Disturbing News

I am starting to like the preschoolers. This kinda bothers me, I dunno why, but there it is. We were eating lunch today and the kids were all being quiet except for the occasional "don't speak in Korea Chan-Woo!" (they like to mimic me and I say this all the time, so they think it's hilarious to say it to one another whenever one of them slips up and starts spouting hangul) and then out of the blue Myung-Bin, this adorable little girl, asks me (straight-faced): "Wayne, are you vampire?"

"No, I am not a vampire, Myung-Bin. Now finish your soup." And I chuckled.

"You vampire!" she says with comic seriousness.

"No, I'm not," I countered, and then tried to explain how it's daylight and vampires can't walk around in the day so I couldn't possibly be one...

That didn't quite get across.

Anyway, the point is that it was a light moment and a charming one, and I seem to be having more and more of these lately. They're definitely growing on me, the munchkins. I didn't expect it to happen, but it has.

The teacher who lived in my apartment previously, Jenn, was back in town this week. She'd spent a few months traveling around SE Asia and she was passing back through to say her goodbyes and collect all her stuff. She was talking to me about how difficult it was going to be to say goodbye forever to the kids she'd been teaching for a year, and it hit me that I was already feeling the beginnings of that sort of connection. Anyway, it's too early to be thinking about leaving, I think...I just arrived. Though it's hard to believe 2 months have already passed, to be honest with you. When I first met Jenn (the day after I arrived) I remember she told me it'd be the quickest year of my life, here in Korea. Maybe she was right about that too.