We had a school field trip to Everland on Monday. That's a big amusement park near Seoul. They got the kids in the gate and then turned them loose with instructions on what time to return. I was rather shocked by this method, but in the end no one was lost.

I spent the day with one special ed kid, a girl who can't walk well, and one special ed teacher. Here are the day's memorable conversations:

Girl: "What time is it now?"
Me: *shows watch* "1:30."
Girl: "We have to meet everyone else at 2:50. It's not 2:50 yet, right?"
Me: "No, it isn't."
*Five minutes later* Girl: "What time is it now? Is it 2:50?"

This went on for some time and I was pretty glad when it was finally our turn for the ride.

By the way, she's a cool kid. She wanted to go on all the scary rides and insisted they were fun, not scary. The teacher had other ideas.

*Late in the afternoon, after we'd been speaking Korean all day*
Teacher: "Laura, do you speak Korean? Can you understand it?"

Now, to understand the third story, you should know that working conditions at my school are fine for me but exceptionally bad for the Korean teachers who get shit all the time and have heaps and heaps of extra work piled on them. Occasionally I ask my co-teacher how her day's going, and every day she says it was terrible and tells some story or other about the administration and what they've done to make everyone miserable that day. So after the field trip, I was sitting with her on the bus ride home after I hadn't seen her all day, and I asked...

Me: "So, how was your day today?"
Soyoung: "It was fantastic."
Me *perks up*: "Really??"
Soyoung: "No. It was terrible."