Aimee’s World Tour

Yes folks, I am a potential carrier of swine flu having left the country for a wonderful week in Bali, Indonesia.  Now people in Bali aren’t even sure what swine flu is but still… we must be cautious.  Apparently it takes seven days to show symptoms. 

Thanks to swine flu I’m only working from 4 – 7:30 pm this week.  Sweet!!  To appease the parents, we are calling the kids for ten minutes a day to practice English though I was told that 5 minutes with my little ones will suffice.  If I actually make it 5 minutes I’m very impressed. 

“May I speak to Aaron?  Hello?  He—?” CLICK “Hi, this is Aimee Teacher.  I want to speak to Aaron please. Hello??”  CLICK.

“What day is it today?  Yes, it is sunny but what day is it today?”

“What color is the banana?…. Is it blue?  Do you like plums or strawberries?” 

“Did you sit nicely today?  Did Elliott sit nicely today?” 

“How many stickers did you get? A heart sticker?  What color is the heart?” 

The best time filler… “I love you.  I miss you.  Do you want to see Aimee Teacher?  Just 5 sleeps until Aimee Teacher time.” 

Quarantined away from the kids… yes we are.  However if we were actually serious about the quarantine we would not be making calls from the teachers’ room at school, using the same phones as the Korean teachers use, walking in the hallway that the kids take to get to ballet and music.  But here in Korean private school we just have to make it LOOK like we’re doing things… it’s all about appearance I suppose. 

If one of us really did have swine flu, it’d definitely be spread among the rest of the staff to the students.  I was very worried that the parents would be outraged as some of them cancelled their vacations just so that their child didn’t have to be quarantined.  Little Sally missed out on Bali.  Other kids can’t come to school for a week because they did go on vacation. 

And here we are at school… germs and all.  I highly doubt any of us has swine flu but you know what I’m getting at.  So far only one teacher’s parents were complaining that if she was in school she should be teaching.  Luckily my parents haven’t become typical Bun Dang nightmare moms just yet.

Korea is a community of sharing.  Whenever we eat, we all stick our chop sticks in the same dish.  We kind of treat everything as an appetizer.  I know this would disgust some people back home but I’m ok with communal habits.   Well, until it comes to things like preventing illness. 

We have to take our temperature every morning before school as a swine flu precaution. It kills me that they try to stick the same thermometer into everyone.  The first day I refused to use it until I found some wet wipes.  Deep down I know the wet wipes aren’t really doing anything…

The helper teachers come into class around snack time every day and take all the kids’ temperatures.  The thermometer goes uncleaned from one kid to the next until the whole class has been surveyed.  I suppose if one kid’s has got the SI then all of them might as well get it.  😉

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 5th, 2009 at 11:08 am and is filed under 1. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.