I'm a Hypocrite (Part 3)

Figured its about time I finished this thing, so here goes.

2 weekends ago saw Hyemi and I heading out for Spanish food. Real Spanish food, so no tacos, enchiladas, burritos or tamales in sight. Sorry if that comes as a shock to some, but unfortunately Spanish food is not the same as Mexican food, kinda like how South Korea is not the same as North Korea. This place was an absolute hole in the wall, containing all of 5 tables in total, but tapas, paellas, whatever, they had it. And they were surely delicious. Hyemi had never had Spanish food, which frankly didn't surprise me at all, as I was absolutely floored to discover that there were any Spanish restaurants at all in Seoul. But there are, and I went to one of them and it was very good.

From there we headed to another cave-like bar for drinks and chit-chat. I've tried to understand why I'm drawn so strongly to these establishments that resemble somewhere that a bear or clan of bats may live in, but so far no answers. I presume it has something to do with my hermit/hobo nature that led to so many early morning wanderings and one attempt to sleep out in the arboretum. I guess this is as close as I can get to forgoing modernity's instruments and living simply with nature. One might reasonably suggest a park as a better option, but considering I'm been ushered off the grass.....AT A PARK (yes, you read that right), then maybe that isn't the best option here in Korea.

The next weekend, we met up again in a quaint little district filled with upscale restaurants. Hyemi was in charge, so she led us to a little Chinese restaurant for dumplings and other goodies. From there, we headed to my favorite tea house to down some tasty tea and try not to get hit by birds flying overhead. While there, we discussed some stuff. Namely, Hyemi's difficult situation. I mean, as awesome as I may be (and I'm pretty awesome), she is just about to turn 30 and the pressure is really on to get married. Technically the pressure is on for girls to get married as soon as they leave their mother's wombs, but it really reaches a fever pitch around 30. Not helping things is the fact that many of her friends are now getting married. As a result, she has to consider whether its worth wasting her time with me, knowing full well that I don't plan on staying in Korea long term. Then there's the whole thing of me not being Korean, which brings with it plenty of stigmas and bad press, at least for some people. Lots of stuff to mull over.

Lastly we come to the dreaded half-marathon. Man, I would have saved myself so much pain if I had just trained for the damn thing, but I really didn't want to quit doing capoeira for a time and I certainly couldn't have done both at the same time. With it kicking off at 9am in a town an hours subway ride outside of Seoul, I had to head down the night before. With the park being located in the middle of the city of Seongnam, accommodations were easy to find. However, they weren't cheap. At least it allowed me to watch a TV concert for one of the really big all girl pop groups.....in HD. I'm pretty sure that's what HD was invented for. Usually I can't stand to watch their performances, however attractive the ladies may be. Fortuitously for me, I've discovered a special button on each remote. I believe in English it is called the "Mute" button. A wonderful invention, this "Mute". It singlehandedly turned what is normally a painful experience into something quite enjoyable. I recommend you try it.

The marathon itself was solid. Despite running it in the middle of the city with nothing but high-rise apartments all around me, the scenery wasn't too bad. They were wise to have the entire thing run on their walkways that bordered a little stream that ran through town. From all the people out walking or riding their bikes to the running water to the grass and other green, nature-y things, you could almost pretend you weren't in the middle of a 1,000,000 plus city. I took my damn sweet time, as I certainly didn't want to collapse in the middle of the race. Man, would that have been embarrassing. Instead, I allowed myself to be passed by all manner of participant. Elementary school girl? Yup. Hungover (or perhaps still drunk) middle aged man? Smoked me. 3 month old crawling toddler? Left me in the dust. 99 year old granny in her motorized wheelchair? I don't wanna talk about it. For me, it was just a nice relaxing 12 mile run. So much for winning that sweet bag of rice for a top spot. Not like I ever ate the bag I won last time.

The highlight was the super enthusiastic people at the refreshment stations. Well, I guess I should specify. The high school girls at the refreshment stands. Everybody else was just going about their business, but these girls apparently had decided that returning home from the marathon with any fraction of their voice intact would be unacceptable. One particular group was screaming for every individual runner that went by, even breaking in a popular K-pop song and dance at times. Amazing, considering there were upwards of a 1000 people running this thing. That is dedication. Not surprisingly, I was a big hit with the kids, boy and girl. After they got over the shock of seeing just how wrong they had been when they declared Brad Pitt the most attractive man on the planet, it was time to try out your weird and limited English. I was in no rush, so naturally, I stuck around after finishing my cup of water to sign autographs, pose for pictures, teach a few free-talking English lessons, you know the usual. My favorites from the English they threw my way? When offering words of encouragement while I was running by, one girl said "Cheer up". Hahah. Not typically what you say to pump somebody up, but I think it works quite well. Naturally, around the 1 or 2 km mark you begin to realize how boring and stupid it is to run around for 12 miles or so, and a well placed "Cheer up" can do wonders to break you out of your funk. My favorite was the lady that yelled "Water! Here! Please!" Perhaps she was politely reminding me that she had water. To me, it sounded more like she was laying down the laws and I had best follow them. After I passed her, I thought about going back, just cuz I didn't wanna see that woman angry.

When it was all over, I clocked a very ugly 2 hours, 12 minutes time. However, I still looked good, as I was able to basically sprint out the last kilometer, mainly cuz I barely broke a sweat for the first 17km of 21km. Despite not being winded, my legs were killing me. The race people had me covered. Post race snacks? Cheapy little bread thing from one of the crappy chain bakeries, corn tea, and a coffee drink. After I finished my super food, I was ready to run another 21.090123421342341234234234234 km. But I decided I should go home, cuz running marathons is really boring. The end.

Next time, I'll have exciting stories about the teacher's volleyball tourney happening next week. I think we've got some legit talent this year, but I'll know for sure after tomorrow's practice game. I really wanna embarrass somebody, really, really bad. Or hit them in the face with a volleyball. Doesn't really matter to me.

I'm a Hypocrite (Part 2)

I'm back for part 2, but since I'm lazy and hella tired from today's half marathon, I think I'm only gonna cover a few weekends and leave the rest for part 3. I best get to the dirty details before I pass out....

We start 4 weekends ago (jesus, has it been that long since I wrote a post??? wow). On Friday of that week, I went with Carrie and Jenna to some foreigner's magazine party or something in Hongdae. I was spotty on the details, but the little information available seemed to indicate there would be music as well as a primarily foreign clientèle, meaning there would be people to talk to. Now, obviously the people who know me will realize that "people to interact with" is never something that I chalk up as a positive, but in this case, having had 2 straight incredibly boring and isolated weekends alone, I was willing to take the chance. I really was that desperate. Before we could find the place, we of course had to wander around lost for some considerable amount of time as the maps and directions and street names and navigation is always crap in this country. When we finally found the place, we were quite hungry from all the searching, so we settled on a faux-German beer haus in the hopes of actual drinkable beer. On that front, we were successful, as the beers were indeed drinkable. I took my chances on the sausages they were serving. And given that I'm writing this post some 4 weeks later, they turned out okay. Ms. Carrie, having had a bit to drink, felt the need to explain in detail, the damage and blockage I was doing to my colon by eating such filth. Thanks Carr, really needed that. Jenna was delighted to find that her french fry plate came on an actual silver platter. No joke, these guys were classy. Odd, but classy. You can't help but laugh at some of the weird stuff that goes down in this country.

Once dinner was over, we headed over to the party and were thoroughly disappointed. I don't know what we were expecting, but the party wasn't it. Beforehand Carrie had laid it out thusly: "This thing is either going to be really awesome or suck really bad". Sadly, it sucked really bad. They started out on the wrong foot by charging us 10 bucks to get in (okay, fine it was a fund raiser, so no big deal), but then our free drink ticket was only good for one really cheap and shitty drink. Boo. We immediately felt out of place as we sensed that we were the only folks in the place that weren't straddling the 30 year mark. Buzzkill. Also, it was swarming with hipsters. Fucking hate hipsters. One would think I would have something in common with these people given how elitist I am about music, but one must remember how much I despise myself. Thus, I'd prefer not to be within 50 miles of these folks. So we left.

At least the St. Patties Day thing turned it around. The basic premise was this: get yourself to the Irish Pub, pay around 40 something dollars, then gorge yourself on all the food you can eat and all the guinness you can drink. Plus there will be bands performing irish music and even some step dancers. With all that, it would have been pretty hard for it to suck. Anna and I arrived first, as Amy was coming later with some of her foodie friends. Well, because the directions were suspect (see a theme developing?), we headed to the one Irish pub we knew of. Clearly the Gangnam district couldn't have 2 Irish pubs, right? Wrong. We soon found out we were at the wrong one, and that the buffet was at the one we didn't even know existed. Not to worry, as the owners had clearly foreseen the foreigners being dumb and going to the wrong one, as we were politely lead to a car and driven to the actual party, completely free of charge. Pretty awesome I gotta say. Especially when we found out our Korean friends, who also went to the wrong bar, were simply given directions and told to walk. Hahah. Sometimes it pays to be dumb/foreign/beautiful.

Once we were at the pub, we had to wait in line, as they weren't allowing anybody in before 7pm and we arrived early in order to ensure we could get some beer and food before the lines shut down everything (we learned a thing or two from the monstrous lines at the thanksgiving buffet). Ms. Amy was dedicated to get there bright and early, meaning we were at the very front of the line. And given that it was 40 or 50 people deep by the time they let us in, that was a pretty big fucking deal to be at the front. Around 7 they let us in and it was bloodbath. Well, it would have been, had the Korean bartenders and waiters been stupid enough to get in our way. We immediately headed to the buffet and beer lines and filled our plates/gullets. Originally I was disappointed at the lack of Irish food in the buffet (there wasn't really anything Irish to be honest), but then I remembered Irish food kind of sucks, so win for us. And man were we glad to get in there fast, as at their peaks, the beer lines and food lines ran about an hour. Ridiculous to think they can't manage to pour beers fast enough to serve that many people in an hour, but it is what it is. With our stomachs filled (for the moment) with food and beer, things got interesting. It was at this point that Amy told me that her Korean co-worker, Hyemi, would be joining us, and then not so subtly told me that Hyemi found me attractive and that I should hit on her. It wasn't a request, so much as an order to hit on her friend. Now, normally in an instance like this, I would begin sweating profusely, shaking and stammering until I finally retreated to a isolated corner to hide from the women.

It would appear, however, that the Guinesses had loosened me up, as my only response was, “Okay, I’m in.” Surprised me too. Soon after, she arrived with her friend and it was time to step up. Looking back, I sure was feeling funny that evening. I mean, when Anna and I were waiting in line for beer and we spied the ladies staring at yours truly, I felt something strange in my chest. I believe this is generally referred to as “confidence”, but having zero experience with it in the past, I can’t be sure. Maybe it was just indigestion/gas from those tasty Guinesses. Either way, we struck up a conversation and it turned out she didn’t suck. I’m still pleasantly surprised whenever I met someone that doesn’t suck. Perhaps I’m too pessimistic? With the bar filled up, grabbing food and Guiness was out of the question, unless you were content to wait for an hour or so. After waiting for near 30 minutes for some wine and moving nowhere, we just settled for the tap of shite Korean beer. Anna and Amy made themselves scarce, leaving Hyemi and myself plenty of time to chat (coincidence? Perhaps). Most shocking of all was when she went to leave and I asked her out and she said yes. Obviously me not getting shut down is a big thing, but asking someone out after only 3 hours of knowing them? That’s about 4 months quicker than my previous best time. Go me.

After Hyemi left, the group ate a bit more, drank quite a bit more, danced along to and listened to the Irish music before calling it a night at midnight. Early, I admit, but we started drinking and eating at 7, so it was a respectable outing, nonetheless. Before leaving, I managed to run into the other foreign teacher at my elementary school as well one of the Badgers who came to Korea with us. Small world. Ohhh, and then there was the rando guy who wanted to know where Anna was from (his buddies had a bet on it), but Anna wouldn’t tell him, so he was for a time speaking in Spanish to the other Badger trying to find out the dish on Anna. Weird, weird, weird.

Sunday was considerably less dramatic, as Jamie, Amy and I met for lunch in my area, then wandered around the nearby universities, while marveling at the impressive, albeit gaudy architecture. That kind of Greek style of architecture looked just a little out of place in the middle of a relatively dumpy and unimpressive area of Seoul, but I can’t fault them for trying.

The next weekend saw the group taking in multiple sporting events. In the US, that would have probably cost us our entire paychecks, but not so here. On Saturday night, Amy, Anna and I headed out for a FC Seoul game vs. Pohang. Both teams are rather respectable, normally, but the game was anything but exciting. That was okay, as we bought ourselves a family’s worth of cheap beer each, and armed with those annoying long plastic horns (well, Anna and Amy were), we were determined to enjoy ourselves and perhaps make the people sitting around us miserable while doing so. While it pains me to see so many empty seats at the gorgeous Seoul Olympic Stadium (seats 60,000 and attendance hovers around 3 or 4 thousand, max), I do enjoy the freedom to sit pretty much anywhere I want, with nobody too close to me and the ability to stretch out. I appreciated this even more after the following day’s baseball game. Sure, the soccer game was cold, and there were a bunch of annoying high school kids behind us, but FC Seoul won, we got to drink some brews and we only paid like 10 bucks for the tickets. That’s a win in my book.

On Sunday, I met with Hyemi for lunch. I must say it felt very strange not being the super nervous and anxious one of the two, but a very good time was had. That is all I’ll say. Basically I wowed her with my combination of intimidating yet approachable badassitude, sex appeal and overall awesomeness. Actually, it was exactly like that.

With that finished, we headed over to the ballpark to meet with Jamie, Amy and Carrie for some baseball. Now this turned out to be much less fun than we had hoped. For starters, we got lousy tickets. I had gone to the ballpark the day before, to buy tickets in person at the gate, only to find out that they don’t presell tix even a day in advance. What???? How much sense does that make? Maybe that is standard procedure, but it seemed silly to me. Instead they want massive crowds to swarm the gates on the morning of, rather than space it out and have it work more effectively with presales days in advance. Whatever. I arrived 3 hours before the first pitch, assuming I could grab some decent seats. Wrong. Already all the decent seats were taken, leaving only the general admission outfield seats. No biggie I figured. We’d still get seats. Wrong again. As soon as we got into to the park, we realized 1) that the stadium is much too small for the fans of Korea’s most popular sport in a city of 15 million and 2) That they had way oversold the tix in the outfield area. We got there an hour before the game started but there were no seats. Anywhere. All the aisles and steps were taken by people sitting or camping out there, making movement through the park slow, difficult and fucking dangerous. I mean, it was silly of me to think anything in Korea wouldn’t be crowded. Looks like I’ll have to go to soccer games if I want some peace and quiet and alone time. The game was fine, well outside of the first inning, where our team gave up 5 runs and looked like there were gonna get run out of the park. Thankfully, the other teams pitching was just as bad, as they gave up 6 runs in an inning to make the whole thing interesting again. Sadly, the whole sitting in a freaking aisle, with people constantly moving past, and all the group sitting 5 rows away from each other, took away from the enjoyment of the game. Ultimately, we ended up leaving early with the promise that next time we return, we will buy our tickets in advance on line. Man, did that suck.

Ooops, I just realized I’ve now written several pages of this extended post and have yet to cover the reason why I’m a hypocrite. I mean, there’s about a hundred different ways I’m a hypocrite, but in this particular sense it refers to Korean women. Some of you may remember that in the past I talked about Korean women being super superficial, vain, boring, self-absorbed, and immature and that I would/could never get involved with one. Sure, this judgment holds true for the most part, hell it holds true for a lot of women, not just Korean women, but it really was only a matter of time before a cool girl came along and shut me the fuck up. Well, consider me adequately shut up on that subject. The moment I realized I was full of shit was when, while talking in the subway, she told me “I would never have my boyfriend carry my purse. Why? I can carry it myself.” Bam, right there she dispelled one of the biggest examples of some ladies’ vanity or helplessness or whatever. It is completely common to see the boyfriends carrying the girlfriend’s purse, while she carries nothing, so presumably she could carry it herself. Is it because she is playing up how helpless and childish she is, that she needs somebody to carry her things for her? Is it because she is so self-absorbed that she thinks that she is entitled to having a slave/servant to wait on her hand and foot? Does she really believe that she is deserving of such servitude? I don’t know and frankly, I don’t really care to know. What I do know is this: Foot, meet mouth. I think you guys should get acquainted, as you figure to be spending a lot of time together.

Part 3 soon

For Pics, see Amy’s albums “Korean Taste Tour” and “All in V4! Hustle-doo 2010!”

I’m a hypocrite

Yes, that’s right, I said it. I’m a hypocrite. And if this preceding statement shocked or surprised you, then you’ve probably never met me or read anything I’ve ever written. For those unfortunate enough to know me, this fact is common knowledge. Why I felt like reiterating this information will be explained later in the post. Now to quickly cover the school stuff.

It’s been about 4 weeks since I’ve written about life here, and in regards to work/school/Korean/capoeira, not much has changed. School has been especially relaxed, with several of the grades going on field trips and excursions, leaving me with no classes to teach on multiple days. All that downtime allowed me to study Korean, chat with the co-workers, listen to music, and even write this blog post. Whatever I felt like. The kids have been good for the most part and they seem to take quite well to the activities and tasks we ask of them, which is definitely a relief. However, our reliance on candy as a motivator has begun to make its effect known. It is an almost daily occurrence to see the sugar junkies, twitching and shaking while trying to score their next fix, slither on into the classroom begging for candy to get them through the day. The whole thing makes me feel like a god damn drug pusher. Weird. The office ladies, however, are amusing as always, and as more than a few have workable English, we’ve had some interesting conversations. Plus, out of boredom, I’ve started attending the teacher’s English conversation classes taught by the other foreign teacher, so I’ve really started to gain some interesting insight on the teachers. Some interesting tidbits: two of the teachers said that whenever they think of their mothers/fathers and the fact that they aren’t around with them (as they live in different areas of Korea), they feel like crying. Everytime. Yikes. I can’t even imagine feeling that way, as the only way thinking about Bob makes me want to cry is when I accidently stumble upon the innumerable memories of him wandering around the house in just his old, worn out, red underwear. That image would make anyone cry. But why share that nightmare with all of you??? Well, frankly I feel its unfair for just my mom and brother and I to suffer through that and I’m feeling in a very giving mood right now, so you are most welcome.

The ladies in the office seen to keep to a pretty laid back work atmosphere, which is very refreshing considering where I currently work and live. Hell, the young teacher even April fooled the other foreign teacher and myself, saying that she was getting married. Thankfully, that was a trick. I don’t think I would have been able to handle being around someone my age who was married. Would be too weird. Marriage is something you do when you are an adult and no young anymore. Does that make me an adult? I sure hope not. Again, would really like to avoid those questions.

The apartment is still small and still kinda sketchy. It’s been thoroughly cleaned and the massive collection of the previous tenant’s hair removed, but I still seem to find hairs that appear to be much longer than mine. That’s some pretty freaky and disturbing shit if you think about it. Where are these hairs coming from? How are they getting into my abode? Is some mysterious woman breaking into my apartment every night and doing unspeakable ills to me whilst I sleep? Do I have……….wait a sec, that last one sounds pretty good actually, come to think of it. Let’s go with that. Overall though, I can’t really complain. Sure the kitchen is way too small and my mattress is kinda lumpy and the shower loses hot water after a few minutes, BUT there is a freakin miniature pony that hangs out just down the road. Totally worth it.

Capoeira and Korean class are much the same as always. At Korean class, we learn a few words, say some stuff in Korean, but spend most of it making fun of each other and saying stupid shit. ‘Tis a good time. Capoeira is still frustrating. Too little repetition of movements before moving on, too little time spent on anything but floreio, etc, etc. However, there were some exciting developments as of late. Firstly, the instructor had to head to Australia for the batizado, meaning the class was taught by his wife. And as it turns out, she is a much better instructor. She is a dancer by profession, so she focused a lot on movement and footwork and stuff that I really needed help on. Plus she always picked me to help demo stuff with her, so clearly she knows what she is talking about. And yeah, you didn’t misread, the instructor and some of the students here had to go to Australia to get advanced. That’s the state of capoeira here. To get baptized/advanced/attend the group’s batizado, you have to hop a plane for something like 14 hours. Wonderful. Much to my dismay, the massive pile of suck that I nearly came to blows with a couple months back got promoted. Yup. Can’t really play any of the instruments well, can’t sing, can’t play at a high speed, has no flow, and hasn’t seemed to improve in all the time I’m been despising his ass. Grrrrrrrr. However, we actually started practicing a song in class (what??? Capoeira and music? Together?? That’s crazy! That would be like putting peanut and jam together…gross), and my delight at practicing music quickly chilled my rage, so all is good. Plus, that weekend, some of the Korean guys invited me to a new capoeira class, taught by a different instructor. And it was incredibly awesome. The instructor, Zumbi, has been training for 10 years in the Cordao de Ouro group and really has a handle on his shit. Plus, he’s from the states, so if I have a question he can actually answer it, without confusion and language trip-ups. His style is much more geared towards Angola and ground movements, so it gives me a whole new angle and set of movements to learn. And the studio we practice in??? Absolutely kick-ass. It’s the practice area for some martial arts play/musical thing here in Korea, so the facilities are new and….they have a padded/spring enhanced floor. YES. After about 40 minutes of just bouncing around and trying all kinds of stupid shit, like 5 year olds in those bouncy rooms, we were able to start the class. And it was good. I plan on going every weekend, when possible. Still riding the high from that class, I headed out to Olympic Park where I had planned another practice in the park. And would you fucking believe it? People actually showed up this time. And they wanted to do stuff with music and practice some songs. I was so proud of the new folks, I almost cried. Well, in so much as a person without the emotional capacity to cry can almost cry. But it was beautiful. There may be hope for this group yet.

And on that uplifting note, I must leave you. It’s Friday and I gotta head home. I decided I’m gonna break up the post into 2 parts, to save your retinas as well as finally get something up online, as I don’t know when I’ll be able to write next about the exploits of the last few weekends. Hell, by the time I write next, I may be able to include this upcoming weekend’s events, which include a date and a half marathon. An unusual combo, but such is my life. Unusual.