I was asked to be a spy....

I never thought I was cut out to be a CIA agent. I mean what kind of person does that anyway?

Things are heating up in preparation for take off. Two of my fellow travelers have been bouncing e-mails back and forth between me and them and Jin Hee and Jenny and Chan and whoever else is stuck up there in our "reply all" option.

For some reason, Jin Hee, the poor grunt who has been put in charge of helping us make our arrangements, has been trying really hard to encourage us to take the limo bus from Seoul to Daegu. When I went three years ago we tried to fly but our flight had been canceled due to rain, so we took the Express Train. It only took two hours (once we got on the train). The limo bus takes 5 hours. That would put us into Daegu at 2:30 a.m.! After a 12 hour flight from SF to Seoul!!

Well, Sue and Elizabeth are both pretty frantically against the idea. I am too, but since they are doing all of the objecting, I am staying out of the negotiations.

We got Jin Hee to agree to make the reservation for the flight, which is only 50 minutes. She's afraid we'll miss it. They could pay for a refundable ticket, but since they are cheap, um, trying to save money, they are paying less for a non-refundable ticket. Which means, if for some reason in our hour and a half between our scheduled landing time and scheduled take off time something happens like a flight delay, late arriving luggage or a strip search in customs and we miss our flight, Jenny and gang are out the money. So Jin Hee (I am sure at the behest of Jenny and Chan) asked us to agree to pay our own way on the limo bus since they would have lost the money they'd paid for our airfare (since they were too cheap, um...whatever, to buy the refundable ticket).

With me so far?

In the middle of all of this, and just before Elizabeth called me to tell me that the limo bus was only $24 dollars, so big deal if we had to pay for it ourselves, but why wouldn't they anyway, Jenny sent me an e-mail that said:

Dear Mike,
Dear Rick,

I am interested in Ethan.
If you don’t mind, would you please inform me of his performance during this summer program?
Thank you.

Jenny

Gee, I wonder how unethical it is for me to paste an e-mail onto a blog like that, but, I'm not telling you who Jenny is, and that might not even be her real name....

I'm presently finding it very ironic that they are afraid of paying an extra $24 each for us, but I am being asked to spy and report on another teacher I have not even met yet.

I wrote back to Jenny and told her the best people to ask would be Ethan's students, since they will be the ones in the classroom with him.

I can tell already, this is going to be an adventure!