there's a totally pimped out version of "the first noel" on a loop of sorts here in ye olde pc bong. don't know why i always feel the qualify things as "ye olde." i guess if just makes me feel good. makes me want to eat a big turkey leg at a renaissance festival, minus all those weird people who go to renaissance festivals. the carol sounds like mariah carey, but korean-ified. whatever that means.
i had a relatively uneventful weekend. some reading, some korean verb conjugating, some imbibing, an odd lesbian sex dream (i guess only odd in that i had it in the first place), and soccer. these, of course, in no particular order.
i'll start with the reading portion pf the recap. after reading what is the what, i was skeptical, believing that anything i read immediately after that would seem pretty lackluster and less than life-affirming. i was correct. i must say i'm disappointed with best american short stories, 2006. it's taken me at least a month to plod through a little over half of this book. if i had to pick a highlight, it would be "The Conductor" by Aleksandar Hemon. good eats. anyhoo, i thought the whole point of short stories was that they were easily digestible little nuggets of literature (although, based on my one creative writing class in college, the point of a short story is for your character[s] to have redeeming qualities. i strongly disagree. perhaps that's why i didn't get a 4.0 that semester that i only had that class one day a week). the point is, i'm having a hard time choking these stories down. not that i planned this segue, but, speaking of difficult to digest nuggets....
on friday i had sort of a bad day at work. no need to go into particulars, as most of the time my bad/sad moods are vague and unpinpointable in nature. so there was some of that intangibility combined with other tangibles. the point being, i was looking forward to some imbibing--i guess i'll take any excuse. hey, i'm in a good mood, let's drink! hey, i'm in a bad mood, let's drink! so of course went to juliana's and drank many a shitty hite. i really miss boulevard wheat. just felt the urge to mention that. at my table, people were playing some stupid card game for money. which leads to one person (or maybe two, i'm not sure) losing lots of money and one person winning lots of money. my gain, not because i played, but just because i was sitting there with the person who won. soon a whole bottle of tequila that someone else bought materialized in front of me. i'm game. of course my liver was bigger than my stomach (dunno if that makes any sense), as i temporarily forgot i hadn't eaten dinner. so several shots in, i'm feeling no pain, but i did have plans to go to a soccer game the next day, so it was important to go home at a reasonable hour. i don't know in what language "reasonable" translates to 3 am, i guess it would be korean. when i got home i passed out after eating an arguably obscene amount of cheese and crackers. i must have swallowed said snack before even chewing, as evidenced by the copious amount of solid cheese-laden vomit i had the pleasure of cleaning up a little before 4 in the am. grrreeeaaat. the next day, post-shower, i had to dry off with a sweatshirt, as all my towels had cheesy barf all over them. yup, i'm a responsible adult.
moving on, and further refuting that last point--you know, the one about me being an adult--i had a soccer game to go to on saturday. met some peeps at noon. looked like we all had a rough night. juliana's owner was with us though, and he wasn't about to let some hungover people (as well as actual rain) rain on his planned day of soccer debauchery. after all, what is soccer without hooligans. korean, american and south african hooligans. so we took a taxi to where the gwangyang dragons were playing. apparently, they'd been kicked out of their home stadium for some sort of concert, so they just played in a generic stadium. whatever, i couldn't tell. but the weather did suck on account of the yellow sand from china and some rain. so we sat in a soju tent eating corn dogs and drinking beer. then we moved into the stadium to continue to drink beer, scream obscenities at the soccer players (scaring and driving children to tears in the process), and behave like complete idiots. this went on long after the game was finished. went back to a guy named brian's house (turns out he's a 3 time olympian. and i drank beer and ate bbq at his house. weird). i went to sleep at 8 pm, relieved that the weather provided an adequate excuse to not do anything productive. i slept until 10 am the next day.
i've realized that my apartment makes a lot of noise. i sleep with gross, spongey earplugs. each night i tentatively plunge my hand into a half-sized ziplock bag full of these little blue plugs, somewhat repulsed by the feel of the wax on my fingers. nevermind the fact that it's this same wax in my ears everyday... now it's more habit than necessity. i remember when i was little and would get swimmer's ear. jules and i would have to wear these really nasty pliable gummy wads that molded to the shape of your ear. but after you'd worn them a couple times, mixed with the wax and the chlorine, they didn't really hold up, reduced to the texture of old, ropey gum. or maybe when gum mixes with candy because you can't commit to just one. there is the constant hum of the refrigerator. that in itself, no problem. constant noise is okay. things that come in evenly spaced intervals are what fuck with me--the dripping kitchen sink, the ticking clock on top of the tv (i guess i could move it, but i can't move the fridge), the weird thumping noise coming from my freezer (what is that?). each drip, each knock, each tick timed out and anticipated.
anyhoo, i believe it was this night i had the bizarre (or not bizarre at all. there weren't any weird devices or anything. heh heh.) lesbian sex dream starring myself and jennifer connelly. i guess it could be worse. i would prefer a hot male sex dream or real-life encounter, but if i had to choose a chick to get it on with, it would be her. anyhoo, we were "on the swim" from evil ship captains. lots of swimming naked in water from shady boat to shady boat. through canals and underground tunnels. and of course amidst all this swimming was other stuff that would constitute a "lesbian" dream. use your imagination, folks. i think this dream stemmed from two things: 1) in gwangju i was talking to some chicks about who we'd pick for "she" sex. jennifer connelly was my number one; 2) i've been investing a lot of time lately in writing a peter pan script for my children's class. captain hook. eh? i am glad that there were no hooks involved in this dream though. would have been gory and slightly less pleasant.
drama class today. i've been in awkward power struggles at work before. ultimately, i've been the one reduced to tongue biting, and higher ground taking. but each time that situation has presented itself in the past, the people involved spoke english. now i have an even weirder power struggle going on at the library with my korean co-teacher. she's old, she doesn't speak english very well, and i honestly wanted to punch her in the face today. i'm starting to project all my resentment of these rude little kids onto her. and she's not even particularly rude, she's just not particularly helpful either. in my other class with the completely competent english speaker, i'll bark out a command or a statement, and she'll repeat me in korean. i don't have to command her to command. she understands me. in today's class, i had 21 little bodies running around screaming (as the director of the library and my supervisor at city hall decide to drop in unannounced. fucking great), and one old woman vacantly looking at me, not understanding her cues to translate. after spending more hours than i'd care to admit revising my peter pan script, she tells me today "i don't think any of the kids can in here can read english." guess what lady, i know that. so i guess i'll just let you direct a korean play instead of an english one. but i can't teach 21 kids to read english in the 2 months we have left. and how the fuck is that my fault. no one asked for my input when they let 21 kids who don't speak engish sign up for the fucking ENGLISH play. maybe i should present it to them like an opera, you don't have to know italian to appreciate it or perform it? puccini, peter pan in konglish, same same.
at the end of class, i was telling all these kids about their homework, and she's just standing there. then i say, "if anyone understands a word i just said, raise your hand." they all just look at me, "bi-lingual" grandma included, wondering why i'm not still speaking. so fucking frustrating. and i keep telling her i need her to help me get control of my classroom while she just vacantly smiles and nods wondering why i'm angry. today at the end she took the script and said she was going to make changes to it, but she couldn't answer "what" changes. then she tells me she won't be here next monday. this after missing last monday and showing up 30 minutes late the week before that. fudge a dudge. this class makes me feel helpless. and it's so much worse than the last beginner's class.
other things on my mind. my contract here in suncheon is past the halfway point. so now i have to start thinking about/ implementing my next course of action, whatever that may be. time both flies and stands still here in these, the stop-motion days of my life. a routine that makes the days feel long when you're immersed in them and fleeting when they've passed. it's bizarre to think these traits of a generic daily life can follow anyone anywhere. i should get a hobby.
1 comment:
aye aye, captain.
Post a Comment