The Day And The Night

The world is split.  Man and Woman. Young and old. Rich and poor.  Us and them.  You and me.  In Korea the teacher crew is split in one distinct line.  Day walkers and  Night walkers. 

Regardless if wrong for this blog, this would be a fun battle. For about five seconds.

EPIKers, kindergarten and university types own the sun.  They keep hours our parents can understand, even if they can't understand time zone differences.  They wake up along with most of the Korean nation and sometimes go to sleep earlier than they ever did in their adult life.

How I sometimes imagine EPIK deskwarming could be.

The night walking shuffling masses of the hagwan arena rarely open their eyes fully before three in the afternoon. They might be walking around, they may make conversation but trust me, they are rarely conscious before their fifth cup of coffee.  And when they go home they think nothing of eating dinner at one in the morning.  And seeing the wrong side of sunrise is a regular occurrence. On a Wednesday night.

Thursday Morning. Like a boss.

To each tribe, the other is alien. Making friends across this divide is fraught with peril.  And, yes, trusted reader, I hear your inner monologue murmuring dissent. "Alien? Fraught? Where does he get off, making it seem like it's worse than a Capulet-Montague kegger. If the Montagues were old money and the Capulets were Jews."

Juliet! You COWARD!

First off turn off that inner monologue.  It has no place here. Second, hear me out.  Friendships start out easy enough. You meet at a bar downtown, or an event, or a sports 'thing'. I don't know how you make friends.
You hit it off finding you have just so much in common. You share interests and goals and visions.  You finish your platonic night together and walk off happily, knowing you just made a new friend. 

As Brian left Russell that night, he never realized he had just been Friendzoned.

However, you find that during the week it's like you are missing out on their social life.  Facebook trawling lets you see that they are doing things ( curse them!) without you. Day Walkers have the option here to at least have a late night. Staying out until two in the morning is a big deal if you are up at seven the next day. Night Walkers do not get that. At all. Two in the morning is equivalent to their happy hour. That is when things start to happen.  Going home to sleep is almost like, I don't know, giving up. 

Man, girls are just dicks to their sleepy friends.

And for a Night walker to get together with a Day walker is practically impossible. By the time Day Walkers finish work, Night Walkers are in the middle of their work day. Planning a lunch together takes military precision that even Camp Walker would find impressive. And even then it is only a scant moment together before the daywalker heads back into the work camps.

"Please stay a little longer." "Dude, BOUNDARIES!"

So, I issue this warning. When you meet your weekend friends, love them dearly. Just accept that for almost 72% of your time in Korea, you cannot hang out. And if that is not good enough for you, you should stick to your own time zone. 

Math is key to Friendship.Ask anybody. Anybody.

Then again, that is still infinity% more time than you can spend with your friends and family back home. So maybe I should just shut the hell up.