Wedding Badgers

Someone made the serious mistake of teaching the youngest kids at the school the words 'love' and 'wedding'. Now I am bombarded every day by 10 children yelling at me, "Joe, Carrie Teacher love????!!!!" and "Joe, Carrie Teacher wedding???!!!!" over and over again. Even my Korean friends are constantly asking me, "so when are you getting married?" and "when you get back to Canada, will you get married?" and "Joe, did you eat the last piece of chicken?" I really don't know what to say to this, so I usually resort to, "Me no speaky England." (Same as at home.)

Being married here is a heck of a lot easier, and if you are not, they will not let you forget it. The pressure is enormous. A student in one of my older classes wrote in her journal, "Joe teacher not married, I think that is very strange." Marriage is deamed a social victory for Koreans, and once you are there it is pretty much smooth sailing (until the pressures of home ownership arise.)

Yes, it would have been much easier to say we were married from the start and be done with it, but I couldn't lie to these people... I should have lied. The term 'partner' is completely lost on Koreans.

Today's lesson, "none of your business.",

Joe