out, face down on the road.  Well, half on the road and half on the sidewalk.  While I have seen many, many passed out people during my time in Korea, this was possibly the strangest of all.  I stopped just a few feet after passing him with the intention of taking a quick photo, but I never got a chance.  I waited for people to pass so nobody would see me, but by the time the coast of clear, another man was straddled over him, trying to wake him up.  Then a few police officers came to help to.  They eventually turned him over, sat him up, hoisted him off the ground, and I guess somehow got his address to take him home or took him to the police station

back for the long haul

TGIF!  It's the first Friday of the new semester.  We're back for good now with no vacation days in sight until a day off in May for Buddha's Birthday.  This week has been way too easy.  I guess it's good to ease in though.  Monday, no classes/Tuesday, only 4th grade/Wednesday, only 4th grade/Thursday, only 1 3rd grade class/Friday, only 1 6th grade class.  Life is rough.  It's gonna be a rude awakening when the real schedule gets underway especially since the classes in each grade are probably gonna be all on different sections of lessons and I have 4 co-teachers to coordinate with.