So today was supposed to be the first day of classes. We had planned to wake up at 6:30 to get ready to go. I, of course, was putting together handouts for the first day at 1:00 in the morning. At around 5:20 a.m., I got a text message: "was a fire @ school so no classes today...we are on standby so if they call me later we may have to go in.. I'll let you know."
Surprise. To say the least. So I went back to sleep.
At 6:30 I got a message that we were to go in at 1:00 to help clean, so I figured no big deal, right? I've been through this before, at Kosin University; small fire in one office, everything in my office covered with a thin layer of soot. I expected I would spend the next couple of days cleaning.
I found some pictures here and here. At this site there are three pictures of the aftermath and a video if you scroll down. I have run it through Google translate for you. Not sure how long this link will be live. And some of the translations are pretty fishy. For example, the headline:
"National Gay Elementary gaehakil four days a temporary suspension of fire ..."
Here are the first couple of paragraphs:
"Gaehakil early morning at an elementary school in Busan, a large fire in the classroom and being burned or shot to a new semester, while students in class were put to great inconvenience.
The school temporarily closed four days of action down the fire damaged building repair and maintenance naseotjiman, meals room, some classrooms and the two burn victims and the size is bigger than you think to the future of the academic calendar seems to have gained a considerable setback. "
No wonder it is so hard to learn Korean if they all speak like this.
In the second picture, looking up the stairs, the little lockers at the bottom left are shoe lockers. When anyone enters the building, they take off their shoes, put them in their locker, and put on the slippers which they had stored in their locker. There are extra slippers for guests, as well. Right behind the person taking the photo were Horyon and my lockers. Horyon had just put in a cute pair of shoes which she had bought back in Kansas just to wear in the classroom. She was very happy with the shoes, but now they are ash. My slippers were bought here in Korea, so they will be more easily replaced.
If you continue up those stairs to the third floor, my classroom is (was?) the first one, and Horyon's is the second. The articles say that the second and third floor halls are in bad shape, and quite a few classrooms as well. Our classrooms have sliding doors that are all little windows. It is going to be a serious mess to clean up, assuming the doors survived.
And right inside both of our doors, still in the boxes, are new printers for our computers. Well, they used to be new anyway.
I had put a few of my books in the classroom, and a new computer mouse, but not much else is mine. The one thing I may really miss (assuming it is unusable) is a book of Kakuro puzzles. Each one now takes me about 20 minutes to complete, maybe more. The book had more than 600 puzzles, and I figured it would not only fill some down time for me but keep my math and puzzle skills somewhat sharpened.
I guess we will see in the morning.
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