전봇대, at your service (for the non-Korean speakers, that’s “john boat day”)

Yup, that’s me. Or at least my new Korean name. I’ve never been given one before, so one of my students decided she would make one for me. It means “telephone pole” or “utility pole” or “light pole”. Basically a exceedingly tall and skinny shaft, made of wood or metal or concrete/stone/etc, that lights sidewalks or carries electrical wires. Sounds like me to a T. Sure its not a real name, as I doubt the first syllable “전” is a viable family name and the given/first name of “봇대” don’t mean anything in Chinese characters, which is how most names are chosen. Well, “대” does mean something, but “line, generation” isn’t really a great name. However, the name does have 3 syllables like 99.99999999999999999% of all Korean names, so its good enough for me. Plus the sizeable amount of phallic imagery and sexual innuendo that comes out of the name amuses me. So it can stay.


At this point, though it breaks my heart to admit it, I must recount our elimination from the volleyball tourney. Yes, my foreign juju and magic could only carry us for so far. The final day’s games started out so well too. The first team we played was so clearly overmatched that I was shocked they had even made it that far. Before getting their shit thoroughly handed to them by us, they lost to the other team 15-21, 9-21. Then we beat up on them 21-10, 21-9 or something near that. Just wasn’t even close. In the first game alone, I was able to lay down near 10 spikes and I’m not even the primary spiker. I also got to lay down my best hit of the entire tourney, aka I finally hit some dude. And man did it feel good. Set was perfect, spike was clean, right at the guy. But he wasn’t able to move fast enough to adjust and get his hands around and cracked him square in the chest, followed by him getting knocked to the floor. The best part: the viewing audience’s shocked gasps and ohhhs. So, so, so satisfying. And pretty damn tasty.


However, the tastiness didn’t stick around long. After the warm-up match it was on to the deciding match with the other team remaining with a shot at the finals at stake. And this team could play. They had 2 youngish players near my height with plenty of volleyball skill. And we could not stop them. Not even a little. It didn’t help that we suddenly weren’t as perfect as we were the previous match. Not much to say for the final match. Their big guys went other directions for their spiking, taking me out of the equation and leaving me a spectator on defense. These guys were good enough that the rest of the team couldn’t block any of their spikes and nobody could dig them out in the back line either, meaning they were scoring every time we served to them. For us to have kept pace, we would have had to be perfect on their serves. And we weren’t. The microcosm of the whole thing was when the other team went to spike, put it down cleanly and easily, and somehow managed to shatter our blocker’s glasses and cut up his face while doing so. I still don’t even know how it happened, but those glasses were fucked. Lenses popped out, possibly broken themselves, while the frame was broken at the nose piece and the segment that rests on the ears was snapped off. In a word (or two), utterly fucked. As soon as I saw that I thought, “well, that’s not foreboding at all…” In the end, we played pretty well, but not perfect and thusly was defeated, 14-21, 13-21. Not a pretty way to end it, but so it goes.


There was little reason for everybody to feel down afterwards, as we had a party planned win or lose. And this time it was actually at school, instead of a lame restaurant. In about as close as you can come to a backyard cookout here in Korea, the teachers broke out little portable burners in the science lab, threw some pork on the grill, cut up some watermelons, and started eating. Sure we were inside, but with all the windows open and the breeze blowing through, it felt damn good. The drinking was minimal this time, but it made its way to me soon enough. The soju ran out before I was to drink, so they had to get creative. The vice-principal ran off and came back with a bottle of Johnnie Walker whiskey, perhaps from a secret personal stash. The most exuberant of the drinkers at the school then poured me a shot. Except he used a regular sized Dixie cup, instead of a mouthwash sized cup. And he poured it to the top. Also remember that Mr. Walker is about 35% alcohol (I imagine), while soju is 17%. That’s a big difference. Can’t really take pulls of that at the same speed and expect to live. In the end I got some help and only had to take 3 shots out of the cup. And I didn’t die. Kinda anti-climatic I know. But then I won a watermelon. The teachers raffled off all the left over food and I won a watermelon, along with some lettuce. But its just a watermelon Eric, you say. Well, watermelons here are usually around 15 bucks for a good sized one, meaning I never eat them. Hell, there’s even a picnic this weekend to take advantage of said watermelon. Watermelon + summer + lovely weather + weekend + picnic = Happy. Write that equation down.


Wednesday was election day and that was wonderful for several reasons. 1) We got a day off so as to encourage people to vote. Sure most people still don’t vote, instead doing something fun (how absurd) with their families. Makes no difference to me, as I can’t vote anyways. Reason 2 is that now the insufferable election nonsense can go away. I don’t really wanna talk about, as it just pisses me off, but in a nutshell it is trucks driving around blaring music way too loudly at all hours, and its supporters dancing and yelling anywhere and everywhere in public. There is no escape from it. If you wish to be more informed, watch the following video.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX4l2O8t-lg


Well, for the actual holiday, Jamie and I went and walked around Children’s Grand Park. As you might expect, there were lots of children. But we came to see the zoo and get the hell out of our houses, so we didn’t care that there were so many anklebiters everywhere. What I did care about was the sad state of the zoo. The cages are too small, with too many animals per cages. People throw all manner of garbage and food in for the animals. Bleg. Zoos here just make me sad. But the weather and the animals were just too awesome to spoil the whole thing. Plus, we got to walk around and talk about all manner of inappropriate subjects mere feet away from impressionable youth, which is always fun. And we made some babies cry on the subway with our terrifying foreign faces. Toughen up baby, its not like you have to look at this face every day of your freakin’ life.


Ahhh, I’m out of time here at work and I still haven’t gotten to cover all the past weekends…boooo. Not having a computer at home sucks. Maybe next time.