Recent Happenings

Having Monday off this week due to an island-wide hagwon strike was nice, but coming back to classes on Tuesday was a bit alarming when I discovered that a dozen or so students have gotten sick with H1N1, Swine Flu, at nearby schools in Sae-Seogwipo ("New Seogwipo" also referred to as "Shinsigaji," the area where I work).

The nearby elementary and middle schools have shown an increasing amount of cases of the sickness, and as a precaution, many parents are pulling their kids from classes just to be safe. Even one of my co-teachers was showing similar symptoms, even though he was told by doctors that it wasn't Swine Flu.

The fact that he's sick though just prompts parents to think that it might lead to their children getting sick and even catching Swine Flu, so a few pre-cautious parents have taken their kids out of our school for the time being.

My director has implemented regular body temperature checks via an ear thermometer (which he cleans in-between) as well as buying new microphones for the computer lab that will help keep germs from spreading. Along with a hand sanitizer dispenser and aerosol disinfectant cans for each class, I think he has made a good attempt to prevent the sickness from spreading.

In other news, I woke up Tuesday morning to find that my scooter was gone. Someone had stolen it, torn open the front grill, and cut the ignition starter out. I found it later down a road in a nearby orange grove.

I was upset to say the least, but I suppose I had it coming. I broke my lock a couple months back and have been just parking my scooter in my pension parking lot, which is easily visible from the road that connects down into the nearby village of Beophwan.

At first I thought it might have been just some school kids having a laugh, but the fact that they removed the starter and left the bike leads me to believe it's a nearby resident or farmer. There are plenty of people in the area with old scooters, so my guess is someone was needing a starter and mine was the perfect target.

It wasn't the best starter, in fact I've been having some troubles with it, but having to pay 125,000 won to get the grill and starter replaced isn't exactly my idea of an upgrade.

Anyway, my director gave me a big bag of Jeju mandarins that has helped cheered me up somewhat.