'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.