Drift Reality > South Korea > April 2001

I teach one class that originally consisted of eight or nine students, but has since diminished to more like five or six, after their Mothers realized that they were essentially paying for a course in coloring, hosted by a depressed foreigner.

There was a fly buzzing around in the class one day, and I couldn't help but become attentive to the fact that one of the students, Bill, had a keen aversion to the small intruder.

He started cringing and screeching, "Mogey! Mogey!" which is Korean for "Bug! Bug!" - everytime the fly buzzed near him.

The class would promptly erupt into chaos at this point so I decided that our intruder should meet his end and I smashed him with one of the English books, depositing his body in the trashcan.

I turned to the class after my action and saw that Bill had turned white with fear.

Later, while they were coloring, I grabbed a black crayon and broke off a three or four centimeter chunk. Then, I requested the students' attention and pretended to reach into the trashcan for the dead fly carcass.

I yelled "mogey" and tossed the small piece of black crayon onto the table and everyone began to go into hysterics. Bill started making a high-pitched noise and I sat down next to him in order to console him.

Meanwhile, Rich had found the black piece of crayon and began stamping on it in an effort to ease Bill's fears.

Bill returned to his seat and I leaned back in my chair and sighed, "Mogey, mogey." For some odd reason, this seemed to set Bill on edge once again, and before I knew it, Rich was joining in, saying, "Mogey, mogey," and wiggling his fingers strangely in Bill's direction, who had begun to make a high-pitched sound once again.

Bill jumped out of his seat and hid behind me, while yelling a stream of words at Rich that I can only imagine, in Korean. It was about this time that I realized that it was coloring time.