For you select few receiving this uncensored version of this email please try not to mention it to my grandparents or any other family members who wouldn't approve.
I often say that I've not been in touch for a while because I've been busy-that's really just an excuse for my laziness, this time I really truly have. About a week after I last spoke to you all I phoned Shawn to find out whether he had booked the tickets to Shanghai and the response was a very nervous very scared voice saying "I've been arrested I'm in the police station, they are going to take my phone off me now can you please go to my house and look after the dog" I said "why've you been arrested?" he said "Someone told the police that I'd been smoking weed".
Let me explain. Shawn's a normal 25 year old guy, he's smoked some weed a few times and that's as far as the story goes. The thing is, in Korea weed is classed in the same category as heroin. No slap on the wrist by the police and told to go home you can get 5 years in prison easily for just having it in your system. He was urine, blood and hair tested all of which showed a small amount of THC in his system, the hair test wasn't even conclusive and didn't show much at all, this didn't seem to matter. I went to visit him in the police station which was actually OK- me and the police finished up laughing together about some really weird family of 18 who all crammed into the visiting room all together. The police let me give Shawn contact lenses, a book, some clothes and some chocolate milk! So I'm at this point thinking he'll get out in a few days, a week max. A week went by and they put him in to a prison. As far as prisons go it wasn't your nice British place with beds and TV but it was far from a Thai or Indian jail too- thankfully. Anyway, I called up all his dad's friends and got them to meet meat the bar- they were on holiday and came straight from the airport. I told them what had happened and they just helped me out completely. About 3 hours later we had the best foreign lawyer in Korea, I'd spoken to the American embassy and things were looking up. So for about three weeks it was horrid. Shawn's mom was speaking to me one second and hated me the next, I was seeing lawyers everyday and living on the other side of Seoul with the dog. Shawn's business partner was working seven nights a week to keep the bar going. Anyway to cut a long story short he was in the prison for 8 weeks, he was so depressed and felt like he'd stabbed someone not smoked a bit. He wrote to me everyday which is nice in a 1940's kind of way and I got in quite a routine of going to work, visiting on Tuesdays, looking after the dog and speaking to his family. He eventually had a court hearing where he got 40 hours community service and two years probation but as soon as immigration got a sniff of the situation they locked him up in immigration cells within hours. Despite being half Korean, his passport is American and in this land of red tape he had his deportation notice served to him within days. He's appealing all this at the moment and he's out on a $10,000 bail awaiting court. I believe this is one of the most interesting starts to a relationship I've ever heard of. My life is far from dull and I do sometimes think that I'm on the Truman show but it keeps things interesting and I wouldn't have it any other way. Watch this space and keep your fingers crossed and please please please never smoke week in the far east, if you need to, go to Thailand.
So other than that ridiculous tale, how's everything else doing?
Since he has been out we've spent lots of time together to make up for the three months of dating that we missed out on- we went to Busan (Korea's answer to Blackpool)-
We've been for lots of meals and barbeques at friend's houses, been on many a cinema date and went to a baseball game- SO MUCH FUN!
After months of longing for one of the white Persian cats in the pet shop I ended up with the cat from hell. Cintia went onto the school playground one evening and found the older boys throwing a 4 week old kitten to each other. Nobody would take it so she took it home. Cintia was ten days away from the end of her contract so gave me the tiny, size of my palm ball of fluff but since then it turned wild. Originally it was thought to be a girl which Cintia name Kit Kat- not under my roof was there going to be a cat Called Kit Kat, anyway I took it for it's shots it turned out to be a boy- now named a much more appropriate, Dave. Dave miaows endlessly, he bites, scratches and chews everything. He spent the night in my bathroom so as to not attack my nose whilst I'm sleeping and after buying him a very beautiful Cath Kidston style strawberry shaped bed, wouldn't sleep on anything but my head. I made the huge mistake of introducing the cat to Shawn's bulldog, Pink. It didn't end well. Common sense would suggest that the dog would try to attack the kitten but oh no. Pink is the most placid dog I've ever met, she never barks, is always friendly and loves nothing more than to have her tummy tickled and to be blowdried after a bath. So innocent little Pink came, curly tail wagging to the door as I arrived, kitten in bag to see her. As I let the cat out of the bag- excuse the pun- Dave arched his back, fur vertical and hissed at the dog until Pink ran and hid by the fridge. I was that scared of the cat myself that I had to throw him in a laundry basket and carry him above my head to the spare room where he spent the day in solitary confinement partly out of punishment but mainly due to my own fear. I'm speaking in the past tense because he was too much for me to deal with so I palmed him off onto Doug, there much better suited to each other- they're both a bit ferrel- thanks Doug, love you lots! xxxxx
I want to steal a child. Honny is four. Her mom has spoken English to her since she was born and last year Honny was sent to LA with her grandparents to live for 3 months. She came back not only being able to speak English but able to speak better English than most English four year olds. She's amazing, she's my best friend in Kids Land and is going through the 'why' phase. During lunch a few weeks ago she was procrastinating (she hates lunch) and started whying.
Honny: Teacher why do you have a fork but I have chopsticks?
Me: Because I'm from England and you're from Korea, eat your rice Honny quick quick chop chop.
Honny (looking at the world map I teach her off when she's bored in class): yes teacher I am chopping. England is very long way from Korea but not as long as America isn't it.
Me: Well the world is round, it's like a ball, like this (i fold the map into a tube) so this bit here is actually really close to this bit.
Honny: why?
Me: urm, I don't know really. why is there enough room in your mouth to speak? Should it not have rice in it?
Honny: ok teacher but why is your hair yellow?
Me: well it's called blonde hair not yellow hair but urm it's yellow because I'm from England like your hair is black because you're from Korea.
Honny: yeah but teacher why are your eyes blue?
Me: because I'm from England, lots of people's eyes are blue in England.
Honny: (ponders for a second), well don't worry teacher I suppose it's just how God wanted you to be.
The kids come out with some hilarious stuff often it's when they get confused. One 5 year old dropped a pencil last week and exclaimed "oh shit"- who knows where she learned that from she can't even say purple yet. The things that the kids get wrong make me laugh but usually it's just how tied up and involved i get in a situation and how internally frustrated I get when a kid just doesn't get it. Sometimes I just need to take a step back, see the situation as it is- a Laurel and Hardy sketch- and just... well give up.
Me: what is this?
Tim: urm, a bat,
Me: nearly it's a hat, h h h h, say h. h. h a t- hat. so what letter is h?
silence...
Me: A B C? h h h
Tim: H
Me: yes Tim great. H, H A T, spells hat, fantastic Tim, HAT- write it here on this picture of a hat.
meanwhile to the rest of the class-
Me: so these are all words that say what? What's the same?
Johnny- at at
Me: great they all say at! everyone say at... at at at ...h- hat...b- bat....c- cat this is a r-r-r rat rat, louder! shout rat!
Everyone: rat!
Me: ok great, color the rat then.
Johnny: oh teacher look is this a hamster? I like hamsters!
Scan back to Tim who has covered the hat in "ffff"
ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
I fell off a chair last Halloween taking a cobweb I'd made from wool off the ceiling
apppppa (Korean owww for extra emphasis that teacher was oucheee as the kids say)
are you ok teacher?
no (my bottom lip out sat on the floor legs outstretched in a room of miniature furniture like some Alice in wonderland scene)
no... teacher it's "I'm fine thank you"
I heard a news story recently about a korean woman in America who had been in a car crash and was really badly hurt, all ribs sticking out, black eyes and such. When the paramedic said "are you ok" she replied "I'm fine thank you". We're producing little walking phrase books with no idea what's being said. I have visions of these future adults asking "may I got to the bathroom please" in a restaurant or saying "you're welcome" after a shop assistant says "thank you".
The Spongebob animator turned out to have also animated my favorite cartoon as a child- the Racoons, I now posses a sketch of Cyrill Sneer drawn on a soggy bar mat, an item an six year old me would have given her Barbie Jeep for.
Teachers day made me realise that the sheer trauma of a very noisy and stressful children day is more than compensated by a highly fruitful day for me. Korean mothers and I don't usually see eye to eye but blatant bribery is something I shall never judge them on. That morning I got presents appaloosa, MAC make up, Chanel make up, Elizabeth Arden moisturiser, a box of cookies, a cake, three bunches of flowers and best of all $100! It's crazy. I'm just at a normal school, some really elite hagwons in posh areas like Gangnam had to ban teachers day because teachers were getting Louis Vuitton bags etc.
It seems I can no longer speak proper English sometimes and I get all mixed up and go into basic communication mode. I find myself coming out with things like "that no, this yes" "I no like" and other such drivel sometimes embarrassingly, to other foreigners. I'm also finding it very hard to string a nice British phrase together and spent a good few minutes the other day in a duel with my brain trying to reword "the tongue's got the cat" "the cat's got a tongue"? "the tongue's got my cat"? knowing for sure that it was by no means right but not quite being able to put my finger on it.
I've turned girly. Heels, I though "sod it" I'm a giant here in flats I may as well work with it and be an even bigger giant in heels. I wear skirts almost every day and I drink cocktails regularly- I don't know what's happened. Some Korean girl did tell me that western girls should be more demure and delicate to which I laughed but maybe something sunk in. If I people watch on the subway I often find it hard to tell who's Korean- they all are but to me they all look how everyone looks, then I see a foreigner and take a double take, I sometimes catch myself in a reflection and think "ooh she's a bit odd". Someone told me when I got here that the weirdest thing is going home and everyone looking different, Christine says that a reverse culture shock is more shocking than the actual one, I can believe it. My idea of what is generally physically normal has morphed too. I saw Heidi Klum on TV the other day and thought "how was she a model she's a bit wide". I constantly see teeny tiny women all day, my idea of how the average person looks has gone down about 4 dress sizes and although I am fully aware that I am not that shape or size and will never be- best not to try, I'm 17 pound lighter than I was in the UK thanks to soup and rice but I feel exactly the same size as when I got here because we are just bigger. I sometimes have to remind myself that in the UK my height, weight and shoe size is average and that I am not actually a freak but It is nice to go to the foreigner areas sometimes to remind myself of this.
My friend Inseob hired a van and myself and 12 others had a weekend in mountains up in the north near North Korea. I had a really nice time, we hired a house and had a barbecue and a campfire.
I nearly killed Shawn's dog a few weeks ago. I took her out for a walk on a very hot day with a very healthy sprightly bull terrier. Pink exhausted herself and after embarrassingly laying down in the street and refusing to move I eventually got her to the bottom of the big hill that Shawn lives at the top of. She decided she was going nowhere. After numerous people started laughing, pointing and calling her piggy in Korean ( people have those pathetic little teacup things here that they can carry in a bag, real dogs get them all on edge) a man came out of a shop with a sausage he'd bought for me to coax her up with. The sausage worked for a while until she got wise to the trick. At this point the Korean man left, only to return, minutes later with one of those trolley things with two wheels that you lift boxes on. I looked at the man looked down at the trolley looked back at the man and said "oh no" he them proceeded to try and lift an enormous British Bulldog onto a trolley to push home as I assured him that she would make it in her own time on her own four feet. She did eventually where I sat her in a cold bath and she slept for a few hours. We Brits just can't handle hot weather.
Whilst discussing what different nationalities eat, myself, a Mexican, an American and a Korean, decided that the British live off leftovers and potatoes. Quite true. My order for when I return though is grandma's corned beef hash, Gran's cheese and egg, my dad's chicken pie and mash, Callie's fajitas and Davids aduki bean stew. I would also like to be met at the airport with a M&S prawn sandwich, a packet of skips and a steak pudding with gravy and mushy peas. Oh food how I miss thee.
I've now been in school longer than any of the other staff so the boss is choosing to shout at me now. The day before a very stressful open class, the boss tried to tell me that my class of 5 year olds weren't good enough because they couldn't read. I'd been teaching the class for 5 weeks and I had them reading the basics, cat, dog, and, the but she wasn't happy and started screaming at me in Korean. I got so frustrated because i couldn't respond in Korean that I cried and she said"oh cenchnayo cenchanayo" which means "it's ok it's ok" i replied " it's not ok i'm crying" and she left the room in a huff. On the open class the next day I excelled myself and all the parents loved me and brought me gifts. The boss found me afterward and gave me a hug and said thank you. Ha ha, I don't think I will ever understand that woman but I suppose it takes all sorts to make a world.
My 22nd Korean 23rd birthday was nice. I stayed with friends in a really nice hotel and had a much longed for bath and lots of pampering and wine. Thank you everyone for the lovely gifts.
Jess, Joe, Tom and Ruth have visited and my best best best friends, Callie, Charlotte, Natalie and Katy are coming tomorrow, I'm so excited. On that note I will go and clean my house and make a 6 foot wide painting of a bus for my 5 year old's Wheels on the Bus recital.
Much Love as always,
Emily
x
Congratulations to Suzanne and Billy. I wish I could have been at the wedding- I hope you had a lovely day and I'm really happy for you both.
Ellie and James- Can't wait to see baby. That's Ellie and James my cousin not my friends just in case I scared James!
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