June 1, Summer Begins

This morning Jack said he had a potted hydrangea for me. I didn’t ask for a plant and I didn’t tell him that I am quite horrible at keeping plants alive so at the end of the day he insisted on driving me home with my new terra-cotta friend.

I sat in the backseat of his extremely long van because the 4-1 homeroom teacher is apparently Jack’s carpool buddy.

I half listened to them chitchat while I tried not to doze off in the backseat. With traffic it took nearly as long to drive five blocks as it takes me to walk home in the afternoons.

There was a shift in the conversation and my ears perked up. The homeroom teacher had dropped her voice to talk about me.

I didn’t gather much except she recounted to Jack how I told her that her class had been very cute last week. If you recall, one boy had excitedly shown me his special pencil case while I was packing up and another two girls came up to stare at me until I gave them a high five.

She and Jack then started gossiping about the 5-6 class, the notoriously rude class. There must be something if even she, a homeroom teacher of an entirely different grade, is aware.

I’m just comforted to know I’m not alone in my frustration with that particular group.

I think Jack made mention that it’s difficult for him, or me, because the homeroom teacher isn’t there to control the class. He might’ve said they should make it easy on me, or might’ve said they should be better at controlling their class.

I’m still an intermediate Korean student after all.

According to Jack, if I water this plant every day for the next year I should see flowers by next summer. I hate commitment, especially to plants, but I’ll try my best for him.