More "Informative" Workshops.....(sigh)

Well, not much going on at present, so I figure most of this post will be focused on the absurd workshops I went through the last two days. School is, as I write this, officially over for the semester. The last few weeks, since I posted last, have been mostly doing evaluations of the students in order to help the co-teacher grade and assess the student's levels, so nothing too crazy. Honestly, I could have given the grades without even administering the speaking tests. The students that participate regularly in class and talk to me a bunch all got A's and B's, while the students that never talk or only talk in Korean to me (and there are quite a few) got C's or D's. Surprise, surprise.

Most of the time at work the last few weeks has been spent working on my winter camps, which until two or 3 days ago, I had only a very vague understanding of who I would be teaching. You know, stuff thats normally very crucial, like how many students I'll be teaching at a time and what their ages/abilities are. The details have been changing almost daily. I feel terrible for the co-teacher cuz she's the one having to deal with all the 180s and then relaying it to me. For example, originally (about a month or so ago) our school wasn't going to have camps, so I was gonna get loaned out to another school. Then my school decided they wanted camps, and for 3 weeks, instead of the 2 weeks I would have done at another school. Fine. Then I was told that they would be having the classes seperated by levels. I was under the impression that this meant that all the grades would be mixed, which would cause problems as a high level 3rd grader isn't anywhere near a high 6th grader. I was also told that my classes would be nice and cozy, around 15 students a class. This I could get used to. It would put us around 60 students (15 for each of the 4 classes). Cept when the sign up sheets came back it was obvious that we had 90 students asking for camp. My co-teach fought hard to keep it at 60 students, but the vice principal, knowing so much about teaching....anything (I'm being very, very sarcastic), decided that all 90 students should get a camp. Now, 15 students a class would be wonderful, but 25 or so still is pretty damn good, so no complaints here, just wish I could get more individual time with each student. Just the tug of war nature of the whole thing that annoys me.

Well the back and forth continued, as 3 days ago, I finally learned that the classes were broken up by level, sort of. The low level class would consist of 1st and 2nd graders, the middle 3rd and 4th and so on. This brings other difficulties into play, as my high level classes, who I presumed would be high level students, are simply the oldest students. I have no idea whether these are the students that could hold a normal conversation with me in English or if they are the ones that can't write their name in English. Also, as you might have realized, I'm teaching 1st and 2nd graders.....who I've never taught before, so I have no idea what they know, if anything. This as you can imagine, makes it hard to make a decent winter camp. I just chose some activities that I think would be doable and enjoyable for the vast majority of the students, and hope they work. That's about all I can do.

My annoyance came to a head last week Friday, as I was working on finalizing my camp lesson plans that I needed to have turned in yesterday. Anyways, the vice princ. wanders in and starts chatting with the co-teach and I find out that, because there were so many 1st and 2nd graders that wanted camp, they had to break them up into individual single week groups. So instead of teaching the same kids for 3 weeks, like I do with the other kids, I teach each group for one week. The vice principal was also worried that the material would be too hard for them, so I have to make a new lesson plan just for them. I was told that it needs to be fun, with coloring, games, candy and other fun stuff. Being annoyed with the additional lesson planning I had to do at the last minute, I told the vice principal to her face, "So you want me to be a babysitter then?". Probably good she can't speak English. There was no way I was gonna come up with a 4th week of all new material (coming up with 3 weeks was hard enough), so I just simplified and dumbed down some of the other camp activities I had planned for the older kids.

The worst, however, was when she asked to inspect my lesson plans for the camps. Upon looking over the plans, she uttered, "Where is the title and key sentences?" THE FUCK ARE KEY SENTENCES?????? Yes, apparently my lesson plans were substandard and incomplete without a title for each class and several key sentences that I would teach the students. However, I was planning on having the students actually use the language, rather than having them recite several sentences multiple times, but hell, what do I know? I humored her by adding key sentences to my lesson plans, regardless of whether I have any intention of teaching them (I don't).

Now we come to meat of this post. The mandatory enrichment workshops, or whatever they call them. Now regardless of whether these workshops were going to be good or not, they got off on the wrong foot with most of the teachers, as they scheduled them for the last two days of semester, where the schools usually do some fun stuff/have parties/etc and instead placed us in stuffy auditoriums, listening to boring speeches about stuff. Strike 1. Then we found out that the first day of workshops last from 1pm - 9pm at night. Yeah, as if workshops weren't enough fun, they planned to have it run into our non-working time. No word as to whether we get overtime for it. Probably not. Now, the workshop was nice and close to my school, which was a plus, so after riding the subway for 2 stops, I was there. Having survived several workshops in the past, I came prepared with books, korean homework and my gameboy, should the speakers ramble on about nothing for multiple hours like I knew they would. Imagine my surprise and disappointment when I find out that this workshop only has about 70 teachers and we would be broken up into groups of 10 for small group workshops. Booooooooooooooooooooooooo. I was really looking forward to some Phoenix Wright or Pokemon Diamond. Now, we had been given very little info on what was actually going on at this here workshop, basically just when and where to meet. Turns out the instructors had been given even less info on what to do. They were the native English speaker teachers at the university and they seemed to be just as thrilled about the whole workshop as us. According to one of the teachers, they were originally told that we would all be high school teachers (which none of us were) and that we were brand new to Korea (also not true).

Given that information (that we were high school teachers), then maybe the fact that the presentations were supposed to be on such topics as teaching presentations, reading, and writing would make more sense. As we are elementary teachers, those particular topics are completely useless, as we don't start teaching reading and writing at all until 4th grade and even then its merely a few words here and there. You can imagine the absolute absurdity of teaching 7 or 8 year olds how to do presentations. Given the instructors had no idea what exactly there were supposed to be teaching and the stupidity of the assigned subjects, most of our workshops turned into conversations pertaining to everything and anything Korea. Funny stories, frustrations with schools/coteachers, questions about Korea, etc. These candid conversations are always the best aspect and sometimes the only positive one at these kinda workshops, as its always good to know that you aren't the only one who thinks the stuff that goes on at your school is absolutely bat-shit insane. Strength in numbers, I guess.

After 4 hours of this stuff, we were treated to dinner, which was actually damn good. Actually, the candid conversations and the food are the sole positives, usually. Course, they didn't have to check attendance at dinner. I mean, it was after our workhours, so they can't really hold us after. Plus, dinner and the following traditional Korean performing arts (shudder) performance weren't even work-related, so how could your school be angry for skipping out. But, as its Korea, people got yelled at the next day by their school for "neglecting their responsibilities" or something like that. Remember, when in Korea, when somebody higher up or older than you asks you to bend over, you must promptly present your posterior without comment. They really like it if you thank them for it too.

Wanting to save myself the lecture from my school, I stuck around for the musical performance. God, I wish I wouldn't have. Now, I know Korea is super proud about their history and love to show off just how fucking scientific everything is, but at some point they need to realize that most foreigners don't like having this shit shoved down their throat. Also, they should realize that most non-Koreans find this "traditional" pretty awful and boring and terrible and did I mention awful? In fact, I'm now skeptical of anything prefaced with the word "traditional". I'm not up on the dictionary definition, but perhaps one of the definitions is "awful, mind-numbing, torturous, painful". Just a guess though.

Now, I've seen the traditional music before, so I had a sneaking suspicion that this would be just awful. A brief recap. There are some nice sounding stringed instruments, but sadly they never let them do their thing with solos. No, they have the stringed instruments play, but then they drown it out with way, way too many percussion instruments. So all you hear is banging and clashing and booming. It's just a loud mess. Then they break in with some sort of breath powered instrument that honestly sounds like a dying fawn or lamb or goat or something. I kid you not. If you slit the throat of this type of critter and then let them slowly bleed out, I guarantee the awful mewing or crying that they produce would sound exactly like this instrument. Not exactly pleasant, I know.

I assumed that this performance would be people in hanbok dancing to these awful, awful sounds. I wasn't too far off. So we arrive at the theater and I realize that we are at the Seoul Arts Center, a wonderful place, and that there is probably some sort of beautiful orchestra or symphony performance taking place at the same time we are forced to sit through this travesty. That probably made the whole thing worse, that I could probably spit and hit a musical performance I'd love to actually see. Anyways, we got to the theater 30 minutes before it started, so people found their seats and settled in and waited for the pain that would soon wash over them. I wasn't too worried, as I had my gameboy, so if shit got really bad, I'd just break it out.

So the performance starts and we are all ready off to a bad foot. The first 10 minutes consisted of a disembodied voice narrating some sort of backstory. The voice spoke in Korean and was accompanied by the textual version displaying on a screen on stage. Now, I'm no expert on the world of the stage and the arts, but I'm pretty sure that you want to start a performance by hooking and pulling in the audience to get them interested. Narration is fine and all, but to have a slow, drawn out one without a very charismatic narrator run for 10 minutes is a bad move, at least in my mind. The story was something about the crown prince going crazy and pulling some weird shit, like trying to kill his servant or something, being banished from the kingdom and living a lecherous life with performers and poor people for a year, then coming back to the kingdom to beg his father's forgiveness. Well, daddy let him back in, but he is so shamed and embarrassed by his son's behavior that to save face (I presume) he asks his son to kill himself. How? Well, he has the boy climb into a rice box and stay there for 9 days till he dies. But it all ends on a happy note, cuz his son grows up to be one of the greatest kings ever and the performance is about the dead prince's wife's 60th birthday party, put on by his really awesome son. Wait, what???? What the fuck was the point of that whole narration????? Seriously???? That story sounded kinda cool and interesting, do the play about that. Why give us that background that has absolutely no bearing on the performance. We are watching the king hold a 60th birthday party for his mom. Who cares what the hell his dad did, it has nothing to do with his mom's party 40 some years later. ARghaslghaslghlsakhgls.

At least, that's what I think the narration said, from what I could read. I don't really know, as the one screen that had English translations (a good idea) was obscured by lighting and couldn't be seen by the English teacher group (a really bad idea). That's right, they chose to put us, the only people in the audience who would need the english subtitles, in the only seats in the house that wouldn't be able to see the screen. Face, meet palm.

So the play thingy starts and its exactly what I expected: boring and loud and uncomfortable. The birthday girl is escorted out slowly by her servants, everybody else slowly walks in and sits down, there's a bunch of bowing and tea drinking, some kinda bombastic speeches (which I couldn't understand what they said), and some lousy background music accompanies the slow, stiff dancers. Seriously, I have never seen such a disconnect between the senses. Outside of maybe Mardi Gras and Carnivale, I doubt you will see more colors and flashy looking stuff then at a court ceremony like this. I mean look at hanboks (the traditional korean outfits). Hell, it looked like a rainbow exploded on stage. Now, as in the examples of Mardi Gras, Carnivale and most other things, bright colors mean vibrancy, energy, liveliness, and life. This performance was the exact opposite. Slow, stiff, lifeless, dull, and boring. Yuck.

Good thing I brought my gameboy, right? Too bad the supervisor guy from SMOE (the big wig) sat in the row directly behind me.....shit. Well, I'll just try to sleep then. No chance. At least not with that painful music playing. Then I'll just zone out and think about stuff, cuz I'm really good at that. What I didn't count on was that the performance was so uninteresting that it had paralyzed my brain. Like someone in a coma or something I was unable to do anything other than look on stage. I was able to find something interesting on the ceiling for a bit, so I just stared at that.

Now, somewhere about 30 minutes into the whole lousy show, it went from just being really f'n bad to awesomely bad and it instantly became watchable. Sadly, it didn't last for long and went back to its dull, uninteresting self soon after. What happened was that suddenly, the stage began to fill up with smoke, several very large lotus flowers were rolled out, and.........2 dancers came out dressed as Big Bird. I shit you not. Technically, they were cranes, but still. They wore striped socks up to their bird bodies, like the big fella from Sesame Street and had full body bird outfits, with the dancers heads sticking out somewhere around the lower neck area. Now, when this happened, I and most of the foreign audience who was still awake (there weren't too many, I don't think) thought they were hallucinating, and crapped their pants, or vice versa. Seriously, where did the birds come from? Straight out of left field, I guess. Now the birds started dancing, spinning, and flapping, and pecking the ground (to dig for worms, one presumes). I can't vouch for the rest of the foreign folks, but I just about started laughing at this point. The only thing stopping me was that I was too damn confused to be able to clearly tell if this was actually funny or if I was losing my mind.

Shit got more weird when the cranes danced over to the lotus flowers, tapped on them with their beaks, and then the lotus flowers opened up to reveal a Korean female dancer trapped inside. WTF??????? Now maybe I just have sex on the brain (okay, so I do), but that scene came off as a big sexual innuendo to me. You may not see it, but I've seen too many Georgia O'Keefe paintings to not think flowers look like vaginas. And the bird's beak that penetrates the flower and out comes a human? Cmon. "Sure Eric, it's all about sex. What a pervert. Next you're gonna tell me that that really awesome football statue at Camp Randall is actually a big penis." Well, now that you mention it.....

Sadly, the cranes didn't stick around and the performance quickly returned to the bowing and tea drinking and stale nature of it all. Eventually it ended. Only an hour long, but man it felt much longer. The performers all came back on stage and we gave them a round of applause. Why I'm not sure. Take for example the 60 year old mother of the King. Presumably a major character in the story, right? Well, here's what she did. She entered at the beginning, very slowly, being escorted by two servants. She sat down, with her back to the audience (she sat that way the whole time). 20 minutes in, she was helped to her feet, turned to the audience and said about 10 words to us all. She then sat down again. When the performance finished, she was slowly escorted out again. Ohhh, and throughout the performance she occasionally turned her head to acknowledge somebody talking to her. That's it. Fuck, I could have done that....easily. The musicians who played the entire time? No curtain call. The dancers who actually did something? Very minor curtain call. The lady that did nothing the whole time? The biggest curtain call. Yeah, that makes sense.

One of the other teachers I was talking with summed up the whole thing the best when he said, "Man, I really feel sorry for Korea that their culture is so stale, so stiff, so boring, so uninteresting." Now obviously that isn't true for all their culture. Hell, many of their modern cultural aspects (Starcraft, computer games, movies, and breakdancing) are all really great. But the traditional stuff? No thanks. Hopefully, Korea will realize someday that most people really don't care for the old timey stuff and will then begin promoting all the actually cool stuff about Korea. I hope.

My Restroom Difficulties

Since its the season of giving again, I'll give you all an amusing story about my restroom problems at school (sure as hell wasn't amusing to me, but you may find it entertaining). As you probably know, my school has only squat toilets, which as you might imagine, pose numerous issues for me. My first encounter was several months ago when I was at the DMZ and the results weren't very pleasant. First off, unlike the Koreans, I haven't been practiced in squatting for long periods of time. I shit you not, over here people when waiting around for something or while chatting will just squat down and stay like that for long, long periods of time. Me? Well, I can effectively squat for about 10 seconds before my knees cry out. And even if I could squat, I still haven't figured out how you wouldn't just drop your payload right into your pants around your ankles, cuz when I do squat, my legs are directly underneath my posterior. And I certainly don't want that. How do I solve the basic posture issue? I go into cocorinha, or for those of you who don't know capoeira, its a squat with one hand on the ground for support. Well, its actually closer to this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CapoeiraMeialuaDeCompasso%26QuedaDeQuatro_ST_05.jpg). See the guy on the right. This seems to work, but over time one's hand gets very uncomfortable having to support most of the bodies weight. But Eric, you say, why not put both hands on the ground? Simple, I need the other hand to make sure I don't pee all over my pants. With the posture difficulties parsed out, lets discuss some other complications. In Korea, for some idiotic god-forsaken reason, they never have toilet paper dispensers inside the stalls. No, you have to pull off however much TP you need before even starting your business. This, as you can see, is an awful, awful Catch-22. If you take too much, you feel bad about wasting TP, as nobody in their right mind will use TP torn off the roll and set next to it, as you don't know where its been. If you don't take enough, well, let's not even discuss that as the idea of it is just to horrifying. Also, my school, and it would seem many other schools, don't heat the bathroom or anything outside of the classrooms for that matter. Last year, the bathroom wasn't heated but they had heated toilet seats in the teacher's bathroom, so at least part of me was toasty. What's more difficult that trying to do your business while squatting? Doing your business in 40 degree temperatures. Or less. Lastly, in the afternoon, the school "cleans" the bathroom, meaning to say they just slop a bunch of water on the floor. That's right, you must balance on the floor with one hand and that floor is dirty and wet. I won't go into how many times I slipped and nearly fell into the narrow toilet. Sure, I wouldn't have done much harm to myself, but I would surely have prayed for death to save me from the utter shame.

All this brings us to our most harrowing adventure yet. On Thursday, as many people are want to do, I felt the need to use the restroom. No problem, I'll just wander off to the faculties. I walk into the bathroom and what do I see? No toilet paper. That's cool, no biggie. I'll just check the other boy's restrooms on the other floors (the school has 4 floors and there are mens and womens on each floor). Second floor? No TP. Third floor? No TP. Fourth floor? Still no goddamn TP. Now, I'm starting to get worried, so I checked the girls bathrooms (I just looked in as I was walking past) No TP there either, cept for the female teachers bathroom. I tried to remain calm, thinking maybe they are just gonna get refilled later in the day. I waited for several hours, checking off and on, to see if they had been refilled. No luck. Well, now I'm getting pretty desperate. Did they change to a bring your own toilet paper policy? Don't laugh, I know other teachers here in Korea that do have to bring their own. Idiotic beyond belief, but that's how Korea rolls sometimes. If they did change the policy, then somebody surely forgot to inform me. Anyways, eventually, I got desperate and, after checking to make sure everything was clear, went into the women's bathroom to retrieve some TP. Now, I obviously wanted to make this as quick as possible, seeing as how being caught in the women's bathroom would be hard to talk your way out of, even if I could speak the language and wasn't in a country where people like me (foreign white male english teachers) are openly discussed and stereotyped as sex addicts/sex fiends/perverts/pedophiles in the newspapers. Needless to say, I didn't wanna get caught. As luck would have it, I heard a door opening as I was still pulling off TP. Now, since everybody at my school is a big wuss about the weather (40 degrees is not cold people, so stop bitching!), they wouldn't leave their heated offices unless it was something important, like perhaps the call of nature. So I grabbed what TP I had, having no idea if it was enough, and got out of the bathroom. But the person leaving the office was coming from the room directly across the narrow hallway from the bathroom (meaning they were like 2 feet away). I'm screwed. Wait, they are turning around to close the door. I'm out, I'm gone, I'm free. Now, in my haste, I wasn't really sure if I had grabbed enough toilet paper, but I'd had enough shock for one day, so I just took my chances. In the end, it was cold, it was painful and it was wet, but I was finally able to go about my business. As I was telling Maria, I'm now completely ready for going to the bathroom in a third world country, cuz outside of shitting in the middle of the woods, perhaps into a hole, and having to use my hand or a leaf to wipe my ass, I'm not sure how defecating could get any more difficult and harrowing.

Now on to some other happier news, at least for me. I FINALLY GOT A BERIMBAU!!!!! It only took damn near a year. Now, my parents have still been unable to get me mine from home, so I had originally hoped to pick up one here, but because the group here cares little to none for music, they are hard to come by. One of the American guys in the group had one for sale, but it wasn't ready and I had almost no hope for it, as the wood simply wasn't loosening enough to allow it to be strung properly. Well, salvation came this week, when I was informed out of the blue that it was ready. Well, sort of. Thing still takes 2 or 3 people to string it, so I'm leaving it strung, which worries me, cuz if that thing snaps and goes.....yikes. It's super tall and I have a super short ceiling in my apt, so I have to play sitting down, but otherwise, I can't ask for more.

School is well, the same. I keep saying this, but it keeps on keeping on, with the same stuff. Winter camps are coming up, and I need to prepare 3 weeks worth of stuff. Still not sure who I'm teaching, as I've heard word that they want me to teach the 1st and 2nd graders, who I have no experience or knowledge of, as I've never taught them before, and I also hear that the classes will be broken up by levels, instead of grades, which will also be bad, as a high level 3rd grader is nowhere near a high level 6th grader in terms of ability. Guess I just have to prepare some materials and if its too hard or easy for the students, all I can do is shrug my shoulders and go "Oooooops". Not much else I can do. Also, as a nice Christmas thank you from the District of Education, I'll have to go to bullshit workshops the last two days before schools ends for winter break. Ohhh, but District of Education, I didn't get you anything...wait, no I do have something for you, its called a middle finger. Hell, you guys have been so awesome, I'll give you two, cuz I'm a giver like that. So here's my schedule for the last two days: go to school as normal and teach all my classes in the morning, then at lunch time run to wherever this stupid workshop is, then shit through stupid lectures from 1pm to 9pm. Yeah, that's right till 9pm. Then I go home and repeat the next day. Not only am I stuck at stupid lectures till that late, but I still do all my regular teaching in the morning (I only lose out on the planning, relaxing, and chatting with office mates part...you know, the good part). I also have to miss my Korean classes, which I actually like. Now, in theory, workshops would be helpful and informative, but as everyone knows, we don't live in a perfect world. Good thing I have plenty of books and a Game boy.

Now, weekend exploits. Two weekends ago, I got out and about in Seoul. To start the weekend, Jenna and I took in a weird little photo exhibit at the nearby Seoul Arts Center. It was exhibiting the works of some British photographer lady living in France. She had distorted or painted on or messed with her photos in some way so that they all looked like some manner of expressionist paintings. They were all especially sad and depressing, covering such cheery subjects as isolation, cold, winter, death, and the like. After that, we headed to some huge food expo. We sampled various teas and coffees, looked at dishes more accurately classified as art rather than food, and watched the national barista championships (it was heart pounding...). I didn't find any of the crazy expensive coffee where the bean is digested then crapped out by some tropical cat, but probably cuz its too damn expensive to give samples of. In the evening, the whole group gathered for a Thanksgiving dinner put on by a brewery in the Gangnam area. The owner was Korean-Canadian, so he understood the illusive concepts of "good beer" and "good food". Now, this is the first brewery I have ever seen in Korea. Quick recap: Drinking is an even bigger part of the culture in Korea than in America and 99% of the consumption is of 3 things, soju, Hite beer and Cass beer. And they all really, realy, really suck. Sure there are some smaller companies for beer, but they all suck too. As a result, microbrews, albeit not great, were greatly appreciated. Hell, here you give thanks for being able to find a Heineken or something and they kinda suck too. Anyways, despite not being American, the owner put on a really great Thanksgiving buffet. Sure we had to wait in line for like an hour (160 people waiting on just a few dishes would do that), but they chose to broadcast the Packers and Lions game on TV, which was awesome. And I must say that Rodgers fella looks like a decent quarterback. That's how long I've been away. The last packers game I saw, our quarterback was Brett Favre....haha. On Sunday, a few of us checked out some Science museum near Seoul. It was definitely orientated for kids with lots of interactive games and such, which was good since most of the directions and everything were in Korean, obviously. My favorite part was the awful, awful English translations on the various exhibits. Can you say babelfished? Cuz I can. Ohhhh, and I also laughed at the green living exhibit, which spent a considerable amount of time talking about how Korean homes are the most green homes ever, cuz they are made using nature's resources and coexist with nature or some bullshit. Course, on that same vein, Native American traditional housing and any other aboriginal tribe's dwellings would be even more so. Plus, nobody fucking lives in traditional housing anymore, so its kinda moot.

The next weekend saw me spending basically the whole weekend way down by Busan, in a temple stay. We got up and were on the bus bright and early at 7:30am, and were gone by 7:40am. Way, way too early on a Saturday morning. For the entire 4 hour bus ride down, we were forced to some stupid girls talk about their stupid thoughts and lives. And I mean the whole time....they never shut up, ever. Sleep was impossible, reading was impossible. All you could do was sit there, staring at the seat while your brain slowly oozed out of your ears. Finally, we arrived at the old Silla kingdom capital of Gyeongju (several hundred years ago Korea was divided between 3 kingdoms and the Silla kingdom, based around Busan in the south eventually conquered and overtook the other kingdoms and united the peninsula under one rule, thus their fame here in Korea). After some very, very Korean lunch (I'm so excited....not), we wandered around the burial mounds for the old kings and queens. There were 20 or so mounds around the area. As you can see from the pics, they weren't much to look at, as they are just 20 feet tall hills with grass grown over them. Maybe I'm just a weirdo, but all I saw were a bunch of huge breasts. We got a tour guide to guide us through the one mound that was open, but he was a monster dick. He spoke super fast cuz he was in a rush or something and was super pretentious (repeatedly asking "Do you understand what I'm saying?"....ummm yeah, asshole, its our language your speaking, we understand English), then when we told him that we were in a rush and had to move on quickly, he just up and left. Wow. After that we headed to another area to stare at the milk jug looking thing that nobody knows what purpose it served. The classical city was a bit underwhelming, as there really wasn't much remaining from the kingdom. Sure, the area was pretty, but I can take pics of mountains and hills almost anywhere in Korea, I wanted to see some impressive architecture or something. Soon afterward we headed on to our temple we would be staying at. Now, this was my second temple stay and it was much, much different from the previous temple stay. The other temple felt like a much more authentic experience as there were only 20 or so of us and we actually all prayed in the same quarters as the monks. This temple was very nice though, especially for those people that wanted to do a temple stay, but not really leave the comforts of home. We stayed in a big separate building built just for temple stayers with showers and everything. The other temple stay? It had a shower house that was a little walk away. They also had a really, really nice gymnasium area at this new temple as these Buddhists practice the martial art, Seonmudo. The old temple stay??? Not so much. Our schedule at the temple stay was very much filled. We arrived just in time for dinner at 5:30pm, then over to the gymnasium for evening prayers, a video about seonmudo, then a 90 minute seonmudo workout. Now, by this point, we had begun to become really, really annoyed with some of the other group members, as they complained when they found out that Buddhists are vegetarian (seriously, you didn't fucking know that???? dumbasses), they complained about how hard the seonmudo workout was (it was basically yoga, sure its a martial art but its much more about balance and holding kicks and moving with grace), they complained about the cold, etc. Not really sure why they came. The seonmudo exercise would probably have been hard for me before I started capoeira, but with all that flexibility practice behind me, it didn't pose much of an issue. I did find all the groaning and moaning quite funny though. I thought seonmudo was cool, but at the end of the day, there is reason why I do capoeira and never any of the other asian martial arts: cuz they are so dull, slow and boring at times. The peace and serenity and self reflection is great and all, but I need something lively, something with energy. Seonmudo is not that.

Sunday morning came way, way too early too. Despite going to bed at 10pm, 4:30am came much too soon. The group groggily wandered up to the morning prayers and after an hour of groggily bowing and mumbling along with the Korean chants, we were given time to wander around the premises before breakfast. We wandered up to the dangerous looking prayer spots. Sometimes there was a rope railing, sometimes there wasn't. Sometimes there was a rope ladder for ascending, sometimes there was just rocks. However, there was always a very, very steep fall to the ground below and there was always a gorgeous view to make it all worth it. We meditated and watched the sun rise over the mountains. This part of the Buddhist lifestyle I could get used to. The food and sleep schedule? Not as much. I would die if I was forced to survive like that long term. Well, maybe not die, but I would be a walking zombie at least. 6 hours of sleep a night and with that diet sorely lacking in any type of food for energy (I wasn't seeing too much in the way of carbohydrates unless they go crazy and have an Italian night every tuesday or something and I just don't know about it), I would be in a constant haze of fatigue. Plus, Korean monk portions are not Eric Wallin portions. Ohhh, but I can have another bowl of rice if I'm hungry? I can't fucking wait. After leaving the temple we headed to the ocean for some pictures, but not for too long as it was only about 30 degrees and the wind was around 20 mph or so. Along the way, we stopped off at some other, smaller buddhist temples. The temple architecture looked the same every time, which is also the same as all the old Korean temples and palaces, so needless to say, that got kinda boring. The actual alters to Buddha were always different and always impressive. Hell, they carved into cave walls and into cliff faces at times. However, I got a question for ya Buddhism. For a religion based on the ideas of living simply and not being extravagent, you sure do have a lot of extravagant and gaudy idols to worship to. Just saying. That comes off a little, well, hypocritical. With all our temple visits finished, we boarded the bus and were subjected to another 4 hours of absolute nonsense from the girls behind us. Hate to break it to ya girls, but I don't give two shits about your hair or what you do to it. So shut the fuck up. Thank you.

Pics: See album "Buddhism for a Day"

Collin Stecker visits Korea!!! (yeah, it was pretty EPIC)

So the last few weeks have been full of adventure and mishaps (mostly mishaps) culminating in the appearance of a certain Mr. Collin Stecker. Time is a wasting, so lets go down to business.

School has been much the same, which in this case is a good thing, but last week we did have one of my classes observed. Not a full-on, 30-something guest teachers watching, but just two supervisors who wanted to make sure I wasn't fucking up too bad, I guess. The class itself went fine, but the performance review afterward was a bit weird. Both of the women that came to observe spoke good English, but at the beginning of the discussion they told me that "in the interest of saving time, we'll conduct the discussion in Korean. Your co-teacher will fill you in later." I'll try not to be offended by that and punch you in the ovaries for that asshole move. It was a performance review for me, after all. You might have included me at least a little. No biggie, as I'm basically fluent in Korean. From what they said, our biggest problem was that I'm just too fucking handsome. They commended the co-teacher on being able to actually carry out her teaching duties in the face of such paralyzing beauty. They were concerned about how much English the children were retaining, as they, the observers, were barely able to stop staring at me long enough to write down comments, so what chance do the impressionable children have in actually learning something......Hmmm, on second thought, maybe my Korean isn't that great.

In this week's installment of "funny shit kids do", we have "Who Farted?". During one of 3rd grades group activities, I spotted one of the groups was pointing and yelling at each other while covering their faces with their shirts. When I moved in to investigate, I caught a healthy odor in the air. An amateur ass air release, but still impressive given the source. Sure enough, the children were blaming each other for the stink. It was clearly the boys, as their scapegoats were very hastily chosen. They singled out the girls and everybody knows that girls don't fart or poop. That's just common knowledge. I quickly won the girls' support by accusing the boys, but they surprisingly fired back by blaming me. Now, had these not been 3rd graders with very limited English ability, I would have explained to the children that had it been me, they would 1) clearly know it beyond a shadow of a doubt 2) The air would be noticeably thicker and breathing would become difficult 3) Your senses would be assaulted until you submitted and preyed for death's sweet release. As they were 3rd graders, I simply joined in the finger pointing and yelling "No, you did it!!".

The other moment involved my new haircut (shitty, as always). The teachers were supportive and said it looked cute and that I looked even younger, like 17. Okay, maybe that's not a compliment. Anyways, some of my favorite students wandered into the office to chat with some of the other teachers, and they naturally spied my haircut. The first one actually started laughing at me. I naturally told the 3 ft nothing, 12 lb little girl to stop making fun of me and picking on me, but that didn't help. She just kept laughing. Then to pile on the insult, my absolute favorite student, the one that lived in Malaysia for a year that speaks great English, starting saying "EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!" in regards to my hair. Who knew third graders could be so mean.

In other unrelated student stuff, one of my third grade classes has a new student, who just came back from some extended time living in California. Naturally, she's bored as shit with the basic English class, but what was startling was the maturity level difference. Now, she may be a bit older, as her Korean may not have been up to par to allow her into her actual class, but still. I get the sense that if I gave the rest of the class some bubbles or balloons, they would be content forever, while this girl would probably look at me and say something like, "What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?" The gap is shocking. I don't know what causes it, but there is a huge maturity difference between Koreans and Americans of the same age. I won't pretend to know why that is, but if I had to ask either an American 3rd grader or a Korean college student questions about adult stuff like sex, etc and wanted the answers.....I would probably go with the American 3rd grader. Yup. I don't know how those American elementary kids know so much about sex, but they do.

With all these new body image and self worth problems, I needed some alcohol to forget about just how hideous and disgusting I am. Thankfully, the weekends were more than willing to serve up the booze and subsequent mishaps. Last Friday, after a satisfying Mexican dinner and then some wine, our little group found its way to a small little music bar. When I say little, I mean it. The entire place housed 20-30 people max. All but one or two were Western, so tonight's horror story comes at the hands of an American woman, rather than creepy Korean men. Same result though: yours truly getting much too much attention from people I strongly wish to avoid. Things started turning for the worst once I was dragged out on the dance floor by the ladies in the group. Let that be a lesson to you out there: forcing men to dance only leads to disaster. Anyways, while out on the floor I noticed that one lady in particular was giving me a lot of attention and kept finding a way to bump into to me on the floor. I'll call her BB, for big breasts, since I don't remember her actual name. That might seem kinda harsh, but she went to consider effort to show them off (yeah, one of those chicks), so to ignore them would really be insulting her. Anyways, after sinning against God (yeah, my dancing is that bad) for long enough on the dance floor, I sat down. And since I was sitting by myself, I was ripe for the picking. Cue BB. She wanders over and grabs my hand and takes me back on the floor. OOOOOOOOOOOOhhhhh no. I immediately knew what was happening, but because I'm a spineless weiner, I didn't stop it right there. She began dancing and gyrating around, in an attempt to interest, I think, but it didn't work in the least. Would have taken one hell of a dance, cuz this chick was not attractive to me at all. I presume this whole thing was quite amusing to spectators, as she was shaking it at hard as it could go, while I stood around and made no attempt at all to dance. Soon enough, though, she started swinging her face in close for some tonsil action. For whatever reason (I'M REALLY DUMB, THAT'S WHY!!!), I decided to go with and make out with this girl. Part of the way through I realized how awful of an idea this was. Course, once wasn't enough for this girl, but I was ready the next couple times. She leans in, I lean out to cough. She leans in, I lean out as part of my sweet dance moves. She leans in, I turn my head to call to one of my friends. Speaking of my "friends", I kept looking for them for backup, but they were just sitting around laughing at me. I love my friends. Anyways, she eventually asks for my name, I tell it, then she reciprocates and gives me her name. I'm not listening and don't care, so I don't catch it. Then a few minutes later, she asks me what her name is. Naturally, I don't know and she gets upset and tells me I have to buy her a drink. Hallelujah, an excuse to get off the dance floor.

Course, once I buy her a drink, it doesn't end. She follows me back to my seat and sits down right next to me. AND wraps her leg around mine. She is mighty subtle. Anyways, then the talking starts which is really where this girl excels....I'm being sarcastic, naturally. She starts off by saying I'm really cute. Then there's the awkward silence. Then she ends the silence by saying I need to reciprocate and compliment her. Wow, this is gonna be hard. I struggle for a bit, then tell her that her hair is really red. It was obviously died, but it was something. Then she tells me I'm cute again. Meaning, I have to compliment her again. Now I'm out of stuff to say, so I naturally turn to the most obvious one: her breasts. I mean, these things look like they are desperately trying to escape, they are that exposed. "You have nice breasts" I say. She happily excepts the compliment and tells me I'm cute again. This time I have nothing, so I say nothing. She keeps the conversation going by asking where I'm from, then talking positively about Oshkosh (she was from Chicago). Q: How do you know a woman is really, really desperate? A: She will stoop to talking warmly about Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Wow. At this point, the girls showed up and scared her off. I then went and hid outside for the next 30 minutes to avoid her. Course, when I did go back inside, she found me again and tried to drag me back on the dance floor. I sputtered something about having to go and I just ran away, back outside. Smooth. I think I'm just gonna convert to Buddhism and live the monastic lifestyle from now on. Would be a bunch easier.

With my awkward experiences out of the way, its time for the recounting of Collin's EPIC trip to Korea during the next weekend. He showed up on Friday and left Tuesday morning, so it was just enough time to see everything worth seeing in Korea (I kid, I kid). Anyways, I met up with Collin Friday night out front of my nearest subway station, as I had instructed him to catch an airport bus to my area. Cept, it didn't go as smooth as I would have liked. I badly misjudged how long it would take to get to my area, so I freaked out for a bit cuz, well, I couldn't find him and he was supposed to be here by now. I just so happened to see an airport bus, which I assumed Collin was on, at the time I assumed he would get in, but no Collin. Ohhhhhh crap. Now, I know most people would probably pat me on the back or give me awards for misplacing Mr. Stecker, perhaps permanently, but Collin's mom would be upset and she's wonderful (wink) and I really don't wanna upset her. I'm sure the Koreans hanging out at the coffee shops in the area were at least a little unsettled by the frazzled looking foreigner who appeared to have stopped taking his meds, but what can you do? Eventually Collin showed up, 30 minutes later than I had guessed. I'm good at math...

Anyways, we immediately headed to capoeira so Collin could get an idea exactly what my group is like. We walked in a little late to find the group practicing (I couldn't fucking believe it!) music. Collin's thoughts: "Well, the instructor is singing so faintly at times that its hard to hear him, nobody is really that skilled with the instruments, and several people looked like they were zombies (aka zero energy being put in)." Yeah, that just about sums it up. Now, I know the instructor doesn't have that much experience with Portuguese, hell his English isn't super great, but he still should have a better grasp of the songs for his experience. We are kinda depending on him to teach us this shit. After music ended, we assembled for the roda. Now, the instructor was so enamoured with Collin, that he made a big push for both of us to attend the group's demo the next day, naturally so the group wouldn't look quite as bad. Why all the love? Well, Collin can actually play a respectable game, and even more importantly, actually can play the instruments and sing. Although, some of his songs kinda flopped as nobody else in the group knew the lyrics and I hadn't heard them in over a year, so I was a bit slow on the uptake. "He's only been training for 4ish years? Wow." Yeah, that's what QUALITY instruction will do for ya.

Afterwards, we headed to Gangnam to meet up with some of the girls in the Madison group. Since they had already eaten, we decided to grab some food while they started drinking. We settled for the chicken grilled at the table and while it cooked we experienced first hand just how awful Korean beer and soju is, made fun of kimchi, talked about Japan, and discussed other matters that probably would have offended the other occupants, provided they could understand English and weren't three sheets to the wind already. Meal over, we headed across the street to meet up with the girls. While there we discussed all manner of ridiculous topics, drank some of the worst wine ever (I'm told it was a combination of 3 different wines...why would you ever do that????), and observed the humorous drunken activity of the Korean ladies sitting near us (how drunk you say??? They were staring quite contentedly at yours truly and actually summoned up the courage to talk to us...so really drunk). A solid night.

Thanks to the previous evening, we got up and rolling and ready to explore Seoul by the bright and early time of 1 in the afternoon. Ugggggg. We immediately headed to Insadong, cuz its cool, unlike many parts of Seoul. We were in search of a sweet tea house and by sheer luck stumbled onto the coolest one ever. Not only was it the smallest little place ever (12 tables total), all the trinkets and knickknacks gave the place a incredibly chill atmosphere. But the best part? Birds. Live ones. That fly around the whole time. Guess that's why its called the Bird tea house or something like that. Couple these little finches constant chattering with the relaxed music, and you have the greatest place ever. Collin and I stuck around for 2 cups of tea. Now, I was criticized for wanting to drink two cups of the same type of tea (plum), but by the end of our times at the tea house (yeah, we went back sunday), everybody was getting the plum tea. It's a religious experience, sans all the shitty stuff that comes with religion. So its actually nothing like a religious experience.

After Insadong, we decided to wander over to Gyeongbokgung palace since its the biggest palace and all the palaces look the same and we wanted to get it all the historical/palace stuff done in one shot. Cept, we got there so late they were already closing for the day, what with the early darkness of winter. Ooops. We instead wandered around Cheonggyecheon (the man-made stream in central Seoul) and checked out the crazy lanterns and displays they had set up along the banks. I guess there was some big lantern festival going on or something. Next, we headed to the newly constructed plaza across the street dedicated to King Sejong and his most scientific language ever: Hangeul. It went something like this: Interpreter guy: "Hey, do you know that the Korean language is very scientific?" Me: "Yes.....I do..." "Do you also know that Hangeul was created by King Sejong?" "......(sigh)" "Let me tell about how Hangeul is the most scientiferrific language ever!" (Facepalm). I guess Hangeul is scientific or something.

Our education out of the way, we headed to Dondaemun, just so Collin could see the mess and chaos. As a result, if anyone ever needs zippers...well, I know a guy. More like 30. Vendors exclusively selling zippers. Who would have thought? From there we headed to Mt. Namsan to check out the tower. I took Collin to the cable cars, cuz really how many cities have cable cars?? Course, we soon realized that 99.99999% of the other cable car occupants were couples. Collin must have realized this as he was not even the least bit interested in holding hands with me. All the effort I put forth showing him the town, the least he could do would be to put out. Just a little. Thats all I ask. The ride, as usual, was filled with squealy Koreans who were unnerved by the fact that we were hanging in a metal box many, many feet above the ground. Seriously, you have a much greater chance of dying in a car related mishap (especially in Korea) than any harm befalling you in the cable car. Once up at the top we top some pictures, then moved to the South lookout point. It was here that we say countless locks chained the fence (to symbolize the secure/togetherness of the visiting couples) as well as a stand that could immortalize a couple's clasped hands in wax. Ms. Prude Collin didn't want to do either. !@#$!@%!@%. If I knew he was gonna be like this, I would have just invited the girl from the previous weekend. Lord knows she would be game.

From here, we headed to Jamsil to meet up with the girls. We originally had settled on meeting on some place about equal distance from where we were (Mt. Namsan) and where they were (Jamsil, shopping). Cept they settled down for some drinks and never moved. Now we really weren't sure what to expect, as they sounded progressively more affected by the alcohol each time we talked. Plus they said they were drinking outside....in 30 something degree weather....next to Lotte World, the amusement park....and were getting weird looks from the families passing by. Well, I assumed they would be sitting at the benches that would naturally be arranged around the lake. Nope. They were sitting on some freezing cold rocks along the edge of the walkway, basically in the bushes, eating chocolate and cheese, and drinking a bottle of wine each. As goofy as they were, it was so incredibly Wisconsin of them and it made me a little proud. From here, we headed to your average tiny divey Korean restaurant. And we all continued drinking, primarily soju. That was a mistake. Once finished with the meal, we hopped a cab to Hongdae to meet with others in the group. Here's where shit got dramatic. First, one of the ladies fell asleep in the cab. Really, really out. Course, now we have to figure out how the hell we are gonna carry her around to some hotel. Unfortunately, she woke up. Why unfortunately? Cuz she started throwing up as soon as she regained consciousness. We asked the cabbie to stop immediately (still 3 subway stops away from our destination) and escorted her over to a wall. Once she had finished, we began walking to a destination, which was now a hotel for our beleaguered comrade. After walking several blocks and having really no idea where we were, Amy hailed a cab and quickly hopped in with our under the weather friend. Cept, she left Collin and I standing in the dust, with the victim's now quite smelly bag. We wandered around for a bit, trying to figure out where Amy went and waiting for Amy to call so we could deliver the stinky bag to her. Boy were we horrified when Amy called to tell us that when they had stopped the cab to let our sick friend out and empty her guts....she ran off. And Amy had no idea where she was. And she wasn't answering her cell phone. And Amy had no idea where she was. Understandably we freaked. Well, maybe just me. Collin would have to have a soul to freak out about the well-being of other human beings. After 30 minutes of flustered wandering, Amy called back to inform us that she had found our friend and that she was now comfortably sleeping in a hotel, which just so happened to be pretty close to where we were at the time. We stopped by, dropped off the bag, and headed back to Hongdae. And all of this before 10:45pm. Wow. Course, we were all too freaked out and stone cold sober to drink anything at the club, so we just went home after a bit and headed to bed.

The most shocking thing was Collin and Amy. No, your eyes aren't playing tricks with you. That's Collin and a female. Fuck, I still can't believe it. Maybe he's not gay or asexual after all. Could have fooled me. Amy told Collin right away that she found him cute, thanks to her straightforward nature (why we love her) but mostly the alcohol (it does that sometimes), but what shocked me was that Collin reciprocated. Dude flirted right back. WHAT??????? Since when does Collin do that????? Regardless, they were quite cute and goofy together. Maybe tomorrow pigs will fly and religious crazies will decide that gays aren't going to bring about the downfall of the modern world, but maybe not.

Again, we didn't get rolling too quickly on Sunday morning either, probably around 1pm again. At least this time we had Amy's deliciously prepared breakfast as a tasty consolation prize. Eggs in a basket??? Yes, please. This time around, we actually got to Gyeongbokgung palace before it closed and Collin was simply overwhelmed with all the history and shit. While strolling through the attached museum, we stumbled upon a rather disturbing Korean tradition: Placenta pots. Yeah, you heard right. I guess traditionally, after a child was born, the placenta was placed in a small pot and buried in a particular pot. I believe it was supposed to bring about a healthy life and good luck. Ohhh, and a very rare placenta tree. Those must be nasty.

After the palace it was back to the bird tea house for more plum tea. Not worth all the effort and money, you say? Try some. You'll be going back too. Bellies warmed, we headed off to Namdaemun, so I could show Collin all the ridiculous shit that he would never want to buy. From there it was to Myeongdong, so Collin could get real up close and personal with the stink of Korean commerce. It is a potent brew. Not too much enjoyment, outside of when we wandered past the lingerie store and its lovely advertisements (yeah, we are creepers, what of it?). See, its been 2 full days in Korea and I'm already out of stuff to show Collin.

On Monday, while I worked, Collin did almost nothing. He woke up real late (perhaps cuz he didn't get much sleep saturday night...wink, wink), then couldn't find the subway station, so he just wandered around and came back when I got back from work. From there it was one last capoeira class, followed by dinner at the most Korean of restaurants, Mad for Garlic, and its solid Italian menu, then back to the homestead. Collin left early Tuesday without so much as even a little spooning over the whole weekend. You'd think for all the work I went through to show him around, he'd throw me just a little of something, anything. Nope. Christ, at this point you might as well call me Mr. Blue (Bowling) Balls. On that lovely imagery, I bid you all adieu for now.

The Japan Trip, concluded

On Thursday, I headed off for another "busy" day of wandering around Collin's town. This time I explored the north side of town, and let me tell you, it was so much fucking better than the shitty south side. Really? Actually...it was the exact same as the south side. Which was fine, cuz the south side was nice and quiet and quaint. During my travels, I found some weird English signs, a massive soccer/track and field complex, and a lot of rice paddies. Exhausted from the sheer amount of mindblowing sights (sarcasm), I settled down in the park and read for several hours. Not the most exciting thing to do on a vacation, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. At lunchtime I met up with Collin again and we headed off to a nearby restaurant. The food was definitely tasty, but the highlight was watching the owner's 4 or 5 year old son running around, causing mischief and taking orders from customers. I know child labor is wrong and all, but its so gosh darn adorable. You just wanna squeeze those cheeks and tell him to get the hell back to work, as those noodles aint gonna cook themselves.

In the afternoon, I read some more and waited for Collin to get off work so we could capoeira it up in field next to his work. Not surprisingly, I got my ass kicked. I'd like to think that I've gotten better in my time training outside of the US, but sometimes I just don't know. At least I could say that I was the second best capoeirista (out of 2) in Ogaki. I'm probably gonna get that printed on a t-shirt.

In the evening, we heard rumors of a free neighborhood BBQ that had actually pulled some of Collin's foreign friends off the street and filled them with delicious food. Free BBQ? Naturally, we were there. They quickly went out of their way to grab us some drinks and delicious grilled food. We sat down and enjoyed our meal while Collin struck up some casual conversation with the folks around us. I didn't understand it, but I can take a guess. Naturally, the men were discussing getting their women inside, as it would only be a matter of time before the ladies realized how unattractive their husbands were in comparison with this foreign Odonis and would run away with him. Or perhaps, given my cross-over appeal with the fellas in Asia, they were just talking about how beautiful I was. The ladies were naturally discussing how inadequate their husbands were in comparison and how they wanted to run away with me at any second. Or so I assume. Eventually, the awkward silence was filled, as a young Japanese girl showed up and started chatting with us in English. Turns out she had spent some time during high school in the States and would now be attending some school in Baltimore. She was curious to find out what we knew about the area. We unfortunately had very little to offer about Baltimore except for its really shitty (thanks for the tip Maria). We then talked about college in the US, as I guess Japanese university is the same as in Korea: really easy and basically just a way to coast through 3 or 4 years to get a piece of paper. Naturally, she was worried about being able to cut it in the US. We explained that there are people who don't study super hard and still make it through just fine (cough, cough). Eventually, we called it a night and headed back home.

On Friday, I had some traveling to do. We had planned for me to somehow find my way to Lauren's town, hang out with her all day, then we would meet up with Collin in Nagoya for the evening. Now, again I was a bit worried, as this trip required several train switches and lots of directions about not taking the Extra Super Express train, but how the Extra Extra Super Express train or Super Express train were okay to ride. Yeah, the Japanese system is complex. First, I had to get from Ogaki to Gifu. That was easy, as there was only one track. I just had to make sure I didn't go the opposite direction of Gifu. Mission accomplished. Now, in Gifu, I had to leave the train station and walk 5 minutes down the street to the station for another train line. This wasn't too hard, as I had to do the same thing, but in reverse when I arrived a few days ago. Then I had to get on the right train heading towards Nagoya. Again, easy, as Gifu was the end of the line, so only one direction to go. Once in Nagoya, it got a little crazier, as I had to find the specific train heading to Lauren's little town. There were somewhere near 10 different tracks, with seemingly endless numbers of Express, Not Quite Express, Super Duper Express, and Really Fucking Express. Eventually, thanks to the English signboards, I was able to find my way to the correct track. Now, I just had to make sure to take the correct train, as Lauren's town was quite small and many faster trains didn't stop in here town. But sure enough, I managed. Everyone was really impressed apparently, as they knew people that had lived in Japan for over a year that wouldn't attempt that trip. Sad, really.

Anyways, Lauren met me at the train station and we took our loud, obnoxious selves to the nearest restaurant for some tasty, yet pricy eel. I told Lauren about all the insanity of Korea, while she told me about the weird shit she's gotten into (I especially enjoyed the stories about the Japanese guy she dated just because of his really cool mohawk hairdo.....ohhhhhh Lauren). After lunch, we headed into Lauren's school to make a scene. Upon arriving and setting all the female teachers' loins ablaze (well, maybe that didn't happen), I sat down and chatted with the vice-principal about the differences between the Japanese and Korean foreign teacher programs. He was a really cool guy that spoke very good English with such educated and sophisticated vocab, that I decided that all vice-principals or other men of such learning should sound like him. I know Korea doesn't wanna hear this, but the Japanese and Korean systems aren't really very much different. Japanese schools don't seem to know what to do with the teachers either and all the same issues of miscommunication, unreceptive students, etc exist. The only difference is that Japan keeps cutting more and more money from the JET program, while Korea keeps pumping more and more money into it.

With the discussion finished, we headed upstairs to help out with English camp. The Japanese kids? Not too much different from the Korean kids. Got a lot of squeals and gasps and amazement when I walked in. Naturally everyone was shocked at how tall I was. Everybody was super shy, even those these kids were high schoolers. The girls were losing themselves and fainting all over the place (well, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit there). They did however, from what I'm told, spend the entire hour talking about how handsome I was. The ladies were so shy that I couldn't even get them to respond if I talked to them. We had to talk through a mediator. Funny. We helped the classes prep for their English plays at the upcoming school festival and then headed out. I guess the whole school assumed that I was Lauren's boyfriend, as Japan like Korea doesn't do the whole male and female friend thing, and judging by everyone's reaction to me, I'd say they think she did pretty well for herself. What can I say? I'm just that wonderful.

We quickly we back to Lauren's apt so I could see her apartment and gauge her digs with mine. Her apartment wasn't too bad, definitely bigger than my old one in Korea, and only a 5 minutes walk from her school, but damn was it messy. She had apparently been obtaining more and more stuff over her year in Japan and now simply had no place to put everything.

From there, we moved to Nagoya to meet up with some other people, grab dinner and some drinks. While waiting for everyone else to show up, we burned time by paging through the bookstore. Now, I thought I would pick up a Murakami, as this is his home turf, but turns out his books in translation were the most expensive books I could find. I can get two Rushdies for the price of one Murakami? Not a hard choice. Smooth move Japan. Anyways, we soon moved to the restaurant, where I had to deal with some lame people before we could head on. Much like many of my social encounters with Koreans (yes, the similarities again...sorry Korea, but you and Japan aren't that different), the Japanese acquaintances just talked amongst themselves and never made any attempt to join the rest of the table's conversation. Now, I know they didn't speak much English, but they didn't even bother to really engage the other English speakers would could speak a decent bit of Japanese. Plus, they took forever eating their food, so Collin ended up waiting for us for like an hour in the rain elsewhere in Nagoya. We eventually got to leave and found Collin, but we were denied entrance to the Irish pub we were trying to go to, as it was "at capacity", so we just ended up drinking outside a Mini Mart, a la Jay and Silent Bob. Some time later, we did manage to get into the pub, but we had to leave shortly in order to catch our trains back home....lame. Course, I spent most of the time at the pub talking to Maria on Lauren's cell phone. I imagine that was a pretty pricy phone call......ooops.

On Saturday, my last full day in Japan, we did next to nothing. Collin and I got up, showered, and walked the two minutes to the mall in time for a late lunch. While I ate some disgusting looking, but delicious, but artery clogging meal, we walked a Pokemon card game tourney. Now, I know Pokemon is still big over in Japan, hell its its own industry, but I was still surprised. What was even more surprising? Watching grown men roll up with their briefcases full of numerous Pokemon decks and counters and whatever else a Pokefreak needs. Now, some of the men were clearly the fathers of the children competitors, but not all of them could have been. Creepy. And besides, father or not, it still looks really weird to have a 7 year old, feet unable to touch the ground in his chair and crying to mommy when he loses, facing off against a 40 year old man. Wandering around the Japanese mall afforded us various other unique pleasures. Like a sparkling arcade with House of the Dead 4. Looked gorgeous and nothing, I mean nothing, beats shooting zombies. Cept maybe shooting Nazis. Hard to say. Their toy/hobby store also featured rows upon rows of just Pokemon or Gundam toys. Naturally everyone in the world has to like one or the other. That's just how it is. We stopped to take pics in front of the store "CramCream" cuz that name is just too good to pass up. I also stopped by the music store to see which Korean artist was trying to crack the Japanese market this week. The highlight was the people obviously. At one point I noticed some girls a distance away with long blonde hair, fake tans, cowboy hats, daisy duke jean short-shorts, and cowboy boots. Naturally, I said to Collin, "What the hell are dumb blondes from Texas doing in Japan?" On closer inspection, we realized that they were Japanese women. WHAT THE FUCK??????? I guess that's a fashion thing for girls there. Hell, there were lots of people with blonde hair. Sorry Asians, but you look really weird in blonde hair. Nothing against ya, but since you have this cultural beauty thing about white skin being beautiful and trying to avoid sunlight as much as possible, when you have bleach blonde hair to go along with your pale ass skin, you look a dead person or a ghost. Either way its terrifying. Work on it.

From the mall, we headed out to Collin's town's wonderful Indian restaurant, Masala Master. Man was that place delicious. The naan? Enormous. Jesus, if you could find foreign food restaurants like that anywhere outside of Korea's biggest metropolitan cities, perhaps the country wouldn't suck so much in Korea. Think about it Korea. We ended the night going back to the mall for some solid arcading action. We tried our hands at Tekken 6, but got wasted by some guy whose arcade id card that keeps track of all his matches said that he had lost 300 some Tekken matches. How many he won? 500. Wow, that's a lot of Tekken. Suffice it to say, we lost...badly.

So ends the Japanese vacation. Sunday saw me getting up and immediately heading for the airport. Not too exciting I know, but the trip was really cheap and I got to relax and enjoy myself, which is more than I could say if I were stuck back in Korea in my apartment. Hopefully I can return the favor for Collin, as he's heading to Korea for a few days this weekend. I'm excited.

Remember that trip I took to Japan 3 months ago? Well here’s the write up about it.…finally.

Yes, I realize I’m a little late in writing about the Japan trip, considering Collin has already written about my time there and he was without internet for like 2 months after I left. A nasty combination of laziness and actual constraints on my time have kept me from writing it thus far. But no more delays. Let’s do this!

Our story begins oooooohhh so many months ago, as soon as I got back from the Philippines. My plane landed back in Korea on a Sunday around 5pm local time, so I entered my sweltering apartment (the thermostat read 35 degrees Celcius, or for those Farenheit followers, 95 degrees. Yeah, hot) around 10pm or so. No time to truly settle in, as I had to be back in Seoul the next afternoon for my placement test for my Korean course and then crash for the night in order to make my flight Tuesday noon.

Monday was uneventful, save for my Korean placement test and quite possibly the greatest Korean drunk guy ever. Otherwise it was simply take train to Seoul, waste time before placement test, waste time after placement test, eat dinner, grab a beer with Chris, then go to bed. The placement test wasn’t really entertaining for me, as I EPIC failed, but I imagine it will be entertaining for those in the audience who find my debacles humorous (cough Maria cough Collin cough cough actually all of my friends to be honest cough, cough). Now, I went into this thing expecting it to be some sort of written exam or at least something that would test the entirety of my Korean ability (reading, writing, speaking, listening). Not so. At the front desk I was told it would simply be an interview for one of the professors. Which would have been fine, had I heard the Korean language at all in the last 2 weeks. Ouch. Once inside the professors office, it was one stumblefuck after another. I couldn’t understand what she was asking for most of her questions, even though they were very easy ones. And when it takes you damn near 3 minutes to think of an answer to “What movies do you like?”, you probably aren’t gonna score too well on that test. Plus, I may have cussed out loud in English, which won’t help either, as every Korean knows the word “fuck”. I believe it sounded something like this: “영화? Ohhh my god, I know this word. 영화? What the fuck is that? Cmon, Eric you know this. Fuck, seriously what the hell is 영화? Shit, its “movie”. Wow.” Understandably, I didn’t place into the high level classes. But I did end up getting the last laugh, as I killed my final for the Korean class yesterday. 2 hours and 40 min exam? Done in 15 mins. Only error? Spelled one word wrong. Phonetic language, my ass. Phonetic don’t help when several letters sound exactly the same.

Anyways, the highlight of the day was the drunk guy Chris and I met after a beer at a downtown bar. So it was only midnight or so and we had decided to call it a night, I with my plane to catch the next morning and Chris with work. After leaving the bar, we decided to wander down along the Cheongyecheon stream that runs through one of the areas of downtown Seoul. As we headed away from the bright lights and towards some of the quieter areas, we began to get into hobo and drunk/blacked out businessmen area. We saw “our guy” from a ways away. He was standing (well, wobbling) with his back to us and he had his hands in front of his body in such a manner that you know he’s peeing. Now this wasn’t some back alley or something. Ohhh no, this was the sitting area above the stream, with roads on either side. No cover, no way to conceal it. As we got closer we were able to see, from the light of the moon, that this dude had been peeing…for a long time. His puddle stretched out several feet in all directions. How you ask? Well, he was like a human compass, you know the ones you use to draw perfect circles in geometry class. His body was the central point and he just spun in a circle and let that pee fly in all directions. But that’s not all. As we passed him, we heard a massive thud. We quickly turned to see that he had blacked out and fallen over…in the urine. Cept, his positioning was unusual. He had fallen forward and hit his head on the ground, cept he still stayed somewhat upright. His feet were still on the ground, and now his head was on the ground too, so he made a big triangle shape, with his ass being the peak. Now, we were shocked that someone could possibly pass out in that position, but we were even more shocked when we saw him up and peeing again just a few seconds later, like nothing had happened. Concussion and all. Man, I love Korea some times. Now, if you want a really good taste of how much fun Korea can be on a Saturday night (or sometimes a Tuesday afternoon), check out this site, dedicated to the Korean blackout/sleeping in public phenomenon.

http://blackoutkorea.com/

Now for the actual trip. Made it to Japan without any delay or difficulties. Honestly, I was probably annoyed that the flight to Nagoya was so short, as I barely got started into my book before we were landing. Once on the ground, things got more difficult, as I had to find my way to Collin’s town, and I already knew that Japan doesn’t do English all that much. I found my way to the commuter train no problem, but whether it was the correct train, who knows. I knew which city I wanted to go to (Gifu), but I couldn’t be super positive. I debated whether to hop on the waiting train, not knowing how long I would have to wait if I missed it. I thought I heard some announcement say something about Gifu and I thought I saw the screen read “Gifu” in English for a split second, so I went with it. Turns out I was right. The 45 min train ride from airport to Gifu was interesting as I got to see the Japan that exists outside of Tokyo. For a country as famously crowded as Japan is, I was shocked to see so many towns resemble the US, with their individual homes and small two story housing complexes, as opposed to massive 10 or more floor apartment structures that line the Korean skyline. In time, I arrived at Gifu station and set to waiting for Mr. Stecker. While waiting I noticed something I hadn’t seen since I left the US: bicycles. Lots of ‘em. They simply don’t exist in Korea, as they are neither expensive or luxurious enough to be used as a status symbol, they require physical exertion (observation tells me that most Koreans don’t generally like this), and they don’t get you where you want to go fast enough (always in a hurry here). At least that’s what I think. Anyways, Collin soon arrived to break me from my bike revelry and then there was much rejoicing (and spooning, but more on that later…). With the clueless tourist in tow, Collin then lead the way back to his home, Ogaki. By the time we reached Collin’s town, it was time for dinner, so off to the mall down the street. Dinner at the mall??? I must be back in the States. “Hey Wallin…that’s a Korean restaurant. You wanna eat there?.....I’m just shitting with ya man, of course we don’t wanna eat there.” (followed with high fives). Ohhh Collin, how I missed you. Can’t wait for you to get to Korea next week. Korea hate in Korea? Can’t beat it. After dinner, we headed over to Collin’s friends place to steal his internet and Skype with Maria. Maria made fun of my awful haircut, Collin and I made fun of Maria for living in the dump that is Baltimore, and Collin made fun of Maria and I for being lesser beings than himself. Business as usual.

On Wednesday, once Collin was off to work and I was finished comparing his apartment to mine in Korea, I set off to wander around town. Collin worked about 5-7 minutes away by bike, so I figured I'd find my way up there eventually, but first I had to inspect his apartment. Compared to many Korean apartments and especially mine from the previous year, it was very nice. Namely because it was an actual apartment and not a shitty efficiency. Kitchen, bathroom and 3 bedrooms. It was old sure, but it made up for that by being super Japanese, sliding paper doors and all. Course, I'm glad I have more solid walls in my apartment, as I leaned too hard against Collin's friends wall the night before and was sure I was gonna tear through the thing. Rar! Wallin smash!! The apartment also featured a nice little balcony that allowed for very good ventilation in the summer (and apparently also makes for very, very cold winters). The major downside? The bathroom. The toilet was actually a squat toilet with a sit down converter. Nice? And the shower, well since the apartment was made for Japanese 50 years ago or something, naturally it was much too small. Also kind of unstable. But who doesn't like a little danger and suspense with their showers. Not I.

Inspection complete, I headed off to see the town. There wasn't a huge amount to see, as Ogaki is just a small, quiet little 100,000 person town. Again, I was shocked at the difference between Korea, as I expected Ogaki to be very small in area and just built straight up. Not so. It felt just like a small US town, with everything spread out and very well planned and generally much cozier and nicer than Korean towns. Hell, they even a US-style mall complex complete with sprawling American-style parking lot (I have never seen a parking lot in Korea....you just kinda park anywhere....see what I mean about the whole planning thing), 24 hour grocery store, arcade/bowling alley, dollar store, electronics store, and bedding store. After stumbling upon some really intriguing stores (a Brazilian grocery store??? why can't Korea have one of those....ohhhh right, cuz Korea hates foreigners), I found my way to historic Ogaki castle. I didn't really pay much attention to the history. Some warlord stayed there or kept one of his mistresses there or something. Either way it was a cool complex. The accompanying park was interesting, as I stopped to watch a group of old timers squabbling over their croquet game. They took it pretty seriously. For lunch I headed over to Collin's mall. Naturally, I was a little worried, as I speak no Japanese and English didn't seem to be that common here for the most part. Eventually, I summoned up the courage to approach the curry restaurant at the food court and found out that the employee working was.....AN INDIAN GUY???? What????? Where did he come from??? Despite my confusion, he was easily able to take my order in English. Crisis averted. I don't know Japan's policy on foreign workers, but I guess I just assumed it was like Koreas, where foreigners could never, ever get a food service job. Foreigners from English speaking countries (preferably gorgeous white skinned ones, if you please) teach English, that's it. Foreigners from Southeast Asia (Philippines, Vietnam, Bangladesh, etc) do nasty, dirty, work that no Korean would possibly do.

Well, I wandered around for a bit more after lunch before meeting up with Collin at his work. From there we wandered around some more (noticing a common trend?), grabbed some dinner, then headed off to the bowling alley for some wholesome fun. The bowling alley was remarkable. Undoubtedly the cleanest I had ever seen. I've always wondered what a bowling alley would be without overweight, nasty, beer-guzzling, chain smoking customers. The answer? Heavenly. No strange smells, no tobacco stains on stuff, no nothing. I don't remember who won in bowling, but I'll just assume that I lost (as that's usually the case). The highlight was the video screens that announced our achievements. In true Japanese, nonsensical, seizure inducing, Katamari Damacy fashion, the screens to announce strikes, spares, splits, and gutterballs featured many, many dancing (and maybe crying, if I remember correctly) dogs, cats, babies and of course, rainbow colors.

Tune in soon for the conclusion of my Japanese adventures featuring Lauren, Japanese school children, and alcohol. Not all at the same time, you dirty minded bastards. Christ.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeo8GpuyG2g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISgFrqke5Oo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISgFrqke5Oo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvA2EqCc_gc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9Puu0SW6vo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9Puu0SW6vo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuXSQhLXYgU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wawKKrsjrV4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aqwo0PltoYg

Pics: See album "The vacation that never actually happened"

The Piggy Flu is coming for you!

Well, school has been pretty nutty this week (and its only Wednesday!!!), so I felt that a brief post would do a body good. Plus, I have absolutely nothing else to do at school today. Why? I’ll tell you.

Now, for the past few weeks I’ve heard and read rumblings about the piggy flu closing in, about schools and private academies being closed for several days to stop the spread of the disease, etc. Many other schools had been hit in Seoul, but up until this week it hadn’t hit us. As of last week when I asked the co-teach, we had one student sick with the flu and it hadn’t appeared to have spread.

As my luck would have it, things changed dramatically when I walked in on Monday. Three of my four classes were cancelled, as the porker had hit the 3rd grade hard and all their classes were shut down until Wednesday. Meaning I had very little to do on Monday and would also have very little to do on Tuesday, as 2 of my 4 classes would have been 3rd grade. The school also offered up a massive cock tease by saying that they would deliberate early Tuesday morning to decide whether to cancel all classes for the school. That’s the kind of stuff that gets this girl all wet downstairs. But alas, I would have to wait.

Tuesday: Freaking Christmas in November. The school decided during the day to cancel all classes for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Plus, for an extra tasty little treat, I found out that next Monday is some manner of school holiday, so I don’t have to come in. While I do have to come in and sit at the office for all of Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, sitting at my desk doing whatever I want is ostensibly better than having to teach, regardless of how much I may enjoy teaching. And as for that observation thingy, where the people that have no right criticizing how I teach English will, in fact, criticize me on how I teach English? Postponed. Awesome. Obviously you can’t have a class observed without students to teach….or can you? Anyways, this whole thing brought up some more drama, as my co-teach got yelled at by our vice-principal for our laziness and lack of proper preparation. She reamed out the co-teacher yesterday because we hadn’t given her a detailed lesson plan for the class in question and hadn’t had a meeting with her about the proceedings. The co-teacher logically brought up the fact that we had no idea it was such a big deal, since its not an open lesson, just 2 observers coming to sit in, and thusly didn’t think all this prep was warranted. We also only heard about this shit 3 days ago ourselves, so forgive us if we don’t have it all wrapped up. Plus there’s that whole swine flu thing that may completely wipe out the class (this tongue-lashing was before the final verdict came down). These valid arguments didn’t do any good, as she got lectured none the less. After hearing a friend of mine tell me that her vice-principal told her, in regards to decorating and preparing the English classroom for a big, big open lesson, that “you should be able to smell the English in here”, I have to wonder: are all principals/school authorities this incredibly out of touch and nutty? Maybe I had a warped perception of my former principals, given I spent very little time with them and wasn’t a teacher, but I can’t imagine any of them being this…well…dumb. Is this just a Korean thing??? As a sidenote to the whole “smelling like English” thing, this teacher is being asked to completely glam up a classroom that previously had no English decorations at all and she has zero school budget to work with (all from pocket) AND she is doing it all herself. One word: Nutty.

It’s currently Wednesday afternoon and I have pretty much nothing to do. I spent the first three hours of school this morning sitting around with the office ladies, eating sweet potatoes and apples, drinking tea and eavesdropping on their Korean conversation (not really, as they know I can understand parts of it, but it sounds cooler than just being the weirdo in the corner who doesn’t talk). I guess I’ll probably study for tomorrow night’s final exam, but I really, really don’t feel worried at all. While most of the class was freaking out about the shear amount of stuff to review, I was thinking “Fuck, I knew this shit months ago.” The test consists of an interview and the standard writing stuff. Some classmates were complaining that we were only given the possible interview questions last night and that’s not enough time to study. Me, being the asshole I am, thought “Ummmm, they did give us the questions 3 months ago…they’re called ‘our textbook’.” I however did not say this, as somebody probably would have hit me, and all the class love I got for telling the one douche student to stop asking dumbass questions and let us learn would have vanished. On a brighter note, said dumbass student apparently left the class and went back to teach English in China. Good riddance. China is more than welcome to keep that fucker for a long, long time.

Quickly, before I leave, I would like to say one thing: I’m VERY VERY VERY tired of rice. I’m done with it. If I never have to eat that tasteless suppository for simple starches ever again, I will be a damn happy man. You wanna know how I know I eat way too much rice? Let’s take a look at today’s menu. Breakfast at home: normal, no rice, good. Snack at school: sweet potatoes (also damn sick those buggers, but that’s a whole other thing), apples, tea….and rice cakes. With a packaged rice cake given as a treat (I haven’t eaten mine yet, surprise, surprise). Today’s lunch: kimchi (ugggggggggggggggggggg), weird pickled veggies, rice and soup…….with rice cakes in it. I’m surprised my body just hasn’t shut down, in protest of the junk I’m tossing into it. But that’s not to say I’ve completely sworn off rice of all kinds. In fact, I just found a Rice that I wouldn’t mind eating for a long, long time. Stephanie Rice to be exact.

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/sports/specialevents/blog/Stephanie%20Rice.jpg
http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200808/r281591_1195874.jpg
http://i.cdn.turner.com/sivault/multimedia/photo_gallery/0810/did.you.see.that.1010/images/stephanie-rice.jpg


Yum.


P.S. Just got back from a teachers meeting about swine flu. I got the rock star treatment when entered. Why? Cuz I was wearing short sleeves and everyone was shocked that I hadn’t died of hypothermia. Seriously, its like I’m living in Wisconsin, but all the citizens are from Florida (love you too mom). It does this every year, so you imagine they would have grown a proverbial pair sometime in their history….guess not. Especially given that not so many years ago most didn’t have the luxury of massive room heaters, modern insulation, and the like.

Work?.....What work?

Yes, as the title suggests, there hasn’t been too much work going since I last posted. Now people could argue that (and rightly so) that there isn’t much work being done by this particular English talky-box on any given day, but this week has been a special exception. There was no classes last week Thursday (where I spent most of the day writing last week’s post), no classes on Tuesday, and only a half day yesterday (Wednesday).

Jumping off topic for a bit, but just a few seconds ago one of the money ladies came in and started discussing paycheck stuff. Naturally, I was worried at first cuz my last paycheck, which was just a week ago, had additional overtime pay of about 400 dollars. Why be worried?? Well, cuz I didn’t do any overtime. Thankfully, they were just explaining that through some error, I had been paid twice, once last week and another time today. Damn electronic banking. Had it been the good old days I would have been half way to the county line before anyone discovered the missing funds. As is, I didn’t even realize that I had been paid twice before the mistake was caught. So much for all the Dom Perignon and expensive women that paycheck was gonna bring me. Maybe next month.

Back to my free days. Let’s hit this shit chronologically:

On Tuesday, I had zero classes as grades 3-6 were taking nationwide standardized tests all day, leaving all the teachers with nothing to do. Our office decided to do something fun, as opposed to sitting in front of our computer screens for 8 hours (well, maybe the rest of the school would find that fun….they really do like Starcraft and computer games here), so we went out for lunch. We had deliberated over food, movie or art museum and naturally lunch won, as food > movie and art. I was told we were going to some New York steak house and having seen how Korea does “American” food, I was skeptical. I was, however, quite pleasantly surprised. We quickly piled in the cars (everyone was generous enough to let me sit in the front, as they know I’m too big for the back…..that’s what she said) and headed off for the restaurant. I was even more surprised to find out that this restaurant was within the mythical “French neighborhood”. I call it mythical because I had heard rumors about its existence, but had yet to find out where the hell it was, despite being in my backyard, so to speak. It would probably be more appropriate to just call me dumb, as the neighborhood clearly wasn’t hard to find. Now, it wasn’t anything super amazing, but it did have: nicer buildings and streets than most of Seoul, French flags on display all around, appealing restaurants with names in French, and some people not speaking Korean. Now its obviously not much, but if you have spent 1.2 years in a place where everything and everyone is so mind-numbingly the same, you would wet yourself over a little variety too. You might ask, “What is a New York steak house doing in a French village?”. The answer: Koreans are bad at geography (course US students would probably put Seoul and Paris right next to each other too….actually I’m certain they would). Anyways, we pulled up to the little steak house and I soon realized that this food might actually be pretty good. How did I know? Cuz the restaurant’s name was “Eric’s New York Steak House”. Now, as I am clearly the most famous Eric ever (that guitarist guy? Please. The dude from Monty Python? You must be joking), they had most certainly named it after yours truly. Now, as I wanted to play it humble and avoid all autograph seekers, I decided not to tell the waiter that my bill should be free. I did laugh when some Korean businessmen were reading some of the signs at the table next to me and began uttering my name in confusion. I was tempted to clear up their confusion by standing up and yelling “I’m Eric, bitch!!!”, but again I was playing it modest. All in all the food was delicious and I shall return, especially when the Germans inevitably roll through the French village and we Yanks will need it as our base of operations.

After lunch we decided to go hiking around on of the smaller parks near my home. Why I have no idea, as the other 5 ladies in the office appear to get the majority of their exercise clicking away on their computer mousse (mice?), shopping for clothes on the web. Needless to say, it was shortlived. We wandered around for a bit, sat down, rested, whined about being tired, then we went back down. I can’t be too critical as some of these women had shorter strides than Rounds, so they had to do a lot of walking.

Things got more interesting when they dropped me off at my house. Right as I was hopping out of the car, my primary co-teacher asked, “Eric, can we visit your apartment?” WHAT???? Don’t get me wrong, I really didn’t care (not like my apt is gonna be dirty or anything), but wow was that request out of nowhere. I guess I’ll have to chalk it up to Koreans’ innate curiosity about how we non-Koreans live and conduct our lives. I said it was okay and so they headed up (both co-teachers and the music teacher). We grabbed some snacks first at the Institutes little convenience store, then settled down in the living room for cookies, dried squid and oranges. It was different, to say the least. The first few minutes were spent soaking in their amazement at how clean the apt was and how I can actually manage to feed myself (which says a lot about their expectations/experiences with men/Korean men). My ego sufficiently stroked, we sat down in the living room, listened to Stevie Wonder, chatted (well, they mostly talked in Korean and I listened in or zoned out) and ate. Now, I know the less scrupulous of my readers (cough Collin cough) would suggest I do “adult” things with the ladies, but obviously he would be saying that in jest (wouldn’t he??), as that would be incredibly stupid in real life. They soon departed and I was left relieved and quite confused. That seems to happen a bunch in Korea.

Wednesday saw us taking a half day due to our hiking day (what???). I was confused too. I think this may be an annual or seasonal thing, but seeing as my school is overwhelming stocked with female employees and teachers and given Korean womens’ terrible allergic reactions to sweat and physical strain (just a guess), I can’t imagine this kind of thing happens all that often. After lunch, we all headed off for a nearby peak, I in my usual work dress clothes and the co-workers decked out in full hiking gear (naturally). The mountain in question was only a few minutes drive from the local subway station near my house. It was remarkable how quickly Seoul just disappeared. Seriously, we went from the hussle and bussle and city around Sadang station to hills, green and a whole lotta nothing in seconds. I had no idea I was so close to the edge. Anyways, I decided to go up with the female office mates, rather than with the group of male teachers for several reasons: 1) The women are much liable to stop and rest every ten feet, thus giving me plenty of time to relax and actually enjoy the sights 2) The male teachers will undoubtedly be drinking, drinking and then drinking just a smidgen more and I obviously wanted no part in that. Turns out I was dead on with both assumptions. The ladies tired quickly and the men got drunk. Course, I’d be tired from just a little hiking too if my legs and calfs and leg muscles were only as thick as my real forearms (yeah, that’s pretty fucking skinny). We stopped part of the way up for pictures, then headed back down to meet up with the rest of the group for dinner. I only mention the pictures because people say that a picture is worth a thousand words. You be the judge. In one pic, I appeared in all my goofy-faced, confused and frightened glory, while the co-teacher thought she looked ugly and hadn’t fixed her hair properly, so she just covered over her face with her hand. Great pic. Ohhh, and if you get the chance to spend time outdoors with a Korean woman do it. Watching them freak out and run away from a single mosquito are beyond priceless. Once back at the bottom we walked to the nearby restaurant and settled in. I was originally concerned with the menu, as the signboard outside mentioned dog soup and I got terribly sick last time I ate dog (not to mention it tastes lousy), but we had duck instead. The meal was uneventful except for the head administrator guy sitting down near me and trying to get me to drink. By this time he had had his fair share of makgolli (Korean rice wine) and was a tad bit loud and pushy. Eventually I relented to a single glass of beer, but he wasn’t satisfied. Thankfully, I had the non-drinking ladies of the school to back me up. Then he started talking to me in Korean. This is one of those times when I wish I had never bothered to learn Korean at all. He called me cute and I really had no idea how to respond. What do you say when a 40 year old man says that to you?? I’m open to any answers, cuz I don’t have any. After that he wanted me to repeat some stuff in Korean. One of the things he wanted me to say, I’m told, was the Korean equivalent to asking someone out on a date. Don’t ask me why he asked it or how that fits in with the previous comments. I simply don’t know.

As for the events of this week (the preceding paragraphs were written last week, just to clarify the time frame), not too much. The school airwaves have been buzzing this week due to several things: 1) Obviously its swine flu. Don't know what its like back in the States but Korea might just be the most terrified country in the whole world (with the US a close second), so naturally this swine flu thing is gonna frighten the hell out of folks. I'm told that a student came down with swine flu last week, so everyone is on high alert. The students have started wearing facemasks in class, which, combined with the hats/hoodies/warm weather clothing on their faces, has made it nearly impossible to tell who everyone is. Poor form on me for not memorizing what their eyes look like and thus being able to recognize them that way, since I'm not seeing any other part of their faces. I get warned on a daily basis to take care of myself, yadda, yadda, yadda, but thankfully we haven't gotten to the point where people want me to wear a facemask all day or eat this disgusting looking and smelling traditional remedy that may share common ingredients with my excrement (not true, but you never know...). I've heard some schools have closed out of fear of it spreading further among the children, but that hasn't come up yet at mine. 2) Recently there was a horrible child molestation case that worked its way through the courts and people (rightly so) are fucking pissed. The basic jist is that some older man kidnapped an 8 year old girl, raped her repeatedly, then to cover his tracks, poured some manner of chemical into her vagina. I'm not sure if he poured some chemical or if he was just so brutal that he permanently damaged her insides, but she had to have many surgeries and is forever crippled. For his god awful offenses, he received some asinine sentence (3 years in jail and 12 years of probation, or something like that), which isn't all that unusual for this kind of stuff in Korea, but this time people got so angry (again, rightly so) that the government finally took notice and have started working to change the laws that govern cases such as this. Parents are scared, so today we had a police official come to school to give some presentation on how to keep yourself safe from predators. Thankfully, his presentation featured no white foreign English teacher types as the predators to further slander our names (though some opportunistic types in the parliament and papers have brought up that Korea must do more to protect its children from the devilish foreign pedophile plague.....god damn I hate this rascist fuckers some times). 3) We also continue to hear news about the student who was hit by a car and put into a coma a few weeks back. I'm told she has finally woken up, but she's in pretty bad shape. Now, I have no idea about the details of the case, but from what I've seen, it could have been either party at fault. Obviously, Korean drivers are terrible. Stats seem to document that, at least in regards to accidents, they are the worst in the developed world. Disregard for traffic rules, always in a rush to get everywhere, poor basic driving skills, GPSs/TVs/cellphones in every car, and just generally unobservant. Any one of these could have been the cause. Hell, I nearly got run over in a crosswalk yesterday, when I clearly had right of way. I saw him, so I was able to get out of the way. I guaran-fucking-tee that he didn't see me. Pedestrians, however, are some of the most unobservant that I have ever seen. I was taught from an early age to always look before I go, because you never know who is driving the car coming at you. Usually you'd be fine in the States, but you still are taught to look. Here, where they know without a shadow of a doubt that the driver is lousy, walk into intersections blindly and without any regard for the consequences. I chalk most of that up to always being on a cellphone/gameboy/tech, but even when a car announces its presence and has to slam on its brakes to avoid the person, I rarely see apology or surprise in the pedestrian's behavior. It seems (in my opinion, for whatever that's worth) like the people on foot assume that they are always in the right and cars must bend to their whim. Frankly, I'll pay proper reverence to the several hundred pound, multiple horse powered metal contraption of death.

The other new of note is that next Wednesday I will have SMOE (the Seoul Office of Education) reps coming to observe my class and then discuss how what I did was completely wrong. This is different from the open lesson, which I have at the end of the month, as that at least has native teachers that observe and can possibly give helpful constructive criticism. I have no idea if either of these reps can speak English, have ever taught English or even if they have ever taught anything in their lives. I have low expectations, as this is Korea and experience has taught me to think thusly. I think my co-teachers are freaking out for me, but I don't really mind. I certainly hope they aren't expecting me to put together some super lesson, cuz I'm not. If they wanna observe me teaching, they are gonna observe how I actually teach on a daily basis. Since I'm exceedingly tall, white and good at being a talking box (although that doesn't happen too much in the new job), I can't really see what they could possibly criticize me for. Either way I shall dismiss them out of hand, as I still don't do well with authority figures, even after a year of Korea's dearth of authority figures. Should be amusing.

On the homefront, as some of you may have seen, I have a few bugs to deal with. The earwigs started showing up in my apartment about a week or two ago and they have been a nasty nuisance since then. During the worst of the onslaught, I was killing about 30 or so per session (they all appeared in the 10 or so hours I was gone for work and Korean class). Things have slowed down, as I hastily taped over all the edges of my windows and filled the corners with paper towel wads, but they still manage to find a way in somehow. I contacted the head teacher guy, our mouthpiece to the folks actually in charge of our building, and he told me, and I quote, "They sprayed the trees on the other side of the path behind our units and they also did a walk through our units. There should be less bugs. This is as much as they can do to help with the bug problem. You should notice alot less bugs around as the tempurature gets cooler. They're virtually gone by winter." As you can imagine, I didn't take to well to this weak-ass response. Firstly, "This is as much as they can do". Seriously??? How about fix the cracks/gaps in the lining around my walls that allow the buggers to get in, hide, and (I hope to god no) reproduce. Then there's the shitty windows that let a healthy amount of air and bugs in. They could replace those. But they won't. Cuz its Korea. Secondly, "they are virtually gone by winter". Don't know where this fucker comes from, but in my neck of the woods virtually gone and absolutely, positively fucking gone are not the same thing. I sent a response back to him saying the same stuff and his response didn't make any attempt to assuage my fears. He just suggested I ensure that my screen is on the proper side, so more bugs can't get in. It is. FAIL!!!! I know its not his fault, but still he could at least lie to me to make me feel better. In fact, I just stopped writing to kill another two of the bastards. I'm almost tempted to gather a bunch of these nasties up in a box or something then release them all under this fuckers door, since he is just next door.

Now on to cheerier news. Namely the random shit I've done over the last few weekends. Let's start it off with 2 weekends ago. That weekend promised to be quite nutty, as my co-teacher (the attractive single one) asked if I wanted to go to this big global fair shindig in the neighboring city of Incheon with her....just the two of us. Now, naturally everybody I talked to thought this was a date or something, but I, ever the pessimist, didn't know what the hell to call it. Who knows if we can actually interact outside the workplace atmosphere (my guess, given my social "skills", would be no)? Anyways I was looking forward to an epically interesting or disastrous weekend, but it was not to be. She never called to decide when we were going to meet. When we were back at school on Monday, she talked about not being able to go, but never apologized or said anything about not contacting me. Did she forgot that we were supposed to go together (remember her suggestion)? Did she just avoid the issue to save face? I have no fucking clue. Korean women....ghaslgdhalsgh. Take all the weird unexplainable stuff that all women pull add the Korean multiplers and you have some massive math problem that I have no hope of solving, ever. I'm an English major, this much calculation is way way beyond my metal ability.

Anyways, with all this free time on my hands, I decided to get together with the regular gang. We headed to Itaewon to catch a Rolling Stones vs. Beatles cover band challenge. Not surprisingly, the Beatles sounded a lot better. While enjoying the music, we quickly realized why we never like to come to Itaewon, the foreigner district. During the hour or so we were there we witnessed a bunch of GIs engage in some pretty juvenile horseplay (there was lots of bro humping), drunkenly spill their beer over our table, and slap the ass of a Korean women leaving the bar. Makes me proud to call myself American. Christ. Being ever so happy to leave, we moved on to a bar/club down the street. This place felt like we were back in the States. See, normally at clubs populated mostly by Koreans, any foreign girl will be free (for the most part) to dance without rando dudes saddling up on their backsides. The reason is that many Korean men actually like dancing and go to clubs for this purpose. Also, it usually takes them anywhere from 30 minutes to a few hours to build up the liquid courage to talk to a foreign lady. This club, being as it was mostly populated by foreign folk, was not like that. The girls stepped foot on the floor and there were the fellas, like a scene from Night at the Roxbury. All in all, we won't be going back anytime soon. On Sunday, Jenna and I wandered around Seoul in lieu of anything else to do. We found a cool ass used bookstore in Itaewon and gorged ourselves on books. I splouged myself when I found a used copy of Stephen Colbert's book and a Lewis Black book. I'm a little tired of Korea's "humor" and I badly needed an injection of actual funny. They also had a substantial section of books in other foreign languages. However, I was disappointed to find that inferior languages such as French and German featured huge numbers of books while the Spanish section was a shelf or two. Also the only non-critical thesis type book in the Spanish section was actually Portuguese. Nice try guys. They are almost the same. We also wandered around Mt. Namsan for some exercise and topped off the day with a trip to the Namdaemun market, where I found the awful English/Engrish shirts I had been looking for. FINALLY. I would show them to you, but I'm pretty sure my entire reader base consists of people who will be receiving said t-shirts and I don't wanna ruin the surprise.

Last week again featured me lazing around Seoul. A few of us gathered together in the French village of Seoul for some wine and other typically snobbish French endeavors. In this case we looked down on people that couldn't authentically speak our language and people that weren't as intellectual as us. Seriously, we were curious to see what the fuck this "French Village" was actually like. It would appear that all that entails is lots of wine and cheese shops, which is just fine with us, as you can't find that shit almost anywhere anyway. Cheap wine in hand, we sat down at the outdoor seating and drank away the afternoon while watching the downpour of rain mere feet from our protected heads. Sufficiently liquored up at 4pm (or was it 5pm...), we grabbed some grub then moved to Gangnam for some drinks. We unfortunately chose the "Irish Pub". Granted, they had Guinness like a real pub, but I sincerely doubt real Irish Pubs are filled with affluent young couples and feature Shakira and MJ and Rihanna concerts playing on the projection TV. Also we go fucked over on the bill, cuz we are Korean and can't do shit about stuff like this. Rather than charging us for the half pints of Guinness one of us ordered, they were charged as if they ordered full pints (a difference of 6 bucks per beer...yeah, guinness is hella overpriced in this country, but what the hell else can you do for decent beer?) and they charged us for a full extra Guinness we didn't order. We won't be going back. On Sunday, Jenna and I headed to another bookstore so I could pick up some practice books for the TOPIK test (the Test of Proficiency in Korean). Why, you ask? Well rather than have people say "Who gives a shit?" when I tell them I know Korean, I can possibly show them a piece of paper....and then get the same, "Who gives a shit?" response. Ohhh well.

This weekend saw Jenna and I heading to Incheon cuz "well, we've never been there before and they gotta have something to do." Yep. Turns out there isn't a whole lot to do in Incheon. Course it would have turned out better had we actually known where to go. Case in point: when we exited the subway, we decided to walk towards the pier to see the ocean. Cept, the harbor turned out to be over an hour walk away, and the whole stretch to the harbor was filled with ugly, loud, and terribly stinky steel melting/fabrication factories and various other heavy industry companies. And I used to think Seoul smelt awful. ahahahdhahh, was I naive. We eventually gave up on that foolhardy venture and hoped a bus that happened to take us to the only official recognized China Town in Korea. Nice. Now, as you can see from the pics, it was nothing like a real town in China, but it was something different (lord knows that that is so hard to come by in Korea) and so we were amused. There were plenty of cool looking murals, sculptures, shops selling semi-Chinese looking junk (in this case we were happy to see the Made in China etchings on all of the trinkets), and restaurants. China Town was also attached to Jayu Park, which featured some cool architecture and a Gen. Douglas McArthur statue commemorating America coming to save South Korea's ass from the Communists during the Korean war. I was a bit surprised to see General McArthur hanging out in Incheon, but apparently that was where the US troops made their landing. We soon saw all we really cared to see and quickly headed back towards Seoul, but not before being accosted and chatted up by a really weird and neurotic fella from New York. We were lucky enough to run into him not once, but twice. Back in Seoul we headed to the picture show house to watch "Inglorious Bastards". Tis a very good movie. I felt a little said for the Koreans, as their vulgar words lack the creativity and beauty of their English counterparts and much was undoubtedly lost in translation. Really, there is no way to translate the transcendent beauty that is calling someone a "pecker-sucker" or a "pecker-sucking bastard". Ohh English, how I love thee.

Pics: See "Incheon's China Town" album