"Pee all that you can Pee"

Happy Children's Day everyone! That's right, thanks to Korea's need to have even more chances to shower children with presents (as Christmas and their birthdays weren't enough), I and all of Korea has off tomorrow. I'm not 100 percent on this one, but I'm assuming that the holiday was just made up as an excuse to shower kids with useless shit. Not that I'm complaining. I'll take any national holiday I can get. The dissapointing fact was that it falls on a Tuesday. Saturday was a major holiday, known as Buddha's birthday. I was a little pissed that I forgot to get him something, but he said it was cool since he's not into that whole worldly possession thing. I lucked out there. Anyways, many foreign teachers were lucky enough to have their schools cancel school for Monday as well, giving them a nice 4 day weekend to go to Jeju, Busan, or some nearby country. Can you take a guess as to whether or not Eric was one of those lucky few (and by few, I mean most of the teachers actually)? Good guess, he wasn't. Days off are always nice, I just would have preferred to get back to Busan or something. Ohh well.

Our joke day of school was at least interesting. The day was greatly shortened, perhaps to manke the day that less meaningful and to make me that much more frustrated at having to come to school. If you are gonna start school 30 minutes earlier, cut five minutes off each class, and cut one entire class just to be done by 12:30, why even bother having school in the first place??? Seriously, in both of my English classes we spent the entire hour announcing the scores from the midterms then adjusting seats to reflect the scores (the teacher has the top students sitting next to the lowest students). That's it. Thankfully the day was amusing enough to make me not care so much about the day. Now I'm sure you're thinking right now, "Eric, what's the title mean? Your titles are always so funny and insightful and relevant to what you are talking about. God, I wish I could write titles that were half as good as yours. Plus you are so damn handsome." Thank you, thank you, you are too kind. But to answer your question, the title appeared in gym class. As I walked in, I noticed one of the boy's was wearing a pink t-shirt that read "Pee all that you can Pee". Needless to say, I laughed a fair bit. Perhaps I even laughed out loud or even was rolling on the floor laughing. Maybe. The best part was when the high level kids got the joke and then translated it for all the kids. The boy seemed to be even more proud of it once he found out what it means. Now the shirt got me thinking, have I really been living up to that motto? I'd like to think I have. I've been to my fair share of places and I've pissed in nearly all of them. I done my business all over the world from standard, recognized restrooms to the less common (take that Madison ROTC building! what you gonna do now? I'm not even in the country!) to the downright filthy (like Round's....OMG, did he just say what I think he said....uggg, that is so rancid...what the fuck, man?)

The day continued to amuse me when I met the brand new student in 3rd grade. Seemed like a nice girl. Decent amount of English, which is always a plus. So imagine my surprise when, before class started, I was talking to her and she told me I was handsome (whatever, I'm used to it by now) and followed that one up with a real humdinger. Boy was I surprised when she suddenly spit out something like "Can we have dinner together?". Jaw, meet the floor. Even more shocking to me was that she was confused why I would say no. Naturally, I asked her if she was going to be paying for our meal, but she said that her parents don't give her any allowance. Dealbreaker. I felt all the more emasculated (don't worry, it happens alot), as this 15 or so year old had no problems asking someone out in a foreign language, whereas I can't even summon up the minerals to ask out a girl in my own language.

School ended and all the teachers gathered behind the school for an old fashioned picnic. They even broke out the grill. Sadly, they are not worthy of the title of Grillmaster, that is to say they don't stand around someone else cooking the food and talk about how they could do it so much better, but then they fuck it up once they are actually cooking the food for themselves (sound familiar Collin?). Sitting there, listening to the teachers talk about my white skin or admire/play with my arm hair, I longed for a brat and some real beer. Alas I had to settle for imperfect beef and some crazy ginseng liquor. I kid you not, they had a bottle with massive ginseng root in it and it was an alcohol. I didn't touch the ginseng stuff, as the ginseng drinks I've had are akin in taste to umbilical cord fluid, I presume. As for the arm hair thing, the Social Studies teacher seriously asked me if I get mosquitos stuck in my arm hair and if when I squish them they get caught in my hair. Well, what he actually said included the Korean for mosquito, which I somehow know, and lots and lots of furious arm gestures and noises. Good thing I'm a champ at pantomime.

The weekend wasn't much to write home about, yet I'm writing home about it anyways. Yet again, the weather literally rained on our parade, dumping on us for most of the day. So much for the FC Seoul game and pick up basketball at one of the universitys. Now I know I'm rusty, but I could handle an 0-30 shooting night if I could walk away with near 300 blocks, which I naturally would, given I'm playing against little people. Maybe just to challenge myself I would only try to block using my elbows, just take away the rest of my forearm. Though I am sad I didn't get to see any Asian ballas. That would have been hilarious. Maybe even funnier than white, wannabe ballas. With the soccer game out of the question, we headed to the theater to catch the opening showing of the new Wolverine movie. I didn't actually get to see it, as the theater fucked up with our tickets, so Jethro and I wandered the mall for the 2 hours. After doing some serious shopping and walking away with a to die for dress that really shows off my cleavage and some gorgeous fuck me pumps, we were on our way. Yeah, right. Anyways, on the way out the group met this cute little Korean kid about 4 or 5, who spoke really good English, as he had lived in the Philippines. He burned us pretty good when he asked one of the group members why they don't know Korean. When she responded that Korean is hard, the boy just skoffed at her. Ouch. He also said he didn't understand why people in the Philippines and foreigners here don't speak Korean. He apparantly found the fact that Filippinos speak English instead of Korean to be very frustrating. I'll make sure to suggest it to them when I visit in August. The benefits of speaking Korean are countless for people living outside of Korea. There's....ummmm...and then there's that one where....no wait, that doesn't count....ummm....hold on, I'll think of one...

Lastly, I had another interview of sorts with another recruiter and this one went better. No screwups by me, but the lady was genuinely concerned about whether I could start the SMOE job on time. The SMOE contracts generally start August 26th and my GEPIK contract doesn't end till August 28th. Ohhh my god, two whole days. Cuz I'm so far away and it would take me forever to get there, like all of 50 minutes. But as one comes to expect from dealing with Koreans, that which seems to be meaningless/uncomplicated/simple is never such. Now I'm genuinely concerned whether I will be able to come home between contracts. I'm also genuinely concerned whether I will be able to get a job at all. Gaaaaaaaa. Korea.