My Last Day

It's Friday June 30th. A year ago I stepped off the plane exhausted and expectant. Today I sit in my cluttered little apartment with my parents sleeping, squished, on my slightly larger-than-normal single bed. Poor them.

Yesterday seemed to go from bad to worse after my mom spent the morning at school. She thought the school was beautiful but the kids were out of control. She agreed that at least one of my kids is abnormally badly behaved so at least I have that to help explain the last few rough months I've had in the classroom.

We returned to the apartment where my dad had been doing this and that on the computer in the morning and we went to Lottemart's TGIF's for lunch. I figured the bulgogi and duck from the previous day warranted some good ol' food they could recognize. Little do they know that I hardly go out for Korean food. School lunches are enough.

We returned home and did some laundry and some Hong Kong hotel booking (my parents decided a hostel with shared bathrooms wouldn't do) before heading out to catch the Hangang Pleasure Boat cruise. This is when the bad to worse part came in.


The traffic was horrific. The weather report was correct and a monsoon hit (hard!) and the fog was so thick we opted out of the last boat. Then the rain slowed and the sky cleared but we were too late.

We took the first taxi we could hail (a black deluxe one - damn!) and went to Itaewon for dinner. I figured my dad would like Ho Lee Chow, a chinese restaurant I'd never been to, but it was overpriced and my parents weren't so impressed. Booo. Bad.

Then we began walking towards the Hannam bus stop where one must go to catch a bus home to Suji. We were going to walk down the dark alley but just as we started to the rain began again and we jumped into another cab to the bus stop. The rain came down even harder then before.

We watched one packed and standing room only 5500 bus speed by and then waited for about 25 or 30 minutes until the 5500-2 came and took us home. Again, standing room only. My poor parents. Luckily some Korean fellows decided now would be a good time to start chatting with us, despite close to NO English skill at all. This added some amusement to our otherwise unlucky, rainy day.


Ah well.

In eight minutes I will leave for my very last day at Kid's College. My very last day in Korea. I don't even have anything I can say about that.