Floor is Trash Can!

I wanted to buy some already-made hummus a couple of Sundays ago.  At first I thought I would have to walk over to my old neighborhood of Kyungnidan to that new bakery in order to get it, but then it occurred to me that I live in Itaewon...where the Mosque is...where the Middle Easterners are...and I must be able to purchase it over here somewhere.  I mean, it's not as though I've ever really tried before.

I Kakao'd Amy and asked her where I might go to get some.  "Try that Foreign Market up that hill," she said.  I knew exactly which hill she was talking about.  She was talking about Hooker Hill, just down the main road and up an alley on the other side of the street from me.

Good idea!  That's much closer than Kyungnidan.  I know you think a street called "Hooker Hill" sounds a bit sketchy, and maybe it is--but the prostitutes mostly stay inside the buildings, and even the sketchy people around here seem pretty harmless to me.  And trust me, there are more hookers in the regular English-teacher/US Military-populated clubs on any given Saturday night than on Hooker Hill.

With no makeup, my hair pulled back in a messy knot, a pair of lightweight army green cargo pants, and a weekend oversized T-shirt that just happens to scoop down too low to wear to work, and of course, a pair of Birkenstocks, I headed out the door and down the street with my one and only goal in mind:  search for and purchase a tub of hummus.

I crossed the big road and headed towards the first little alley lined with mostly discreet-looking brothels.  But the second I turned the corner, I was suddenly face to face with about 70 African men, standing along the street, hanging out and enjoying each others' company and the halfway sunny day.  They all turned around and looked at me (glowing like the moon), all at once.

I seemed to have conveniently forgotten that this was also the African neighborhood, and that Sunday is their one and only day off from the illegal factory jobs they work...jobs that Koreans are, these days, opposed to doing themselves.

As I looked at the threateningly large groups of Nigerian men eyeing me, I realized my mistake.  Duh, this is their area and their only day off, and they are out looking for action.  Preferably action with a not-so-nice young lady such as myself.

For the record, I have no problem with a man looking for such a thing.  It's just that, on this particular day, or rather, in this particular year, that is not what I was (or am) looking for.

In a country where the super-skinny natives consider me to be at the very least morbidly obese, men from this particular part of the world see a little jelly on a girl and fantasize about how they could make it jiggle...where they could give it a little slap to make it wobble just right.  The first man I passed, who I saw only through my peripheral vision, as my eyes have now been trained to strictly avoid all contact with this sort of stranger, smiled at me and said, "Oh, I like that tattoo!"  Suddenly I was wondering why I hadn't put on a turtle neck on this steamy, July afternoon.

I don't even own any turtle necks.  Wait, was I on a mission to buy a turtleneck?  No...hummus!  I was just trying to do a little grocery shopping!

Feeling buck naked, I braved my way past the next group of 6 or 7 men, when suddenly I spied something wonderful coming towards me: a pale, familiar face with kindly blue eyes, a bald head, and a scruffy, graying beard...

"Mr. Scott!!!" I shouted.  "Hi!!!"  I ran up and gave him a hug, just to let all these men know I was not alone.  The second it happened, they all turned back around and returned to their previous conversations with each other.


With the weight of 140 eyes suddenly off of me, I smiled and talked to my former coworker, who is having trouble going back to the States with his Korean husband, since their marriage isn't recognized in every state yet.  It's a visa thing.

"What are you doing?" he asked.  "I'm just going for a walk."

"I'm trying to go get hummus at the Foreign Market," I explained.  Then I whispered, "I don't like walking up this street alone."

"Why?" he wondered.  Little did he know.  I explained about attraction of men from certain regions of the world to women with a bit of extra weight, and he was happy to  accompany me up the hill, having no particular agenda himself.  I found homemade hummus at two different locations and bought them both to see which I liked better, for future reference.  


We talked about his cat, the one I am fostering for him.  I asked him about where to order food since I had just run out, and he offered to do it for me instead.  That Wednesday I came home from work to a giant bag of Purina Cat Chow on my front porch.  


Tomorrow are my class's parent conferences.  We have been preparing for this for like a month.  Developmental notes have been meticulously taken and recorded for each child, and yearbooks (like scrapbooks) have been updated.  Tonight, as I stayed stuffing the organized pages of children's drawings and photographs into their owners' books, I watched as my coteacher, and three other Korean teachers meticulously cleaned every marble, paint bottle, and magic marker in the classroom.  Every pencil was sharpened and every basket was emptied, wiped out, and refilled.  "Who's going to look under the Q-Tips to see if the bottom of the basket is clean?" I silently thought to myself.  


Apparently mothers have pulled their children out of our school for pencils not being sharp enough. My theory is that they're too ashamed to admit they can no longer foot the bill, even though they needn't be; it being so high and all.  Or they're just psycho.  Luckily for me, I had four others in my classroom to worry about whether or not the plastic dinosaurs were properly wiped down.  I just sat listening to Fiona Apple in one ear, and the soothingly familiar, sing-song tones of Korean being spoken in the other, as I gingerly stuffed the plastic pockets of my children's yearbooks, hypercautious not to bend a page, or get a date out of order.  "They've given you one job, Annie," I told myself, "and you'd better do it beautifully...they are trusting you."


At one point I noticed Ms. Jenny examining our large plastic dalmation and making funny, frightened noises over it.  "Why?" I asked her.


"Eyes are blue!" she noted.  It was obviously hilariously frightening to her.  I considered this for a moment, cocking my head to the side ever so slightly.


"My eyes are blue," I replied.  "Is that scary?"

"No," she laughed, "only dogs."

"I have a friend with a dog with one blue eye and one brown eye," I told her.

"Really?" she asked incredulously, in Korean.


In the end, the room looked more torn apart than I'd ever seen it.  The floor was covered in junk and I loved it.  The Korean teachers had come through like a cleaning tornado, wiping and organizing everything on the shelves, plus the shelves themselves, but throwing loose ends, bits of pipe cleaner, old marker caps, and toys too bent out of shape to present to the mothers onto the floor, knowing that the cleaning ladies would later sweep it all up and dispose of it properly.  After all, they had other classrooms to attend to.  After finishing the yearbooks, I had fun glue-gunning some of the children's artwork to the sliding glass door of the closet.  The doors are covered in a thin, soft, fabric-y sort of material, and every other method of getting these pictures to stick hasn't worked...so we had to pull out the gun.  I finished up by sticking some sagging corners with double sided tape  and throwing the backings of it directly onto the floor, which was already covered in trash.  It was way too much fun.


"Miss Min!" I said joyfully.  "I like this!  Floor is trashcan!"  Leaving out the articles represents a level of Konglish unnecessary when communicating with my coteacher, who lived in Seattle for the past five years, but sometimes I just can't help myself.  She laughed.

I mean, if I can't enjoy talking like that now, when will I ever be able to do it again?