The New Digs….I like, I like

I know I’m starting to sound like a broken record here, but I’m yet again stuck at my desk with little to nothing to do, so why not shoot off another blog post about stuff. Plus, there was actually some stuff that happened, so I won’t be rambling about nothing the whole time. Awesome.

As you can see from the title, I have a new place of residence. At least for my school life. Yes, the new school that was supposed to be opened last August is finally open and it is, in a word, wonderful. The drama leading up to the move in, was entertaining and so terribly Korean. It began last Thursday, when I was leaving school after a half day of sitting in the cold office (you know, the one whose heater didn’t work, so I sat next to a shitty electric heater fan). The co-teacher, who I haven’t seen in 3 weeks, abruptly calls me up and informs me that I will be teaching by myself the next week, as she is having LASIK eye surgery and will be out of school all week. Now, I didn’t say anything about the poor timing of the operation, given she’s had no work since Christmas, and will have another 2 weeks of vacation at the end of February. Honestly, its genius. I should have planned some serious operation for these 2 weeks. Course, there’s still time. I have always wanted slimmer, more emaciated legs. Calf reduction surgery, here we come!

I don’t mind teaching by myself, and actually the call was very much appreciated, as up to this point, 2 days before school is to restart, I had no idea what the hell we would or wouldn’t be teaching during these 2 weeks. She said we would be teaching legitimate stuff instead of feeding them candy and watching movies. Darn. Well, whatever, I’ll just plan all my shit at school tomorrow (Friday). Or not. I roll into the office on Friday to find out its moving day. Everything, and I mean everything, is boxed up/taped up/gone and is being physically moved from the old school to the new school. Why is this typically Korean? Because nobody bothered to take the 2 seconds to say to me, “Eric. Tomorrow…..school. move. (further explained by repeated lifting motion.)” Had someone said this to me earlier in the week, I would have easily prepped for classes during all that time I was trying not to freeze. However, they didn’t so I attempted to prep within the wreck that was the school. Wasn’t happening. They had disconnected the power to the office and my computer, so that route was cut. I could have possibly hooked everything back up, but I certainly didn’t care that much. Well, I’ll just look at my textbooks and write some shit down and then print out whatever I need at home or something. Wrong. The desk drawers were taped up for the move, so there was no getting into them. However, getting into the desk may not have been good enough because presumably all my books had been removed and sealed up in one of the 40 or so cardboard boxes littering the room. Well, fuck. That shoots that idea. As its been 1.5 months since I last taught using the book, I don’t even remember what we were covering, so I can’t even brainstorm in my head. Whats a guy to do to spend the next 3 hours at school? Simple. Juggle a soccer ball (well, literally it was a volleyball, but beggars can’t be choosers) and dance the only way I know how (awkwardly) alone in the office. Frankly, I’m kind of impressed with myself for being that productive and resourceful. I stumbled upon the volleyball just sitting in the room and I thought, “Well, I got nothing else to do and it certainly doesn’t matter if I break anything, since there isn’t anything left to break, so lets do it.” I’m happy to report that my juggling skills have not fallen off too much, despite not playing soccer in near a year. Well, I guess there was that one time over the summer when Amy’s Korean du jour of the moment, Dragon, being a soccer player himself, challenged me to a juggling competition. I went first and quit after 100 consecutive touches without it hitting the ground (you know, cuz I didn’t wanna show him up) and he just conceded without trying. As for the dancing, sure there was no music, but music only serves to illuminate just how badly we white folk dance and how far we are off the beat. Since there was no one else there to observe it, I can safely say it was some of the greatest dancing this side of Michael Jackson.

Well, coming into school the next Monday, I was very, very excited to see the new school. I had so many questions, most pressing obviously being “Will I be able to shit in peace now?”. The answer: “Yes, Yes, a thousand times Yes!!!!”. I am happy. I’ll put up pictures soon on facebook to better explain the place. The outside still looks like a huge mess, with the builder’s trailers, dirt, mud, and construction materials everywhere. The inside however, was quite nice. Well, sort of. The movers had managed to move everything into the new building, but nothing was really unpacked. My office, with the other 5 general subject teachers, was way, way off to the side, far, far away from the vice-principals office, which I see as being a very, very good thing. The design of the school is very simple, much like the old one. The structure is simply one long hallway, with offices and classrooms off to either side. The ground floor is all the offices, for administration staff, teachers, principals, computer servers and everything in between. The 1st floor is for 4th grade class rooms, the library and the cafeteria. The 2nd floor is 5th grade, computer lab and gymnasium, while the 3rd floor is 6th grade and the science labs. All in all pretty damn spiffy. Course, anything would have looked nice compared to the old, worn down school we used to use. The paint job on some floors were a bit strange, as they used a lot of pink, but a minor squabble. My office? Central heating. Yeah, that’s right bitches. I’m talking to you from the future, the 20th century that is, and I can say its pretty fucking awesome. It’s now the third day in the office and its been warm all the days. I can ask no more of it. Sure the design is lousy (having 6 computers and printers and phones and such running all into one single outlet, meaning lots and lots of multi taps and surge protectors is never a smart idea), but its warm and it works. Next door to our office, we have 2 empty offices. I’m still debating what to do with the rooms. I originally figured I’d have a party room, cuz you always need one of those and a Hot Chicks Room, cuz, well, I don’t even need to explain why you can’t live without one of those. Now, some people might say that a Hot Chicks Room would be a party room, so why waste two rooms. Why? Well, as a respectable employer who tries to have his employees’ interests at heart, I understand that people get tired and can’t dance all the time. If the girls wanna dance, they certainly can, but if they wanna relax and sleep and do Hot Chick stuff, then it would be wise to allow them too. Plus, they’ve got full 401K plans and health benefits. A happy Hot Chick means a happy everybody else.

As for the rest of the school, I was certainly surprised to find that the school now has shower rooms. I have no idea when or how they will be ever used, but we got them nonetheless. Cool. The cafeteria is massive and very, very legit, bringing back all those fond memories of lunches and the odd conversations that occurred back at Oshkosh West. Good times, good times. The gymnasium was a total surprise, as I had no idea they were installing it. It’s one of those hard wood floor gymnasiums, with a stage on one end. I know I’ll be spending lots of time there. Since we have the proper facilities now, our school has a soccer team or soccer club or something. The coaches look like they’ve never played soccer in their life, hell even exercised in their life, so I’ve decided I will be coaching the team as of April 1st. Mark it on the calendar. As for the toilet thing, yes they have sit down toilets, they have warm water in the sink, the bathroom is heated, and they have the TP dispensers in the stalls. I’ve used them once already and it was wonderful. There’s a word for the emotion I feel every time I think about those bathrooms. It’s “Bliss”.

As for what I’ve been doing at school, Monday was a zoo, as we had to unpack everything. Thankfully, there were no classes (again, didn’t know until I walked in the door on Monday), so no worries. The moving men, despite having stickers on every desk and computer and drawer, still managed to pair up the computers with the wrong desks. Sigh. On the plus side, I now have a different computer to use at school which appears to be faster than the old one. Hooray for upgrades. Naturally, I was asked to do all the lifting of the boxes, as my fellow office mates are all Korean women and I imagine that lifting their purses oftentimes qualifies as heavy lifting for them. I impressed them with my Western Barbarian strength. “Ohhh, that 10 lb box? Sure I can lift it. Nah, its okay. Hell, I’ll lift 2 10 lb boxes at the same time.”

I found out, to my continued surprise, that I would teach only 2 classes on Tuesday (instead of 4), and would teach no classes on Wednesday and Thursday. Apparently, the 5th and 6th graders are doing other stuff so I don’t need to teach them. I will however have to teach the 4th graders on Friday. Then we have school next week, but I’m told that there won’t be any teaching, then we have 2 weeks off for Spring Break. The question was posed by me last year, but really why come back for two weeks, then go back to vacation? Especially if you aren’t gonna do anything at all on the second week and only sort of do stuff the first week. Just scrap the whole thing and have vacation last through all of February. Simple. But they won’t ever do that, so the dreams persist.

As for this last weekend, we found (or re-found) a cool hookah bar in Gangnam, ate delicious French/Italian food in the French village, drank wine under a bridge, and met some new people. On Friday, we found the bar, called Rainbow, and stayed for several hours, enjoying the tasty mixed drinks (though I doubt there was any booze in them…probably why they tasted so good), several hookahs (never get the flower flavors, they are not good), and some non-Korean clientele who wanted to record some birthday wishes for their friends. On Saturday, we met up for dinner at a very, very nice restaurant in the French village. Amy brought along some new friends. They are apparently the friends of Amy’s co-teacher, who she decided to hang out with…sans the co-teacher. If you are wondering, that’s unusual. Amy might be the only teacher I know that spends time outside of school with her co-teacher, let alone with his friends. They were really cool and spoke English very well, so there wasn’t any of the usual angst and uneasiness that most Koreans feel around us. I’m sorry, I’m just so tall, imposing and beautiful that its only natural for most people to feel insecure and inadequate around me.

After dinner, Amy went home and the rest of us headed to a nearby wine bar, where we were upset to find that you could buy bottles for 15 bucks to take home, but you couldn’t drink that same booze in the bar. Instead, you had to buy the 30 dollar or more bottles. So after a bottle of the expensive stuff, we grabbed a bottle of the cheap stuff and headed out. It was warm (well, warm by Wisconsin standards) outside, so we settled down under a bridge and began drinking. It was a little odd, drinking like hobos immediately next to some of the priciest and fanciest apartments in all of Seoul. Hell, my entire district, which included the French village and this particular bridge, is the ritziest in all of Seoul. However, I must say I prefer drinking like a hobo to sitting around drinking in a super uptight, super proper, and super dull wine bar any day (no offense to the presumably super dull customers within said bar). From there we moved back to the hookah bar, where we watched some creepy, creepy older (30s or more) Indian men try to hit on any and every woman in the bar. I know all Indian men aren’t sketchy like that, but all the men I’ve ever seen in Korea are. Not sure why that is. They attempted oozing up on the girls, but to no avail. Although somebody in the group said that she got her boob grabbed, so kudos Indian dudes, you did get a little action after all. From there it was back home and off to bed, another weekend of adventures behind us.

Pics: see Facebook Album "The Brand Spanking New School"