and guess what? it’s raining!
I’m sitting here, sweltering and dripping with sweat. The ramen (or ramyeon, as Koreans would spell it) noodles didn’t help. (though Koreans would say increasing sweating when it’s hot is healthy for you) I had to leave the apartment for a minute, just to get some air from 360 degrees instead of only from my window, so decided to take my recycling out, and on the way back bought the noodles.
If anyone’s ever seen me reading labels, you’ll have to laugh if you visualize me trying to separate my recycling from the five bins downstairs. Fifteen minutes later, and I’ve still no idea where the little yoogurt drink bottles go! Do they go with the plastic juice and water bottles? Or do they go with the kind of plastic that tofu containers come in? And what about the mylar cereal bag and coffee sticks? Do they go with the plastic bags or the bottles or the containers? Next time, I am going to cross reference the majority of the recycling with the number in the recycle symbol. BUT, there are a lot of foreigners in my building, so the correct distribution of recycling could be skewed.
On my window ledge inside my apartment today I noticed many dead mosquitos. I have woken up in the middle of the night all week, my feet itching and burning. I even researched athlete’s foot…but then I looked more closely to discover my feet were basically covered in mosquito bites, or just one big giant mosquito bite. So now the window never gets open without a screen. How is it that mosquitos would fly up to the 10th floor? What is the maximum altitude of mosquito flight? I had to laugh at them, though, with their tiny mosquito brains, because once they got caught in my hermetically sealed officetel, they all die for lack of food when I leave the house for work.
During one of the classroom discussions, one of the worksheet topics was whether or not you enjoy the rain. It was surprising how many of the students, both boys and girls, said it was romantic. OK. You gotta love that. I mean, I do. 16 year old boys unabashedly talking about romance. The rat race here is so extreme. I hope they hold onto these sentiments. The kids are often monsters, but it’s not their fault. I do like them a lot.
Hello Korea ! 
I was there from second week of July to August, and it rained alot in July, but I didn’t know exactly when was the rainy season.
Since my arrival in Canada, I always loved rainy day when it’s hot, and I’ve always been melancholic at the same time.
It’s only there that I remembered why.
I remembered saying to my Amother things like : I like when it rains during summer, because it reminds me of Korea. I like sunflowers, because we have that in Korea. I like Cosmos flowers because we also Cosmos in Korea. I like roses because there was a rose garder at eonni’s house…
I remembered about the rain, at Molly’s house in the middle of a night when it was raining. I remembered about sunflowers when I saw them on a postcard, about the Cosmos at my parents’ cemetery, and about the roses when my sister showed me an old photo of her in front of that garden.
ahh, you and I would have been one of those romantic hakseng…
I also asked my students if they liked school and why. One girl’s answer was, “like. because there is a rose garden.”
They really enjoy sitting there and relaxing. I think it’s the only time I see them both awake and peaceful.