This Week in Gross: Piercing & Spitting

1. Male students have taken to piercing their own ears in the school's 화장실. This will likely be tolerated by the school administration until somebody hurts themselves. I give it three weeks.

I remember sitting on a friend's bed watching his sister pierce her friends ears. But this is ridiculous. They're doing it in the restrooms, which are filthy here and only get a daily spray with a hose. And they're accomplishing it with cheap jewelry. Not a alcohol, needle, cotton swab, etc. They are forcing sharp piercing jewelry into the front and then back of their ear lobes. They are literally tearing holes into their ears. Tough and Stupid.

Today, a boy came into my class with one of these hanging from his ear. It kept falling out, so I noticed it pretty quickly. I took the jewelry and made him go clean his ear and bandage it. Not only has he pierced his ear with the jewelry, he's trying to increase the size of the piercing by painfully forcing the jewelry further through his lobe while sitting in class. As you can imagine, his ear is a bloody mess. And I have to wonder: the boy sits in the fourth chair in a middle row. How has nobody seen him fussing with his ear, twisting that jewelry into his tortured ear lobe, wiping blood onto his jeans?

Of course, I told a teacher and asked that his homeroom teacher be informed, but the Korean faculty aren't going to do anything. I guess I'll keep checking in on him to make sure he doesn't get a horrifying infection. I'll bring some alcohol to school and help him keep the wound clean.

2. Two boys already on my shit-list for spitting on the floor. Spitting is a national past-time here. It's not a full day without walking past an 아저씨 (ajeoshi, middle-aged man) just as he's wretching up a mouthful of lung and phlegm to spit near you as you walk on by. There are boys who like to sit in class and spit on the floor. They will do it all day, if allowed. I don't permit it in my classes. It's gross and a complete distraction: try teaching with a boy dropping spit in between his legs. And you know how they let that drooly gob of saliva slowly slip from their mouths until it breaks adherence and slaps the floor. By the time I get to some of them, there's already a moist pile of saliva settled onto the concrete floor.