Children of the Polo

The other day I noticed that 4 out of 8 of the 5-year-olds in my class were wearing shirts or dresses with a little horse rider on the front. I looked at one of the tags, and apparently that diminutive poloist is the emblem for Ralph Lauren Polo. Although somehow strange, this is probably harmless since I don't think the kids really have any idea what clothes they are wearing, except for Lisa who wears her favourite pink flowered dress 4 days a week. Still, 5 is a bit young to begin indoctrination into the cult of materialism, which is much more evident here than in Prince George. Also, kids shouldn't be swinging mallets on horseback.

Having rich kids as students is nice, however, on Teachers' Day, which was today. We got swag. Swag was gotten by us. Some of said swag was semi-expensive. Also, cake and donuts, many donuts. It was kind of like Christmas, except I didn't know it was coming. Most of the stuff I'll never use, but I'm 1/4 Scottish, so I love free stuff on principle.

Last Sunday I went to the National Museum of Korea. The nice thing about giant cities in Asia is that they have kick-ass subway systems. It's neat to know that there is more stuff than you could ever possibly visit within 30 minutes of your house. The museum is apparently the 6th largest in the world by floorspace, which is an inaccurate indicator, but never mind that. It was OK. It took me 3 hours to walk through. The space and the building were interesting architecturally, and there was a neato Pagoda Garden with 1000-year-old pagodas, but it was no Met.

On Thursday we are taking a fieldtrip to "American City," which is one of several recreations of smalltown U.S.A. that have been built so that people can go there and practice English in an "authentic" setting. It is even stocked with live, breathing white people. These same people I will heckle vociferously because their job is being a phony version of themselves. That's not fair. I do that everyday and no one pays me anything.