::A Geek in Korea::

The school’s starting to be remodeled. The construction crews took over the elevator, and there was a lift truck parked behind the school ferrying out trash and lifting up building supplies.  I arrived in the afternoon to teach. There was a huge banner surrounding two floors of the school that talked about the new franchise moving in soon.

The basement of our building is also getting remodeled. I guess it’s getting bought by the same franchise, but I have no idea if this is true. It used to be a naughty old men’s singing room. It’s the kind of place that featured naked women on the videos when you would sing the songs. Those sorts of places make me extremely uncomfortable to go into, and I avoid them. It only advertised at night and had some advertisements that our building manager would hang newspapers over until all the students would go home from the school. After hours I guess that place was open, but I leave work long before it started each night.

Imagine a school with a dirty singing room in the basement in the United States. I don’t think that’d do very well before someone would launch a moral crusade against it. Here it’s just part of the landscape and no one cares. Weird.

The remodeling wasn’t occurring on the floor where we teach classes yet. That’ll happen at the end of the month. We’re still getting impacted by all the work. It wasn’t just the view from the windows being covered up by the giant “Remodeling!” sign either. Because of the heating system, the second floor was getting unhealthy doses of paint fumes from the floors above and below us. Teaching tired kids on their winter vacation while smelling paint fumes all day is a wonderful way to develop a nasty headache.

I actually took my journal grading homework with me, went to a local coffeeshop and worked outside of school because I was so bothered by the fumes. I have a strong dislike of paint fumes, but I think all the Korean teachers that worked with me had their brains rotted away much earlier in the day and couldn’t smell it anymore by the time I arrived.

I’m tempted to sneak upstairs to see what they’ve done with the old materials from the previous school. They had blueprints and everything, and they’ve been working for more than two days, so it’s unlike any other Korean remodeling job I’ve seen take place at a school before. Usually they knock all the work out in no more than a weekend after completely gutting the place and starting from scratch. The lease from the last school was up on New Years Day, but that’s a holiday. They’ve probably spent three to five days working maximum.

Could they actually be trying to make the place inhabitable and well planned? They are painting, and also cutting carpets for the floors, so it must tbe one of the last steps in the procedure. I’m to woozy from the paint fumes to speculate when they might be finished working above, but I hope it’s sooner rather than later.