Now for the fun stuff

As a result of being really, really, really bored at work with nothing to do, I give you the weekend exploits that took place during my winter camp.

Now, after reading the previous post about all the nonsense during camps, it would not be strange to question just exactly how my brain didn’t explode from all the bullshit that went down the last few weeks. There are several reasons for this. First, Korea has helped me build up a massive tolerance to this kind of stuff. If there is anything at all that I can take away from Korea when I leave, it is this: People are quite often very, very dumb, and they say and do very, very dumb things, so just roll with it. I feel like that advice will serve me well in the rest of my life. Secondly, the weekend events have been interesting enough to distract me from the week and help heal all the mental damage the week had caused. This post documents the latter reason.

Since it’s been so long since I wrote about my life in Korea, I actually have to start way back out our group’s Christmas dinner. Amy found some French restaurant near the Hongdae party area, so we figured we would celebrate Christmas with some wine and fancy food. Jenna, Carrie, Amy and I were not disappointed. Well, maybe Jenna and Carrie were a bit, as the majority of the scrumptious dishes contained meat. While those two had to settle for appetizers and soups and what not (which were still tasty), Amy and I split their special, the 5 course meal. First course….massive oysters. Yes, yes and more yes. It had been a while since I had eaten anything like that. I also recommend, when eating oysters, to have friends present who don’t like seafood and are grossed out by the fact that you appear to be eating snot. Makes it even better. The next course was soup (or was the soup the first course?) and was also very good. The third course was the main dish, the stuffed chicken breast. It wasn’t super awesome, but it was good enough for me. Amy hated hers and gave most of it to me. Advice: always, always go out to dinner with your female friends. They will never finish all their food and that’s where you come in. One meal for 20 bucks? Pretty expensive. Two meals for 20 bucks? Exactly. Genius. They followed that up with tasty, tasty cake. Wait, that’s only 4 dishes. Perhaps the glass of wine was one? I guess I’m okay with that. The entertainment, as it always does when we are drinking, came from Ms. Carrie. She has the tolerance of a tiny new born infant, so one glass of wine and she hits the perfect level of ridiculousness. Not to say that the rest of us weren’t out there. I believe I won with the quote of the night, when I said: “Sometimes I wish I were a large black woman…you know for their incredible singing voices.” I do not, however, take that back. I wish I could sing like those ladies, instead of sounding like a young boy whose voice is cracking thanks to puberty (jurys out on whether I’ve actually gone through it yet). After dinner we headed out to the music bar where I had my horrifying encounter with the aggressive girl from Chicago, but thankfully she didn’t show up this time. We sat around for a while and enjoyed some beer with some actual good music in the background. When we left, silly Carrie saw some beautiful fixed gear bikes resting against a bar. Granted, I don’t see anything that crazy about bikes, but she loves the things. So much so that she actually went up and hugged the bikes. Naturally, the owners of the bikes thought this was weird and funny (there were just inside the window of the bar), so they came out and took pictures with Carrie. She didn’t really care for the pics, she just wanted some shots of the bikes. Ohhhhh alcohol.

The next weekend we got together was the first weekend back after Japan. It was Amy’s birthday, so she decided to go visit Anna and Carrie in Ilsan, rather than boring old Seoul again. We met the gang at an Indian restaurant in Ilsan’s really fancy mall for the standard wonderful Indian food (soooooooooooooooo much better than Korean food). After the meal we moved to some generic bar where the wait staff was super excited to see us, probably cuz there really wasn't anyone there. Being the crazy party animals we are, we lasted until 11:30pm before we were all really tired and bored with drinking, so we all crashed at Anna's apartment watching "Tropic Thunder". Love that movie. Somehow having entire scenes where I had no idea what any character was saying made me love the movie even more. Good, good stuff. On Sunday, we ate birthday cake and pizza while watching "True Blood" and old episodes of "Hercules". You know, the one with Kevin Sorbo. And did I mention it has Bruce Campbell as the King of Thieves. Ohhhhhhh yeah. Dude pulls out sick standing front and back flips like nothing. But then Hercules punches him through a tree or wall and it's usually over. Memo to Korea: Get a show, any show, that is remotely as cool as "Hercules" and I will watch it and stop talking about how your television blows (it most certainly does). That is all.

The following weekend, due to all our other friends having fallen down wells or having been sucked into alternate dimensions or having been kidnapped by North Korean guerillas, there was nobody else around, so Jenna was forced to hang out with just me. I can only imagine how intense her boredom must have been to willingly choose to spend time with me rather than watch paint dry. Since she had no school that week and was bored (see above), see wandered into town on Wednesday. We grabbed some Indian food (notice a trend?) and then some alcohol. What? Liquor on a weekday? My good, I'm turning into a Korean! Wait, I'm from Wisconsin. Never mind. Business as usual. As our friends were still dead to the world on Friday and Saturday, it was just the two of us again. On Friday, we met near City Hall and stumbled upon the greatest restaurant ever....The Manchester United Pub/Restaurant. That's right. The greatest football club in the entire world is such a massive brand that they now have their own restaurants. It was interesting, to say the least. The entryway was all terribly overpriced merchandise, will the walls were littered with photos of the team, tv screens showing game highlights over and over (I never get tired of watching John Terry choke in PKs in the Champions League Final ever), and player biographies. They had a really large variety of food. We settled on some yogurty drinks. I don't remember what they are called, but Jenna assured me they were Indian in origin, so naturally they must be good. Also, they had Wayne Rooney's name attached to them, so double win. We hung around for a bit, feeling awkward and a little weird about the very existence of such a restaurant. Ohhh, and the fact that we were the only ones in the restaurant didn't help either. Don't know how long the place will stick around if nobody's showing up so I gotta get Jamie (lifelong Liverpool fan) in there as soon as possible. It would be too much fun not to.

http://www.manutd-cafe.com/gallery5.php

There's the link to pics from the Korean restaurant. After our snack we left and headed to Myeong Dong to catch a viewing of "Sherlock Holmes". While it wasn't your typical Sherlock Holmes movie, I enjoyed it, as Robert Downey Jr. never fails to impress. Plus the beautiful bro-mance between Jude Law's Watson and Downey Jr's Holmes made me a little teary for the long lost days in the Mound house and the dorms before that. Rounds....sigh.

On Saturday evening, we headed out to the jazz club. We stopped off for some Vietnamese pho (spelling?) and soup first, where I classed up the joint by failing to deliver the spoon full of soup to my mouth on several occasions, making a sizable mess on myself and the table. Classy, as always. Once at the jazz club, we settled down for some wine and jazz. More like a bunch of wine. Over 2 bottles of wine between the two of us, we enjoyed some pretty solid jazz. The highlight was the odd coupling of a 50 something year old black guy on the piano accompanied by 3 20 something Koreans on the bass, drums and saxophone. The guy on piano was super charismatic and funny and hyper, flailing all over the place on the ivory like Stevie Wonder or something, while his Korean bandmates just stood or sat there, playing their instruments and that's it. They didn't even look like they enjoyed being there. I don't know if I'll find a better microcosm for my experiences in Korea. There's the foreigner, goofy, laid-back, relaxed and trying to have fun, and then there's the Koreans, stiff, almost robot-like, with ass cheeks clenched so tight they could make diamonds. At least the crew at the blues club seemed to enjoy playing. From there it was back to the Crazy Wine Bar. Unfortunately, no B-level celebrities this time. Just lots of darts. Embarrassingly, I did not win ever match. Hopefully nobody was watching.

The next weekend after that (aka last weekend), we headed to a house party in honor of the birthday of one of the girls at capoeira. On our way there, we decided it would be in good taste to bring our own booze. So we stopped at a nearby convenience store. They had 6 packs of Coronas, so naturally grabbed them. Especially when the price tag said 3,500 won (3 bucks). For six? Hellz yes. Cept that was 3,500 won...per bottle. 18 bucks later, we were on our way. Sure it hurt, but it definitely beats drinking the local piss water or paying 5 to 6 bucks for a Corona at a bar. Yeah, good beer doesn't come cheap here. Once at the house party, we attempted to mingle. I say attempted, as I really only talked to the few people I already knew from capoeira. But I was talking to people at all, so I consider it an improvement. Some time after, the group moved to nearby Itaewon for some dancing and more drinking. My advice to the audience: don't drink wine (before the party), then beer, then hard liquor. They don't mix well and makes Sunday a rather unpleasant day. At the club/bar, I was of course forced to dance. Thankfully, no one was hurt or died...this time. The venue changed as we found another more suitable dance floor for our large group. Here those in the group with some skill were able to show off their considerable moves while I watched from a safe distance. Some of the Koreans from capoeira even came too and showed off their moves. One of the fellows was too injured to participate in capoeira just hours ago, but he certainly wasn't too injured to keep from pulling off a 6 or 7 rotation head spin. Interesting. Noraebang room followed, which we quickly bounced from, as Miss Jenna really wanted some french fries. At 3:30 in the morning. Thankfully, bars understand the randomness of drunken hunger pangs, so we were able to get our greasy potato fix. Finally off to bed at 4:30. Ahhhhhh, sleep. Well, not before trying to watch a movie (not my suggestion) that lasted 10 minutes before people fell asleep (yeah, kinda figured that would happen). Sunday? Well, it was a Lazy Sunday, that's for sure.

Winter Camp: This only happens once a year?......darn.

It’s been a long, long time since I posted about anything pertaining to my life here in Korea and I figured now was as good a time as any, considering I’m stuck at school all week with nothing to do. Yep, no camps (thank god) or classes to teach, I just gotta warm the hell out of my seat. Now normally I’m really, really good at that, but this week my skill has been put to the test, as my office is rather chilly. How chilly? How does 3 degrees Celcius (38 Farenheit or so) grab ya? That was yesterday. Today we are up to 5 degrees (42 Farenheit), so I’m typing this in shorts and sandals cuz it’s so damn toasty. Sure my office has a big box heater thing, but it suddenly doesn’t work. They gave me a little electric heat fan (for those who don’t know, it looks like a small fan, cept on the inside it has little coils that heat up instead of fan blades), but those things suck. They only heat the air directly around then, rather than the entire room like the big box heater. And they don’t heat so much as burn and singe the areas closest to them. Currently my right leg feels like its hairs are being slowly burned off, while my left leg is, well, not warm. The situation is, in a word, shitty. I could go on and on about the lousy heating policies here in Korea (floor heating is crap by the way), but I won’t, for as lousy as my school situation is this week, they are letting me go home at noon, so all is forgiven.

Since it has been so long since I posted, I figured I should give a quick update of whats been going on. When last you saw (err, read) me, I was at the stupid workshops. Well those things took place on a Monday and Tuesday, with Tuesday being my last day of school till winter break. I used some of my vacation to free up Wednesday and Thursday to do, well nothing. Then Christmas was on that Friday, I left for Japan from Sunday through Saturday (Dec 27th to Jan 2nd) and started winter camps the next Monday (Jan 4th). Those lovely, lovely camps took three weeks (Jan 4th to Jan 22nd), and now I’m doing a whole lotta nothing this week. Which brings us back to the present.

Naturally, the majority of my time the last few weeks has been swallowed up by winter camps, so I’ll start there. Ohhhh, the memories. I believe I mentioned it in previous posts, but originally I got yanked around a bit about camp. First, I was gonna teach 2 weeks at a different school, then it was 3 weeks at my school, then they added in 1st and 2nd graders, who I’ve never worked with, and asked me to design camps for them.

Well, with all that behind me and a good week in Japan to relax, I was ready to do this teaching thing (don’t worry the very un-Wallin-like enthusiasm for work was dead and buried by the second day of camp). It just so happened that Korea decided to have its heaviest snowfall in 33 years on the same day, so getting to school was difficult, to put it mildly. I should have just walked, probably would have been quicker. Seoul got hit with quite a few inches of stuff, nothing too crazy for Wisconsin, but crazy, crazy, amounts for Korea. They never get this much. As a result, they were woefully unprepared. How unprepared? The roads weren’t back to normal, in my opinion, until Friday. 5 days later. And I’m not talking the back alleys and shit, I’m talking the major highway/expressway across southern Seoul that runs right next to my apartment. Most places it seemed like they did nothing, just having the cars drive over the snow until it was packed down and impossible to plow. As for snow shovels? I have yet to see one. Most people were clearing sidewalks and walkways with brooms. Freaking brooms. Yeah, that’s gonna move 4 inches of snow real good like. Jesus.

Having no idea the storm of the century was heading my way, I didn’t get up any earlier than usual, so I arrived to school late. Surprisingly, it was only 10 minutes late. Did I think I was gonna die along the way? Yeah, I did. Considering I look both ways, repeatedly, when crossing a street, a one way street, here in Korea (yeah, they are that bad and unpredictable), I was sure I was dead when I went across the crosswalks. But surprisingly, the Korean drivers, pretty damn lousy on a good day, weren’t really that bad in the snow. Good work folks.

Anyways, I walk into my first class of camp (the 1st and 2nd graders) and my co-teacher is there to help me. Cool. Didn’t think she would be there, but I could always use the help. Now, I had previously balked at making a completely new camp for the young kids cuz I just didn’t wanna make that much extra work for myself, so I recycled the easy stuff from the older kids. This was thrown out the window after I spent the first 10 minutes of class working the kids through “What’s your name?” and the answer “My name is ….”. Crap. New lesson plan on the fly. Had to make up some stuff, but we did okay. The other classes went pretty well too. The drama started once class was over, of course (maybe in some utopian/dream society, people can actually do their jobs free from the bullshit and drama, but that dream society is not Korea).

After class, I was immediately dragged into a meeting with the vice-principal to discuss some things. Firstly, my tardiness. Yes, class does start at 9:00am and my contract time says I need to be at school at 8:50am and I showed up at 9:10am. I get that. However, its….well, it’s a blizzard outside. A little bit of leniency should be allowed. Buses aren’t running at all and traffic isn’t moving. Kinda hard to travel by bus in that environment. Where it got really ridiculous was when she explained to me that I need to be at school before the 8:50am time required in my contract. Why? Well, “some of the parents are very busy and must bring their children to school early, but they can’t get into the classroom, so you need to be here then.” Excuse me, how is that any of my responsibility? 10 minutes before class starts, which is when I normally would arrive, is completely reasonable to ask of me, but anytime before that is completely unnecessary. I was told that at the latest, I should be at school at 8:50am. Naturally, as with any disagreement in the workplace with superiors here in Korea, I say absolutely nothing, nod in agreement, then just completely ignore whatever nonsense they just gave me. I’m gonna show up at 8:50am, whether the parents like it or not. It’s there problem to modify their schedules to accommodate. Plus, most of these kids live a stone’s throw away in massive apartment buildings, literally 2 minutes walk away. If these kids are incapable of walking this distance without holding their parents hand, that is also not my problem (the excessive babying of the children here is a whole other subject). To make this argument even more ridiculous, when I was able to get to school at 8:50am from Thursday onward (I badly underestimated Seoul’s ability to remove the snow, thus resulting in being late again on Tuesday and Wed…you can imagine that went over well), only one student was waiting at 8:50am. One student. Out of 13. And most of those 13 arrived 5 to 10 minutes late to class. Now, I understand that people may have modified their schedule by then, but it still doesn’t give their complaint much ground to stand on. Definitely doesn’t back up the amount of uproar and annoyed parents that the vice principal claimed there was. Perhaps she was just covering up her own complaints about me by transposing them on the kids…..

Her other problem this day (…yeah, there were several days of meetings and lectures) was about the material for the little kids. Obviously, it was too hard. I knew that, after working with them, that’s why I changed it. That had always been the plan, make some rough plan, then adjust for the kids. So naturally, I didn’t take to kindly to having to listen to her explain that the class was too hard and that I should teach this and teach this and teach that for a whole hour. Firstly, this woman knows nothing about actually teaching, much less teaching English, and secondly, I can’t get much actual planning and prepping done while sitting on a couch in her office listening to her lame suggestions. So ended Day 1. Stressed and frustrated with this woman, I went home.

Day 2 went well, at least from the teaching standpoint. The newly designed 1st and 2nd grader lesson plan went well (I made sure to include coloring and drawing), and the older kids weren't so bad. There was, however, another meeting with the vice-principal, not like I was surprised. Again, she stressed the need to arrive early (I rolled in at 9 today, as I wrongly assumed the buses would be running properly again) for the sake of the parents and kids, which I previously said turned out to be a load of crap. Today's lecture point du jour was that the material was too hard for the students. Apparently, after one day (yes, one day) some of the students complained that it was too hard, those students' parents complained to the vice-principal and here we are. Seriously, one day? I didn't know who was in my classes, other than their names, so my lessons were obviously not going to be perfectly suited to the students without actually meeting them in person. Also, some days will obviously be harder than others, as I'm no professional, so my lessons aren't perfectly designed for their levels. The students aren't all at the same levels, as the classes were separated by grade, so the material was hard to a few students with little to no English ability but was perfectly doable for the vast majority of the class. That sounds like a success to me. However, it was made very clear to me that I should be focusing the lesson on those low level kids, while boring the shit out of the high level kids. As you might expect, I zoned out and completely ignored this BS. In my experience with these kids, the low level children are usually the ones who won't do the work and don't give a shit, while the kids that do their work are of average or high ability. Whatever I give these low level folks, regardless of difficulty, they won't do it. No child left behind? Not so much. These low level kids need special, extra one-on-one attention to catch up that I simply can't offer, at the expense of everyone else. Sorry.

Day 3 was much the same. Classes went fine, followed by lecture from the vice-principal. If this shit was gonna continue every day, I wasn't gonna make it to the end of 3 weeks. With the 1st and 2nd grade class issues resolved, today's diatribe consisted entirely on the material being too hard for the older kids. The vice-principal pulled out another gem here. She claimed that one student had been so scared/upset with how hard the first day had been, that they just quit the camp and never came back. Pretty ridiculous to judge it on one day, but okay, some of these Korean kids are pretty damn coddled, so I'll buy it...at first. My curiosity got the better of me and I had to check the attendance sheets to see who it was that quit after the first day. The conclusion? Nobody. Sure I had some students who missed a day here or there, but then they'd be back the next day. What the hell was the vice-principal talking about here? My suspicion is that she had problems with my class material (why I have no idea, as she can't speak English at all, so what the hell does she know?) and in order to "save face" and speak in a round about way, she said the parents and kids complained, rather then saying she had a problem with the class. This is where our cultures differ. Where I'm from, that's called "BS" and "lying" and "deceitful", which are generally bad things. Here that same behavior, in this instance, is a culturally accepted mode of conflict resolution.

So I modified some stuff to ensure the kids had nothing to whine about. We had originally been watching the movie "UP" in small segments and answering simple questions, like "what is his name?, etc", but since that was too hard, I decided to simply teach some phrases from the movie, which the kids wouldn't really have to do anything for or think at all, outside of maybe listening to me (which most didn't), so it couldn't possibly be too hard. Heaven forbid they have to use the language and learn something. Wouldn't want that.

Day 3 also featured the longest argument, as I ended up leaving school a full hour after I'm supposed to due to more garbage. This time the vice-principal was bothered by the fact that I was teaching the same material to each of the three older student classes (I have 1 class of 1st/2nd, 2 of 3rd/4th, and 1 5th/6th). I believe some "student" (yeah, doubt that) complained that the B-2 class (which contains the higher level 3rd and 4th graders) was learning the same thing as the B-1 kids (who are the lower level 3rd and 4th graders). I guess they were offended that the smart kids were learning the same stuff as the dumb kids and because they are smart they deserve better things than the dummies. Frankly, I thought the camps were supposed to fun and entertaining, so I went out and tried to find 3 weeks worth of fun stuff. I tried to explain to the vice-principal that I wasn't making 9 (well 10, if you count the little kids) fucking weeks of different material, but obviously I was talking to a brick wall. God, I hate brick walls. She even called up the co-teacher and we spent 40 minutes talking, me rubbing my forehead due to the massive headache I know had and saying things like, "I don't understand what the hell you want me to do...please tell me what this woman wants" while she said things like, "Can't you just change it a little?" Not the co-teacher's fault here, just the impossible to reason with vice-principal.

The woman's last suggestion/complaint dealt with teaching "Key Words" and "Key Phrases", which are important words or useful sentences in each chapter in our school textbooks. In her mind, all English classes should be taught through extended repetition of a few important words or sentences. Wait, I thought camps were supposed to be fun? Cuz this stuff would be the exact opposite of that. Naturally, I was confused. I tried to explain that I wouldn't be teaching anything, simply allowing the kids to use the material they already have. My message didn't make it through the brick wall, obviously. She also wanted different key phrases for each of the older kids. At this point I just gave up, made up some shit, typed it up, turned it in and went home. alsdfjsaldkfjslkdfhslakdhflsjf. Yeah.

Now, for some of my favorite quotes from the vice-principal over the camps (or at least as close to accurate as I could remember).

As to why the students couldn't bring their own materials (scissors, colored pencils, paper, etc) and why we needed to supply the stuff: "It's cold out so the students can't bring their colored pencils and materials." Ummmm........what? How does the temperature have anything to do with the kids bringing a backpack with their things. I don't even understand a little. Not one bit.

Advice on how to better control my classes, as they were running amok and not listening to me: "You must speak louder. If you talk loud, the students will speak louder and pay attention." ahahahahahah. What a joke. Let me get this straight...if I speak louder (aka yell) at my students, they will raise the volume of their responses, rather than whisper and they will inherently listen to me. Not sure I agree, as I tried this tactic last year when I would lose my patience with the kids and they would stop talking for a second, be shocked at Eric Teacher being loud, then resume talking. So if I can teach my entire lesson in that one second they shut up, then I'm golden.

As for improving my general teaching methodology: "You must be funnier and more exciting and more expressive". Right, how could I forget? I'm not an English teacher, I'm an English speaking clown that gives out candy and makes balloon animals. How silly of me to forget.

"I want to stab myself in the face." Actually, that one isn't a quote from the vice-principal. That one's from me and I wrote it on the paper when I was trying to remember the quotes for future reference. I think it accurately expresses my frustration at the time.

As for the kids? Well, in comparison they weren't so bad. They were pretty good for the 1st week, but they went downhill from there. I originally assumed that, this being a optional English camp that students had to go out of their way to sign up for, the students would all want to be there and would be well behaved. Hahahahah. Man, am I dumb. Most of the kids were really good and did their work and wanted to be there and I catered to them obviously. Then there were the few students who were forced into the class by parents, clearly didn't wanna be there, and refused to do anything. I went out of my way to involve them, going so far as to doing their work for them at some points, to no avail. So eventually I stopped bothering if they weren't gonna give a shit. I would ask them to join a group for the activity or give them the worksheet or paper everyone else was working on, they would flat out refuse, so I would move on and help the other students, while they went back to staring at the wall or playing Game Boy or reading a book. Fine by me. Hope you guys can learn English really well through osmosis.

Those kids weren't so bad, as they quietly did nothing, but didn't disrupt class. The disrupters....ugggg. A small group of boys in one class really never wanted to do any of my activities, but they did want to play with the lawn darts and plastic bowling ball set at the back of class, so whenever I turned my back, they were setting up and letting loose. And they weren't even any good at bowling.

All those students pale in comparison to one kid. This kid sticks in my mind because he was an absolute asshole that caused difficulty everyday. Originally he just didn't do his work and sat at the back of the class doing nothing. That evolved into talking to other students and distracting them from working. One day in particular, he got into a little argument with another boy and then put him in a headlock, which continued despite the other boy pleading him to let go, me standing overhead and then me telling him to knock it off. Now all this distracting class and talking wouldn't be so bad if he actually stopped when I asked him too. He didn't, he just ignored me. I had to confiscate candy from him one day and he pulled out a whiny temper tantrum the next day when I told him I threw away his one piece of gum that he wanted back. Everything about this kid just bugged me. The last week he starting claiming that he had academy classes to go to and that he had to leave class 10-15 minutes early. Now, my class was only 40 minutes long and these kids were already showing up 10 minutes late anyways. Now, I don't mind kids being late, cuz I'm getting paid whether they show up or not and not teaching is always easier than teaching. They are only wasting their own time. However, the idea of showing up for only 10 min annoyed me, so naturally I didn't let him go early. Over time I got tired of his whining, plus he was probably gonna leave on his own anyways, since he didn't listen to me, so I let him go. The other students told me he just went to a PC room, which also pissed me off, as he was lying to my face. By the last 3 days, he was arriving to class, signing in, then leaving for the PC room. Not surprisingly, those were the 3 best days of the camp for that class. I really wanna meet his parents so I can slap them for raising such a selfish, self indulgent asshat. I already know who's gonna get asked all the questions during the regular semester by Eric Teacher. That's right clown, payback is a bitch. I know holding a grudge is wrong, but I have to punish this kid in some way for his awful behavior, since I have no other method or recourse.

Man, there was a lot of grouching in this post, but those were the worst 3 weeks I've had at this job. Period. No debate. Tomorrow I'll discuss the stuff I did outside of class to keep me from going insane.

The Reunion, Part 2

On Wednesday, since we had to through there anyway to meet Maria at the airport, we decided to spend the day wandering around Nagoya. Maria’s flight didn’t get in until the early evening (8pm, I believe), so we had a far chunk of time to spend in Nagoya, once we actually hauled our lazy and cold asses out of bed, into the shower (at the same time…to save time, obviously), and into more or less clean clothing. Once in Nagoya, we met up with Collin’s friend from the Japanese dept in Madison, who also works as a translator through JET, and her JET teacher friend. If you don’t know, JET is the name for the Japanese program of English native speaker teachers. Anyways, we ate lunch at one of the fancy restaurants about Nagoya Station, before heading to Osu Arcade for some people watching (what, you think Collin and I would actually go to a shopping district to shop? hahahahaha). We walked around for a while, just taking in the all the flashing lights and the sidesplittingly hilarious looking people. Personally, I’m glad so, so many people in this world have either no shame or no mirror at home to see how they look, cuz my life would be a lot less humorous without them. We naturally stopped to gawk at all the Final Fantasy XIII posters and videos. The game had only launched a few weeks back, so Japan was still in a state of welcome hysteria. We played a bit of it later in the vacation, and it was tasty. I’m still not sure what to think of the black character in the game, Sazh. He has a chocobo (bird from Final Fantasy universe) that lives in his fro, and I’m not sure if I should be offended for the really stereotypical portrayal of a black character or if I should completely in awe of Japan’s “We don’t give a shit, we’re gonna be as racist as we like” attitude towards issues of political correctness. I mean, they really don’t give a shit over here.

Having tired of the arcade and still having way too much time to burn before going to pick up Maria, we stumbled upon a used videogame store, basically heaven on earth. But because there must be balance in the universe, hell on earth wasn’t too far away. That my friends, was occupied by an anime girl art gallery/studio. Yes, that’s right an entire gallery devoted to the scantily dressed female characters from animes and their realistically impossible breasts. Yuck. I can only imagine the seedy and pathetic characters you would find inside. I imagine that they have to refill the toilet paper quite a bit in there, and its not cuz the patrons have to poop a lot. Also, as we had females in our party, I couldn’t, in good conscience, ask them to walk anywhere near that place and subject them to quite a bit of unhealthy male attention. (shudder)

The used videogame store was wonderful, though. Having spent the last 1.5 years in a country that plays almost zero console games, spending their time solely playing computer games, I was obviously nostalgic for the days when I could wander into Gamestop or something and dig around for some hidden gem in the bargain rack. This place was even better, as they had hardware and systems from every generation. Super Famicom (the precursor to the Nintendo)? Check. Crazy bongo controller for the Donkey Kong rhythm game on the Gamecube? Check. Sega Saturn? Check. Like I said, they had everything. They even had sections just for the best games. Final Fantasy, Mario, Pokemon, and Kirby all had their own sections. Wonderful.

After that massive geek-gasm and after the ladies waited patiently while Collin and I changed our pants, we moved back to Nagoya station for a dessert buffet. Yes, I know that that’s a horrible idea, but we did it anyway. Don’t ever do what we did. We irreparably damaged our bodies and our health so that you don’t have to. However, the desserts were damn good before we we got too sick to taste anything. Having cut down severely on my sweets consumption since I arrived in Korea (K-candy and desserts suck, end of story), I wasn’t able to hang with everyone else. I had to settle for one plate with 7 or 8 pieces of cakes/tarts/deliciousness before moving on to pasta and fruits, which cancels out all the sugar and sweets right? The rest of the party ate considerably more than me, for which I received considerable flack because I’m a guy and I was getting out eaten by girls half my height. Ouch. But I was content in knowing that I would be the only one not vomiting when the whole affair played out. There was a happy ending to this story, as nobody ended up throwing up. Hooray!!

We next headed back to the Station to take in all the pretty lights and spectacle set up for Christmas. They had a massive light show on the side of the building that ran for several minutes before repeating. Pretty damn cool, but I have problems justifying why that even exists. Part of my brain can’t help screaming, “WHAT A WASTE OF ELECTRICITY? WHY, WHY, WHY IS THAT NECESSARY?”. But the other part of my brain tells it to shut up and enjoy the pretty lights.

After the lights spectacle it was finally time to head to the airport and pick up a certain Ms. Sundaram. She was, well to put it mildly, excited to see us. There was lots of hugging and maybe a few tears. Were Collin and I able to feel (black, black pieces of coal where hearts should be seem to prevent “normal” emotional depth), we would have surely been giddy and excited to see her too. We soon moved to the train for the homeward journey, and Maria continued being her goofy, awkward self. But that’s why we love her. Back at the apt, we watched more TV, chatted about random stuff, made fun of each other, and just generally enjoyed the hell out of each other’s company. It was good to have the gang back together. If only we could have had Big Sexy and Rounds there too.

Speaking of Rounds, we got to talk to his crazy ass the very next day, Thursday. And he did not disappoint. In just over 2 hours he managed to make us completely uncomfortable by proposing we three “get busy” (still not sure if he was being serious…you never really know with that kid), turn Collin eating Pringles into some filthy, explicit act of unbridled sexual energy (I kid you not, he asked for Collin to eat some Pringles in front of the camera, then asked him to eat them slower while he…ummm…made some strange noises on the other end………I’m just glad we could only see him from the waist up in the camera), and said some of his trademark nonsense that makes your head explode with the sheer amount of its absurdity/stupidity. So, classic Rounds. I’m already looking forward to visiting him in his inevitably awesome apt down in Chicago come next year.

As for the rest of the day….well, there wasn’t much happening. It was cold and snowy outside, so leaving the apt? Ha, fat chance. Cue more “Californication” and “Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia”.

But, wait, its New Year’s Eve! You had to have done something, right? Well, we nearly didn’t. The plans originally were for Collin’s supervisor to kindly drive us to a local shrine to get blessings on the new year, ring the bell for the new year, etc, but with all the snow that was falling throughout the day, we didn’t figure the co-worker would be willing to drive us and frankly, we didn’t want her to risk herself on our behalf. Plus, we hadn’t really heard from her much all day, so we just kinda assumed the whole thing was off. Which was fine by us. So we went to the grocery store, grabbed some sake and some bottles of Japanese beer (so, so so much better than Korean sHITE), and headed back to the homestead. When midnight rolled around, the energy was palpable. We all raised our arms above our heads (though maybe not, cuz its so much warmer bundled up in the blankets) and each of us gave out an enthusiastic (enthusiastic for a 117 year old person, that is) “woo…”. Energy. Palpable. Not quite as action packed as last year’s heavy drinking and dancing, but I don’t think anyone minded too much.

However, 12:15 rolled around and we got a call from Collin’s supervisor letting us know she was on the way, despite the blizzard. Bless her heart. She showed up in her tiny little Honda or Toyota (the exact opposite of what you wanna be driving through a blizzard with) and we were off. And boy was the going slow. Blowing snow to obscure visibility, covered roads that made lane markers invisible and Asia’s typically small roads made for precarious going at times. At least we were able to keep the conversation light hearted. Collin explained to her the commonplace nature of weather like this in Wisconsin and that people commonly pull all kinds of stunts in the snow (donuts, fishtailing, etc) and she laughed and called us all “idiots” in Japanese. That’s one way to look at it. Frankly, I prefer “badass”, but it’s a matter of perspective.

Finally, we arrived at our destination. Turns out she really wanted us to ring a big bell to symbolize the coming of the new year, so she took us to a tiny little shrine just down the street from her mother’s house, as there would be no crowds or lines. Very, very sweet of her. This little country block of houses was deathly quiet. I loved it. Naturally. We stopped at her mom’s house so she could give us all umbrellas to help with the falling snow. This must be an Asian thing, cuz I’ve never seen anyone in the States use an umbrella to ward off falling snow. Hmmm. Anyways, we walked the 5 minutes to the shrine, knocked on the caretaker’s door to ask for permission, got the go ahead, then rang the hell out of that bell. Well, not me I guess. I went last and my ring was followed by several “Ummm, Wallin….you know you can ring it harder than that right?” What can I say? I’ve got a very gentle touch. I believe the poet laureates of our time, Tenacious D, would agree with me. Sometimes you just gotta bang it/her softly.

Our business with the bell finished, we took a quick tour inside the shrine and were awarded a bag of snacks and treats by the elder caretaker. And they were all very tasty, so thank you again little lady. Back at the co-worker’s mother’s house, the ladies desperately tried to find boots to fit my feet, so my feet wouldn’t get wet and cold in the snow, but shockingly, they couldn’t find any to fit my feet. Not like I’m not used to it. Frankly, I think I understand why Godzilla was always wanting to raze Tokyo: they never had anything in his fucking size. Trust me, its gets mighty irritating over time. That and hitting one’s head on the ceiling of buses or doorways or showers whose faucets come up to one’s armpits. Great for keeping one’s underarms clean, but terrible for keeping one’s head clean. I guess short people deserve some manner of revenge for being inferior in every other way to tall people. God, it would suck to be short. I don’t know how you people do it.

At the big, official shrine, we were met with considerable crowds, even at 2:30 in the morning, well back midnight. We didn't stick around long, as it was still blowing snow and not so warm. We hustled up to the shrine, only to find it under construction, so we had to make our prayers/wishes at a make-shift shrine. Toss in a couple of Yen, bow, clap, make your wish (to get laid alot in 2010....what? what else is there to wish about? world peace? please) and move on. After the prayer, we moved to the stand where we could buy good luck charms for the coming year. Collin, being the sharp fellow he is, bought me the "good luck in love" charm, cuz being me, I could obviously use all the help I could get. Now, I'm not a huge believer in good luck charms and superstition, but if I have any success in 2010 (and a big if that is), it will have to be attributed to the charm, as it couldn't possibly be something I was doing.

Official festivities over, we headed back home, but we suddenly weren't tired. Even though we had been passing out way back at 10pm, we now had no desire to sleep at 3 in the morning. So we watched movies until we passed out at 6am.

As you might expect, Friday January 1st didn't amount to much, as we sleep most of the day away. We finally were awake, dressed, showered and fed by 3 or 4pm, just in time to watch the start of the Sasuke (aka Ninja Warrior) tournament at 5:30pm or so. Sasuke is an insane obstacle course/competition that is hosted every 6 months and features 100 contestants. The obstacles and tasks are insane, without the time limit that some stages have. To give you an idea how hard this thing is, the American Olympic gymnast brothers, Morgan and Paul Hamm, athletes of the highest order that can do incredible things due to their training, failed in the very lst stage and the 2nd stage, respectively. The course has 4 stages. Normally, out of the 100 folks only 5 or 6 finish the first stage. Of course, most of the competitors are just average joes there for fun, but still. Anyways, the tourney featured some fan favorites failing out way, way too early, but we did witness a winner, only the third time that's happened in 20 tourneys. The winner? A shoe salesman, who appears to spend his entire life practicing and training for this course on homemade replicas of the obstacles in his house. Yeah, they are kind of intense. By the time the tourney ended, some 5 hours after it started, it was basically time for bed, as I had to get up at a respectable time the next day, to make my plane back home.

Saturday, the 2nd, was my last day in Japan, so the crew got up at a respectable hour, then sat around relaxing and trying to savor it as much as possible, as it would probably be a long, long time before the gang is fully reunited once again (although to be honest, we weren't completely whole without rounds and JBH, just to name a few). However, time marches on and we soon had to start heading towards the airport. We decided to stop in Nagoya for food, then onto the airport. Except all the restaurants were hella crowded on a Saturday afternoon, so we kept moving on to the airport for food. At the airport we ordered food at some generic restaurant, then listened to Collin, in all his fatigue and hunger, drop the instant classic, "for shiggles". We found it way, way too hilarious, but I'm just glad there weren't any black folks around, especially not Snoop Dogg, as they would have come over and slapped Collin for being so damn white and lame. Meals consumed, it was time for goodbyes. Again, some people (those with hearts) got choked up, while those with coals in their chests didn't. It didn't really hit me until after I was through the security check and couldn't see them anymore. Before then, I could still see Collin and Maria, so what's the big deal? Why get choked up? They are just right there. I can walk over and talk to them more right now if I wanted to, no big deal. Once they were out of sight, I finally grasped the fact that I wouldn't be seeing these people for some considerable time. Sure, I can talk to them every day on Skype, but a computer screen image is not that person standing next to you, feeling inadequate next to you cuz you are so tall and awesome and beautiful. That realization in hand, it was a little difficult to concentrate on my gameboy and books. And on that day, the Grinch's heart suddenly grew 3 sizes.

Pictures: See Facebook album "Collin, Maria, and Wallin sit around Japan"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wynnHwhlQSk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Yw8BNEOC3s

The Reunion

Well, I've put this off long enough, but time has finally come for me to buckle down and write about the Japan reunion between 3 of the greatest minds of this generation. Well, more like the greatest mind of this generation meeting with 2 other folks of little importance, but sometimes it gets lonely at the top, so I give a bit of undeserved credit to the other two. I doubt they'll mind.

Way, way back, ohhhhhhhhhh so long ago, in December I began my trip to Japan. My flight left from Incheon airport at 9:15am on a Sunday morning, so I had to get up bright and early to make it there. Now, I'm no 3 or so hours away like I was last year, but it still takes some time to get there. Getting to the airport was the easy part, everything was were it got sticky. Get up, eat, shower, walk ten minutes to the airport bus stop, wait for 5 minutes, get on bus, ride bus for an hour to the airport. Done. Everything according to plan (so far). So now I'm at the airport with 1 hour and 45 minutes to check in, buy my reentry stamp, go through security and find my plane. Plenty of time, given how quickly I normally get through Incheon. Or so I thought until I got to the airline check in counter and saw the line. To this day I still don't understand why it was so busy on a Sunday morning. Yeah, Christmas was on Friday, but Koreans all have to go back to work on Monday and they don't have any days off till New Years, which was Friday. I started to get nervous as I watched the line move ever so slowly. Tick, tick tick. 40 or so minutes had slipped by when I was informed that they were taking the last call for my plane. I was only halfway through the line, so luckily I was able to jump to the front and get through. Now with around 45min-1hr before my plane takes off, I've still got to exchange money and buy my reentry permit. Screw exchanging money in Korea, I'll just have to deal with being unable to close my wallet cuz its so full of 10,000 won bills (still the highest bill in circulation most of the time). How much did I take out? 700,000 won. Yeah, that's gonna be a fat wallet. Anyways, from there I moved to the immigration office and naturally there were lots of people. 45 or so ahead of me in line, to be exact. Now I'm sweating, cuz I know just how slow these things can be. Eventually I got through and was off to the security check. Time till flight leaves: 25 minutes. Yeah, cutting it close. While in line, to try and ease my fear and mounting paranoia about missing the flight, I texted Jenna a couple of times, as she was also somewhere in the airport on her way to Vietnam. Course, I doubt they alleviated my fears, as most of the messages consisted of "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH, only 20 minutes till take-off! What do I do?"

However, I did get through in time. Just in time for last call in fact (15 minutes to spare before take-off). Sure, I ran all the way through the terminals, but the terror on the unsuspecting Koreans faces as a giant (don't forget beautiful) white man came bounding towards them was so worth it. The plane ride was a quick hour and 30 minutes, but I wasn't done with the drama just yet. This time it was during the immigration paperwork stuff. Employee: "Where is your hotel?" Me: "I don't have a hotel, I'm staying with a friend." Employee: "What is his address?" Me: "I don't know." E: "...Well, what is his phone number?" M: "I don't know" E: "...... (cue massive panic attack)" As I clearly appeared to be a slimy foreigner of ill repute, having no way to track me, via address or phone number, was a major problem. Several other people were called into the mess and they also promptly had a panic attack. Eventually one women ran away with my immigration forms, not to return for another 20 minutes. Presumably she was furiously looking for a Collin Stecker who lives in Ogaki. Eventually, they let me through. I didn't pay enough attention to see if I had a government agent tailing me the entire time I was in Japan, but there probably was one. Frankly, I feel kinda honored. By the time I actually got to the baggage claim area, the machine had been turned off, probably for some time, and my bag was sitting on the ground next to it. Good thing I wasn't in any rush.

Since I wasn't meeting Collin for several hours, I got to Nagoya station and waited for him. Good thing too cuz it took me about an hour just to find where we were going to meet. Allow me to explain. My directions were to find the Sakuradori side of the station and the gaudy gold clock housed within. When I arrived at the station, I was side A (I don't remember the name, sorry). Naturally, as train stations are roughly square shape with 4 sides, and two of those "sides" are occupied by the track, then naturally the other side opposite side A would be the Sakuradori side, or so I assumed. Boy was I surprised to find out that the side opposite Side A was some new Side B instead of the Sakuradori side. Now I'm just confused, angry, and tired. How to solve this pickle? The only way I knew how: walk around the entire outside premises of the station until I found the proper area. As the station is massive, that took near a half an hour. Where was the elusive Sakuradori side? Right next to side A, maybe 100 feet to the right. I'd explain to them that 100 feet does not a different side make, but I already know they don't speak the English so good.

That done it was time for lunch and some reading to pass the time. As a brief aside on the book I was engaged in at the time, Holden Caulfield is an immense ass hat and I hate him more than any other literature character ever, save maybe Edna from "The Awakening". God that felt good to say. Yes, I was reading "Catcher in the Rye" for the first time then and I was tempted to put down the book in anger over his general asshattery EVERY SINGLE PAGE. That's all that needs to be said on that. Early in the afternoon I met up with Collin and we decided just to head back to his apartment as I had already expended considerable energy being worried, stressed, and angry. Back at Collin's we did a whole lotta nothing (which was the major theme of the trip, really). We ate a bunch. I read some more of "Catcher in the Rye" before I got too angry and put it down. We watched alot of episodes of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" and "Californication", which are guaranteed good times. We went to bed. Not a bad day really. It turned out pretty good.

That theme of nothing held true especially for Monday, as Collin had to work, so I was left alone in the house. What did I do? I got up (late), showered, ate and played Pokemon on my DS. Bam, its now 4:20pm. Why did I just sit on my ass you say? Several reasons. 1. I've already been to Ogaki, so there's little for me to see and do if I wander out exploring. Plus its December, so its not that cozy to be outside for long periods of time. 2. Ogaki isn't close enough to some place worth visiting that I could get to and back by 4:20pm. 3. Collin's apartment is unheated. Yes, that's right, it has no central heating. What does that have to do with anything? Well, somewhere between wearing several layers at all times, constantly staying within arms distance of the space heaters, and sleeping with my coat, hat and gloves on, I slipped into a mini hibernation of sorts. Like a bear during winter, I had little desire or drive to expend energy on anything besides eating and keeping myself alive till spring. Once Collin returned home, I was roused from lethargy by the prospect of wonderful Indian food at Masala Master. I can now say that outside of maybe Maharani in Madison, this small restaurant in a small dink Japanese town is the best Indian food I've ever had. After dinner we enjoyed several more episodes of "Californication". End result: another good day.

Tuesday finally saw me leave the not-so toast confines of Collin’s apartment, as we, along with one of his English teacher friends, headed off to Kyoto to visit some temples. We boarded a train (gotta love the convenience of being able to take a train to anywhere) and were standing in Kyoto station inside of 2 hours. Nice and prompt. Too bad the inter city bus we caught from Kyoto station was anything but. I kid you not, the bus would stop every 50 feet or so. There must have been damn near 50 stops by the time we got off over an hour later. I’m not entirely convinced it would have been slower just to walk the damn thing. At least we met some other friendly travelers from Canada on the bus. We all exchanged many a laugh about how much nicer winter in Japan is as opposed to home (it was 40 something degrees with no snow on Dec 29th) and then moved on our way.

The first stop was the Kiyomizudera Temple. The temple offered a lovely view overlooking Kyoto. Not too much to say about it that couldn’t be said about a million times better by the pictures I took there. The temple was gorgeous. The surrounding woods and mountains were awesome. There were a million people there from every corner of the globe. I couldn’t help finding the Koreans in the crowd and then not so subtly pointing them out to the rest of the group (and I may have literally pointed at them). How do you like it Koreans? Kind of annoying when people spend all of their energy staring at you or observing you like you were some sort of animal. After wandering around for a bit and watching some people nearly fall into the pond while trying to catch water from a little waterfall (see pic 33), we headed back down the hill. But not before we tasted some delicious snacks. Green tea ice cream and green tea cream puffs? Yes please. Don’t bother asking for a Blue Moon ice cream or anything fancy like that. Choices were vanilla, green tea, black sesame, and maybe chocolate. I was certainly shocked to see cream puffs in Japan, but that didn’t keep me from eating it. The cream puffs were messy and spilled all over, so naturally considerable innuendos pertaining to male ejaculate were made. We are only human.

From there, we moved on the Ryozen Kwanon, a monument to the fallen soldiers of WWII. Unlike the temple, this place was empty. Not sure why, really. How does a huge 40 ft tall or so Buddhist deity, massive 20 feet long footprints of the Buddha (now I understand the inferiority complex everybody else gets around me and my shoes…..sorry), and several Buddhist alters not draw in the crowds? Maybe I thought it was so cool cuz it was completely empty and thus quiet and peaceful. Hmmm.
From there, we moved across the parking lot to Kirodiji Temple to take in a lot of pretty. Pretty ponds, pretty traditional houses, pretty gardens, pretty rock gardens (that looked suspiciously like breasts), and pretty trees. Again, see the pics, as my words can’t really do it justice. My favorite part: the trees. Especially the bamboo. Man, I really like trees. Must be because I see all of….zero here in Seoul. Also because lots of trees usually means not lots of people, which is never a bad thing.

The highlight of the entire day, however, came unexpectedly at lunch. We sat down at some random ma and pa restaurant for some food when we noticed the husband reading a newspaper near us. At least that’s what we thought it was till he turned the page and there was a half page picture of a topless woman. Understandably we were taken aback. Here he was, wife 5 feet away cooking the meals, customers 2 feet away, making no attempt to hide or conceal his porn. Good sirs and madams, we have found my hero. How did the wife take the whole thing? Well, when she finished the meals she sat down right next to him and casually moved the porn he had set down, not even breaking her rhythm a little because of the explicit material. Let that be a lesson to everyone out there….porn brings people together, perhaps literally.

Ready to do some heavy thinking as to what exactly we just witnessed in the restaurant, we headed towards the Philosopher’s Path, a famous pathway that leads between several notable temples where presumably the monks spent their days wandering and thinking up great things. Nice quiet area where we discussed how cool it would be to live in that neighborhood on a FREAKIN’ UNESCO World Heritage Site. Also there were lots of cats, which was wonderful, and they didn’t run away if you tried to come near them and pet them, unlike in Korea (they aren’t so good with animals here….).

Leaving the Path we were discussing the inherent goodness of Wisconsin and Wisconsin cheese products, apparently quite loudly, when several white folk walking ahead of us turned around and said, “Did you guys say ‘Wisconsin cheese? Cuz we’re from Wis-can-sin too”. Turns out the guy was from Appleton and his girlfriend, who was visiting, was from Milwaukee. We chatted for a bit on our way back to the station while crammed into the city bus (well, we weren’t crammed in as nobody wanted to get within 10 feet out of fear of catching Anglo-Saxon-it is). In the interest of being friendly and polite, I neglected to mention I hated the guy’s guts for being from THE shithole on Earth that is Appleton. At least he wasn’t from Fond Du Lac. That would have been pretty terrible. Once back at Kyoto Station, we grabbed some ramen and tried not to cringe every time the waitress spoke (her voice was so loud and high pitched and squealy that I blacked out every time she spoke). Finally, we wandered around in amazement at the crazy ass architecture of the mall/train station. Seriously, it is a testament to the architect’s creativity that I can’t actually, in words, explain what the building looked like. It was cool (see pics).

Thus ends part 1. I could have continued the whole thing in one, but for your sake, I’ll break it up into 2 parts.

Pictures: see Facebook Photo album “Collin, Maria and Wallin….um…sit around in Japan”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO2Jn4WA-Q4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTXgDkWf0DI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93G304R53fM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VltUDJAypgo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VltUDJAypgo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8Wa_F8EgOM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAlp-zzOzSY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI-8TTW8KXk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=estGGt7Y2aQ

More "Informative" Workshops.....(sigh)

Well, not much going on at present, so I figure most of this post will be focused on the absurd workshops I went through the last two days. School is, as I write this, officially over for the semester. The last few weeks, since I posted last, have been mostly doing evaluations of the students in order to help the co-teacher grade and assess the student's levels, so nothing too crazy. Honestly, I could have given the grades without even administering the speaking tests. The students that participate regularly in class and talk to me a bunch all got A's and B's, while the students that never talk or only talk in Korean to me (and there are quite a few) got C's or D's. Surprise, surprise.

Most of the time at work the last few weeks has been spent working on my winter camps, which until two or 3 days ago, I had only a very vague understanding of who I would be teaching. You know, stuff thats normally very crucial, like how many students I'll be teaching at a time and what their ages/abilities are. The details have been changing almost daily. I feel terrible for the co-teacher cuz she's the one having to deal with all the 180s and then relaying it to me. For example, originally (about a month or so ago) our school wasn't going to have camps, so I was gonna get loaned out to another school. Then my school decided they wanted camps, and for 3 weeks, instead of the 2 weeks I would have done at another school. Fine. Then I was told that they would be having the classes seperated by levels. I was under the impression that this meant that all the grades would be mixed, which would cause problems as a high level 3rd grader isn't anywhere near a high 6th grader. I was also told that my classes would be nice and cozy, around 15 students a class. This I could get used to. It would put us around 60 students (15 for each of the 4 classes). Cept when the sign up sheets came back it was obvious that we had 90 students asking for camp. My co-teach fought hard to keep it at 60 students, but the vice principal, knowing so much about teaching....anything (I'm being very, very sarcastic), decided that all 90 students should get a camp. Now, 15 students a class would be wonderful, but 25 or so still is pretty damn good, so no complaints here, just wish I could get more individual time with each student. Just the tug of war nature of the whole thing that annoys me.

Well the back and forth continued, as 3 days ago, I finally learned that the classes were broken up by level, sort of. The low level class would consist of 1st and 2nd graders, the middle 3rd and 4th and so on. This brings other difficulties into play, as my high level classes, who I presumed would be high level students, are simply the oldest students. I have no idea whether these are the students that could hold a normal conversation with me in English or if they are the ones that can't write their name in English. Also, as you might have realized, I'm teaching 1st and 2nd graders.....who I've never taught before, so I have no idea what they know, if anything. This as you can imagine, makes it hard to make a decent winter camp. I just chose some activities that I think would be doable and enjoyable for the vast majority of the students, and hope they work. That's about all I can do.

My annoyance came to a head last week Friday, as I was working on finalizing my camp lesson plans that I needed to have turned in yesterday. Anyways, the vice princ. wanders in and starts chatting with the co-teach and I find out that, because there were so many 1st and 2nd graders that wanted camp, they had to break them up into individual single week groups. So instead of teaching the same kids for 3 weeks, like I do with the other kids, I teach each group for one week. The vice principal was also worried that the material would be too hard for them, so I have to make a new lesson plan just for them. I was told that it needs to be fun, with coloring, games, candy and other fun stuff. Being annoyed with the additional lesson planning I had to do at the last minute, I told the vice principal to her face, "So you want me to be a babysitter then?". Probably good she can't speak English. There was no way I was gonna come up with a 4th week of all new material (coming up with 3 weeks was hard enough), so I just simplified and dumbed down some of the other camp activities I had planned for the older kids.

The worst, however, was when she asked to inspect my lesson plans for the camps. Upon looking over the plans, she uttered, "Where is the title and key sentences?" THE FUCK ARE KEY SENTENCES?????? Yes, apparently my lesson plans were substandard and incomplete without a title for each class and several key sentences that I would teach the students. However, I was planning on having the students actually use the language, rather than having them recite several sentences multiple times, but hell, what do I know? I humored her by adding key sentences to my lesson plans, regardless of whether I have any intention of teaching them (I don't).

Now we come to meat of this post. The mandatory enrichment workshops, or whatever they call them. Now regardless of whether these workshops were going to be good or not, they got off on the wrong foot with most of the teachers, as they scheduled them for the last two days of semester, where the schools usually do some fun stuff/have parties/etc and instead placed us in stuffy auditoriums, listening to boring speeches about stuff. Strike 1. Then we found out that the first day of workshops last from 1pm - 9pm at night. Yeah, as if workshops weren't enough fun, they planned to have it run into our non-working time. No word as to whether we get overtime for it. Probably not. Now, the workshop was nice and close to my school, which was a plus, so after riding the subway for 2 stops, I was there. Having survived several workshops in the past, I came prepared with books, korean homework and my gameboy, should the speakers ramble on about nothing for multiple hours like I knew they would. Imagine my surprise and disappointment when I find out that this workshop only has about 70 teachers and we would be broken up into groups of 10 for small group workshops. Booooooooooooooooooooooooo. I was really looking forward to some Phoenix Wright or Pokemon Diamond. Now, we had been given very little info on what was actually going on at this here workshop, basically just when and where to meet. Turns out the instructors had been given even less info on what to do. They were the native English speaker teachers at the university and they seemed to be just as thrilled about the whole workshop as us. According to one of the teachers, they were originally told that we would all be high school teachers (which none of us were) and that we were brand new to Korea (also not true).

Given that information (that we were high school teachers), then maybe the fact that the presentations were supposed to be on such topics as teaching presentations, reading, and writing would make more sense. As we are elementary teachers, those particular topics are completely useless, as we don't start teaching reading and writing at all until 4th grade and even then its merely a few words here and there. You can imagine the absolute absurdity of teaching 7 or 8 year olds how to do presentations. Given the instructors had no idea what exactly there were supposed to be teaching and the stupidity of the assigned subjects, most of our workshops turned into conversations pertaining to everything and anything Korea. Funny stories, frustrations with schools/coteachers, questions about Korea, etc. These candid conversations are always the best aspect and sometimes the only positive one at these kinda workshops, as its always good to know that you aren't the only one who thinks the stuff that goes on at your school is absolutely bat-shit insane. Strength in numbers, I guess.

After 4 hours of this stuff, we were treated to dinner, which was actually damn good. Actually, the candid conversations and the food are the sole positives, usually. Course, they didn't have to check attendance at dinner. I mean, it was after our workhours, so they can't really hold us after. Plus, dinner and the following traditional Korean performing arts (shudder) performance weren't even work-related, so how could your school be angry for skipping out. But, as its Korea, people got yelled at the next day by their school for "neglecting their responsibilities" or something like that. Remember, when in Korea, when somebody higher up or older than you asks you to bend over, you must promptly present your posterior without comment. They really like it if you thank them for it too.

Wanting to save myself the lecture from my school, I stuck around for the musical performance. God, I wish I wouldn't have. Now, I know Korea is super proud about their history and love to show off just how fucking scientific everything is, but at some point they need to realize that most foreigners don't like having this shit shoved down their throat. Also, they should realize that most non-Koreans find this "traditional" pretty awful and boring and terrible and did I mention awful? In fact, I'm now skeptical of anything prefaced with the word "traditional". I'm not up on the dictionary definition, but perhaps one of the definitions is "awful, mind-numbing, torturous, painful". Just a guess though.

Now, I've seen the traditional music before, so I had a sneaking suspicion that this would be just awful. A brief recap. There are some nice sounding stringed instruments, but sadly they never let them do their thing with solos. No, they have the stringed instruments play, but then they drown it out with way, way too many percussion instruments. So all you hear is banging and clashing and booming. It's just a loud mess. Then they break in with some sort of breath powered instrument that honestly sounds like a dying fawn or lamb or goat or something. I kid you not. If you slit the throat of this type of critter and then let them slowly bleed out, I guarantee the awful mewing or crying that they produce would sound exactly like this instrument. Not exactly pleasant, I know.

I assumed that this performance would be people in hanbok dancing to these awful, awful sounds. I wasn't too far off. So we arrive at the theater and I realize that we are at the Seoul Arts Center, a wonderful place, and that there is probably some sort of beautiful orchestra or symphony performance taking place at the same time we are forced to sit through this travesty. That probably made the whole thing worse, that I could probably spit and hit a musical performance I'd love to actually see. Anyways, we got to the theater 30 minutes before it started, so people found their seats and settled in and waited for the pain that would soon wash over them. I wasn't too worried, as I had my gameboy, so if shit got really bad, I'd just break it out.

So the performance starts and we are all ready off to a bad foot. The first 10 minutes consisted of a disembodied voice narrating some sort of backstory. The voice spoke in Korean and was accompanied by the textual version displaying on a screen on stage. Now, I'm no expert on the world of the stage and the arts, but I'm pretty sure that you want to start a performance by hooking and pulling in the audience to get them interested. Narration is fine and all, but to have a slow, drawn out one without a very charismatic narrator run for 10 minutes is a bad move, at least in my mind. The story was something about the crown prince going crazy and pulling some weird shit, like trying to kill his servant or something, being banished from the kingdom and living a lecherous life with performers and poor people for a year, then coming back to the kingdom to beg his father's forgiveness. Well, daddy let him back in, but he is so shamed and embarrassed by his son's behavior that to save face (I presume) he asks his son to kill himself. How? Well, he has the boy climb into a rice box and stay there for 9 days till he dies. But it all ends on a happy note, cuz his son grows up to be one of the greatest kings ever and the performance is about the dead prince's wife's 60th birthday party, put on by his really awesome son. Wait, what???? What the fuck was the point of that whole narration????? Seriously???? That story sounded kinda cool and interesting, do the play about that. Why give us that background that has absolutely no bearing on the performance. We are watching the king hold a 60th birthday party for his mom. Who cares what the hell his dad did, it has nothing to do with his mom's party 40 some years later. ARghaslghaslghlsakhgls.

At least, that's what I think the narration said, from what I could read. I don't really know, as the one screen that had English translations (a good idea) was obscured by lighting and couldn't be seen by the English teacher group (a really bad idea). That's right, they chose to put us, the only people in the audience who would need the english subtitles, in the only seats in the house that wouldn't be able to see the screen. Face, meet palm.

So the play thingy starts and its exactly what I expected: boring and loud and uncomfortable. The birthday girl is escorted out slowly by her servants, everybody else slowly walks in and sits down, there's a bunch of bowing and tea drinking, some kinda bombastic speeches (which I couldn't understand what they said), and some lousy background music accompanies the slow, stiff dancers. Seriously, I have never seen such a disconnect between the senses. Outside of maybe Mardi Gras and Carnivale, I doubt you will see more colors and flashy looking stuff then at a court ceremony like this. I mean look at hanboks (the traditional korean outfits). Hell, it looked like a rainbow exploded on stage. Now, as in the examples of Mardi Gras, Carnivale and most other things, bright colors mean vibrancy, energy, liveliness, and life. This performance was the exact opposite. Slow, stiff, lifeless, dull, and boring. Yuck.

Good thing I brought my gameboy, right? Too bad the supervisor guy from SMOE (the big wig) sat in the row directly behind me.....shit. Well, I'll just try to sleep then. No chance. At least not with that painful music playing. Then I'll just zone out and think about stuff, cuz I'm really good at that. What I didn't count on was that the performance was so uninteresting that it had paralyzed my brain. Like someone in a coma or something I was unable to do anything other than look on stage. I was able to find something interesting on the ceiling for a bit, so I just stared at that.

Now, somewhere about 30 minutes into the whole lousy show, it went from just being really f'n bad to awesomely bad and it instantly became watchable. Sadly, it didn't last for long and went back to its dull, uninteresting self soon after. What happened was that suddenly, the stage began to fill up with smoke, several very large lotus flowers were rolled out, and.........2 dancers came out dressed as Big Bird. I shit you not. Technically, they were cranes, but still. They wore striped socks up to their bird bodies, like the big fella from Sesame Street and had full body bird outfits, with the dancers heads sticking out somewhere around the lower neck area. Now, when this happened, I and most of the foreign audience who was still awake (there weren't too many, I don't think) thought they were hallucinating, and crapped their pants, or vice versa. Seriously, where did the birds come from? Straight out of left field, I guess. Now the birds started dancing, spinning, and flapping, and pecking the ground (to dig for worms, one presumes). I can't vouch for the rest of the foreign folks, but I just about started laughing at this point. The only thing stopping me was that I was too damn confused to be able to clearly tell if this was actually funny or if I was losing my mind.

Shit got more weird when the cranes danced over to the lotus flowers, tapped on them with their beaks, and then the lotus flowers opened up to reveal a Korean female dancer trapped inside. WTF??????? Now maybe I just have sex on the brain (okay, so I do), but that scene came off as a big sexual innuendo to me. You may not see it, but I've seen too many Georgia O'Keefe paintings to not think flowers look like vaginas. And the bird's beak that penetrates the flower and out comes a human? Cmon. "Sure Eric, it's all about sex. What a pervert. Next you're gonna tell me that that really awesome football statue at Camp Randall is actually a big penis." Well, now that you mention it.....

Sadly, the cranes didn't stick around and the performance quickly returned to the bowing and tea drinking and stale nature of it all. Eventually it ended. Only an hour long, but man it felt much longer. The performers all came back on stage and we gave them a round of applause. Why I'm not sure. Take for example the 60 year old mother of the King. Presumably a major character in the story, right? Well, here's what she did. She entered at the beginning, very slowly, being escorted by two servants. She sat down, with her back to the audience (she sat that way the whole time). 20 minutes in, she was helped to her feet, turned to the audience and said about 10 words to us all. She then sat down again. When the performance finished, she was slowly escorted out again. Ohhh, and throughout the performance she occasionally turned her head to acknowledge somebody talking to her. That's it. Fuck, I could have done that....easily. The musicians who played the entire time? No curtain call. The dancers who actually did something? Very minor curtain call. The lady that did nothing the whole time? The biggest curtain call. Yeah, that makes sense.

One of the other teachers I was talking with summed up the whole thing the best when he said, "Man, I really feel sorry for Korea that their culture is so stale, so stiff, so boring, so uninteresting." Now obviously that isn't true for all their culture. Hell, many of their modern cultural aspects (Starcraft, computer games, movies, and breakdancing) are all really great. But the traditional stuff? No thanks. Hopefully, Korea will realize someday that most people really don't care for the old timey stuff and will then begin promoting all the actually cool stuff about Korea. I hope.

My Restroom Difficulties

Since its the season of giving again, I'll give you all an amusing story about my restroom problems at school (sure as hell wasn't amusing to me, but you may find it entertaining). As you probably know, my school has only squat toilets, which as you might imagine, pose numerous issues for me. My first encounter was several months ago when I was at the DMZ and the results weren't very pleasant. First off, unlike the Koreans, I haven't been practiced in squatting for long periods of time. I shit you not, over here people when waiting around for something or while chatting will just squat down and stay like that for long, long periods of time. Me? Well, I can effectively squat for about 10 seconds before my knees cry out. And even if I could squat, I still haven't figured out how you wouldn't just drop your payload right into your pants around your ankles, cuz when I do squat, my legs are directly underneath my posterior. And I certainly don't want that. How do I solve the basic posture issue? I go into cocorinha, or for those of you who don't know capoeira, its a squat with one hand on the ground for support. Well, its actually closer to this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CapoeiraMeialuaDeCompasso%26QuedaDeQuatro_ST_05.jpg). See the guy on the right. This seems to work, but over time one's hand gets very uncomfortable having to support most of the bodies weight. But Eric, you say, why not put both hands on the ground? Simple, I need the other hand to make sure I don't pee all over my pants. With the posture difficulties parsed out, lets discuss some other complications. In Korea, for some idiotic god-forsaken reason, they never have toilet paper dispensers inside the stalls. No, you have to pull off however much TP you need before even starting your business. This, as you can see, is an awful, awful Catch-22. If you take too much, you feel bad about wasting TP, as nobody in their right mind will use TP torn off the roll and set next to it, as you don't know where its been. If you don't take enough, well, let's not even discuss that as the idea of it is just to horrifying. Also, my school, and it would seem many other schools, don't heat the bathroom or anything outside of the classrooms for that matter. Last year, the bathroom wasn't heated but they had heated toilet seats in the teacher's bathroom, so at least part of me was toasty. What's more difficult that trying to do your business while squatting? Doing your business in 40 degree temperatures. Or less. Lastly, in the afternoon, the school "cleans" the bathroom, meaning to say they just slop a bunch of water on the floor. That's right, you must balance on the floor with one hand and that floor is dirty and wet. I won't go into how many times I slipped and nearly fell into the narrow toilet. Sure, I wouldn't have done much harm to myself, but I would surely have prayed for death to save me from the utter shame.

All this brings us to our most harrowing adventure yet. On Thursday, as many people are want to do, I felt the need to use the restroom. No problem, I'll just wander off to the faculties. I walk into the bathroom and what do I see? No toilet paper. That's cool, no biggie. I'll just check the other boy's restrooms on the other floors (the school has 4 floors and there are mens and womens on each floor). Second floor? No TP. Third floor? No TP. Fourth floor? Still no goddamn TP. Now, I'm starting to get worried, so I checked the girls bathrooms (I just looked in as I was walking past) No TP there either, cept for the female teachers bathroom. I tried to remain calm, thinking maybe they are just gonna get refilled later in the day. I waited for several hours, checking off and on, to see if they had been refilled. No luck. Well, now I'm getting pretty desperate. Did they change to a bring your own toilet paper policy? Don't laugh, I know other teachers here in Korea that do have to bring their own. Idiotic beyond belief, but that's how Korea rolls sometimes. If they did change the policy, then somebody surely forgot to inform me. Anyways, eventually, I got desperate and, after checking to make sure everything was clear, went into the women's bathroom to retrieve some TP. Now, I obviously wanted to make this as quick as possible, seeing as how being caught in the women's bathroom would be hard to talk your way out of, even if I could speak the language and wasn't in a country where people like me (foreign white male english teachers) are openly discussed and stereotyped as sex addicts/sex fiends/perverts/pedophiles in the newspapers. Needless to say, I didn't wanna get caught. As luck would have it, I heard a door opening as I was still pulling off TP. Now, since everybody at my school is a big wuss about the weather (40 degrees is not cold people, so stop bitching!), they wouldn't leave their heated offices unless it was something important, like perhaps the call of nature. So I grabbed what TP I had, having no idea if it was enough, and got out of the bathroom. But the person leaving the office was coming from the room directly across the narrow hallway from the bathroom (meaning they were like 2 feet away). I'm screwed. Wait, they are turning around to close the door. I'm out, I'm gone, I'm free. Now, in my haste, I wasn't really sure if I had grabbed enough toilet paper, but I'd had enough shock for one day, so I just took my chances. In the end, it was cold, it was painful and it was wet, but I was finally able to go about my business. As I was telling Maria, I'm now completely ready for going to the bathroom in a third world country, cuz outside of shitting in the middle of the woods, perhaps into a hole, and having to use my hand or a leaf to wipe my ass, I'm not sure how defecating could get any more difficult and harrowing.

Now on to some other happier news, at least for me. I FINALLY GOT A BERIMBAU!!!!! It only took damn near a year. Now, my parents have still been unable to get me mine from home, so I had originally hoped to pick up one here, but because the group here cares little to none for music, they are hard to come by. One of the American guys in the group had one for sale, but it wasn't ready and I had almost no hope for it, as the wood simply wasn't loosening enough to allow it to be strung properly. Well, salvation came this week, when I was informed out of the blue that it was ready. Well, sort of. Thing still takes 2 or 3 people to string it, so I'm leaving it strung, which worries me, cuz if that thing snaps and goes.....yikes. It's super tall and I have a super short ceiling in my apt, so I have to play sitting down, but otherwise, I can't ask for more.

School is well, the same. I keep saying this, but it keeps on keeping on, with the same stuff. Winter camps are coming up, and I need to prepare 3 weeks worth of stuff. Still not sure who I'm teaching, as I've heard word that they want me to teach the 1st and 2nd graders, who I have no experience or knowledge of, as I've never taught them before, and I also hear that the classes will be broken up by levels, instead of grades, which will also be bad, as a high level 3rd grader is nowhere near a high level 6th grader in terms of ability. Guess I just have to prepare some materials and if its too hard or easy for the students, all I can do is shrug my shoulders and go "Oooooops". Not much else I can do. Also, as a nice Christmas thank you from the District of Education, I'll have to go to bullshit workshops the last two days before schools ends for winter break. Ohhh, but District of Education, I didn't get you anything...wait, no I do have something for you, its called a middle finger. Hell, you guys have been so awesome, I'll give you two, cuz I'm a giver like that. So here's my schedule for the last two days: go to school as normal and teach all my classes in the morning, then at lunch time run to wherever this stupid workshop is, then shit through stupid lectures from 1pm to 9pm. Yeah, that's right till 9pm. Then I go home and repeat the next day. Not only am I stuck at stupid lectures till that late, but I still do all my regular teaching in the morning (I only lose out on the planning, relaxing, and chatting with office mates part...you know, the good part). I also have to miss my Korean classes, which I actually like. Now, in theory, workshops would be helpful and informative, but as everyone knows, we don't live in a perfect world. Good thing I have plenty of books and a Game boy.

Now, weekend exploits. Two weekends ago, I got out and about in Seoul. To start the weekend, Jenna and I took in a weird little photo exhibit at the nearby Seoul Arts Center. It was exhibiting the works of some British photographer lady living in France. She had distorted or painted on or messed with her photos in some way so that they all looked like some manner of expressionist paintings. They were all especially sad and depressing, covering such cheery subjects as isolation, cold, winter, death, and the like. After that, we headed to some huge food expo. We sampled various teas and coffees, looked at dishes more accurately classified as art rather than food, and watched the national barista championships (it was heart pounding...). I didn't find any of the crazy expensive coffee where the bean is digested then crapped out by some tropical cat, but probably cuz its too damn expensive to give samples of. In the evening, the whole group gathered for a Thanksgiving dinner put on by a brewery in the Gangnam area. The owner was Korean-Canadian, so he understood the illusive concepts of "good beer" and "good food". Now, this is the first brewery I have ever seen in Korea. Quick recap: Drinking is an even bigger part of the culture in Korea than in America and 99% of the consumption is of 3 things, soju, Hite beer and Cass beer. And they all really, realy, really suck. Sure there are some smaller companies for beer, but they all suck too. As a result, microbrews, albeit not great, were greatly appreciated. Hell, here you give thanks for being able to find a Heineken or something and they kinda suck too. Anyways, despite not being American, the owner put on a really great Thanksgiving buffet. Sure we had to wait in line for like an hour (160 people waiting on just a few dishes would do that), but they chose to broadcast the Packers and Lions game on TV, which was awesome. And I must say that Rodgers fella looks like a decent quarterback. That's how long I've been away. The last packers game I saw, our quarterback was Brett Favre....haha. On Sunday, a few of us checked out some Science museum near Seoul. It was definitely orientated for kids with lots of interactive games and such, which was good since most of the directions and everything were in Korean, obviously. My favorite part was the awful, awful English translations on the various exhibits. Can you say babelfished? Cuz I can. Ohhhh, and I also laughed at the green living exhibit, which spent a considerable amount of time talking about how Korean homes are the most green homes ever, cuz they are made using nature's resources and coexist with nature or some bullshit. Course, on that same vein, Native American traditional housing and any other aboriginal tribe's dwellings would be even more so. Plus, nobody fucking lives in traditional housing anymore, so its kinda moot.

The next weekend saw me spending basically the whole weekend way down by Busan, in a temple stay. We got up and were on the bus bright and early at 7:30am, and were gone by 7:40am. Way, way too early on a Saturday morning. For the entire 4 hour bus ride down, we were forced to some stupid girls talk about their stupid thoughts and lives. And I mean the whole time....they never shut up, ever. Sleep was impossible, reading was impossible. All you could do was sit there, staring at the seat while your brain slowly oozed out of your ears. Finally, we arrived at the old Silla kingdom capital of Gyeongju (several hundred years ago Korea was divided between 3 kingdoms and the Silla kingdom, based around Busan in the south eventually conquered and overtook the other kingdoms and united the peninsula under one rule, thus their fame here in Korea). After some very, very Korean lunch (I'm so excited....not), we wandered around the burial mounds for the old kings and queens. There were 20 or so mounds around the area. As you can see from the pics, they weren't much to look at, as they are just 20 feet tall hills with grass grown over them. Maybe I'm just a weirdo, but all I saw were a bunch of huge breasts. We got a tour guide to guide us through the one mound that was open, but he was a monster dick. He spoke super fast cuz he was in a rush or something and was super pretentious (repeatedly asking "Do you understand what I'm saying?"....ummm yeah, asshole, its our language your speaking, we understand English), then when we told him that we were in a rush and had to move on quickly, he just up and left. Wow. After that we headed to another area to stare at the milk jug looking thing that nobody knows what purpose it served. The classical city was a bit underwhelming, as there really wasn't much remaining from the kingdom. Sure, the area was pretty, but I can take pics of mountains and hills almost anywhere in Korea, I wanted to see some impressive architecture or something. Soon afterward we headed on to our temple we would be staying at. Now, this was my second temple stay and it was much, much different from the previous temple stay. The other temple felt like a much more authentic experience as there were only 20 or so of us and we actually all prayed in the same quarters as the monks. This temple was very nice though, especially for those people that wanted to do a temple stay, but not really leave the comforts of home. We stayed in a big separate building built just for temple stayers with showers and everything. The other temple stay? It had a shower house that was a little walk away. They also had a really, really nice gymnasium area at this new temple as these Buddhists practice the martial art, Seonmudo. The old temple stay??? Not so much. Our schedule at the temple stay was very much filled. We arrived just in time for dinner at 5:30pm, then over to the gymnasium for evening prayers, a video about seonmudo, then a 90 minute seonmudo workout. Now, by this point, we had begun to become really, really annoyed with some of the other group members, as they complained when they found out that Buddhists are vegetarian (seriously, you didn't fucking know that???? dumbasses), they complained about how hard the seonmudo workout was (it was basically yoga, sure its a martial art but its much more about balance and holding kicks and moving with grace), they complained about the cold, etc. Not really sure why they came. The seonmudo exercise would probably have been hard for me before I started capoeira, but with all that flexibility practice behind me, it didn't pose much of an issue. I did find all the groaning and moaning quite funny though. I thought seonmudo was cool, but at the end of the day, there is reason why I do capoeira and never any of the other asian martial arts: cuz they are so dull, slow and boring at times. The peace and serenity and self reflection is great and all, but I need something lively, something with energy. Seonmudo is not that.

Sunday morning came way, way too early too. Despite going to bed at 10pm, 4:30am came much too soon. The group groggily wandered up to the morning prayers and after an hour of groggily bowing and mumbling along with the Korean chants, we were given time to wander around the premises before breakfast. We wandered up to the dangerous looking prayer spots. Sometimes there was a rope railing, sometimes there wasn't. Sometimes there was a rope ladder for ascending, sometimes there was just rocks. However, there was always a very, very steep fall to the ground below and there was always a gorgeous view to make it all worth it. We meditated and watched the sun rise over the mountains. This part of the Buddhist lifestyle I could get used to. The food and sleep schedule? Not as much. I would die if I was forced to survive like that long term. Well, maybe not die, but I would be a walking zombie at least. 6 hours of sleep a night and with that diet sorely lacking in any type of food for energy (I wasn't seeing too much in the way of carbohydrates unless they go crazy and have an Italian night every tuesday or something and I just don't know about it), I would be in a constant haze of fatigue. Plus, Korean monk portions are not Eric Wallin portions. Ohhh, but I can have another bowl of rice if I'm hungry? I can't fucking wait. After leaving the temple we headed to the ocean for some pictures, but not for too long as it was only about 30 degrees and the wind was around 20 mph or so. Along the way, we stopped off at some other, smaller buddhist temples. The temple architecture looked the same every time, which is also the same as all the old Korean temples and palaces, so needless to say, that got kinda boring. The actual alters to Buddha were always different and always impressive. Hell, they carved into cave walls and into cliff faces at times. However, I got a question for ya Buddhism. For a religion based on the ideas of living simply and not being extravagent, you sure do have a lot of extravagant and gaudy idols to worship to. Just saying. That comes off a little, well, hypocritical. With all our temple visits finished, we boarded the bus and were subjected to another 4 hours of absolute nonsense from the girls behind us. Hate to break it to ya girls, but I don't give two shits about your hair or what you do to it. So shut the fuck up. Thank you.

Pics: See album "Buddhism for a Day"

Collin Stecker visits Korea!!! (yeah, it was pretty EPIC)

So the last few weeks have been full of adventure and mishaps (mostly mishaps) culminating in the appearance of a certain Mr. Collin Stecker. Time is a wasting, so lets go down to business.

School has been much the same, which in this case is a good thing, but last week we did have one of my classes observed. Not a full-on, 30-something guest teachers watching, but just two supervisors who wanted to make sure I wasn't fucking up too bad, I guess. The class itself went fine, but the performance review afterward was a bit weird. Both of the women that came to observe spoke good English, but at the beginning of the discussion they told me that "in the interest of saving time, we'll conduct the discussion in Korean. Your co-teacher will fill you in later." I'll try not to be offended by that and punch you in the ovaries for that asshole move. It was a performance review for me, after all. You might have included me at least a little. No biggie, as I'm basically fluent in Korean. From what they said, our biggest problem was that I'm just too fucking handsome. They commended the co-teacher on being able to actually carry out her teaching duties in the face of such paralyzing beauty. They were concerned about how much English the children were retaining, as they, the observers, were barely able to stop staring at me long enough to write down comments, so what chance do the impressionable children have in actually learning something......Hmmm, on second thought, maybe my Korean isn't that great.

In this week's installment of "funny shit kids do", we have "Who Farted?". During one of 3rd grades group activities, I spotted one of the groups was pointing and yelling at each other while covering their faces with their shirts. When I moved in to investigate, I caught a healthy odor in the air. An amateur ass air release, but still impressive given the source. Sure enough, the children were blaming each other for the stink. It was clearly the boys, as their scapegoats were very hastily chosen. They singled out the girls and everybody knows that girls don't fart or poop. That's just common knowledge. I quickly won the girls' support by accusing the boys, but they surprisingly fired back by blaming me. Now, had these not been 3rd graders with very limited English ability, I would have explained to the children that had it been me, they would 1) clearly know it beyond a shadow of a doubt 2) The air would be noticeably thicker and breathing would become difficult 3) Your senses would be assaulted until you submitted and preyed for death's sweet release. As they were 3rd graders, I simply joined in the finger pointing and yelling "No, you did it!!".

The other moment involved my new haircut (shitty, as always). The teachers were supportive and said it looked cute and that I looked even younger, like 17. Okay, maybe that's not a compliment. Anyways, some of my favorite students wandered into the office to chat with some of the other teachers, and they naturally spied my haircut. The first one actually started laughing at me. I naturally told the 3 ft nothing, 12 lb little girl to stop making fun of me and picking on me, but that didn't help. She just kept laughing. Then to pile on the insult, my absolute favorite student, the one that lived in Malaysia for a year that speaks great English, starting saying "EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!" in regards to my hair. Who knew third graders could be so mean.

In other unrelated student stuff, one of my third grade classes has a new student, who just came back from some extended time living in California. Naturally, she's bored as shit with the basic English class, but what was startling was the maturity level difference. Now, she may be a bit older, as her Korean may not have been up to par to allow her into her actual class, but still. I get the sense that if I gave the rest of the class some bubbles or balloons, they would be content forever, while this girl would probably look at me and say something like, "What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?" The gap is shocking. I don't know what causes it, but there is a huge maturity difference between Koreans and Americans of the same age. I won't pretend to know why that is, but if I had to ask either an American 3rd grader or a Korean college student questions about adult stuff like sex, etc and wanted the answers.....I would probably go with the American 3rd grader. Yup. I don't know how those American elementary kids know so much about sex, but they do.

With all these new body image and self worth problems, I needed some alcohol to forget about just how hideous and disgusting I am. Thankfully, the weekends were more than willing to serve up the booze and subsequent mishaps. Last Friday, after a satisfying Mexican dinner and then some wine, our little group found its way to a small little music bar. When I say little, I mean it. The entire place housed 20-30 people max. All but one or two were Western, so tonight's horror story comes at the hands of an American woman, rather than creepy Korean men. Same result though: yours truly getting much too much attention from people I strongly wish to avoid. Things started turning for the worst once I was dragged out on the dance floor by the ladies in the group. Let that be a lesson to you out there: forcing men to dance only leads to disaster. Anyways, while out on the floor I noticed that one lady in particular was giving me a lot of attention and kept finding a way to bump into to me on the floor. I'll call her BB, for big breasts, since I don't remember her actual name. That might seem kinda harsh, but she went to consider effort to show them off (yeah, one of those chicks), so to ignore them would really be insulting her. Anyways, after sinning against God (yeah, my dancing is that bad) for long enough on the dance floor, I sat down. And since I was sitting by myself, I was ripe for the picking. Cue BB. She wanders over and grabs my hand and takes me back on the floor. OOOOOOOOOOOOhhhhh no. I immediately knew what was happening, but because I'm a spineless weiner, I didn't stop it right there. She began dancing and gyrating around, in an attempt to interest, I think, but it didn't work in the least. Would have taken one hell of a dance, cuz this chick was not attractive to me at all. I presume this whole thing was quite amusing to spectators, as she was shaking it at hard as it could go, while I stood around and made no attempt at all to dance. Soon enough, though, she started swinging her face in close for some tonsil action. For whatever reason (I'M REALLY DUMB, THAT'S WHY!!!), I decided to go with and make out with this girl. Part of the way through I realized how awful of an idea this was. Course, once wasn't enough for this girl, but I was ready the next couple times. She leans in, I lean out to cough. She leans in, I lean out as part of my sweet dance moves. She leans in, I turn my head to call to one of my friends. Speaking of my "friends", I kept looking for them for backup, but they were just sitting around laughing at me. I love my friends. Anyways, she eventually asks for my name, I tell it, then she reciprocates and gives me her name. I'm not listening and don't care, so I don't catch it. Then a few minutes later, she asks me what her name is. Naturally, I don't know and she gets upset and tells me I have to buy her a drink. Hallelujah, an excuse to get off the dance floor.

Course, once I buy her a drink, it doesn't end. She follows me back to my seat and sits down right next to me. AND wraps her leg around mine. She is mighty subtle. Anyways, then the talking starts which is really where this girl excels....I'm being sarcastic, naturally. She starts off by saying I'm really cute. Then there's the awkward silence. Then she ends the silence by saying I need to reciprocate and compliment her. Wow, this is gonna be hard. I struggle for a bit, then tell her that her hair is really red. It was obviously died, but it was something. Then she tells me I'm cute again. Meaning, I have to compliment her again. Now I'm out of stuff to say, so I naturally turn to the most obvious one: her breasts. I mean, these things look like they are desperately trying to escape, they are that exposed. "You have nice breasts" I say. She happily excepts the compliment and tells me I'm cute again. This time I have nothing, so I say nothing. She keeps the conversation going by asking where I'm from, then talking positively about Oshkosh (she was from Chicago). Q: How do you know a woman is really, really desperate? A: She will stoop to talking warmly about Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Wow. At this point, the girls showed up and scared her off. I then went and hid outside for the next 30 minutes to avoid her. Course, when I did go back inside, she found me again and tried to drag me back on the dance floor. I sputtered something about having to go and I just ran away, back outside. Smooth. I think I'm just gonna convert to Buddhism and live the monastic lifestyle from now on. Would be a bunch easier.

With my awkward experiences out of the way, its time for the recounting of Collin's EPIC trip to Korea during the next weekend. He showed up on Friday and left Tuesday morning, so it was just enough time to see everything worth seeing in Korea (I kid, I kid). Anyways, I met up with Collin Friday night out front of my nearest subway station, as I had instructed him to catch an airport bus to my area. Cept, it didn't go as smooth as I would have liked. I badly misjudged how long it would take to get to my area, so I freaked out for a bit cuz, well, I couldn't find him and he was supposed to be here by now. I just so happened to see an airport bus, which I assumed Collin was on, at the time I assumed he would get in, but no Collin. Ohhhhhh crap. Now, I know most people would probably pat me on the back or give me awards for misplacing Mr. Stecker, perhaps permanently, but Collin's mom would be upset and she's wonderful (wink) and I really don't wanna upset her. I'm sure the Koreans hanging out at the coffee shops in the area were at least a little unsettled by the frazzled looking foreigner who appeared to have stopped taking his meds, but what can you do? Eventually Collin showed up, 30 minutes later than I had guessed. I'm good at math...

Anyways, we immediately headed to capoeira so Collin could get an idea exactly what my group is like. We walked in a little late to find the group practicing (I couldn't fucking believe it!) music. Collin's thoughts: "Well, the instructor is singing so faintly at times that its hard to hear him, nobody is really that skilled with the instruments, and several people looked like they were zombies (aka zero energy being put in)." Yeah, that just about sums it up. Now, I know the instructor doesn't have that much experience with Portuguese, hell his English isn't super great, but he still should have a better grasp of the songs for his experience. We are kinda depending on him to teach us this shit. After music ended, we assembled for the roda. Now, the instructor was so enamoured with Collin, that he made a big push for both of us to attend the group's demo the next day, naturally so the group wouldn't look quite as bad. Why all the love? Well, Collin can actually play a respectable game, and even more importantly, actually can play the instruments and sing. Although, some of his songs kinda flopped as nobody else in the group knew the lyrics and I hadn't heard them in over a year, so I was a bit slow on the uptake. "He's only been training for 4ish years? Wow." Yeah, that's what QUALITY instruction will do for ya.

Afterwards, we headed to Gangnam to meet up with some of the girls in the Madison group. Since they had already eaten, we decided to grab some food while they started drinking. We settled for the chicken grilled at the table and while it cooked we experienced first hand just how awful Korean beer and soju is, made fun of kimchi, talked about Japan, and discussed other matters that probably would have offended the other occupants, provided they could understand English and weren't three sheets to the wind already. Meal over, we headed across the street to meet up with the girls. While there we discussed all manner of ridiculous topics, drank some of the worst wine ever (I'm told it was a combination of 3 different wines...why would you ever do that????), and observed the humorous drunken activity of the Korean ladies sitting near us (how drunk you say??? They were staring quite contentedly at yours truly and actually summoned up the courage to talk to us...so really drunk). A solid night.

Thanks to the previous evening, we got up and rolling and ready to explore Seoul by the bright and early time of 1 in the afternoon. Ugggggg. We immediately headed to Insadong, cuz its cool, unlike many parts of Seoul. We were in search of a sweet tea house and by sheer luck stumbled onto the coolest one ever. Not only was it the smallest little place ever (12 tables total), all the trinkets and knickknacks gave the place a incredibly chill atmosphere. But the best part? Birds. Live ones. That fly around the whole time. Guess that's why its called the Bird tea house or something like that. Couple these little finches constant chattering with the relaxed music, and you have the greatest place ever. Collin and I stuck around for 2 cups of tea. Now, I was criticized for wanting to drink two cups of the same type of tea (plum), but by the end of our times at the tea house (yeah, we went back sunday), everybody was getting the plum tea. It's a religious experience, sans all the shitty stuff that comes with religion. So its actually nothing like a religious experience.

After Insadong, we decided to wander over to Gyeongbokgung palace since its the biggest palace and all the palaces look the same and we wanted to get it all the historical/palace stuff done in one shot. Cept, we got there so late they were already closing for the day, what with the early darkness of winter. Ooops. We instead wandered around Cheonggyecheon (the man-made stream in central Seoul) and checked out the crazy lanterns and displays they had set up along the banks. I guess there was some big lantern festival going on or something. Next, we headed to the newly constructed plaza across the street dedicated to King Sejong and his most scientific language ever: Hangeul. It went something like this: Interpreter guy: "Hey, do you know that the Korean language is very scientific?" Me: "Yes.....I do..." "Do you also know that Hangeul was created by King Sejong?" "......(sigh)" "Let me tell about how Hangeul is the most scientiferrific language ever!" (Facepalm). I guess Hangeul is scientific or something.

Our education out of the way, we headed to Dondaemun, just so Collin could see the mess and chaos. As a result, if anyone ever needs zippers...well, I know a guy. More like 30. Vendors exclusively selling zippers. Who would have thought? From there we headed to Mt. Namsan to check out the tower. I took Collin to the cable cars, cuz really how many cities have cable cars?? Course, we soon realized that 99.99999% of the other cable car occupants were couples. Collin must have realized this as he was not even the least bit interested in holding hands with me. All the effort I put forth showing him the town, the least he could do would be to put out. Just a little. Thats all I ask. The ride, as usual, was filled with squealy Koreans who were unnerved by the fact that we were hanging in a metal box many, many feet above the ground. Seriously, you have a much greater chance of dying in a car related mishap (especially in Korea) than any harm befalling you in the cable car. Once up at the top we top some pictures, then moved to the South lookout point. It was here that we say countless locks chained the fence (to symbolize the secure/togetherness of the visiting couples) as well as a stand that could immortalize a couple's clasped hands in wax. Ms. Prude Collin didn't want to do either. !@#$!@%!@%. If I knew he was gonna be like this, I would have just invited the girl from the previous weekend. Lord knows she would be game.

From here, we headed to Jamsil to meet up with the girls. We originally had settled on meeting on some place about equal distance from where we were (Mt. Namsan) and where they were (Jamsil, shopping). Cept they settled down for some drinks and never moved. Now we really weren't sure what to expect, as they sounded progressively more affected by the alcohol each time we talked. Plus they said they were drinking outside....in 30 something degree weather....next to Lotte World, the amusement park....and were getting weird looks from the families passing by. Well, I assumed they would be sitting at the benches that would naturally be arranged around the lake. Nope. They were sitting on some freezing cold rocks along the edge of the walkway, basically in the bushes, eating chocolate and cheese, and drinking a bottle of wine each. As goofy as they were, it was so incredibly Wisconsin of them and it made me a little proud. From here, we headed to your average tiny divey Korean restaurant. And we all continued drinking, primarily soju. That was a mistake. Once finished with the meal, we hopped a cab to Hongdae to meet with others in the group. Here's where shit got dramatic. First, one of the ladies fell asleep in the cab. Really, really out. Course, now we have to figure out how the hell we are gonna carry her around to some hotel. Unfortunately, she woke up. Why unfortunately? Cuz she started throwing up as soon as she regained consciousness. We asked the cabbie to stop immediately (still 3 subway stops away from our destination) and escorted her over to a wall. Once she had finished, we began walking to a destination, which was now a hotel for our beleaguered comrade. After walking several blocks and having really no idea where we were, Amy hailed a cab and quickly hopped in with our under the weather friend. Cept, she left Collin and I standing in the dust, with the victim's now quite smelly bag. We wandered around for a bit, trying to figure out where Amy went and waiting for Amy to call so we could deliver the stinky bag to her. Boy were we horrified when Amy called to tell us that when they had stopped the cab to let our sick friend out and empty her guts....she ran off. And Amy had no idea where she was. And she wasn't answering her cell phone. And Amy had no idea where she was. Understandably we freaked. Well, maybe just me. Collin would have to have a soul to freak out about the well-being of other human beings. After 30 minutes of flustered wandering, Amy called back to inform us that she had found our friend and that she was now comfortably sleeping in a hotel, which just so happened to be pretty close to where we were at the time. We stopped by, dropped off the bag, and headed back to Hongdae. And all of this before 10:45pm. Wow. Course, we were all too freaked out and stone cold sober to drink anything at the club, so we just went home after a bit and headed to bed.

The most shocking thing was Collin and Amy. No, your eyes aren't playing tricks with you. That's Collin and a female. Fuck, I still can't believe it. Maybe he's not gay or asexual after all. Could have fooled me. Amy told Collin right away that she found him cute, thanks to her straightforward nature (why we love her) but mostly the alcohol (it does that sometimes), but what shocked me was that Collin reciprocated. Dude flirted right back. WHAT??????? Since when does Collin do that????? Regardless, they were quite cute and goofy together. Maybe tomorrow pigs will fly and religious crazies will decide that gays aren't going to bring about the downfall of the modern world, but maybe not.

Again, we didn't get rolling too quickly on Sunday morning either, probably around 1pm again. At least this time we had Amy's deliciously prepared breakfast as a tasty consolation prize. Eggs in a basket??? Yes, please. This time around, we actually got to Gyeongbokgung palace before it closed and Collin was simply overwhelmed with all the history and shit. While strolling through the attached museum, we stumbled upon a rather disturbing Korean tradition: Placenta pots. Yeah, you heard right. I guess traditionally, after a child was born, the placenta was placed in a small pot and buried in a particular pot. I believe it was supposed to bring about a healthy life and good luck. Ohhh, and a very rare placenta tree. Those must be nasty.

After the palace it was back to the bird tea house for more plum tea. Not worth all the effort and money, you say? Try some. You'll be going back too. Bellies warmed, we headed off to Namdaemun, so I could show Collin all the ridiculous shit that he would never want to buy. From there it was to Myeongdong, so Collin could get real up close and personal with the stink of Korean commerce. It is a potent brew. Not too much enjoyment, outside of when we wandered past the lingerie store and its lovely advertisements (yeah, we are creepers, what of it?). See, its been 2 full days in Korea and I'm already out of stuff to show Collin.

On Monday, while I worked, Collin did almost nothing. He woke up real late (perhaps cuz he didn't get much sleep saturday night...wink, wink), then couldn't find the subway station, so he just wandered around and came back when I got back from work. From there it was one last capoeira class, followed by dinner at the most Korean of restaurants, Mad for Garlic, and its solid Italian menu, then back to the homestead. Collin left early Tuesday without so much as even a little spooning over the whole weekend. You'd think for all the work I went through to show him around, he'd throw me just a little of something, anything. Nope. Christ, at this point you might as well call me Mr. Blue (Bowling) Balls. On that lovely imagery, I bid you all adieu for now.