Happy Valentine’s Day…Or Not (14 February)

It’s that dreaded time of year again or maybe it’s only dreaded by singletons and, being perennially single, I dread it every year.  As usual, in the days leading up to this day of love, the stores have been packed with Valentine’s Day gifts – mostly candy. 

Valentine’s Day is celebrated a bit differently in Korea.  Without going into too much detail about holidays here, Korea has a love associated day on the 14^th of every month.  As a result of this plethora of holidays, Valentine’s Day is a day for girls to give gifts (usually candy) to their boyfriends or boys whom they like.  White Day, on March 14^th, is when the boys are expected to reciprocate this gesture and I’ve heard that the White Day gifts are generally expected to be more expensive.   I decided to forgo the entire holiday and didn’t give any candy to anyone – not even Six-pack or cute doctor – much to the disgust of many students. 

I arrive at school rather peacefully only to discover that it’s been a rather eventful start to the day.  NZ2 arrived at 8:30am to find one of the Korean English teachers collapsed on the floor in front on our office while Six-pack attended to her and helped paramedics get her to the waiting ambulance.  Apparently she was still talking and was fairly coherent but didn’t have enough strength to stand up by herself.  This particular teacher has been looking really stressed out and overworked since I arrived at the school.  The frightening part is that she is only two weeks older than me.  The details of what happened are rather vague and I later hear that this teacher had low blood sugar which is what caused her to collapse.

The rest of the day provides far less excitement than it’s start as I have little to do at work but catch up on blog entries which permanently seem to be four to six weeks in arrears…