Tiny Monsters

        I always expect my first day at a new job to be a disaster.  What can I say?  I’m an optimistic guy.  It’s just that in my experience, I find that I’m completely clueless whenever I start something fresh.  Of course, that’s a pretty common situation to be in, and I’m sure a ton of people have had that new-job moment where they realize “I have no idea what I’m doing.”  It’s usually not a big deal, because in most instances you can blend into the background until you get the hang of it.  Problem is, as a teacher you’re thrown into the spotlight from the first minute.  And at the beginning of any job, your knowledge is so limited that you don’t even know what could go wrong.  The possibilities are endless, in a really bad way.
        But as it turned out, my first day went fine.  I was told I’d have the week to lesson plan, so on Monday I came up with some topics I wanted to teach and got started on an “About me” powerpoint.  I was feeling pretty good, but I definitely shouldn’t have been.  Because when the 2nd day rolled around, I started to learn about some of those “endless possibilities.”
        I got to school at my normal time and kept working on the curriculum.  Then at 2:15, the head English teacher walked into the room looking pretty pissed off.  He yelled something at the classroom assistant in Korean, reset the power to the room for some reason (deleting the “About me” presentation I’d been working on) and stormed out.  The assistant looked at me.
        “He said class start in five minutes,” she said.
        “What?”
        “I don’t understand,” she said.  “He say you have one week to lesson plan, but now he say class start.”
        She wasn’t the only one having trouble understanding.  “All the classes?  Today?”  I asked.
        She gave me a solemn nod, like she was diagnosing me with stage 4 cancer or something.   “Yes,” she said.
        I looked back at the computer, which was in the process of restarting.  I don’t really have a “panic mode,” but this was probably as close as I’ve ever gotten to it.  What the hell was I gonna do for the next three hours?  Talk about myself without a powerpoint?  There was a decent chance these kids wouldn’t understand anything without pictures to help.  Hmm…maybe nametags.  Yeah, nametags take thirty minutes, right?  (If we're charting this by the five stages of grief model, I think I was in denial here).  Somehow, though, I pulled myself back to a rational train of thought, and I remembered I had at least part of my presentation in my email.  I opened that up and found an eight slide powerpoint that ended with “I don’t like cheese.”  Really, I guess that’s as good a place to stop as any.
        A couple minutes later, the students started trickling in.  One girl came up to my desk and gave me a sideways stare.  Then she reached out and began touching my hair.  I wasn’t really sure what the protocol was on this, so I just sat still until she stopped.  All in all, about five more girls came in, at which point the assistant said I could start.  The girls sat down and mostly just stared at me with confused expressions.  Then they began shouting out rapid-fire questions in Korean, which the assistant fielded.  I stood there silently the whole time, no idea what was going on.  I had a feeling this wouldn’t be the last time.
        Anyway, I wasn’t really sure when to start, because more girls kept coming in every few minutes.  But eventually I opened up my powerpoint and went for it.  Surprisingly, even my abridged version took forever, as the students interrupted every few seconds with more questions (trust me, I was very thankful for this.)  No joke, the class actually ended before we even had time to make nametags.  So that wasn’t so bad.  I’m not sure if they know any English, but at least they seem like good kids.
        Then my 3rd and 4th graders came in.  The first two kids to wander in were a boy and a girl.  The girl immediately picked up a soccer ball and smashed the boy over the head with it.  It didn’t take me long to realize that these kids were not going to be like my 1st and 2nd graders.  About 15 of them filed in, and they were bouncing off the walls.  They weren’t wearing shoes and the floor was wooden, so they all did that run-really-fast-and-slide-for-a-few-feet thing.  Secretly, I wanted to join them, but I was an authority now.
        “Hey, no running,” I shouted.  “No running!”
        I could tell they understood by their expressions.  Of course, that didn’t stop them from completely ignoring me.  Finally- with the help of the assistant- I was able to get them all to sit in their seats long enough to go through my powerpoint.  They seemed halfway interested, but this time it didn’t even take ten minutes to finish.  OK, that was fine, we still had to do nametags.  I handed out a sheet of English names for them to choose from, and the kids started working on it.  But I noticed that some of them had gotten a little…creative.  One kid named himself “G.D.”  Another named himself “RB bag.”  (Was he going for Arby’s bag?  I really don’t know.)  Within ten minutes, they’d all finished, which meant they were back to punching each other and screaming and throwing paper airplanes.  Just great.
        I needed something to kill twenty minutes.  Some kind of game, but what?  I thought about all of my training during orientation, and of course I came up blank.  What did I play as a kid?  What games did I like?....uhhh…umm…Hangman!  I went up to the whiteboard, drew the gallows, and said, “Pick letter.  ABCDEFG…”  I’m not sure if they’d played before, but they figured it out instantly.  And that was how I spent the last twenty minutes of my class.
        Last class: my 5th and 6th graders.  One of the first girls to come in pointed at me, screamed “YOU CAME OUT OF THE TV!” and started running in circles.  Every few seconds, she’d scream the same thing again.   I could tell it was going to be a fun hour.  About fifteen students came into this class, and it was more of the same:  punching, slapping, screaming.  Let me take a second to clear up a little misconception here.  Before I left, a few different people told me something like, “Well, I bet these kids will be perfectly behaved.”  Uh, no.  For the most part, they’re psychotic.  Adorable, but psychotic.  Anyway, for the 5th and 6th graders, the powerpoint/nametag combo only lasted half the class, so I had another half to kill.  What’d I do?  What do you think?  Hangman, of course.  Hey, if it ain’t broke…
        At about 5, the kids left and I was finally able to take a deep breath and reflect.  What was I supposed to accomplish in my first day of teaching?  Set up class rules?  Nope.  Assess their English proficiency?  Not so much. 3rd-6th graders know the alphabet well enough to play Hangman.  That’s about all I’ve got.
        In the end, my voice was pretty much gone, and I was exhausted, and yet…I was still here.  The kids had gotten through it, too.  No tears were shed.  Nobody died.  Sure, there were technological problems, and yeah, the kids were a little bit insane.  But spite of everything that went wrong, I actually had a pretty fun time.  And I know it won’t be long before I get another shot at it.  

Home

        When you first sign up for this program, they make it clear that you’re going to a rural area.  That’s just part of the deal.  But then you get to Korea and they put you up in college dorms with a couple hundred other people, take you to Seoul a couple times, and you forget all about it.  You start to adjust and you think, “So this is my life now.”  And then the rug gets swept out from under you.
        Of course, I knew it was coming, but it was still kind of surprising to finally arrive in my town and face the reality of it.  Still, my first impression: the place is gorgeous.  It’s a tiny town surrounded by giant green mountains on every side.  There’s a small river that runs through it.  And there are cows in my backyard.

The town square.  Just kidding.

My new best friend.

        I’m living right outside the elementary school in what’s called a “teacher house.”  It’s got a bedroom, a kitchen/dining room area, and a bathroom.  So while it is small, it’s definitely enough for me, and a little more than I was actually expecting.
     

My bedroom, which is basically a dorm room.

 

Dining room/Kitchen.  I went a little picture crazy in this post because I finally got my camera fixed.

Where I pretend to cook.

From the outside.  My house is the left half (number 8).
The surrounding brick wall got damaged in the recent typhoon.

        Since Daedeok (my town) is about two hours away from the nearest city (Gwangju), I think most teachers live in the teacher houses during the week and then go to their apartments in Gwangju on the weekends.  I’ll probably head up to the city most weekends as well, because there’s not a whole lot going on here.  I’d guess there are around a couple thousand people in the area, and the place basically shuts down at 7 pm.  Rural is definitely the right word for it.

Elementary school!

        Anyway, my first day here, my mentor teacher took me to dinner at a Korean BBQ place with some of the other guys at my school.  There was the gym teacher, the custodian, a sports coach, and me.  My mentor teacher was the only one who spoke English, and even he didn’t speak much.  Here's an example of a conversation I had with the coach:
        Coach:  "LA?"
        Me:  "Am I from LA?  I'm from Missouri."
        Coach:  *confused look*
        Me:  "I've been to LA."
        Coach:  *confused look*
        Me:  "LA good.  I like LA."
        Coach: *smiles, nods*
        So for the most part they just talked in Korean and poured me a bunch of drinks, which I'm not complaining about.  They were all really nice, and it was funny to see the dynamic between them without even understanding the language.  You could tell who the joker was, the responsible one, the quiet one, etc.  The joker, for example, kept pointing at me and saying “Meeester B” and laughing.  Then everybody else laughed, too.  I had no idea what he meant, but after a while, I gave up trying and just laughed along with them.  Only later did I learn that he had been saying “Mister Bean.”

I swear to God, I look nothing like him.

        The next day, I met the whole school staff.  I introduced myself, and when I said I was 25 (you add one for Korean age) all the female teachers started giggling.  I think I’m the youngest here by about three or four years.  Apparently I don’t look that young, though, so they were all kinda shocked.  In the US, people think I’m sixteen, but here, I look like I’m thirty.  There's no explaining it.
        Anyway, one of my favorite people so far has been the vice principal.  She doesn’t speak any English, which goes for most of the adults here.  The first time I walked in the room, she was shouting at the top of her lungs into the phone.
        “Oh,” said one of the younger teachers, “She’s just talking to principal.”
        So the VP definitely seems like a no-nonsense woman, but she’s also hilarious.  One time, she brought in ice cream for us, and we were sitting on the couches along with a couple younger female teachers.  The VP started talking in Korean to one of them, and then she pointed at me, and said, “handsome handsome,” along with the other teachers.  After that, she got one of the teachers to ask if I had a girlfriend.
“Uh…no.”
“Why?”
“Umm… I don’t know.”
Then the VP pointed at the fairly attractive teacher sitting next to me as if to say, “Well, how about her?”  Everyone cracked up.        
All in all, the people here have been incredibly nice to me.  I'm pretty sure they're worried that I’m going to die out here because I’m alone and I don’t know Korean.  As a result of this, they’ve gone out of their way to be kind, and really I think that’s something you can only find in small, tight-knit communities.  What more can I say?  I’m happy.

The Deadly Typhoon

        We knew we weren’t all going to make it out alive.  We were trapped in a desolate place, a place where danger presented itself at every turn.  It was a dark and scary time.  Wait, you thought I was talking about a typhoon?  Nope, just my second orientation.

        For this week long orientation, we were split up into our regions, so I was sent to the south with about forty others.  The place they chose for this orientation was definitely a little strange-we were camped out in the mountains at some business retreat in the middle of nowhere.  As far as I could see, it was the perfect setting for a murder mystery.  Forty people in a confined space…and then one by one, they start dying off.  We know someone here has to be the killer, but who?  The quiet Canadian?  The Australian who’s just a little too friendly?  Or maybe, just maybe, the Koreans in our group have teamed up to plot against us.  It explains why they’re always talking to each other in their secret language when we’re around.  Yes, this is what I think about when I’m really bored.

        Anyway, we were doing the standard go-to-lectures-all-day-do-nothing-at-night routine when word started to come in: there was going to be a typhoon.  The biggest typhoon to hit Korea in ten years.  Now, I’ll admit, I had no idea what a typhoon was.  Was it an Asian tornado?  A hurricane?  Would the sky open up and start raining bacon?  I hoped so, but I really didn’t know.  All they told us was that this typhoon was going to hit the south the hardest.  Whatever it was, it was coming for me. 

        The typhoon was scheduled to roll in at 3 AM, so naturally the night before we all hung out outside until midnight waiting for something crazy to happen.  By the time we went to bed, it was kinda windy and drizzling.  MADNESS, I TELL YOU.  So I went to sleep just like normal, but at some point in the middle of the night, I woke up to a CRACK CRACK CRACK sound at my window.  Was it Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston?  Who could say?  Honestly, in my sleepy state, I did think there was somebody outside knocking.  It seemed pretty weird, but I just did what I always do: I went back to sleep.

        I woke up the next morning to steady rain.  Only then did I realize that the sound had been the wind thrashing against the window.  Outside, tall trees had been split in two, and there was some minor property damage, as well.  So I’d survived my first typhoon by sleeping through it.  No surprise there.

 

This is not at all what it looked like.  I just googled typhoon.

                             

        In the end, the build-up and anticipation had been much bigger than the result, but that’s how life usually goes.  However, the area even further south had gotten the worst of it.  There had been fifteen or twenty deaths and much more damage.  As it turned out, my school was in the very deep south.  After we all said our final goodbyes, that’s where I headed next.          

Cens■rsh■p

        A couple days ago, I put up a post about my trip to Seoul.  As you may have noticed, it’s not here anymore.   Why’d I delete it?  Well, there’s one main reason: I really, really don’t want to get fired.  I like Korea.  I’ve made a ton of great friends.  I like my job so far (even though I haven’t actually started it.)  So this blog is going to be just a little different from here on out.
        I’m gonna hold back on posting some of the more questionable material.  Trust me, this goes against every instinct that I have.  I’d rather put everything out there, tell the best stories I have, and make no excuses for it.  However…I’m friends with my boss on Facebook.  There’s a chance she’s reading this right now.
        That’s not to say I’ll start lying on here or anything.  It’s just that instead of telling R-rated stories, they’ll be more in the PG to PG-13 range.  I’m taking it as a challenge.  I think I can keep this thing entertaining without pushing the limits quite so much.
        In addition to the Seoul post, there’s already been one other post that I didn’t type up yet because I thought it might cause problems (See, I do have some discretion!).  BUT, I will still keep writing down my craziest stories, and I’ll probably post them once I’ve finished working here.  Or if you want to read them before then, just send me an email at npearlst@asu.edu with the subject line “TELL ME ALL YOUR SECRETS.”  Then I’ll just send you the shadier stories as I write them.  Anyway, that’s all for now.  Happy weekend!

The Pit Of Despair

        In the beginning, I thought Korean food wasn’t half-bad.  Sure, the flavors were different, and maybe kimchi wasn’t ever gonna be my thing, but I figured I’d grow to like it the more I experienced it.  I was wrong.  I realize I might be generalizing here, but Korean food is absolutely awful.  Most meals, I eat a pile of rice and a small spoonful of the mystery meat du jour.  One dinner, they mixed in tons of beansprouts and other vegetables with the rice, and I ended up not eating anything at all.

Pretty standard Korean meal.  You can tell I didn't take this picture because there's WAY too much food on the plate.

     
        With such wonderful breakfasts as “Vegetable gruel and French fries,” is it any wonder things aren’t going so well here?  And of course, there’s always kimchi.  Kimchi is a pickled lettuce dish that’s flavored with Korean spices and can be prepared about 100 different ways.  Fun fact: Every Korean has a normal refrigerator and a refrigerator solely for storing kimchi.  It’s that big of a deal.  And I’ve found that in every variation, it’s totally inedible.

Kimchi!  Not how I want to start off my day.  Or end it.  Probably not in the middle, either. 

 
        Of course, part of the problem is that I’m eating cafeteria food three times a day.  If I was a foreigner and I went to a college dining hall in America seven days a week, I’d probably think American food was pretty sick, too.  But since I’m in this position for the next week or so (and I can’t go out for every meal) something needed to be done.  Lucky for me, I saw that cooking classes were being offered at night.  If you want something done right, do it yourself, you know?
        Now I had been taking Korean language classes at the time, so I had a huge decision on my hands….just kidding.  It took me all of .5 seconds to drop language and sign up for cooking.  So that first night, I went into the cafeteria, which I've taken to calling the Pit of Despair (coincidentally, the name could also be applied to my toilet.)  Anyway, in the back corner of the caf, there were a bunch of stations set up with vegetables and meat and sauces.  The food hadn’t even been cooked yet, but it just looked good.  About fifteen other people showed up, and then the main chef gave a demo.  She was cooking a beef dish called bulgogi.  It basically consisted of throwing everything in the pan and then stir-frying it.  It seemed idiot-proof.  But then again, this is me we’re talking about.
        Here’s a story:  Once, I actually ruined a can of tomato soup by burning it.  That seems impossible, right?  But somehow, someway, I overcooked the soup.  It caramelized and ended up tasting kinda like that weird black ash you get on the outside of marshmallows when you’re making s’mores.  It was awful.  The only thing I’ve ever really been able to cook is pasta, and that’s because I do it about twice a day.  Anything else is just asking for disaster.
        Thankfully, our cooking class was split up into groups, and I got paired with people who knew what they were doing.  They let me chop up a red pepper, and then for the rest of the time I “supervised.”  In the end I got to eat some pretty tasty food.  As usual, all my hard work was rewarded.

Cooking team!

        Since then, I’ve gone back pretty much every day classes have been offered.  The food has all been really good, and I’ve even started doing crazy chef things like “stirring” and “sautéing.”  Now, when I go to the cafeteria during the day, I have the urge to run back to the kitchen and be like, “OUT OF THE WAY.  IRON CHEF NOAH MORIMOTO COMING THROUGH.”  I haven’t gone that far yet, but if they serve one more dehydrated fish corpse (skeleton included) I might just have to take matters into my own hands.  Anyway, at least I’m not starving anymore.  You adjust to your circumstances and you make the best of it, and life usually turns out alright.  But good god, kimchi is disgusting.  

In My Craft Or Sullen Art

        I’m a pretty creative guy.  Writing, photography- anything that involves self-expression is alright in my book.  So when I heard we were going to have an hour a day of Korean art class, I was excited.  One, I figured it’d break up the monotony of the seven hours of lecture, and two, it seemed like it’d give me a new window into their culture.  Unfortunately, after a couple days of class, I’ve only really learned one thing: Korea’s not ready for my creativity.
        The first day of art class was focused on Korean painting.  I went over to my desk and found a sheet of thin paper, an ink block, a brush, and water.  Our teachers thus far had been pretty fluent in English, but the art teachers didn’t seem to speak a word of it.  So (with the help of a translator) the art lady explained that we’d be painting some kind of flowery nature thing, and then she handed out sample drawings that she’d made.  We all thought this was really cool, until we looked at each other’s paintings and realized they were all exactly the same.  Had she photocopied these things?  Or had she really drawn the same scene again and again?  My question was answered about two seconds later when she sat down at a station and showed us how it was done.  When the painting was finished (it took her less than five minutes), it turned out to be a perfect replica of all the others.  That’s when I should’ve known- Korean art isn’t about individuality.  It’s more like coloring between the lines.
        Anyway, I sat down with my paper in the middle and her painting on the right, and I began.  Big surprise, mine didn't look like hers.  While her lines were narrow and jet black, mine were a watery gray mess.  I finished the painting, but in the end, it just looked awful.  I wanted another shot at it.
        So I picked up another sheet and started drawing the same first couple lines…and then I thought, “You know what?  This doesn’t look like a plant.  It looks like a dolphin.”  In light of this epiphany, I decided to go with an ocean theme.  I drew the water and the sun and a person surfing on a fish.  It wasn’t very good, but it was mine.
        Before long, the instructor started making rounds, and that’s when she spotted my work.
        “Oh no no no no!” she said.  It was like she’d seen a dead baby or something.  She grabbed the painting and pulled it over to her.  And then, in a moment that completely took me by surprise, she started painting over my work.  WHAT??  She drew the same strokes she’d drawn so many times before, except now there was a beach scene in the background.  When she finished, she handed it back to me, smiled, and walked away.  I was in disbelief.

My genius defiled

        Still, I went back to art the next day with a positive attitude.  Maybe the painting teacher didn’t appreciate my originality, but now we were doing something totally different- Korean paper art.  At first, I figured it would be like some kind of origami, but as it turned out, we were making paper fans.  We were handed a square sheet with a bunch of Korean characters on it, and we were told to cut out any shape we wanted.  After that, we were supposed to attach a handle.  That’s it.  It should’ve taken five minutes at the most.
        I decided to make a fairly normal shaped fan, except with mini spikes all around the edge.  I started cutting the fan out, and by the end of it, I thought it looked pretty good.  Of course, then the teacher came around to check our work.  It was déjà vu.
        “No no no!”  she said.  “Yaka sama mayo…etc.”  She didn’t speak English either, so I had no idea what she was saying, but she didn’t look too thrilled.  Some Korean kid behind me translated.  “You see that ribbon on the table?” he said.  I looked down and saw the ribbon for the first time.  “That has to be glued around every edge, or the fan will fall apart.  She wants you to cut your fan down so it has a smooth edge, otherwise it’s gonna take forever to cover each little part.”
        That put me in a tough spot.  Was I going to allow my work to be censored yet again?  Sorry teacher, not this time.  I started cutting the ribbon into small pieces and glued them on one by one.  It took me about 1 minute per edge, and there were around fifty of them, so it wasn’t looking like I’d be able to finish in time.  After a few minutes, the assistant teacher came over and reached out, as if to say, “Give me the fan.”  I had some reservations, but she was cute, so I handed it to her.  Then, she picked up the ribbon and began doing my work for me.  I felt like a regular Tom Sawyer.
        “Hey, I can do that,” I said.
        She just laughed and kept working.  Since I didn’t have anything else to do, I figured I’d strike up a little conversation.
        “So you’re a teacher?” I said.
        “Teacher,” she said.
        “Do you usually teach older kids”- I reached my hands up in the air- “or younger kids?” and I put my hand down by the ground.
        “Younger,” she laughed.
        While she kept taping up my fan, I got the attention of one of the kids who’s fluent in Korean.
        “How do you say, “good teacher” in Korean?
        “Cho-un san-sang-neem.”
        Well, I repeated that to her, and she cracked up.  It must’ve been the funniest thing she’d ever heard.  I wondered if I’d actually just said something embarrassing, but I double checked it with someone else, and it really did mean “good teacher.”  I guess it’s easy to be a comedian over here.
        Sadly, as the hour drew to a close, so did our short-lived romance.  I (she) finished the fan about two minutes before class let out.  It had taken us about forty-five minutes more than anyone else.  But that fan was a triumph.  A masterpiece.  I could’ve cooled down the entire school with that thing.

In 100 years, this'll be in the Louvre.  Or a landfill.

        The main teacher came by one more time, smiling and shaking her head.
        “It’s good, right?” I said, holding out the fan.  She took it, looked it over for a few seconds, and then fanned herself with it.
        “Yes,” she said.  “Very good.”

Using A Lot Of Toilet Paper Is Inappropriate

        There are rules here, and you better not break them.  If you’re late to class by one minute, you get a demerit.  If you’re late for the 11 pm curfew, demerit.  Five demerits and you get sent home.  Needless to say, I’m not such a big fan of this.  Almost everything about the TaLK program has been wonderful so far…but this stuff is a little bit on the militant side.  And I’ve barely even scratched the surface of all the rules.  Men can’t go in the women’s dorm and vice versa.  There are even six rules in every bathroom for how to correctly use the toilet (one of which is the title of this post).  But all the rules in the world won’t change the fact that we’re a bunch of college students and twenty-somethings in a concentrated area.  As far as I can see, something’s gotta give.
        So after a full day of lectures, we headed out at 9 pm for the benches.  The benches are basically some picnic tables set up outside a convenience store, and it’s the place where we can hang out and drink.  It makes me feel sorta like the homeless guy you see drinking outside a 7-Eleven, but it’s all good.  In Korea, alcohol is a pretty big deal, and it’s cheap.  The most popular liquor- soju- is sold for a buck a bottle.  It’s less expensive than water.  You can’t really beat that.
        We got a couple bottles and started playing a Korean drinking game called 007.  The first person says “zero” in Korean and points at another person, who then also says “zero.”  That person points at someone else, who says “seven,” and then they point at someone and say BANG! and pretend to shoot them.  The two people around the person who got shot throw their hands up in shock.  I’m probably not explaining this very well because I barely even figured it out myself.  All I know is that if anyone messes up, they take a drink.  There was a lot of messing up.
        Anyway, after we finished up at benches, some of the TaLK people who’d already been here for a term led us over to an indoor bar.  The bar is farther downtown and also farther away from our campus.  I didn’t check the time, but I figured we were OK, and if not…I was with twenty-five other people.  They can’t get us all in trouble, right?
        The next bar was all TaLK people again, but I still had a really good time hanging out and getting to know everyone better.  We ate, we drank…and then somebody suggested we go to another bar.  Well, I’m not one to decline, so we started heading deeper into the city.  And the whole time we walked along, we were going down this winding hill.  Finally, we get to a western bar called “Touch.”   I’m not really sure what was western about it, other than the fact that they had crappy light beer.  I had a lot of fun, though, and this bar actually had a decent amount of Koreans, so it felt a little more authentic.
        Just as I was thinking about going up and talking to some of them, a person in my group said, “Hey, it’s 10:30.”  Oh shit.  We were probably a twenty-five or thirty minute walk away from the dorms.  I threw down some cash and started to book it out of there.  I got a couple hundred feet away…and then I realized that I’d forgotten my backpack at the bar.  I turned around, but all the shops looked the same and I had no idea where I was.  I started wandering in circles while everyone else headed back for the dorms.  I’m thinking I’m screwed…and then some random chick came out of a side door with my backpack in hand.  Whoever you are, thank you and god bless.  Anyway, now that I had my bag I felt a little better, but I still had to get back to campus in twenty-five minutes.  And since it had been all downhill on the way there, that meant it was all uphill on the way back.  Christ.  If I went at a normal pace, there was no way I could make it back in time.  That meant there was only one thing to do: run.  Let me tell you, running uphill with a twenty pound backpack is kind of a pain.  I didn’t have my cell phone, so I really had no idea how close I was cutting it, but I figured I’d need every second I could get.  By the time I made it back to the dorms, I was covered in sweat.  The clock read 10:55.  He's safe!  He's safe!!  And the crowd goes wild.
        In the end, we were allowed to hang out for another hour in the lounge downstairs, and then we were all herded off to bed.  That just about wrapped up an exhausting, fun day.  The best part is, I’m still demerit-free.
        At least for now.