i think i should mention my two drama classes first, as i am currently sporting a huge headache. my class was Monday, but the brain pain lingers. i have a korean "helper" for each of my classes. for my beginner class, my "helper" is an older woman who herself doesn't really speak much english. which means i have 21 children and 1 old woman, none of whom understand the majority of what i'm saying for the 2 hour class. the helper also thinks she gets to be a part of the decision-making process--what play, which characters--but I really just want her to try to discipline them. she's failed me thusfar. last week she showed up to class 30 minutes late because she overslept (class is at 4 pm). this week she didn't show up at all. but she did send me a 5 page script for the ugly duckling. 5 pages for 21 children. the kids vetoed it. so peter pan it is! nevermind the fact that we'll have to somehow figure out how to make these children fly when all our props are made of cardboard. somehow I don't see the library springing for a cables and pulley system suspending children from the ceiling. maybe they'll surprise me though. i'm mostly excited about having a bunch of little girls dressed as pirates, replete with eye patches, parrots and mentionings of scurvey.
Monday's class was a nightmare. i have absolutely no control over these kids for 2 hours. they know it. I know it. they know I know it. i don't even have the power to be condescending or in any way intimidating when these little bodies don't understand english. i am truly powerless. it's a crappy feeling. there is one student in my class who was in the last english play, so she did her best to scream at the other kids, but it was all a joke to them. since koreans typically sit on the floor, there are all these little pillows stacked in one corner of the room. add to that a very slippery wheelchair ramp in the middle of the auditorium and they envision some sort of luge course as soon as they show up. even as i'm yelling at them and the korean woman is yelling at them, they're riding their makeshift sleds down the ramp. seems sort of cruel--a mockery of those who might actually need this accessibility--even without any handicapped folks there. there is also all sorts of av equipment on stage, behind the stage. the kids make a beeline for it and start playing with it, banging it, generally destroying it. and then there are random instruments laying around. it's a playground to them. with very very expensive equipment.
though i feel helpless now, i know that i felt the exact same way last time but still managed to pull it off. we shall see. as soon as i have the script written, it should be all gravy, smooth sailing, etc. my advanced drama class should be okay, but i have to somehow find the time to write the play before friday. i keep putting it off. i guess i could be working on that now...
after the drama class on friday, i felt like i wanted to shoot all the kids and then shoot myself, so i was very eager to hop on a four hour bus to seoul to simmer down and pass out. went there with 2 of the other suncheon teachers. arrived in itaewon around 1-ish and went searching for a love motel. slim pickings in the itaewon area. ended up at a love motel on "hooker hill". the rooms smelled like piss and the sheets left some sort of film on my skin. but the shower was hot and i had my own room. it also sort of made the experience more authentic. seedy motel on a hill full of prostitutes. it just felt right.
what was the most interesting about the whole situation was that the first time i went to seoul with my back-stabbing co-worker from the hagwon in chuncheon, we stayed in the exact same area. i saw the bar where someone stole $100 from my wallet (ironically called "club U.N."). i saw the bar where said co-worker picked up two dudes, one of whom tried to molest me later. but instead of feeling really pissed off about it all, it was sort of a fond memory. just because in retrospect everything that happened to me makes a great story. i'm pretty damn sure i didn't feel that way then. but now, I can admit that there was some humor in all that. as long as there was no actual physical harm done, i guess i've recovered. of course when i go back to chuncheon, being there, seeing my apartment, seeing the hagwon, seeing the people who were actually nice to me for no real reason might be overwhelmingly sentimental. I suppose most things are.
saturday morning on limited sleep, me and the dudes got up to go shopping in itaewon. itaewon in the morning hours is a testament to all manner of debauchery. the prostitutes are still advertising, and there are people still buying. folks are drunk at 11 in the morning, somehow never finding the self-control to call it quits the night before. it's interesting, for lack of a more all-encompassing word. there are lots of military folks, lots of esl teachers, lots of prostitutes, lots of students, lots of tourists and just generally an odd mish-mash of people. it's not my favorite place in seoul, despite its "diversity" (just seedy in general, and lots of douchebags reminding me of frat boys back home). but we americans are bigger folks, so seems like itaewon is one of the few places to find clothes that fit. i didn't even buy any clothes though. bought a backpack (the piece of shit i bought in beijing didn't even last 24 hours. walking around tibet with my shit falling out of ripping seams and compromised pockets. excellent.), got my boots shined for too much money, bought a silk jacket for rory that has an embroidered dragon on it (very karate kid).
after itaewon, went to the myeongdong area as we had decided to change our lodgings. not that we didn't want to be surrounded by filth and hookers, and filthy hookers...we ended up staying at an actual apartment that had two rooms, 4 beds, a kitchen and a living room. it was a spacious oasis in the midst of the cramped hustle and bustle of the big city. next time i'm in seoul with lots of people, we're staying there. when we looked out the window, we could see the namsan cable car steadily climbing the mountain, as well as the inumerable lower class houses dotting the mountain's base.
at 5:30 we went to a fancy hotel to have a mizzou asian affairs center reunion. sang was there, epac teachers were there, epi students were there, tesol students were there. all the people i worked with in columbia on campus were there. it was quite surreal to be surrounded by all these people in their home country. the most interesting part was getting to meet all these people who knew julie from the past tesol program, but had no idea who i was. it's weird for people to know her but not know me. lots of staring and giggling. it was almost as if they didn't believe I was a real person, I was merely a decoy sent there to confuse them.
we drank free beer and ate free food, then went out dancing and norae bong-ing and drinking until the wee hours of the morning. a great idea since there was the dmz tour starting 8 am on sunday. of course I wasn't thinking about the dmz tour as I stared at the 3 liter beer tower in front of me. anyhoo...i've gotten into this habit lately of dancing like a complete idiot. usually it involves making people feel uncomfortable while I molest them. this night was no different. yikes.
bright and early Sunday morning we woke to make our way to our dmz tour. apparently, on sundays the amount of things you can actually go see is quite limited. I was actually looking forward to a sobering, somber experience where I felt the heartache of those separated from their families, and just some general heaviness brought on by the harsh reality of the gravity of the situation. I wanted to see soldiers pointing guns at each other and feel the remote, yet apparent, chance that my life was slightly threatened.
boy was I disappointed! the whole experience felt like a carnival ride. as a matter of fact, at the freedom bridge (lots of flags and notes written on a monumental wall), there was a big ol' pirate ship carnival ride, a la "the buccaneer" at six flags. so this was what the historical significance and the very real clear and present danger had been reduced to: an amusement park ride complemented by a glossy, compact, overtly sentimental 7 minute film that basically sums it all up. the film showed lots of images of a little girl crying while rifle shells fell around her, and ended with a butterfly landing on her finger. good stuff. but we did go down into one of the tunnels, via monorail. I took a rock from the tunnel. if I had to pick one part of the tour that I felt was actually worth the $58, i'd say it was this (the tunnel, not the rock). there was something quite bizarre and surreal about getting to the door at the end of the south korean side, approximately 200 meters from where our monorail "docked". there was some impotent looking barbed wired (sort of looked like christmas lights) haphazardly blocking a door, with a camera focused on it. a window to the left of the door revealed a large, vacant room behind the wall. then perhaps 50 feet away was another door denoting the beginning of north korea's portion of the tunnel. on the other side of the door across the room, there were probably some north korean tourists doing the same thing, peering into that room wondering what lay on the other side of the door. very bizarre. very low security. again, very surreal.
so that's it. next time I go to the dmz, i'm doing it big. feel like this is an abrupt ending to the blog, but I guess it's already pretty long.
the end.
Monday's class was a nightmare. i have absolutely no control over these kids for 2 hours. they know it. I know it. they know I know it. i don't even have the power to be condescending or in any way intimidating when these little bodies don't understand english. i am truly powerless. it's a crappy feeling. there is one student in my class who was in the last english play, so she did her best to scream at the other kids, but it was all a joke to them. since koreans typically sit on the floor, there are all these little pillows stacked in one corner of the room. add to that a very slippery wheelchair ramp in the middle of the auditorium and they envision some sort of luge course as soon as they show up. even as i'm yelling at them and the korean woman is yelling at them, they're riding their makeshift sleds down the ramp. seems sort of cruel--a mockery of those who might actually need this accessibility--even without any handicapped folks there. there is also all sorts of av equipment on stage, behind the stage. the kids make a beeline for it and start playing with it, banging it, generally destroying it. and then there are random instruments laying around. it's a playground to them. with very very expensive equipment.
though i feel helpless now, i know that i felt the exact same way last time but still managed to pull it off. we shall see. as soon as i have the script written, it should be all gravy, smooth sailing, etc. my advanced drama class should be okay, but i have to somehow find the time to write the play before friday. i keep putting it off. i guess i could be working on that now...
after the drama class on friday, i felt like i wanted to shoot all the kids and then shoot myself, so i was very eager to hop on a four hour bus to seoul to simmer down and pass out. went there with 2 of the other suncheon teachers. arrived in itaewon around 1-ish and went searching for a love motel. slim pickings in the itaewon area. ended up at a love motel on "hooker hill". the rooms smelled like piss and the sheets left some sort of film on my skin. but the shower was hot and i had my own room. it also sort of made the experience more authentic. seedy motel on a hill full of prostitutes. it just felt right.
what was the most interesting about the whole situation was that the first time i went to seoul with my back-stabbing co-worker from the hagwon in chuncheon, we stayed in the exact same area. i saw the bar where someone stole $100 from my wallet (ironically called "club U.N."). i saw the bar where said co-worker picked up two dudes, one of whom tried to molest me later. but instead of feeling really pissed off about it all, it was sort of a fond memory. just because in retrospect everything that happened to me makes a great story. i'm pretty damn sure i didn't feel that way then. but now, I can admit that there was some humor in all that. as long as there was no actual physical harm done, i guess i've recovered. of course when i go back to chuncheon, being there, seeing my apartment, seeing the hagwon, seeing the people who were actually nice to me for no real reason might be overwhelmingly sentimental. I suppose most things are.
saturday morning on limited sleep, me and the dudes got up to go shopping in itaewon. itaewon in the morning hours is a testament to all manner of debauchery. the prostitutes are still advertising, and there are people still buying. folks are drunk at 11 in the morning, somehow never finding the self-control to call it quits the night before. it's interesting, for lack of a more all-encompassing word. there are lots of military folks, lots of esl teachers, lots of prostitutes, lots of students, lots of tourists and just generally an odd mish-mash of people. it's not my favorite place in seoul, despite its "diversity" (just seedy in general, and lots of douchebags reminding me of frat boys back home). but we americans are bigger folks, so seems like itaewon is one of the few places to find clothes that fit. i didn't even buy any clothes though. bought a backpack (the piece of shit i bought in beijing didn't even last 24 hours. walking around tibet with my shit falling out of ripping seams and compromised pockets. excellent.), got my boots shined for too much money, bought a silk jacket for rory that has an embroidered dragon on it (very karate kid).
after itaewon, went to the myeongdong area as we had decided to change our lodgings. not that we didn't want to be surrounded by filth and hookers, and filthy hookers...we ended up staying at an actual apartment that had two rooms, 4 beds, a kitchen and a living room. it was a spacious oasis in the midst of the cramped hustle and bustle of the big city. next time i'm in seoul with lots of people, we're staying there. when we looked out the window, we could see the namsan cable car steadily climbing the mountain, as well as the inumerable lower class houses dotting the mountain's base.
at 5:30 we went to a fancy hotel to have a mizzou asian affairs center reunion. sang was there, epac teachers were there, epi students were there, tesol students were there. all the people i worked with in columbia on campus were there. it was quite surreal to be surrounded by all these people in their home country. the most interesting part was getting to meet all these people who knew julie from the past tesol program, but had no idea who i was. it's weird for people to know her but not know me. lots of staring and giggling. it was almost as if they didn't believe I was a real person, I was merely a decoy sent there to confuse them.
we drank free beer and ate free food, then went out dancing and norae bong-ing and drinking until the wee hours of the morning. a great idea since there was the dmz tour starting 8 am on sunday. of course I wasn't thinking about the dmz tour as I stared at the 3 liter beer tower in front of me. anyhoo...i've gotten into this habit lately of dancing like a complete idiot. usually it involves making people feel uncomfortable while I molest them. this night was no different. yikes.
bright and early Sunday morning we woke to make our way to our dmz tour. apparently, on sundays the amount of things you can actually go see is quite limited. I was actually looking forward to a sobering, somber experience where I felt the heartache of those separated from their families, and just some general heaviness brought on by the harsh reality of the gravity of the situation. I wanted to see soldiers pointing guns at each other and feel the remote, yet apparent, chance that my life was slightly threatened.
boy was I disappointed! the whole experience felt like a carnival ride. as a matter of fact, at the freedom bridge (lots of flags and notes written on a monumental wall), there was a big ol' pirate ship carnival ride, a la "the buccaneer" at six flags. so this was what the historical significance and the very real clear and present danger had been reduced to: an amusement park ride complemented by a glossy, compact, overtly sentimental 7 minute film that basically sums it all up. the film showed lots of images of a little girl crying while rifle shells fell around her, and ended with a butterfly landing on her finger. good stuff. but we did go down into one of the tunnels, via monorail. I took a rock from the tunnel. if I had to pick one part of the tour that I felt was actually worth the $58, i'd say it was this (the tunnel, not the rock). there was something quite bizarre and surreal about getting to the door at the end of the south korean side, approximately 200 meters from where our monorail "docked". there was some impotent looking barbed wired (sort of looked like christmas lights) haphazardly blocking a door, with a camera focused on it. a window to the left of the door revealed a large, vacant room behind the wall. then perhaps 50 feet away was another door denoting the beginning of north korea's portion of the tunnel. on the other side of the door across the room, there were probably some north korean tourists doing the same thing, peering into that room wondering what lay on the other side of the door. very bizarre. very low security. again, very surreal.so that's it. next time I go to the dmz, i'm doing it big. feel like this is an abrupt ending to the blog, but I guess it's already pretty long.
the end.
1 comment:
So did you ride the ride or what?
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