It's 3:30. I've got five minutes. I pop two 100-won coins in the coffee machine and choke down the half-cup of syrupy liquid. My eyes pop open and my heart races as the chemicals take hold.

Rollbook, teaching materials and chalk in hand, I walk slowly towards room 309 at the end of the hall. The hallways is packed with people. Mothers fill the chairs lining the hallway. Korean teachers pass by, they're arms filled with notebooks. Screaming, laughing children surge down the hallway in both directions, pausing only to gawk at their caffeine-addled American babysitter (me). A few brave souls stumble over a vowel-ridden "hallllooooo teachah, howa you?" I nod.

It's hard not to think of oneself in the third person when walking to a classroom full of hyper ten-year-olds who don't speak your language. I'm not Stephen Jones walking down a hallway crammed with students. I'm Daniel being cast into the lions' den. I'm Paris marching out to face Achilles. I'm a Parisian revolutionary convicted of asking for my piece of cake.

The sound of the children dies down and the hallway fades away. People throw rotten fruit and stones at me as I am lead by chains to the gallows. Somewhere in the distance a lone snare drum organizes the silence into a sharp staccato roll. The Grand Inquizitor approaches me as the executioner fits my neck with a prickly noose.

"Does the convicted have any last words?" he asks snobbishly.

"Why yes sir, I do," I say as I enter room 309. "CLASS! STAND UP!"

The kids weren't too bad today. I tried a new trick to learn their names. I brought a styrofoam ball and tossed it to each child as I called their names. Once caught, they threw it back and repeated the name so that I could hear it spoken in it's native tongue.

I'm still far from perfect at pronouncing Korean names. How do you think "Seob" sounds? Here's a clue: Not a thing like it's written.

"Yoon-seob!" I call out.

"Noooooah teachah! Noooooah!" Ah, Yoon-seob is here. The seven-year-old boy crosses his arms in front of his face and shakes it at me. No, bad, wrong, try again.

"How do I pronounce?" I ask sheepishly. "Yoon-seeop?" The boy's eyes widden even further and the arms go up again.

"Nooooah! Nooooah! Yoon-Sop!"

"Yoon-Soop?"

"Noooooah! Yoon-SOP!" He emphasizes the end of the name, making it even harder to understand. I try again.

"Yoon-Soup?"

"Yoon-SOP!"

"Sup?"

"SOP!!!"

"Sopp?"

The child hangs his head as if to underscore my complete failure at pronouncing Hangul. Frustrated, I move on to the next child, amazed to see that five minutes of my twenty minute class is gone forever.

"Tae-eun?" I say and look up.

"Noooooah, teachah! Noooooahhh!" A little girl stands up and crosses her arms at me. Ah, Tae-eun is here, too. It literally took all twenty minutes of my first class with the 1-2Ps simply to call roll.

Tomorrow I have to wake up at the crack of dawn to catch a bus down to the Red Cross and listen catch a seminar on "proper behavior while living in Korea" by the Alien Registration Bureau. According to Ha-young, our teacher coordinator, every single registered alien in all of Busan is required by law to be there for the entire three-hour duration. That is going to eat most of my free time tomorrow, which sucks. Lately the time I keep for myself has become a precious commodity.

My co-workers cornered Ha-young in the teachers' office and demanded to know why they had less than a day's warning for the seminar. Mike was particularly irked, demanding to know why he has go when he only has a week left in Korea. Dennis wondered aloud what the penalty for not going would be. Julie shrugged her shoulders and probed Ha-young for loop-holes. Ha-young herself doesn't have to go, a complete injustice by my co-workers recogning (sp?).

I kept quiet the whole time. I'm kinda looking forward to this. There are only 700 or so registered aliens, probably 95% of which are teachers in varying degrees of responsibility, from tenured professors at PNU to simple songsemnim like me, and the Bureau of Alien Registration is going to put all of us in one room together. Even if I only meet a few, it is a fascinating concept.

So I've got to go now and get some sleep. Peace. --Notes