I am fine thank you and you

---

Greetings from the recently rated number one e-government friendly nation on earth where nothing remains unblighted by technology. Imprinted in bold white letters right under the name of my school on its 50-year old brick surface is the following:
seouldorim.es.kr, which I assume is not a porn site. In spite of all that, I don't have Internet access. They wanted the entire year's payment in advance (that
would have broken the bank several times over) because apparently they were afraid I was going to flee the country momentarily. Truly, I have thought about
defecting to the North due to my well-established love for communist countries (if not the leaders who run them), but I had misgivings mostly concerning whether
I would ever be able to see my family again. Mom, you can stop panicking now!
Anyway, here on the decidedly non-Communist, but still ultra-nationalistic side of the peninsula, I have started my new job as official Native Speaker of English Teacher at Dorim Elementary School. The moniker may be a bit clunky, but it's better than the
Assistant English Teacher (AKA human tape recorder) I was on the other side of the Sea of Japan. NB: If you are in Korea, DO NOT call it the Sea of Japan. It is the East Sea. As a matter of fact, if they are watching me type right now, I only have a matter of
moments left so I send out my love to everyone. P.S. Please donate all my comic books to the White House. I heard Dubya is running out of literature.

I now have approximately 9,599,347 students, judging by the number of hellos I hear every day. Actually I believe the number is around 700 who I see every week (bigger to slightly bigger munchkins: 4-6th graders) and another couple hundred littler munchkins (third graders) I see on a monthly basis. Approximately zero of them speak more English than what is exhibited in the following conversation: Hi. How are you?
Iamfinethankyouandyou? I am _________ (insert your favorite witticism here. Saying ET usually throws them for a loop). My favorite is when my co-teacher and I have this
conversation as a class. Then it goes something like:
Korean Teacher: Hi Scott. How are you?
Scott: I am super-duper fantabulous. Students, how
are you?
Students: Iamfinethankyouandyou?
This exchange creates a hole in the space-time continuum that ordinarily would tear asunder the universe as we know it. However, thanks to my extraordinary telepathic abilities, I implant the aforementioned information in my students' brains before they complete the question, leaving them gasping in mid-air. The Doc should be suitably
impressed.
Being at school definitely puts you in an alien's frame of mind. Bigger kids scream at me and little kids stare at my mind-blowing appearance all the livelong day. Every day without fail a seven-year-old boy comes up to me and asks in all seriousness, "Why is your nose so big?" I keep hoping he will say why are your teeth so big, but apparently my teeth (and ears) are normal from his pint-sized perspective. Teachers are equally inquisitive, but they prefer examining my eyes, which apparently are the biggest and bluest they have ever seen. They are also without question, the blindest. The teachers also think I am wasting away before their very eyes, so they feed me roughly 16 times a day. Side note: Mom, you don't have to worry about me forgetting to eat here. On the down side, usually each of the 16 times is the same culinary delight. For example: purple grapes. Unfortunately inevitably (usually the fifth one) the work required to remove some half a dozen seeds from each morsel exceeds my enjoyment of this delicacy. Sometimes they surprise me with random food like sushi. I haven't asked, but I am sure they claim it is Korean. I then commence my kosherizing operation by removing all eel, shrimp, squid, bacon, ham, octopus and giant tortoise, before lifting the roll up in the air with my daintily held chopsticks. Typically several milliseconds later, the roll returns to earth with a splat, the soy sauce firmly embedding on my shirt. It is thus fortunate that I can come to work dressed in t-shirt and blue jeans. If I am not mistaken, their reasoning is I am already an alien, so wearing a suit and tie would be over the top.
I hope you now have a bit of insight into a day in the life of Scott. I have officially dropping the Mister. I felt that it didn't fit my personality. Most kids just call me "teacher" or "guy with big nose" anyway. They also associate me very closely with King Kong because every time I do a self-introduction (22 and counting), I draw a picture of the Empire State Building and I mimic a monster climbing up. They then on cue scream out in unison KING KONG. Hollywood has taught Koreans 90 percent of what they know about Americans. We are divided into one of two groups: New Yorkers and cowboys. Luckily, I fit into the first group pretty cleanly and have a bit of experience with the second. Sorry to offend all you Wisconsites and Hawaiians out there.

---