Tuesday August 4: Whole lotta Nothing.

As the title suggests, I did nothing. That's not to say that it wasn't absolutely wonderful. Doing nothing on a lovely island with sparkling (that's right Korea, shit is actually sparkling in the Philippines!) seas and beaches is a whole hell of a lot better than doing anything most other places in the world. I woke up around 8 or so, then hit the books, well book, till noon, only stopping momentarily for food. The book of choice was Orhan Pamuk's supposed masterpiece, "My Name is Red". Good stuff and terribly ironic that I would be reading a book based solely in Istanbul and written by the only Turkish author I know of, given the role Istanbul and Turkey plays in this vacation (Foreshadowing!!!!). Once the book was finished, I had to find something else to do. I settled on sitting in the hammock and laughing at all the people still working back in Korea or the States. I take joy in others misery. Deal with it. After several hours of vegging and thinking about how much better I am than everyone else, I decided to get off my lazy ass and do something constructive today. I chose to take a run, cuz that's certainly something and I should probably try to keep my fatty self in shape during the vacation. I only lasted 30 minutes due to the oppressive humidity and hot, hot sun (couldn't possibly be because I'm out of shape. Not possible. Nope). Now, I'm sweaty and tired. Where could I go to cool off? Ohhh, right. The ocean. You know, the one 2 minutes away from my cabin. So convenient. Spent the next few hours till it got dark just sitting in the shallows getting pushed back and forth by the waves, like a 6 year old. Not sure what adults are supposed to do at beaches. Talk to the office on their blackberries? Talk about the market over a coffee? Fuck that. Nothing happening at the beach outside of a few older or unattractive Westerners with a way out of their league Filipina (can you say Prostitute?). With the sun down, I headed back to the cabin to meet up with Jamie for dinner and drinks.

At this juncture in the story, Jamie started whining. Now, I know this is terribly hypocritical of me to make mention of someone else's whining given my reputation in the field, but I'm a hypocrite, so this is just how I roll. Apparently during the previous evening, several mosquitoes found their way inside dear Mary's mosquito net and bite him a very large amount of times. He estimated around 300. I concur. I ended up with only 10 or so during our time in Malapasca, so I must have done something right or Jamie was doing something ohhhhh so wrong. Mosquito bites suck, they itch and everyone hates them, I get that. But scratching them incessantly until they open up and possibly get infected and then bitch about them to everyone around you for the next week doesn't help. He also wouldn't stop talking about how bored he was. He spent the entire day sleeping basically cuz he was bored. Who deferred all responsibility for deciding what we were going during the vacation, read all the information he was offered about Malapasca, then signed off on the whole isolated, quiet, island in the middle of nowhere thing? Exactly. I could have stayed a little longer, but for Mary's sake I decided we should leave the next day.

Guess I could talk about the cool little cabin I was staying in, but the pictures can probably explain it better. Just a cozy little wooden cabin with a short double bed and the ever so helpful mosquito net. The bathroom was functional, which is really all I can ask for on a island in the middle of nowhere run on generators that usually didn't work. Lowered expectations. Spent most of my time on the porch or in the hammock. Everything I could ask for for 10-12 bucks a night.

Pics: See Album, Pictures 61-65

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osWHgJfOpTw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMCX1FcQ_WU

Monday August 3: We're Here!!!

As mentioned at the tail end of the previous post, we didn't sleep all that well the night before thanks to the rooster who wouldn't shut the fuck up. Needless to say, we were happy to say goodbye to Maya and finally reach our desired destination. The only thing in our way was the bangka ride across to the island. Bangkas are the standard mode of water transportation and given the design, with its bamboo pole supports to keep the boat steady, they have been for the past 500 years or so with little change outside of a engine. Now, as you can see from the pics, these boats don't instill the greatest confidence in their sturdiness and seaworthiness, but its all they got, so I shut my mouth. After the disaster on the ferry to Jeju (where I lost 150% of my bodily fluids, my boxers and what was left of my dignity, granted it wasn't much), I was rightfully concerned about my sea legs. No problems though and 30 minutes later we were on land at Malapasca. Now this was my first real experience being in any of the big touristy areas of the Philippines (but I imagine its like any other place where the visitors have loads of cash and the locals have almost none), so I was unprepared for the bum rush of people that greeted us as we disembarked. "Do you need your bag carried?" "Where are you going, sir?" "Do you need a room?" "Do you already have a reservation?" "Would you like to rent a motorbike?" "Do you plan on snorkeling while you are here?" "I know a great dive shop I can take you to if you like." We were more than a little dazed and confused, but we eventually chose a guy to show us to some rooms. Once we were settled in our 10 dollar cabins (can't beat it), we decided to grab some grub, then headed off for some snorkeling.

As an aside, Malapasca Island itself was incredible. It's just a tiny little island off the north coast of Cebu that literally takes only 2-3 hours to walk all the way around. There are absolutely no cars, so everyone either walks, bikes, or uses dirt bikes if they really need to move. The various settlements are scattered along the coast at various parts of the island. The major village is situated on the south end where the traffic arrives from Maya. This area is the only part of the island with an actual paved road and also features a legitimate church with basketball court with frequent pick up games. This is the only section of the island that features homes built from stone or concrete as the rest of the island houses less sturdy, more traditional wooden huts. There is zero industry or cash flow, save that from tourists. Everyone works in one way or another with the tourists. Working the resorts, running the numerous restaurants for the tourists, dirt bike drivers, boat operators for snorkeling or diving, dive instructors and operators, small convenience stores owners who sell almost exclusively to the tourists (how much use are the locals gonna get out of the numerous hygienic products for sale when they appear to shower themselves at community wells?). As for the sights, wow. Just wow. The water: perfect. The beaches: perfect. The entire island: quiet, simple, secluded, isolated. My dreams of being a hermit/recluse have been realized. Ohhh, and they only have electricity from 6pm to 6am, as everything is run on a generator. And the generator was frequently broken. What more could I ask for?

For our snorkeling venture, we were randomly paired with...imagine that....a Korean in order to fill up our boat and he didn't have anyone to go with and didn't feel like paying for the boat all by himself. His English name was James and he is from the city of Wonju, which is about an hour east of my town by train. He was about my age, having already served his military service, and was working in the Philippines over the summer before going back to university in the fall. Cuz Jamie and I emit massive amounts of cool (mostly me though), James decided to hang out with us for the remainder of our time on the island and our 2 became a might triumvirate. Once on the boat we were able to get some good views of the island. Final verdict: still gorgeous. It was quite windy that day, so we had to move our boat around quite a bit to find a calm piece of water in which to clearly see the coral below us. In some spots the reef was only a few feet below us. Being the Philippines, they weren't too strict about protecting the reef, as our captain would just chuck the anchor at random into the reef and we could get as close to the coral as we wanted. Our of the crew was a rather unshapely (or if he had a shape I would describe it as "American from Wisconsin"....you know what I mean) man who insisted on wearing a tiny little Speedo. I spared you any pictures of that. You are most welcome. In the end I realized that snorkeling is not for me, as I cannot breathe with just my mouth. Obviously when snorkeling, you breathe through the tube thingy (the official technical term) while your nose is covered up in the face mask. So every time I would suck in air through the mouth, my enormous European honker of a nose would desperately try to draw in air, but there was no air to be found inside the face mask, and my body would then instinctively begin to freak out to try and get air. What a mess. I eventually gave up snorkeling and just began holding my breath while paddling around. Much freaking easier.

Once snorkeling was over, we wandered around the island for a while, taking plenty of pics and taking in the sights around us. Still pretty. Later on, after dinner, Jamie decided for lack of anything else to do, he would start drinking again. Can't really blame him, as once the sun goes down you can eat and drink. That's about it. Now remember that before the vacation, Jamie said he would only drink seriously for 3 days. Here we are on vacation day 3 and he's drinking heavily for the 2nd day (I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on the day in Manila). Tonight he tried something different, as Tanduay Rum (the local rum that everybody drinks) and Coke were plentiful. 1.50 and 2 dollars apiece, respectively. You heard right. A bottle of rum costs less than a liter of Coke. Enjoyment for hours. We three drank the night away (well, really the other two and I just watched them get progressively more drunk and Jamie begin to tell the same stories over and over and over), then crashed at the late hour (at least for our vacation) of 11pm. Hey, you'd be crashing too if you started drinking when it went dark at 5:30pm.

Pics: See Album 1, Pictures 15-60

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47Sq2-GWfp4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9c306FmqEg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pnzf9JMC-Aw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GB4f7VpKJK4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjho7eOGkeU

Sunday August 2: Onward to Paradise

After all the fun we had had in Manila, we were reluctant to leave, but the beaches were calling and you can't find them (at least any good ones) in the capital city. We got up quickly and ate breakfast and hustled off to the airport to catch a noonish flight. Problem was, they don't run flights all that often from Manila to Cebu, especially during their off season, so the soonest flight we could catch was at 4pm. We were at the airport by 11. Fuck. How to pass the time? Easy, teach Mary (for those of you who don't know him, Jamie and Mary are the same person, long story behind it, just felt like clarifying) Korean. He made me promise him I would teach him the alphabet as he has a 50 dollar bet on whether or not he can read Korean once he returns from the Philippines. Plus, he's offering me 50% of the winnings if he wins the bet. I've been paid much less for much harder teaching. At the present day, I still don't know if he won the bet or not, but I have faith he pulled through. Or at least he better have. I don't work for free.

Anyways, we eventually got on our flight and were in Cebu before it. Whole hell of a lot of waiting for a 45min to 1 hr puddlejump of a flight, but that's life. By the time we got through the airport, we realized we were fucked to get to Malapasca Island tonight, as its a 5 hour bus ride up there and its already 5pm now. We decided to hop the bus as far as it would go that night, then find some place to crash along the way. We quickly boarded a cab and asked him to take us to the North Bus Terminal. I can't tell you how much less stressful it is to work with cabbies that can speak your language and know which buses from which terminals go where. It was a necessity in Manila as there was no central bus station so I basically got in the cab and said "I wanna go to _____. What bus station do I go to?" and the cabbie did the rest. Lifesavers. Once we got to the bus station, we realized that Filipino bus stations aren't quite as nice as the ones in Korea, though given what we saw of Cebu we should have assumed it. Cebu was just a grimy as Manila with less nice, respectable areas and practically nothing to do outside of shopping. We moved through quickly (but not before I picked up an absolutely to-die-for Dolce handbag...gorgeous!). We were pleasantly surprised to find that our tickets for the 5 hour bus ride were....wait for it....2 dollars and 10 cents, roughly. We are gonna run out of money at this rate. The bus ride went rather quickly, as we had plenty to feast our eyes on during the whole trip. From lush mountains and valleys to rice paddies for miles to villages big and small, we pretty much got to see it all on that bus ride, as you can see from the blurry pics I took from the bus. Our progress slowed considerably about 3.5 hours in, as our paved road suddenly wasn't paved anymore, making transport bumpy and slow. Finally, around 10:30 or so, we arrived in Maya, hungry and tired. The locals directed us to the only hotel of sorts in town and it was there that we met the 10 year old who blew my mind with her English level. She was the daughter of the owners, who spoke a little English and directed their daughter to show us to our rooms upstairs. Once we got upstairs, she opened up Jamie's room and heard an "Oh shit" escape from the room. Did she say that? Sure as shit she did. While we were waiting for her to clean the rooms, it quickly became apparent that this girl can talk. Sure, sometimes her accent would be kinda weird and she would say something that sounded a bit funny, but we were speaking to her at normal speed with all the weird quirks and idioms that we usually reserve for other native speakers. She didn't skip a beat. She had learned it all on her own too, from self study and watching TV, with no instruction at school (yet). Even more shocking was when I found out her favorite TV show is the Korean drama "Boys over Flowers" that had swept through Korea (and the rest of Asia it appears) like a plague back around March or so, infecting anyone and anything under the age of 20. We talked about how cute Lee Min Ho was and who her favorite characters were, etc, etc. Crazy. Eventually she stopped talking and we asked her to get us some beer. She charged us 2 dollars a beer, which we felt was a little steep for the Philippines, but still pretty damn cheap. Cept she came back with Mega bottles. These guys were at least 3 regular bottles worth of beer. Jamie bought 3. Little bit of foreshadowing, but this will come back to bite him. Next was to find some grub. Sadly, Maya has absolutely nothing for food (or anything else for that matter), especially not at 10pm. Thankfully the bakery was open so we grabbed some weird pastry things and settled down on our balcony for a quality meal of booze and greasy bread products. Yummy. Soon after we crashed in our much too small rooms. As you could see from the pics, the small Asian sized beds went from wall to wall. Can't ask for too much for 8 bucks. Yep, I paid 8 bucks for my room. Jamie paid 16 bucks cuz his room had AC, which didn't turn on till about 5 am. Hahahah. Cept, nobody told us about the rooster that lived outside the window and began crowing off and on every few minutes starting at 3 am or so. Which meant that every few minutes or so I would wake up and then go back to sleep. Jamie couldn't ever get back to sleep and gave up trying around 5 am. We were happy to get out of Maya the next day.

Pics: See Album 1, Pictures 6-14

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYj9QEf1WTw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGZu-FZmKXM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfBvFFUWMDI

August 1: The Adventure Begins

Well, the vacation began just like most of the other ones: crashing in Seoul the night before so I can make my flight. Well, it nearly did. I got my flight times for the Philippines and Japan mixed up and was on my way out the door when I finally decided to check my flight times and realized I was leaving 3 hours later than originally assumed. But I did remember my passport this time.

After a brief stopover in Seoul to meet up with Jamie and Chris and grab some grub, Jamie and I headed on to Incheon (but not before shedding numerous tears about being away from my Chris for a whole 2 weeks). Incheon was fast, efficient and effective, like always and we were through in no time at all. The only hangup was when I attempted to mail my documents for me new Seoul job. The recruiter asked that the documents be sent via FedEx or some other courier rather than standard old snail mail, I figured I would save some time and send the package from the FedEx stand at the airport (I researched this shit). No problems, right? Only the FedEx stand is at the shipping airport terminal, which is apparently nowhere near the airport I happened to be standing at. Crap. After deliberating, I decided to just mail it using the Korean post office stand at the airport. I'm starting my Seoul job next week, so I guess it worked.

6 or so hours later, we arrived in Manila. 2 hours to Hong Kong, brief layover in Hong Kong, then another 2 or so hours to Manila. Other than Jamie asking me every 5 minutes (at least it felt like that) what time it was since he didn't bring a watch, it was a uneventful flight. As soon as we set down in Ninoy Aquino Airport in Manila, I knew we were in for something different here. Hell if your international airport is as divey and dirty as Ninoy Aquino is, imagine what the rest of the country will be like. Needless to say, I was excited. Exiting the airport I ran into my second point of frustration with dear Mary: his hopeless lack of direction or destination. It was like traveling with a infant. Sure he didn't wander off whenever I turned my back, but he would just pick a direction and go. Sometimes it was right, usually it was wrong. I understand going the wrong direction in a place where the signs are in a language you don't speak, but everything was in English. When the clearly visible signs say the taxis are to one's right, why go left? Thankfully, he was completely okay with me making each and every decision on the entire trip, so there was no repeat of our drama with being the "chief" whilst in Tokyo. Soon enough we found a taxi and were on our way to our hotel room in Manila to sleep for the evening before boarding a plane to Cebu the next morning. We chose the Malate area on the recommendation of my Lonely Planet book (love those babies) and off we went. During the 30 minute cab ride (which cost a whopping 10 bucks, I think), we were able to get a good grasp on Manila. It's dirty, polluted, slummy, dangerous in certain spots, sprawling, difficult to navigate and exactly what we were looking for as a foil to Seoul. We loved it. I like Seoul, but its usually much too nice, too high class, too well lit, etc. Manila is much more my style. Once settled in at the hotel, we headed for the nearby bars to drink as we had fuck else to do at 10pm.

The bar we selected was more than divey enough for us. Pretty much a iron awning over a bunch of shitty plastic lawn chairs, they hooked us with their 27 peso beers. That's 50 cents. That was the cheapest we found in our entire trip. Not like booze was expensive anywhere, though. We quickly realized the culture of street vendors and street peddling that is nonexistent in Korea. You need a smoke? You need a lighter? You need a newspaper? Can you spare some change sir? Explains why the bar had security....not to kick folks out but to keep vendors from getting in. How divey was the joint? Well, when Jamie asked for the bathroom, the waiter guy showed Jamie around to the back of the building and pointed at a brick wall. Ladies did at least have a toilet. The oddest moment of the evening was when a sketchy old man wandered up and tried to sell us some stuff in small boxes. At first, I couldn't tell what is was, but once I got a closer look, I burst out laughing. Mother Fucker. He was trying to sell us boxes of Viagra and Cialis. Yep. He was also selling unwrapped condoms. Somehow I just don't trust either of the products given the source. Must be my spider sense or something. We politely declined. At last count, I was offered Viagra on 4 different occasions. I really must be giving off some massive "I need as much help as I can get" vibes or something. Jesus. To close out the night, we spied on the two Korean ajosshis (middle aged men) sitting next to us. One actually inspected and eventually bought a condom off the vendor, then tried hitting on a couple of local girls using a mix of English and Korean (which they didn't understand). Classy.

Pics: See Album 1, Pictures 1-5

Preface to the Vacation

A few things to mention before plunging into the recount of my vacation:

1) After seeing how unwieldy and long the posts recounting my trips to Japan and within Korea got, I've decided to break up the posts by day. Some days won't have much to say but it should be much easier to read. Plus, I really wanted to artificially inflate my numbers of posts and this should do it nicely.

2) I like the Philippines. Thought I'd get that one out there really early. I like it alot. Sure there are many, many things that need to be improved, as the Philippines would probably still be considered a third world country by most estimations, but there are many things to like. Personally, I like it more than Korea. Obviously just my opinion, but my argument is thus: The Philippines has better weather (perfect weather all year round), its much prettier, much cheaper, with much more to do and see, the English is much better (so almost everything is much easier for English speakers), the people are friendlier (Koreans are mighty friendly but Filipinos really, really go out of their way to help), the beer doesn't taste like piss water, the food is much more conducive to my stomach (can't go wrong with grilled chicken or other meat), and the attitude is much more conducive to me (everything is just much slower and more relaxed than Korea with much less emphasis on work, work, work). Then there's their women. Filipinas are approachable (the greatly improved English helps, but they don't pull the coquettish, shy, "I'm just an innocent little girl" act that is so frustrating), they have a figure (you know exactly what I'm talking about), and they are not afraid to approach men or make the first move (all the women that Jamie met at the clubs in Manila approached him). Plus there is the remaining Spanish influence due to their colonial domination for several hundred years. I've never been to Central and South America, but I imagine that they would feel similar to the Philippines in many ways, which is to say that the Philippines feels nothing like Asia and that is a very good thing for me.

3) English here is really good. Really, really good. I would take any random Filipino off the street over my current co-teacher to teach English speaking. Hell, I met a 10 year old girl who spoke near fluent English just from watching TV and home study. I don't think I will ever see a country with such a seamless integration of two languages. Everywhere you say English and Tagalog. TV shows, radio programs, whatever had a host that could and would just flip between the two at a moments notice. All the English language shows from the States appear without subtitles and all their national newspapers appear in English.

4) Korean influence is everywhere, at least while I'm still in Asia. Korean restaurants, Korean TV programs, Korean tourists, Korean music on the radio. It was everywhere. Hell, they were just as crazy about the "Boys Over Flowers" drama as Korea was, and their current Top 10 countdown for music featured 2 Korean songs (at #1 and #5).

5) No matter what I did while on the vacation, I couldn't shake this feeling that something was lacking from my vacation, that something was missing, that I hadn't really got absolutely everything out of this vacation that I could have. It could have been any number of things working together. Heavy rain and landslides that kept me from seeing some of the more beautiful mountain ranges, spending too much time just lounging around the beach and our resort when I wanted to get out and wander around, spending too much time in transit to this place or that place, rather than actually doing stuff, and also a travel companion I grew tired of (I love Jamie, but I got a little sick of the guy by the end....I'm sure he felt the same about me).

Now down to business.

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.