Tuesday, June 14, 2011

"You're putting 'oh no' together to sound like 'Ohno'..."

This month, the book my 4th graders are reading for their "RDB" class is called "Out in the Cold." I thought it was devoted solely to Arctic explorers and mountain climbers, but it turns out there's also a section on winter sports.  Unfortunately, the athlete the authors chose to feature was Apolo Anton Ohno.  I actually wasn't aware of that whole speed-skating controversy in the 2002 Olympics, but after observing my whole class vigorously pummelling the photo in their books, I sure am now.  Hahaha.  (They were also quite taken with the fact that his name is "Oh-no" - seemed to think it very fitting.)

They started off by telling me they "don't like Ohno" and "he is vely vely bad."  When asked why, they told me that in the Olympics, he had pushed the skater in front of him, but the judge "said that he didn't push" and so he won the gold medal - this story was related very heatedly and concluded with "and that person that he pushed is Korean!!!"  I sympathized with this tragic tale of injustice and agreed that, from the sound of things, Ohno was indeed "very bad."  They waxed scornful on the topic for quite some time - I'm not sure I've heard an athlete disparaged in such disgusted tones since the days when my sisters and I took strong dislikes to Rudy Galindo, Ilia Kulik, and Philippe Candeloro (among others.)

I googled it later on and read how in fact, Ohno had not pushed anyone but had complained of being blocked by Kim Dong-Sung and gotten Kim disqualified.  I was also surprised to find that what these kids were so passionately riled up about had happened when they were babies - I had kind of figured it must have been in 2010.  Oh - and they'd also told me that the judge who ruled in favour of Ohno was Ohno's father and thus shouldn't have been officiating at an event in which his son was competing (that being the case: quite so!)  But I couldn't find anything about Ohno's dad being a speed skating nib, only a hairdresser. Hahaha.

I'm teaching the same class again next week, and this time we'll actually be reading the section on Apolo Anton Ohno (they had skipped ahead to it today.)  Being American, the book will of course praise him to the skies.  Hahaha... it should be an interesting class. :)

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Moving - Part 1

It's been two weeks now since the Lanigan/Hay-Roe residence packed up its bags and moved across the alleyway from City of Angel 1 to City of Angel 3.  Those two weeks have proven to be sufficient time to recover, but it was easily one of the more bizarre experiences we've had in Korea so far.

Preliminaries first: it all began on a Friday afternoon in early May, when I got a text at work from Katelyn saying "oh my gosh i have crazy news."  I called her to find out what was wrong and she said that we had to move out of our apartment.  I freaked out a little at first because I thought that her school had found out she was sharing her place with me and didn't like that for some reason and so had decided to evict us, but no, they just wanted to put us in a cheaper place because our rent (which the school pays) was going up.  So, could we please move out on Sunday.  Which frankly seems a little ridiculous to me, asking someone to move at two days notice, but that's Korea for you.  Anyway, we were heading out of town the next day to visit Gyeongju and Busan on our four-day weekend, so Katelyn said no, we couldn't move on Sunday, and they consented to allow us to move the following weekend.  When we got back from our vacation and inquired WHERE we were moving they had no idea, and a day or two later they told us that actually we couldn't move that weekend because our apartment hadn't been sold yet - kind of annoying as we'd packed up a bunch of stuff already and now had no idea how long we'd have to wait and when we'd get a call saying "OK, you're moving out tomorrow."  But eventually the date was fixed for Sunday, May 22nd - which was a bit unfortunate as Katelyn had a friend from Japan staying over that weekend, but evidently we had no choice in the matter.  The mover, we were told, would be there at 9 am.

The day dawned and we dragged ourselves out of bed most reluctantly, not relishing the prospect nor having had sufficient sleep after getting back late from Seoul the night before.  So when the mover arrived earlier than expected we weren't really ready for him, and Katelyn was still in the shower.  He was a small and rather boorish chap who immediately began throwing open all our cupboards and pawing through our personal belongings and stuffing them into crates.  We'd been told he was just going to move our furniture for us (we've actually accumulated a surprising amount) and that we would move our personal stuff, so it was a bit startling when he suddenly commandeered the whole project.  And typically, when you leave something out until the last minute when packing, it's because you still need to use it, right?  He didn't seem to get that.  Katelyn got out of the shower to find no trace of the clothes she'd been planning to wear or of her glasses - she inquired after the latter and he directed her to a large crate, at the bottom of which they were precariously nestled.  Who packs glasses, loose, at the bottom of a huge box with a bunch of other stuff on top of them?!  I ask you.  Then I went up into the loft to get dressed (like I said, he came earlier than expected and caught us off guard) and came down to find that he'd somehow spilled the contents of my makeup box (which I had already PACKED in my suitcase with other personal items) all over the floor and was engaged in shoving them back in with grubby hands and was about to swathe the whole thing in reams of packing tape - quite unnecessary.  I took it from him politely but firmly and endeavored to convey that he need bear no responsibility for it or the other contents of the suitcase he'd spilled it from.

I will say this for the man - he did work very quickly.  Spurred on, no doubt, by his frequent smoke breaks. :)  When he took the first load of stuff down to his truck, we thought he'd taken it over to the new place already because it took him so long to come back, but we realized later that every load that went into the truck was accompanied by a cigarette.  Anyway, he got all our stuff downstairs and onto the truck pretty quickly and then drove it across to the new building.  (I think it probably took more time to load and unload the truck than it would have taken just to wheel each dolley-load of stuff a little further across the parking lot and alley and dispense with the truck stage altogether, but whatever.)  The other thing you should know about this man was that he loved his packing tape.  A lot.  I think he viewed it as a sort of one-size-fits-all solution to all your moving needs.  Packing a mug?  Put a piece of bubble wrap over it and then apply packing tape LIBERALLY.  Bubble wrap by itself does nothing, it's the tape that really shields from impact.  Filled up a box that doesn't have a lid?  Use packing tape latticework to make sure nothing jumps out.  Moving a TV?  Tape its cords to it first with a couple yards of packing tape.  Packing a shoe?  Put some packing tape on it first, just to be safe.  Got a door that needs holding open?  Stick it to the wall with packing tape.  OK, I made up the part about the shoe... still, he used a lot of packing tape.  In fact I would venture to say that cigarettes and packing tape might be all this man would require to lead a happy and fulfilled life.

So there we were.  A little rattling, perhaps, having a stranger with whom you have no common vocabulary rifling through all your personal belongings and covering them in packing tape, but things seemed more or less to be going according to plan at this point.  We had set out to move, and moving we were.  But (as Bertie Wooster would say) mark the sequel. Darker forces than any maniacal chain-smoking mover would soon be at work.  (To be continued.)