"Towel! Towel!"

So today, a teacher came up to me and said, "Towel! Towel! Art room, towel!" So... what...? I need to give you a towel? Go to the art room for a towel? Did I spill something on myself and I need a towel? Is there student work I should look at that involved towels? Or is there like a student art show going on?  Am I hearing towel, but you mean something else in Korean? What does towel in Korean mean? And then I followed the teachers (all women, by the way) to the art room and saw boxes of towels. Oh, so you really meant towels. And pillows and blankets, too. Of course you meant towel! I was brought to a table with little folded washcloths, so between those and the boxes of stuff set up in the art room, I stupidly thought "Hey! Craft time! What are we making?" Yeah, I don't know how I came up with that idea either. 


Really, what it was, was a man selling this stuff with a speech about each product and examples. The principle (who's a man) stepped in, saw all the  women, saw everything for sale, and sheepishly stepped out. A lot of other women teachers slipped in and out to get their free towels. The things for sale? Totally overpriced unless it's magical bedding and pillows. A tube shape pillow sold for $30, and a tiny travel sized one $20. Noooo thanks. But, he even had a gadget to take credit cards! And an ion reader, too...


Seeing people selling stuff in schools seems incredibly out of place to me, coming from a culture where this just doesn't happen, but now I have a magic towel for free (I guess that's why I was told to go), the guy did a demonstration by dumping some water on the table and threw a cloth on it- and then the water was amazingly gone, table bone dry, WOW. I'll have to test this later for validation. True fact: Koreans like their free stuff. Further proof to eventually follow.


TWENTY SIX MINUTES UNTIL MY WEEKEND STARTS, OMG. Tomorrow, I'm going to see Namdaemun market, I'm excited to see all the STUFF! But it sits on more than 20 blocks, and has multiple levels from what I understand, so I guess the visit to H&M and Forever 21 will have to wait, and that makes me sad.