My school's playground serves as the unofficial community center for the neighborhood, probably because it's the only flat area in the neighborhood. There's a playground, soccer goals and a section cornered off by bushes with a small amphitheater and a few benches shaded by a canopy of ginkgo trees. In the afternoons, mothers bring their young children to play on the playground, my students hang around long after I leave to go home and there are always a half dozen older men sitting under the trees, smoking and talking. All this is very quint and picturesque, but it also means there's a lot of trash piling up around my school. Public trash cans are rare in Korea, and food wrappers, cigarette butts and liquor bottles all get thrown on the ground. Students are responsible for keeping the school clean, and in the mornings, a teacher stands in front of the school with a trash bag and kids pick up the garbage as they walk to school.
This morning, a fifth grade boy holding a not-quite-empty bottle of soju waved hello to me. "Look, Teacher!" he shouted, waving the bottle in the air, the swills swishing about, "I'm drunking!"
Kid, that is the best. Konglish. ever.
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