The New Year

I didn't even realize it was New Year's Eve until Jen came on MSN this morning with an early (very early being from Ontario) "Happy New Year!" Holidays are just whizzing by unnoticed. Well, happy New Year to you all - I hope it's a good one.

The winter is, sadly, becoming harsher rather than milder, as Seoul's average daily temperature dips into the negatives. This unfortunately means my room becomes terrifically chillier, because of a leak in my window I only noticed on the weekend, when it started to snow and I felt water droplets splashing onto my face. Obviously this has to be rectified, and so provides an excellent example of how the simplest things - ie. complaining to your landlord - become a hurdle to overcome when you've got a language gap.

Having spoken to the woman in the real estate office before with poor results about changing my door passcode (I ended up having her call my director to translate, which was kind of awkward), I was determined to break the barrier myself this time. My solution: a picture. Happily, I was blessed long ago with at least a modest amount of skill with a pencil, so it came out reasonably clear: a storm battering the building outside, and below, a shot from inside with wind and water coming in through the closed windows. I managed a caption in Hangul (thanks be to my phrasebook), which read, "bad window".

She understood. Of course, I've no idea when she'll have it fixed, but she got it. Meanwhile, I find it interesting to watch the thermometer in my apartment fluctuate... when the winter was milder, it would generally alternate between 20 and 19 degrees - but just yesterday it started to drop, first to 18, then 17... and last night it was 16. Now it's 15.

I could turn my heat on, since I think it's taken care of by my school, but I'm kind of curious about what kind of temperatures I can feel comfortable in.

One final thought: report cards suck, especially when you're required to lie and pretend that all your kids are excellent students, even the one who doesn't do any of his homework and simply stares ahead with his mouth half-open, a barely-noticeable bit of drool escaping his parted lips, or cutting up bits of paper and scattering them around the desk, all while I'm asking him questions. Ah, to be allowed the honesty of a public school teacher...