I Love Zombies!

J-I had a bit of a rough one today. You see, teaching here works in shifts. Since last week, I had been working the afternoon shift, and I thought that I was going to change shifts at the “end of the month.” I was in the midst of writing out my lesson plan for today, when I was informed that “the end of the month” had already come to pass because the calendar here is very, very different. Unfortunately, I was informed of this only after I had missed several classes. I might not be living in the West anymore, but even after 2 years living in a culture with a different sense of time, this type of thing does still occasionally get to me. I was essentially told not to bother showing up today, and I knew that this would wind up reflecting poorly on me as opposed to those who had not told me of the change. So, why did I end today grinning instead of agitatedly pressing my temples in frustration? I’ll tell you why: zombies. Specifically, “The Walking Dead.” Now, anyone who knows me will tell you that I am no fan of horror/gore as a genre. However, for some odd reason, I am nuts about the AMC series “The Walking Dead.” For at least a week now, I have been slumping in my seat every time that a promo for the next season was aired on the Fox International station that is often playing on restaurant TVs here. It’s mostly a movie station, but it kept airing promos for the upcoming season. Considering what a cliff-hanger the last season left off at, you can imagine how bummed I was at the thought of not being able to watch the next season as it unfolds (or more likely having people back home post spoilers about it that ruin all the best moments in the season as would often happen back in South Korea). I thought for sure that at best we would have to wait until someone over here got a bootlegged copy to circulate among the volunteers, or at worst I’d have to wait until I went home. Well, It turns out that I was dead wrong about that (I’m not touching that pun; it’s too obvious). We were hanging out at our favorite juice bar again, drinking a couple of avocado juices, when we noticed that the place was starting to get really packed. They still had the channel tuned in to Fox, which was running plenty of pre-season-premier related stuff, but they had music playing over it so that you couldn’t tell what was being said. We cleared out as they were running the final episode of last season because we didn’t want to watch the first episode of this season without sound (and subtitled in Arabic). Still, the place seemed pretty packed and lively, and it did seem like a lot of people were paying a lot of attention to the silent TV. We decided to hit up a local net café to pass the remaining hour before the show would premier, and then we would duck into the hotel across the street from our house to see if they were playing the show with the volume up. This hotel, of which we are regulars at the restaurant/bar portion (for better or worse), normally plays the news on high volume all evening. Still, we took a chance, and at 7:20 PM we walked in to find the last episode of last season finishing up with the volume on, and a large collection of locals sitting around waiting anxiously for the new season. We grabbed a seat at a partially unoccupied table, ordered a couple of beers, and had a serious hour of bonding time with some of the men in our community. It was an AMAZING episode, a great experience, and we look forward to continuing doing this every Monday until the mid-season finale. The people of Fiche are Walking Dead fans; who knew?