That all went down last Monday. The next day, Tuesday, was payday. As a rule, payday is a fine day and one worth looking forward to after Monday's stress. I received my empty yellow envelope with humble gratitude, as the money was deposited directly in my Korean bank account. Nick however, (who always recieves his pay in cash money or monet due to laziness or forsight, I'm not sure which), had an envelope which was a bit lighter than usual. Now, a good two hundred dollars had been deducted based on the ridiculous amount of international calls Nick had made from our home (largely to Canada and Thailand) --our academy will pay any bill that we incur and then take it from our salary. But, Nick had been sick three days in the past month, and two of those days he was not paid for, despite the fact that our contract promises us seven sick days for the year. Furthermore that crazy bastard Nick had made a few international calls from the secretary's desk in between classes, so neatly attached to his envelope was a phone bill from the academy, and scrawled at the bottom were these profound words, "P.S. Mr. Jo and I know the fact". Now I'm no rocket scientist, in fact I am barely an English Teacher, but buried deep within that elegant, well-researched phrase, I detected some animosity, and so did my portly pal Nicolas. Immediately he objected to the sick days being unpaid, right then and there in the teacher's lounge. This led to another lengthy, ugly exchange which involved no less than five people to translate each other's pointed words. I slunk off to class gratefully, for once looking forward to the fecophiles and nitwits who awaited me.

After work, Nic and I talked about how unhappy Mrs. Song was making us both. He had talked to Mr. Jo (Mrs. Song's husband, right? Married women in Korea keep their maiden names, although it is only selectively enforced) and he had told him that even though he had seven sick days available to him in his contract, Mrs. Song had decided to change his contract. Now, I learned early on in the game, possibly when I contracted the Chinese yellow dust disease known as conjunctivitis, that it's best not to miss a day of work even if you have a highly contagious ailment and frequently rub your eyes and then touch children (which is essentially how I pass the time at work). I had to come in despite the fact that I was this was my one chance to truly live like a leper, but instead I was thrust callously into the midst of Korean children (our most precious resource). Still, changing Nic's contract on a whim, simply because he sucks, strikes me as somewhat wrong. Anyway, the talk between Nic and I was probably the most empathetic conversation we have ever had...little did I know it would be our second-to-last (or penultimate).