Silence.
It’s something I’ve grown accustomed to here in Korea. Silence in the middle of a million jabbering people, their words bouncing off me like tiny pebbles without making a dent of reason. They collect in little piles around my feet building a wall of isolation. To make my days at school a wee bit less lonely I tell myself people’s stories to fill in the blanks. The nurse who watches me and laughs a little too loud has always just been a house wife, an identity that has built up over time like folded laundry and piles of dirty socks. And the teacher Jennifer, she’s written having a baby into her day planner this week…
Monday
- 9:15am 5th grade Art Class ✓
- 11pm 3rd grade Science ✓
- 5pm Grocery shopping ✓
- 5:45pm make baby ✓
- 6pm Cook dinner ✓
It’s when these stories begin to fill in the silence for the dialogue of the people around me that things start to get a little janky. Sometimes it’s hard to separate what I’ve been told from what I’ve told myself and there are not enough words in between to anchor reality. I’m guessing this is a natural product of living in a foreign country where you don’t speak their language, but trying to sort through fact from fiction definitely makes teacher dinners far more interesting!
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