Market Day: The Bondu Nightmare

Market Day was today, and they weren't lying when they said I would be cooking. I was the main event of the snack bar that was bombarded by roughly 60 starving Korean children. It is called Bondu in Korea and a dumpling in the U.S. It may not sound like a big deal. They set up a huge frying pan on the table and turned it on all the way. They threw in some vegetable oil and stuck my back there with 8 bags of 50 count Bondu. Without giving me a chance to get a head start the secretary walked towards the door that was keeping the maniacal children at bay. They were pounding on the outside of the door saying, "hurry, hurry!" It was like that scene in Saving Private Ryan; the one where the tank is closing in on their foxhole at the end, and the loose ground is shaking all around them, a sense of impending doom in the soldiers eyes. So, with me already in the weeds, she opens the flood gate, and 50 children are in my grill yelling, "Bondu, HURRY William!" Holy hell. There is a reason they made me do it; it's the hardest station at the snack bar. So I am hustling to get these kids out of my face, sweating bullets while standing over the fryer. I am the only adult male in the room. I say this to let you know that, interestingly enough, none of the other three male employees were anywhere to be found while during the mayhem but conveniently showed up at the end of market day. I was pretty ticked about that. To add insult to injury the prongs they gave me to flip and serve the bondu with were about four inches long. As you can imagine, the oil was popping off of the fiery frying pan and on to, you guessed it, my clothes, my hands, etc. Also, I had to hold my hand four inches from this heat for quite some time. My hand is still beet-red and it is now been 5 hours since the incident.

Kicks Ass: Market Day is over, and since it was market day there was no class. I got to go home at 6 instead of 9:30.

Sucks Ass: I forgot to tell you that I showed up at 1:30 to help set up. Everyone else showed up at 3:30. I sat outside of the academy for two hours after I was told to show up at 1:30. The other male teachers didn't show up until 5:00. I won't be fooled again. I can certainly promise you that!