Ugggggg.....

Not really any other way to describe how I'm feeling at present. It's been a frustrating day. Good news first though. I got accepted for SMOE!!! Only took 3 days when they had originally had said 10-15. Not sure if that means anything about how awesome I am, but I'll most certainly take it that way. With the confirmation out of the way, now the task falls to getting all the mess of paperwork sent in, which hasn't been going all that great. I received the Criminal Background Check from the States, notarized and shiny, but I was stupid and didn't realize that they also needed an apostille (just another notary stamp, but at the state level and more expensive, that's all) and I can't fucking get those here in Korea. I had forgotten how much Korea loves stamping shit. Can't get enough. So I went to the US Embassy last week to try and resolve the issue. Rumor had it that I could just go to the Embassy, get a signed affidavit and that would suffice. I'm still waiting to see if that is good enough. I sure hope so, as the whole trip was stressful enough. Despite leaving my school at 12:30, I was barely able to get to the Embassy before it closed at 3:30 and I probably was nearly detained/jailed/shit canned. Hell, if I was working at the metal detector/check in for the US Embassy and some dude wanders in sweating up a storm, mumbling nonsensical shit to you, shaking like a crack junkie, while he jerks himself off with his exposed penis, I'd be cautious too. Ohh and he smells like piss. I was kinda like that. They did let me inside and I freaked out again as this was the US Embassy and I only had won to pay in....good thing they take American credit cards. Although, they probably accepted won, but I was in such a frantic state that this escaped me.

So the Criminal Background check may or may not be done. Now comes the degree issue. They used to only accept the original thing (and their website stills says so), but now they only accept notarized and apostilled copies. Too bad I have the original copy sitting next to me with unnotarized copies. Fuck. I took my original degree to the interview to ask the lady and she said that it should be okay, since I can just take the original to the office myself and they can see its not a fake, though I don't really feel like I earned that thing, but that's a whole other matter.

Those were all issues that had surfaced before today. Today added some new ones. First, there was the complication with printing out my contract paperwork. What issue, you say? Just print it out and sign. Ohhh, you silly, silly people. You don't understand my relationship to technology, coupled with the extra degree of difficulty added to everything just because its Korea. Naturally, I should be able to just print and go, but our school's tech wiz was never able to hook up my pc to the printer. Don't know why, maybe the English barrier, maybe cuz Vista sucks that much. So for all my printing pleasures, I have to use another office PC, which incidentally doesn't have Adobe or any other pdf reader. Why? I have no idea. So many files are pdfs, that it seems asinine to not have one. But because of the schools security, I can't install Adobe. I explained this situation to the co-teacher and that got me nowhere, cuz talking to my co-teacher about computer issues is akin to talking to my mother or anyone's mother, if she didn't speak the same language. Eventually, I found some tiny off brand pdf reader that would install. Probably filled the pc and subsequently the rest of the network with massive spyware, so lets just call that my going away present for the rest of the school.

Next up, the proof of employment at my current job to get a higher pay grade, as I'm an experienced teacher. I explained this to the co-teacher, hoping she could just write up some manner of letter saying I worked at the school from said date to said date. Instead, she grabbed the contract paperwork and began reading it, cuz I clearly asked her to (wait, no I didn't...son of a...). Eventually she got to the page on when the Seoul contract starts, saw that it read August 24th (I'm still under contract at the current school then) and freaked out. "You know you are here then! You can't go! You have to come to school here!" Yes, I know. Trust me, I know exactly when this contract ends. I just told her it was wrong, which it is, technically. But now the whole school is probably fearful I'm gonna ditch them...a whole 5 days before my contract ends. Why the hell would I do that? Seriously? I do that and I lose out on the contract completion bonus (which is basically $2,000). Plus, I've survived 11 months with this woman and I haven't lost my mind yet, so I think I can handle another 5 days. End result of the freak out: school is paranoid and I didn't get the proof of employment paperwork. Brilliant.

Ahhhh, now we come to the Korean background check. Which I feel is redundant, as if I am currently and still employed in the Korean education system, then I clearly have committed no crimes, otherwise I would have been sent home. The problem being, how do I got about getting one? I have no idea. Does one just go into the local police station and ask for a background check? Do I have to go to some central bureaucratic police authority for it? I'm told to get one, but SMOE and my recruiter really couldn't tell me how to go about getting one.

Finally, we come to the transcript. I assumed this one was cut and dry, but I was being stupid, obviously. It arrived today in the birthday care package, which sadly ruined the happy feeling I should have gotten from new music, new books, and more candy from home. The transcript was super sealed goodness, but the registrar people didn't sign their name or stamp along the seal line, probably cuz they didn't think you needed that bullshit. So chances are that the transcript is no good. I can probably order another one with super speed delivery and get it before I leave for the Philippines (ohh that's right I'm leaving for two weeks on Saturday, so I won't be around to fix this shit that comes up.....crud), but I'm hoping I can just order one to be sent to SMOE or somebody else, so I don't have to wait around for it.

And just for good measure, when I tried to apply to one of the Korean universities to take classes in Korean, it totally cockblocked my application on both Internet Explorer and Firefox. Technology really is conspiring to lead down the life path of the wandering homeless drifter. I'll be the modern day Johnny Appleseed. Now I just gotta find something to spread across the country. Maybe my "seed" rather than apple seeds.......ohhhh who am I kidding?

The weekend saw our badly depleted group (as most everyone is out of Korea at the moment) check out a Fernando Botero exhibit at on of the art museums. Botero is a Colombian painter who paints everyone and everything as fat, usually comically so. That's it. That's his thing. Fatties. Humorous for a while, "Haha, look at that fat dog", and sometimes gross (there were way too many obese nearly naked women), but it got old after a while, as he only had the one thing and most of his paintings depicted more or less the same scene. I was hoping the reasoning for everything being fat would be some harsh political statement about "fat cats" and "big wigs" in power, but it turned out to be just something about how he loves working with volume and wanted to truly depict the volume of things. Disappointing. Plus, all the pics were from the last twenty years, so we saw no evolution or growth as an artist. He's found his thing and doesn't appear to be moving from it, ever. Too bad. His coloring was amazing, but I just needed more depth for the painting, whether in meaning, the scene depicted, or the manner it was depicted. I like to stick around and think about paintings for a time, but I had absorbed his stuff in seconds. "Ahh, fat guy on a bike, reminds me of something I saw on America's Funniest Home Videos once....okay, now we have a fat chick sitting in front of her mirror....now we have a fat man on a fat horse, weird." We ended the evening with the exhibit documenting the Korean War in pictures along the stream. The Korean people are having the same issue with history as America, that nobody fucking knows anything about it, especially kids. Korean kids seem to be just as clueless about the Korean War as American kids are about who runs the government and such. The exhibit was interesting for me, as I obviously knew almost nothing about the Korean War other than it was that one thing we did between WW2 and Vietnam. More interesting was how it was portrayed, given that the sides haven't been reconciled, so "things" are left out in the official depiction of the events. Namely, the demonization of the North and the noticeable absence of negative events regarding the South, such as mass killings of POWs and the resulting mass graves. Makes you wonder just how distorted the history of the US is, now that I can see someone's elses history from the outside.

Now, for all you readers that are sad about hearing not hearing one of my bitchy rants in many months, I'm sorry and I hope today's post suffices. I lost myself for a time with all the fun times and lack of drama. My apologies. It won't happen again.

P.S. The title is even more applicable now, as I've suddenly been stricken with really bad, doubling over stomach pain that materialized out of nowhere. Can't explain it. Hope it goes as quickly as it came.

July 20th or Where were you when He was born?

Yeah, that's right. I'm arrogant enough to actually capitalize "He". Deal with it. But yes, my date of birth has come and gone yet again, to considerable acclaim, as you would expect. Don't worry too much if you forgot about it, hell I nearly forgot about it. It was that normal. Not bad, not good, just normal.

My "special day" unrolled in a manner closely approximating the following depiction. Summer camp began on the 20th (Happy Birthday to me!!!....groan) and on this first day I decided to play Jeopardy with the kids because I love useless trivia and proving to myself that I'm more intelligent than everyone else because I know said useless knowledge. As I expected, Korean children are just as clueless about geography and finding places on a map as American kids, so that's a relief to me, who thought that just Americans were dumb. Nope, people are dumb all over. Course, that may be a bit harsh as these are just middle school students, whereas Jay Leno has proven for years that Americans of voting age (sigh) have no idea where our Congress is. The kids knocked it out of the park on the Korean Pop Stars, Korea and Soccer sections, as I predicted. At least they are learning something in school. I was originally very hesitant about the camps, as I usually get stuck with the lowest level kids that have no desire to do anything or listen to me. Was I in for a shock when I found out that 3 out of my 4 classes are composed of my favorite high level students. Maybe there is a God after all. Ohh, and my classes are 7 students, 6 students, 4, and 4. Poor Anna with her 40 strong camp classes. You have my prayers. I was allowed to go home early, as I had a doctor's appointment to look at my ear. Ever since I got back from Busan 2 weeks ago, my ears have been bothering me, presumably from sand or something that got in there and led to an infection. The doctor had a looksie and found out that the problem was in fact, impacted ear wax and other garbage (you know, cigarette butts, big mac wrappers, used condoms, etc) that had wedged itself deep down in the ear. Easily removed problem. I can honestly say I understand how Superman felt when he developed his super hearing, that initial shock of going from hearing almost nothing to hearing...everything. I have no idea how many years worth of junk was cleaned out, but the difference was large, to say the least. That elderly woman who fell down her stairs and can't get up to call the police in Turkey? Yeah, I heard her poor, sad, futile cries for help. Those beavers having sex up in the Canadian wilderness? Yep, heard 'em loud and clear, unfortunately. And with the eclipse going on today, the rest of my powers are bound to manifest any day now (a la Heroes). I hope I get some cool powers like flight or invincibility or something. I don't think I could live with myself if I ended up as a male Jubilee. Man, she sucks.

Anyways, the rest of my evening consisted of me going home and enjoying a really, really, really quiet and slow evening in the apartment. Read my book? Check. Listened to David Cross rant about rednecks, stupid people and religious nuts? Check. Fucked around on the guitar? Check. Watched some inane Korean television shows cuz I like pain? Check. Nothing crazy, but I don't think I would mind having a lot more birthdays like that. There's still plenty of time for me to have those birthdays with the enormous cake that a male stripper jumps out of (did I say male, err, aaaa, I meant female, yeah.....boobs, breasts, beer, football, guns, violence. Nice save Eric, nice save.)

The other event of note was I had my interview with SMOE and surprise, surprise, I didn't say anything ridiculously stupid. Honest. When asked about my teaching methodology, I didn't respond "Methodology? Hell I just do whatever to get the little bastards to shut the hell up so I can tend to my hangover headache." I swear to a deity of your choice, I didn't say that stuff. Though, they did throw a surprising question in there to trip us up. "Do you like to go to clubs and go clubbing in Hongdae?" "Awww, hellz yeah. Fuck those fine Korean bitches that are grinding up on everybody there are just so, so easy. How can you say no to that? Plus, they have apartments nearby, so I don't have to do much walking, as I'm way too fucked up to stand on my own.....ohhhh, wait, you got my interviewer lady, well done. Well done." My actual answer was something like, I don't dance, when I do, babies die, I don't like loud music, I don't drink much, and yes, I am an 80 year old grandmother. Overall, I have to give a lot of credit to the interviewer and to SMOE for choosing this woman as the interviewer. Her English was incredible, she was super friendly and easy to talk to, took all the pressure out of the interview process, and she knew who Vladimir Nabokov and Salman Rushdie were. What I'm trying to say is that I'm in love (sigh). Although I think she tried to trip me up again when Vladimir Nabokov came up. "Wasn't he the writer who made 'Lolita'? What did you think of that book?" "Frankly, I loved it as someone finally understood just how hard it is to say no to those little 12 year olds when they are playing with their Barbies or drinking a juice box or something. God, what little vixens....ohhh, you got me again interviewer woman, you are good, you are good." With the interview over, I now have to focus on all the paperwork, which includes trying to get a bunch of bureaucratic stamps and such that may be impossible to get outside of the States, trying to sign a contract before I head to the Philippines for 2 weeks (when the paperwork will presumably arrive), and getting a criminal background check from the local Korean police. I don't even know how you go about the last one. "Criminal Background Check jusaeyo (Korean for 'please give me')?"

The weekend was pretty slow, as the group got together for drinks to say goodbye to Amy before she headed home for several weeks. There was eating, there was drinking, there was insulting of Amy. Same old, same old. We tried a new area, the City Hall, downtown area, as it was close to Amy's cheap hotel for the night (and ultimately my home for the evening, as when I finally stopped drinking and settled in for the night, I had missed the last train by, oohhhh, 5 hours or so). Nuts. We managed to find one of the biggest Western style chain bars, that, wonder of all wonders, serves beers not from Korea (a.k.a. good beer). Indian beers, Philippino beers, Mexican Beers, American beers, German beers. A veritable adult candy store. The next morning I rolled out of bed at the crack of noon, as the hotel owner insisted everyone check out by noon. Since I was already in town, I headed off to do some shopping round the big retail areas. Never again. I thought I had the fortitude to withstand the inanity and commercialism in Myeongdong by myself but I was wrong. One lap through and my head was spinning and I was calling for reinforcments. "Wait, you are actually buying a product to whiten your skin? Aren't you already opaque? You can't get any more white unless you go translucent. Wait, that [insert clothing article] costs how much? But its only a half a shirt/skirt/etc, shouldn't it cost half a full shirt/skirt/etc's price? Wait, why do you need that? Seriously, what possible use could you have for that shit?" BOOOOM. The last part was my head exploding. Now normally I would criticize females, as in the states that are the primary offenders at malls and such, but since Korea is striving to eliminate the genders and just create some androgynous meta species, men are just as much to fault here. I just don't get it. And I don't think I ever will.

Down Home Country Living....ya'll

Another week has come and gone and wouldn't you know, shit actually happened. Life never ceases to amaze me.

First off, I finally got confirmation of a SMOE interview. After all the months of waiting and cussing and waiting some more, I have an interview date: July 21st. If you were keeping track, I started the application process some time in April. Yeah, a fuck ton long time ago. Screwed up the first application back in April, started the second one at the start of May, waited till the middle of June on references to come in, had the recruiter lose one of the references, then once shit was squared away, waited another 2 weeks to hear from SMOE. The very definition of prompt, if I do say so. But the wait is over, and in little less than a week I get to show off my pretty white face. Course, this means that I once again have to steel myself to keep from saying anything stupid or incriminating (see every other interview...ever). But I think I'll be okay. The guidelines and suggestions from the recruiter on how to conduct myself during the interview were terribly thorough, but amusing as it felt to me like rules to follow when dealing with wild animals. "SMOE is a very proud and confident creature, do not belittle or insult it. Remember you are in its den, so please show respect and reverence. Do not ever look SMOE directly in eye. Do not approach or attempt to pet/touch SMOE unless it has given permission to do so. And most importantly, do not feed SMOE, as it survives on a very specific diet." But, if I am being interviewed by some manner of bear or wild beast, I should be okay, as I seem to get along with them much better anyways.

Secondly, I gots vacation coming up. Yes, all three weeks of it. In a little over 2 weeks, I'll be hopping a plane to the Philippines to sit on the beach, swim, and some other stuff that I haven't planned yet. 2 whole weeks to spend there and I haven't really planned a thing yet. Jamie and I figured we would would just play it by ear, cuz we are two wild and spontaneous and free-spirited dudes and that's how we roll. Jamie has started talking about Philippinas with considerable excitement. I'm not sure his intentions with them, but I assume it has something to do with them being able to speak English, so he can finally talk to someone about the riots in China and the presidential mess in Honduras. I'm a little worried cuz that means I might have to talk to girls....ewwwwwww. And as soon as I get back from the Philippines, I'll probably be hopping a plane the next day to Japan to visit Collin and Lauren and hopefully sight see around the parts of Japan that aren't Tokyo. Swine Flu has complicated the whole mess, as its suddenly broken out in big numbers recently here in Korea. That has confounded the general populace as Koreans eat plenty of kimchi, which protected them from bird flu several years back (I shit you not, people actually believe that shit), so it stands to reason that they would be impervious to swine flu as well. But, ahhhhh, kimchi is too spicy for foreigners, so they aren't immune, that's where its getting in. And with summer vacation on the horizon, the foreign teachers will getting the fuck out (can't blame them) and naturally bringing back the disease. To protect the kiddies from the germs, the Ministry of Education is recommending that all teachers returning from abroad sequester themselves away from the kids for a week after arrival back in the country to ensure that they aren't infected. Logical and safe procedure, no problems there. Unfortunately, the our Korean co-teachers have taken this as reason enough to force us to move around/cancel our vacations, which they cannot legally do, obviously. Already I've heard stories of schools not allowing their teachers to go on vacations, as the additional 7 days of home quarantine would interfere with the schools plans, so tough titties on the foreign teacher. My school asked about this and I simply "forget" to tell my school that I'd be going to Japan and returning the day before classes start. I'm gonna handle the whole thing like I do any illness: if I get sick, I shall stay away from the school to avoid possibly infecting other people. Common sense, cept that policy doesn't apply in Korea, except for swine flu. Maybe this whole scare will get Korea to look at how they the idea of sick days (non existent) and illness prevention. I can hope at least.

As for this past weekends fun, I headed out to Amy's place in the country country for some good ol' country fun, like cow tipping, getting hammered on homemade moonshine and stuff. Our hoedown began with lunch at one of the town's restaurants. The food was delicious and the owners were friends of sorts, as their grandaughter studied abroad for a year in, get this, West Bend (why West Bend, I have no idea), so naturally, she has gotten to be good friends with Amy. You know you're in the country when the menu for the restaurant consists of 2, count 'em, 2 choices. Normally the menu has a whopping 5-7 things plus drinks. From there, it was on to the town's gorgeous park/sports complex. Now, what really irks me is that Amy's metropolis of maybe a couple hundred folks (if you add in farm animals) has several tennis courts, a nice blacktop basketball court, some badminton courts, and a mouthwatering artificial soccer field, while my town, the freaking capital city of the goddamn county, has only dirt soccer fields. Sure, we have all the tennis courts and badminton and basketball courts, but really nobody cares about those sports. Since nobody ever uses the field (I mean seriously, who is gonna use it? The cows? The old ladies when they're not tending their rice paddies?), I made sure to get my money's worth. Even when the rest of the group had finished playing and were relaxing/socializing/enjoying each others company, I kept playing, with myself (hey, don't judge me). Soccer or human interaction? No brainer, really. God, I miss soccer and grass, or in this case grass substitute. Once I had finished my business it was time for dinner. With the help of Amy's landlords and some Korean accomplices, we grilled up some grub the way it oughta be: no frills, no side dishes, just beef and stuff to dip/dunk/slather on said beef. Our Korean company naturally suggested the noraebang afterwards, so a caroling we a went. Highlights included: us realizing we know way too many of the lyrics to way too many shitty Korean pop songs, the Koreans delivering with some English pop songs (always amusing when people who can barely converse with you manage to knock an English song out of the park), and Mr. Jamie Jackson attempting to sing the Bee Gees in his closest approximation to a falsetto (Ouch). After the singing, we all crashed, being the said excuses for UW grads that we are. Started drinking at 5-6ish and in bed asleep by midnight. Sad. Sunday morning brought adventure, as we had to somehow get to the train station, a 45 minute walk away, in torrential rain. Now in the States, you could just wait it out, and you'd be good in a hour or so. Not so in We attempted to call the taxi, but he hung up on us twice. We called in some backup from Korean allies and they relayed to us that the taxi man already had 2 pickups scheduled for that time and that he didn't know how to tell us that, so he just hung up. Swell. We decided on the bus instead, so we slowly moved towards the bus stop, one organic mass of flesh and umbrella (we were a few umbrellas short). What we didn't know is that no bus was coming today, a Sunday. Lucky for us, a generous man driving by offered us a ride and we arrived to the train station, more or less dry.

The rain though, all I can is "ugggggggg". I know that right now is technically the rainy season and I've been warned to bring an umbrella to school every day, but geez the amount of water that has fallen from the sky has still amazed me. Thursday and Sunday saw entire days of torrential rain, I kid you not. No periods of sprinkling between downpours, no eye of the storm, nothing. Just massive droplets falling all day long. As a result, the roads and my town overall are under water. The Han has swallowed up any and all parks and running paths along its banks. I find the whole thing pretty ironic, as Yangpyeong's slogan is "Clear water Yangpyeong", cept the Han is anything but clear at present with all the mud, dirt, soot, grime, and shit that the river picked up off its banks. Korea's national slogan, "Sparkling Korea" isn't holding up so well either. Ooooops.

'Da Beers, 'Da Beach, and 'Da Open Lesson.....I tried

Hope I didn't alarm anybody by not posting on a Monday, as per usual (obviously I'm being sarcastic as I know that nobody follows my ramblings closely enough to even notice that I missed a posting). Nothing wrong, I just wanted to include the open lesson from Tuesday in the post and I really fucking didn't write on Monday. Now, to hop right into it.

First off, we had the long awaited return to Busan. The whole group had been siked for some time now, as it was nearly everybody's first trip down South. It was my second, but with people actually on the beach this time, it felt all new again. We started our journey late Friday night by catching the KTX out of Seoul at 9pm, putting us in at Busan around midnight. We were all excited for Jethro to take the speedy KTX train, as he had been literally creaming his jeans about this fucker for months now. "Eric, what was the KTX like?" "Ummm, it was like a freakin' train, you know, with seats and cars and tracks and stuff." "Eric, did you know the train was designed by French engineers? Did you know that it gets going over 180 mph? Did you know.....? Did you know....?" Now that the time was upon us, what was Jethro's reaction? "Ohhhh, its just like the other train. That's not very exciting." Thud. Thud. Thud (my face hitting the table). Duh. Uneventful train ride behind us, we were in Busan and ready to hit the town. But first, to our hotel. I suggested we head to Haeundae, the biggest and most popular beach, so off we headed to the subway, which supposedly doesn't close till 12:45, a full hour after our arrival. 'Cept it was closed already. Korea lies, we're used to it. Cabbie it is then. We hopped in the cab and headed to Haeundae, but our cabbies being the cool old dudes they were, suggested we try the smaller and more out of the way Songjeong Beach, as Haeundae is really full this time of year. Those guys turned out to be geniuses. Plus, our guy, after he found out that Chris could speak Korean, began pointing out all the landmarks and stuff during our drive. This started the whole Jethro diva shit that lasted for the whole weekend. After being informed of an enormous new mall, Jethro suggested that we go there tomorrow for something to do. Chris and I naturally disagreed, as we were in Busan to do the stuff that only Busan had to offer: namely beaches and not shit that we could have done back in Seoul. See, Jethro and I/everyone else in our group think quite differently. Take our desired travel destinations while in Korea. Me: Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, India (countryside). Jethro: Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, China (only to Bejiing). See the trend. He's not much of an outdoorsman.

Beachtime. We arrived at our beach and naturally had to find a hotel. How did we chose? We went with the one that had lights on all the balconies, naturally. Songjeong turned out to be perfect for us. Much more quiet than Haeundae, less people and the accommodations were much cheaper. Hell, we paid 60,000 for a room on Friday and 80,000 on Saturday (split between 3 people) for a room with a balcony a stones throw from the beach (literally it was hotel, street, then beach), whereas I paid 50,000 for a hotel in Haeundae in January that was 10 minutes from the beach. Shit settled, we set out to explore the beach and to grab some beers and blow some stuff up, as it was July 4 (not saying we wouldn't have done it on any other day, but still). There were several shriveled old ladies selling roman candles, so we heartily partook. Couple that with ample amounts of booze from the convenience stores and a beach nearly all to ourselves, and we were able to easily occupy ourselves until the wee hours of the morning. The drunken conversation turned (as it always does) to sex and I learned two things: 1) I know practically nothing about the subject and thus am useless in such conversations 2) Chris is an experienced and wise sage in such matters and I should listen to him.

The next day the group got up bright and early at the crack of 11am and headed for breakfast (which was a struggle to find) and then onto the beach. This was my first experience with beaches and beachgoers in Korea, so it was a learning experience. For starters, I felt like the most tan man on the beach, as the majority of the Koreans, despite being out in the sun, where badly trying to avoid "being out in the sun". Sunbathers? Hahah, yeah right. That would ruin their perfectly ghost white complexions. What about if you are swimming, you gotta take off some layers for that right? Wrong. The majority of the beach dwellers, if they actually left the shaded safety of their beach umbrella, hit the waves in shirts and such. Hell, we felt naked comparatively, in just our bathing suits. The ocean was cold and salty, as to be expected. The latter point was forgotten by me, only to be brought back ohh so quickly after my first gulp of sea water. Our group was content to just sit on the beach all weekend, but Jethro was not, thus the drama. He obviously wasn't enjoying himself the previous evening, being no fan of alcohol or beaches (apparently), and with no intention of that changing anytime soon. As a diva is want to do, he let us know that he wanted to do something else and made us all guilty for enjoying ourselves. I especially felt guilty because I had pushed for him to come, as he had yet to visit anywhere in Korea not named Seoul. My guilt quickly changed to anger, as he seemed to write off the beach as soon as we stepped out of the taxi and decided to stay around the beach and mope on Saturday, rather than head to the mall or whatever he wanted to do. In the end, I think he enjoyed himself, but he annoyed the crap out of everybody else.

Once we were sated with our sun and fun, we decided to head to Haeundae Beach to see what all the fuss was about. It was as advertised: busy and crawling with sketchy GIs....tasty. We wandered in and around the beach for the remainder of the day, grabbing lunch at a hole-in-the-wall (literally, as I could probably have touched wall to wall with my wingspan) restaurant for seafood, then on to the ritzy high rises in the area, where we were approached by a drunk middle-aged business man who wanted to drink with us (just another day in the life), before settling into the Madison Terrace-esque outdoor seating area for more drinks. From there it was back to the hotel room to prepare for our early exit on Sunday morning, as Chris had to be back to Seoul by 10am, meaning a 6am wake up call for us....groan. Not much else to report as we were only in Busan for little over a day and we never really left our beach area. Sit, sun, drink, chat, repeat. Nothing overly exciting, but damn satisfying.

As for the dreaded open lesson, well it ended up being even more of a waste of time than expected. All this preparation and paperwork would make a little bit of sense if there was a huge number of other teachers and administrators coming from all over the district. The actual number of guests in attendance? 0, at least from outside our school. Our principal did honor us with our presence, all though he wandered in a minute or two late (the walk from downstairs is a real hum-dinger), as well as the music teacher and science teacher. The dreaded and sometimes ridiculous Q an A session that follows the lessons didn't materialize, obviously, but I wasn't disappointed. I was sad that the co-teach got off the hook, as the principal and other teachers had no problem with her using plenty of Korean in the classroom, while outside administrators would have taken her to task for it. Whatever, I got to run the class and the kids liked the lesson and responded well to it, probably cuz I taught them a new way to make fun of each other, then gave them class time to practice insulting each other (we covered comparatives, ex. he is uglier than me, using -er or "more", so the opportunities for mockery were ripe). My odd ball kid had the most colorful comparative, when he, after being told he is more hideous than all the other students, fired back with "you are shittier than me." Instant win. Now part of me wants to stop him from using bad English words (his most common english words are now "fuck" "god damnit" "son of a bitch" and "shit"), but another part of me realizes he is on the right track towards something I like to call authentic English. Though I'm not sure it's ready to be included into the official ESL canon. Not just yet.