Charpie's Travels

Peter brought a wooden bead bracelet today. Sometimes he wore it on his wrist, sometimes he wore it like an anklet. It even briefly hung over his entire ear. But most often, he just played with it.  At some point when he should have been in his chair, Peter appeared in front of my face. "Teacher, go like this," he instructed and held out his index finger. I hesitated and then complied. When I did, he slipped his bracelet onto my finger. "Dum dum duh-dum..."  After singing the beginning of The Wedding March, he announced to the class, "Teacher is my bride!"

I woke up to the sound of a street vendor broadcasting his sales over a loudspeaker. I've heard many a foreigner discuss this sort of wakeup call, but it was a new experience for me.  A couple hours after the wakeup call, someone outside was blaring Pomp and Circumstance. That's not a September song.  The trees between my home and the subway station are tall and skinny. You wouldn't guess they could hold much more than the leaves attached to their branches. Perhaps that explains the baby birds that dropped to the road a couple feet in front of me. They were bright green and beautiful. I'll spare you the details of their demise.  The man working at the SK store wore a shirt with a picture of a hot dog and the words "Spicy Dairy Queen." I love clouds more than I love coffee. I've been in Korea nearly ten months, and the sky's been gray and characterless the majority of those days. Ever since the Chuseok flooding , however, it's been stell