Today we went back to the regular schedule from the summer schedule. That means we start each day at 1:00 in the afternoon, and finish at 9:00 in the evening.
Needless to say, after finishing work we were looking forward to going home. We were about to get on the school bus when we noticed someone had spray-painted the word "SEX" over the front windshield. I started trying to clean it off with a wet sponge while the bus driver ran off to find the principal.
For those of you who have never tried it, a wet sponge really doesn't do much to take spray paint off of glass. Especially not when it's already dried on, and doubly not when whoever hit the car gave it two or three coats per letter. I'll say this for them, whoever they are- they may be vandalous little punks but they do quality work.
While this was going on one of my elementary school students came up and tried to read what was written on the windshield. "S... E... X... socks? Teacher, why writing socks on bus?" His brother came along and helped. "Socks is S... O... X... Teacher, what is S.E.X?"
"You'll learn that word when you're in middle school", I told him.
Eventually Sung-min figured out that the vandals were trying to spell "Sexy" on the bus but ran out of space. Then his brother clued him in that "Sex" was a word in his own right. Then the inevitable next question. "Joe, what is Sex in Korean?"
"Ask your mother."
"I think my mother don't know that. I'll look dictionary" he said. Over the next few minutes Sung-min and Sung-mo both sang a nonsense song consisting entirely of the word "Sex". I continued trying to clean the paint off the bus until the bus driver got back with some soap. Here's some more information you may or may not know- trying to clean paint off of glass with a soapy wet sponge is actually no easier than trying to clean it off with a plain wet sponge.
That's when I had a good idea- we could use the ice scraper to loosen the paint, and the sponge should help lubricate and take it off. Of course this being Korea the bus didn't have an ice scraper in it. Instead I used my Canadian health insurance card. It worked fairly well at first but eventually cracked in two. No big problem- when I move back to Canada I'll need to get a new card anyhow.
At this point in time the mission was declared pointless and another bus was called in to take us home. Now here I am at home typing this message. And to think, this is just Monday.
