It’s 9:00am, Tuesday morning and I am teaching my first class of the semester (I only have one university class this semester; the other classes are at the language institute).

Well, not so much teaching, but handing out copies of the syllabus and going over it with all four students in the class.

Wait a minute? All four students in class? What the heck is going on here? On the official, subject to change student list, there are 26 students registered for this class. Where are they?

I’m thinking that they might have overslept or still trying to find the classroom.

“Where are the rest of the students,” I asked. “There are supposed to 26 students in our class.”

Some giggling, a show of embarrassment on the part of the four female students that are in class. Giggling, or nervous laughter is quite common in Korea, especially from females when they are embarrassed about something-even if it has nothing to do with them.

“They are in Japan,” one of the embarrassed and giggling students said.

“Japan?”

Now, what the heck are they doing in Japan when they are supposed to be in this class? Gee, did someone get the scheduling all fouled up and forget to tell the students that they had a class today?

“What were they doing in Japan?” I asked.

That was too hard of a question for the four students to grasp this early in the morning and this early in the semester-after all, they probably haven’t spoken much English in the past three months-so I thought I would just go ahead and explain the rest of the syllabus to them and let them go early.

After that abbreviated class, I stopped in at the GEL (General English Language) office and asked about this class and why they were in Japan and why no one had bothered to inform me that most of my class would not be in class on Tuesday.

“Swine flu,” the GEL assistant said.

“Excuse me? Swine Flu? They all have Swine Flu?”

“No, they were in Japan but when they came back to Korea they have to stay at home for a week before going to school to make sure they don’t have it,” she said. “It’s the law.”

“Whoa. What law is this?”

It’s probably not a law, but that’s the way it got translated. I’m thinking it’s more of a mandatory quarantine for travelers-especially students and even teachers-to make sure no one is infected.

“Do you want to cancel the class?” she asked.

Maybe she thought I was afraid of getting Swine Flu.

“No, no, no. I just never heard about that law or whatever the powers that be are calling it.”

Later, that’s exactly what I would find out: that it is a mandatory quarantine for students and teachers who have traveled to a foreign country and have to stay at home for a week before going back to school.