A Woman to Note

I feel like I owe a post to my boss's wife. This little lady is one of the scariest and cutest ladies I have ever met. I'm not entirely sure if I should be terrified of her or feel safe and protected by her. I don't actually know her name, so I never refer to her as anything other than my boss's wife or the vice principal. She is terrifying to the students and I was warned by the other teachers when I first arrived that she can be a b!tch. Noted. However, since arriving this woman has been nothing but good to me. Her English is awful, but she tries to have conversations with me...even if it means we stop every ten seconds for her to look up a word in her phone.

She often asks me how Korea is. My standard response is to smile and say "good"... what else should I say? After the last time she asked me and I gave my standard response she grabbed my arm and looked me deep in my eyes and said "I worry about you here". It was slightly awkward and I didn't know what to say, so I patted her arm and said "no, no! All good", to which she said thank you.

Other than her worrying about my life in general, she always worries about my eating (as does her husband). The pair of them are certain that I don't enough, or often enough, and that in general... I am malnourished. While some of this may be true, I am certainly getting by. This doesn't stop his wife from buying me bags of oranges or piles of bananas and all other sorts of food. I appreciate these things, but I think they forget that I am one person... I will not sit down and eat 5 bananas at one sitting, or even in one day. In fact, today I had to throw out 6 bananas because they had gone bad and the fruit flies were coming. She also brings in food to work, mainly for me. She will grab my arm and drag me around like a 2 year old and plop me in front of food and say "eat". I'm not complaining, but if I have just eaten my only big meal of the day before walking in to work ten minutes before... I certainly don't want to stuff down fried chicken on top of it.

I think that this woman feels the need to take care of me because her two sons are in Canada right now. I can always tell after she has talked to her sons because she gets clingy to me. She will ask me things like "do you get hungry in line". What? What line? My standard answer to her random questions like these are always "no". She then will tell me that she just talked to her son and he said something like "Mom, I get soooo hungry when I stand in line". I really don't get why she tells me these things, but she always has tears in her eyes and just stares at me.... I think she feels that if she takes good care of me here that in some karmic sense her sons will get taken care of in Canada.

She asked me if "On Sunday, you want to go...here...and there..and here ... and there"... I am not sure if she meant sightseeing or what. I have been invited to church every weekend that I have been here and have given the lie that I am going to see a friend in Seoul every time which gets me off the hook. I gave the same response to this question. I think that I disappointed her, but I need my weekends to interact with some English speakers and have some fun.

I am really thankful for this woman though, lord knows that she could be a tyrant and make my life hell here. I am also glad that so far there have been no unannounced visits to my filthy apartment. I am sure that if she saw my place right now she would lose any respect she had for me and that would be the end of any more free food.