The weather is cooling, deciduous trees are changing colour, my aircon is resting, Korean oldsters are making for the woods with long bamboo poles to knock down the high-up chestnuts, the doors on the dorm are fixed and I have figured out another riddle of Korea!

Sunday night I was coming back from the grocery store and I spotted the caretaker I yelled at Thursday night. I made my way over to him and appologized for my outburst. He waved it off and in English said,"It's okay. Power drinking!" We laughed. But I THEN said, "However, I need my doors fixed." He said,"Okay, tomorrow. " But I hadn't even finished putting my groceries away when there was a knock at my door and he was there with a new knob. He installed it and unbelievably it had the exact same problem! But while he was installing it I saw him twisting the part at the base of the knob. The ring that covers the hole has a thread to it. Now this guy is like 90 pounds soaking wet. So I gave the base of the knob another half turn and, violin! It works like a charm! Probly coulda kept the OLD knob on. So all this time it was just a lack of elbow grease or the proper tool. huh.

So the mystery I've solved is this: if I want these guys to help me, all I have to do is ask once nicely, wait for a while, yell at them, wait for a while, then apologize and ask a third time. Easy!

Sigh. I'm not gonna pretend my problems are over here. I've got confidence in myself. What I mean is I'm not one of these people who block out the negative or pretend it's not there. I can almost always tell when I'm lying to me. I believe the trick is to own the good AND the bad and have the confidence in yourself that you can figure out a way to deal with it. I think there's a reward for working through the bad that people who run from it never receive. But that's just me. I realize that some people don't like being around me while I'm working through the bad. I sometimes feel like a buzz kill. But I think it's worth it. At least people know I'm genuine. And genuine happy is a thousand times better than fake happy in my book. Besides if I were happy all the time it just wouldn't be as nice to see me happy.

Today I did a lesson in one of my classes in which each student is given a piece of paper and has to draw 3 or 4 pieces of "cave art" relating to their lives. I explain cavemen and cave art. I do myself as an example drawing a "cave" teacher, a cave helicopter a cave plane and a cave hockey player. I explain that I work as a teacher, I once flew a helicopter, I enjoy travel and my favourite sport is hockey. I write on the board things they can make their cave art about such as jobs, hobbies, family, dreams, past experiences etc. I write about 10 sentences they can ask OTHER students about THEIR cave art. I tell them that if they can't think of anything LIE. Draw a cave crocodile and say you were bitten by a crock in Australia. It's okay to lie. I'm supposed to allow 5 minutes but I give them 10 minutes to draw some stuff.

I walk around the room. I see three people who have drawn a cave teacher, a cave plane, a cave helicopter, and a cave hockey player. So I have to explain again individually to them. I see 4 people who have drawn one big picture in very NON-cave style. I explain why they can't do that. I see probably a dozen people who are labeling all their pictures, some in Korean. I give them new pieces of paper. 4 students stroll in at the 8-minute point so I give them papers and another students has to explain the exercise to them. I tell them to explain in English but they use Korean. I check on the new students and one of them evidently had it explained wrong in Korean.

After 25 minutes it looks as though we have most of the students doing the exercise correctly so I give them all a number between 1 and 3 and tell them to remember their number. I tell them that ones make a circle on the left side of the room, twos in the center and threes on the right. Nobody moves. I explain it again with exaggerated gesticulation. A few people move and there is a lot of Korean explanation going on. Whether it's correct or not I don't know. People who I know were ones are sitting with the threes; friends who were right beside each other are STILL beside each other; the threes only have 4 in their group while the twos have 10. So I just randomly tell people to go to group three. Then I get the thousand mile stare. I break out Charade Dave. You- point, go- walk, here- point. Still nothing registers. One of the students begins explaining in Korean. I tell him to stop. This is a huge waste of time if they can't understand this in English. FINALLY everybody is in groups with their cave art ready to go. So I say, "Okay, start." Not a word of English ensues even though I've got every sentence they might need written on the board for them. But there's only a few minutes left in the class anyway so I just let them laugh at each others pictures.

Hey, at least nobody was sleeping! This was a successful class for me! See? I could say stuff like that but I'm pretty sure I'm lying to me. I prefer to think of the fact that these disasters make really fun stories. And really, my job IS sweet! After a few months of this sort of quasi-education I'll be wandering the ruins of Ankhor Wat or golfing the Monkey Course in Pattaya or slurping pho in Halong Bay and thinking, "It's worth it." To me that's both how I work through the bad AND its reward.