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Today I was cordially ordered by management units to abandon any and all plans for Sunday Goodness and spend my day serving coffee and little pieces of shrink-wrapped cake to Korean families. But first I had to play pamphleteer and harass and annoy people strolling past the Sanbon fountain outside on their weekend jaunt. Yes.

As part of the grand old spirit of private education competition, our school regularly engages in such mad endeavors. I offered a token level of protest to this 'English Cafe' - "I will lick the drinks and hopefully I have hepatitis and then everyone will have hepatitis and we'll have to teach the English term for 'weeping sores' next week" - but my heart wasn't entirely in it. I have never worked in the food service industry, you see, and I am not entirely adverse to trying new kinds of labour. At least not for more than 4 hours.

As a pre-game pamphleteer I had more luck than my Korean colleagues. They were waved off dismissively, more often than not, as there are always people handing out brochures and stupid shit around town and many citizens have adapted a comprehensive policy for avoiding them. I, on the other hand, had the element of surprise on my side: I could hide behind pillars and jump out, roaring "I AM YOUR PAMPHLETEER!!!" to the terror of many children. Then I would tell them to listen to the Weakerthans and cram as many leaflets into their hands as I could disguise as one. In this manner I disposed of my paperstuffs efficiently. I think many people were genuinely interested to see what the hell kind of service a Westerner could be coerced into hawking on the streets like a common vagrant. It probably helped that I got bored of saying "English Cafe" and started cryptically advertising things like, "Monkey coffee choco-bong-bong" instead.

So pamphleteering was easy, but serving was a different story. I honestly don't know how you people do it - staying on top of one table was easy enough, and maybe two, but once the cafe started to fill up I was fucked.

Part of the problem was that it was an English Cafe and, as such, it was generally expected that the kids would get a chance to speak... y'know... ENGLISH. Sadly this was not the case as our students are notoriously shy when in the company of their proud, tuition-paying parents and are reduced to simpering giggle-ridden mutes. Basically I had to ask how their vacation was, although chances are they'd already told me twenty times in class, and then sit by as aforementioned parents tried to coax something, ANYTHING, out of them. When embarrassment of teacher and family alike reached its climax I would say, "Oh wow, Sally, that's wicked... you went to the beach," even though she hadn't said a word. Then I would scuttle off to another table. The general flavour of the afternoon was that Herald School kids suck ass at English, although their telepathic abilities are beyond contestation.

Some of the children remembered enough to call me crazy though, to the great consternation of their overly-respectful parents. And one ten-year-old tried to order a "love beer" and I was like YES and high-fived him until I noticed his mom's face, which was visibly trying to work through the uncomfortable questions of "How did my kid learn how to say 'beer', and has this terrible white man before me been feeding my little darling alcohol at school?" The answers, respectively, are 'I told him' and 'Most certainly.' Love beer keeps em placid!

The din and crowds eventually died down and the last families bowed themselves all the way out the door. I threw down my apron, confident that, although I never mastered carrying one of those round trays piled high with tall drinks (How do you do that, anyways?? It's wobbly!), I have basically cemented my status as a distinguished and venerable community servant. Sanbon will undoubtedly erect a statue in my honour when I leave, an obsidian Chris firmly grasping a weeping child's hair in one gauntleted hand and spilling a tray of tomato juice with the other.

[Korea] [Sanbon] [pamphleteer] [English Cafe] [mute children]

Posted by Chris at 09:49 AM >> Commentations (0)