worst christmas ever? (to be continued...)

i guess i should check the punctuation there. a question mark implies doubt, uncertainty (also the potential for some irony, but that's sort of lost since typing and/or reading yields nothing but other people's [perhaps slightly] skewed inner monologues, with none of the subtle nuances that only my speaking voice can provide). so yes, i am certain that this was the worst christmas ever.

imagine, if you will, that you work 5 days/week at a school in china. now imagine that you routinely work between 10-12 hours on each of those days. you don't mind this, actually. but what you do mind is spending so much time in the company of a handful of people for whom you have absolutely no respect or regard in general. i don't think i need to spend too much time differentiating the bad work apples from the good, as anyone reading this won't know what the fuck (or "who" the fuck, i should say) i'm talking about. but yeah, there are some retarded cunts that i work with. wow, i feel better.

sorry, back to this hypothetical situation that isn't actually hypothetical at all. we'll just call it my decidedly "subjective" christmas nightmare. anyway, back to that. for starters, no one died. that's not a bad thing. that's more a reminder to me that maybe all this fucking bullshit wasn't as bad as my melodrama will probably suggest.

my christmas started early, as i had an "open door" on sunday night. again with the "things that don't mean shit to people outside of ef." an open door means the parents of students in a particular class get to come and watch you teach their kids for about 20-25 minutes. 13 kids in this class. pretty low level. 8-9 being the average age. based on the body language of the parents alone, i could tell that i had some tough critics. for the next 30 minutes, i struggled through parents talking to their kids in chinese ("you don't understand") and touching their kids, while i was trying to convince their kids that there weren't any parents in the room and that they could understand. 13 Ss. 13 parents. makes for a crowded classroom. at the end of it all there were 3 mothers who were just nasty and had made up their minds to complain about anything. "the cd is too fast." "my kid doesn't understand you." "i don't understand you." "my kid just guesses what you mean by your body language." (*all translated by a chinese staff member). the best part was when a mother got upset about the fact that her kid did indeed write his lowercase i's correctly. she wasn't happy about the fact that she was wrong. i.e. she wasn't happy about the fact that her kid was writing exactly how he's supposed to. it's just funny because chinese has pinyin. plenty of i's there. there's not really an english i and a chinese i. or if there is, i wasn't aware of it. somebody educate me on that.

the point is, i had to hold back tears for damn near 20 minutes while a bunch of parents spoke vehemently (and nasally. that's not even the right word. i've yet to find the accurate adjective to describe the chinese language, particularly when spoken by a bunch of angry women debating the merits of their children's foreign english teacher. again, someone educate me on that one) against me in a language that i understand far less than korean. i heart long, inopportune parentheticals. just thought i'd share.

oh yeah, my gas is empty. that's not a metaphor, but it does contribute to my lack of holiday cheer. so i have no hot water. i haven't taken a shower in 4 days (soon to be 5). maybe this is information that i shouldn't divulge, but there's not really anyone around that i'm trying to impress by being, well, clean. i guess in the grand scheme of things 5 days isn't horrible (tibet=10 days, no shower). i'm sure that all the dirty people in far less-developed countries than the one in which i currently reside would agree with me there....the gas man cometh (tomorrow).

monday we had a huge christmas party at a fancy hotel. heaps of food and performances by the kids who had all paid an exorbitant amount of money to partake in both things. the worst part about that was that it was on my day off, but i still had to go spend time with the aforementioned assholes with whom i work. and instead of completing menial tasks that needed to be done, said cunts spent time dancing and/or applying copious amounts of makeup to prepare for the dance. i won't dwell too much on this, only to say that 1 of the 2 routines had absolutely nothing to do with christmas (which, as a westerner, i feel happy to grossly overvalue, as there are so very few western comforts around. and dammit, it is the most wonderful time of the year. i actually believe that.). their outfits were also completely inappropriate for a room full of children (a cold room, i might add). purple fringed halter tops and accompanying mini skirts. once, twice, three times a midriff exposed. gross. it was just strange to be surrounded by people who don't work as hard as i do, but who were more than happy to sit around on their asses at the party, eating western food (uhh, gummy sharks, anyone?) celebrating a holiday created, manipulated and thus cherished by the western world. the western world of which i'm a part, whether only in spirit and everything else about me other than mere geographic location.

so that was an all-day sort of a situation.

next day (my 2nd regular day off), had to be at the school at 7:30 am to go on a road trip to "chinawood." oh god. chinawood deserves it's own blog. and so it shall be....

spoiler alert

hmm. need to get back into the habit of this. it's just been hard to do since my home internet has been sporadic at best. rambling on and on in written form requires a certain degree of privacy, and i just don't seem to have that at work. not that i should expect to be able to do something non-work related whilst at my place of employment. makes sense, i suppose. but yes...work work work.

i should reckon long and hard about my current state of affairs. having said that, i've a feeling that this here blog is going to be an exercise in relative brevity by my standards (we'll judge the accuracy of this premonition by the word count at the end). i guess the main thing worth noting would be ef. it feels strange to be a cog in the wheel of such a huge machine.
seriously, wikipedia it. this is strange good for a majority of the time. except on sundays. sundays are the days when i feel like crying for no particular reason, but i guess there probably is a reason. the last day of my working week (mondays and tuesdays off) but in the grand scheme of things, this is an improvement. in korea i had at least 3 days/week that were like that, particularly in the latter months of my tenure there. that sounds very official. tenure. of course there are also jules and rory at ef, which changes everything for the better. living at work doesn't seem so miserable when you put it in the context of working with two of your favorite people. in fucking china. yeah, that's cool. so in that respect it was easier to be unhappy when it went unnoticed in korea (due to a palpable lack of friendly-type beings with whom to have regular discourse).

besides all the other glaring/obvious differences between the china and korea, the biggest one for me has been on the emotional front (yup, here she goes... i'm even going to contradict prior statements. i like to keep me on me's toes). constantly being in the company of people who just might give a shit about me means it's not quite as easy to lie about how i'm feeling, so as to spare them the sympathy/empathy (genuine or otherwise) they feel is due. sure, i did that a lot in korea (the wallowing and whatnot), it just so happened that i was alone most of the time. there was a lot less accountability for how i was feeling. crying willy nilly with no regard for how it affected others. simply because there was no way it could have. so even though i try to explain that things here are so much better than they were in korea, there weren't any actual humans who have been in both places with me for the past two years who can validate/corroborate that statement. no litmus test, as it were.

it feels sort of strange to admit that i'm not a chipper person. even stranger to realize that i'm okay with that. since i'm working out some "issues" here, i'll elaborate. what's puzzling me now is trying to recall if i've ever actually been deserving of any happy-go-lucky type qualifiers. or have i always been this sort of overly emotional chick who spends a good portion of her time (or at least more time than most normal humans) teetering on the verge of tears? i guess it doesn't really matter either way. it is worth noting that my tears are not always the result of depression or any other sort of hostile personality clouder. hmmm.

enough about that though...the other day there was a camel on the sidewalk. as if the fact that i have to enter a police precinct to actually get to my apartment building--the very epitome of communist chinese housing--isn't enough. of course i say my apartment's the epitome of something of which i had no prior notion. that's how i roll. but my "complex" is big (don't read into that, even though i wrapped it in quotes...) and concrete and has lots of palm trees. yup, the very image of communism. so yeah, across from the police entrance is a kindergarten, which is why i can only assume that's why there was a real, live camel hanging out on the sidewalk. kids and camels. just like metal and...magnets. i didn't take a picture with/of it, because somehow it only struck me as something odd enough to notice, but not odd enough to involve myself with beyond that.

besides the camel, there's really not much to report. oh yeah, i've been reading a lot. i say a lot, simply because it's the only thing i've really done consistently outside of work, besides drink. usually this "reading" involves going to starbucks (yeah, i know...evil). i figure that if i'm ever going to meet hot foreign dudes to "talk to" that aren't affiliated with my school, this most archetypal of western coffee chains is a good place to start. so far my quests have proven less than fruitful, as far as dude-scoping goes. if actual reading had ever been the point, then yes, i've "totally scored" on that front. fuck, heavy on the quotes today. finished a few books. the last of which was beneath the wheel. herman hesse. i think that i can safely say i have his whole story arc figured out: "i think i'll kill the main character, now that the reader has gotten good and attached to him." anyhoo, having read a few of his books now (most of which i [surprisingly] remember. sorry, siddhartha...), i'd have to say that the glass bead game is the bee's knees. i'm not exactly sure why i've dedicated a whole paragraph to a shoddy book report, but hey, why not.

fuck, i turned 30. in china. that seems noteworthy on two counts. hey, i ain't dead! hey, i live in china! make it three: hey, jules is here! she cooked chili at her crib. lots of folks came over, circle of death ensued. although we ditched the game early to depart for ktv. i say ktv like it should mean something to anyone outside of china. ktv's akin to karaoke, except you can sing in your own private room. it's sort of what we do around these parts. so yup. ktv and chili. east meets west. i guess east met west, since that was last week.

i have nothing else to say at this juncture. i must sleep and mentally prepare myself for early morning munchkins. there's a little dude in my first class (joey) who confuses /t/ and /k/. so instead of saying "it's a snake" he says "it's a snate." he's still convinced that pronouncing loudly means pronouncing more correcter. and with that heart-warming anecdote, i'm spent.

oh shit, about that dream i mentioned in the last post...there's really not much more worth mentioning. manute bol sums it up.

a heads up

look out, world. today marks the triumphant return of home internet, after nearly 6 months of abstinence.

it also marks the purchase of a dvd player, so my attention's divided.

at some point i'll need to talk about a dream i had last night that involved a person that i think was manute bol, a lobster, a dinosaur, some terrorists and a giant net. but i don't want to spoil it before i can offer more details. in due time...

oh yeah, i forgot

i mistakenly posted my photo update to the old korean blog.

'nam photos are up:
www.flickr.com/photos/jamieleighmcgeorge

word.

making up for lost time

an untimely recap of my last week in vietnam. that was over 1 month ago. weird. and now i "live" in china. equally weird. i actually signed a contract on my new apartment yesterday, which, strangely enough, reminds me of exactly the kind of place in which i'd have dwelled in columbia, mo. the perfect little crappy/charming post-dorm life abode. and it has a backyard. bbqs, beer consumption and general merriment shall ensue. this is unheard of round these parts (the yard, not the merriment). i'm muy stoked. visions of unpacking my clothes that had seemed like faraway dreams are now a more than slightly-wrinkled reality.

but back to the last week in 'nam. in short, it ruled. in long...my last full day in sapa consisted of a 7 km mountain trek--uphill, mind you--through a typhoon-ravaged village. strange to be walking over ginormo mud clumps dotted by random upturned grass and the occassional roof bit or beam. "shit, that was someone's dwelling." very real manifestations of how weather/nature can destroy things. i'm lucky to have only ever experienced weather as an inconvenience. being in vietnam was the first time it ever struck me just how powerful mere water droplets falling out of the sky can be. i think i realized that the first time i had to walk home from class down one of the busiest streets in the city in water up to my knees. it was pleasant--one of those distinctly vietnamese moments--but also unsettling in just how quickly the water accumulated. but enough about that.

prior to afrorementioned mud clumps, there were other pleasantries to be had, namely banana pancakes and an early morning swim in a waterfall near the banho village. i'd stayed the night in a bamboo stilt house with a local family of tay minority people. at our dinner table of 10 peeps, i was the only "tourist." sleeping in the same house as some locals seemed to satiate this warped desire for "authenticity." and what is that exactly, authenticity? some [relatively] abstract notion that has managed to saturate my brain during this grand asian adventure known as my life (a notion that i seem to associate with skewed senses of clarity and purity--huh?--along with other equally intangible things that i'll never be able to succinctly or thoroughly explain).

so, uh, yeah. dinner. my guide was a fantastic human, despite his drunken sexual advances later that same evening. so he translated everything for me. he also shared his coagulated duck blood pudding. not something i'd choose for myself, but hey, i tried it. and now i can say i did. it was really nice to sit back and see this large family unit interact, much in the same way large family units everywhere interact. and i felt happy and sad at the same time. hard to explain. the inherent tragedy of life-changing events (the good kind) when you're lucid enough to realize you're in the middle of them. the very transitoriness that makes these moments/hours/days in time so profound. and then it's back to your regular life, and work and obligations and less-than-stellar relationships with most people. ho hum.

moving on to the ascent. saw many an errant water buffalo, along with brightly-clad mountain women and giddy, muddy children picking crab apples when i finally made it to the top of this mountain after sweating my proverbial balls off, i drank a beer in a hut with the crappiest karaoke setup out in the middle of nowhere. but i guess in context, it could arguably have been the best karaoke setup i've ever seen. hmmm...

post-karaoke, had to get back to the main village. and the only way to do that was via motorcycle taxi, my favorite aspect of vietnam. so back over/through the waterfalls and landslides and to the arguably plush hotel i'd been to on the first day. vietnam was a study in contrasts for me. the trip began with the mental taxation and stress of the celta course and ended with the physical exhaustion of my person. and both were equally rewarding. the sort of balance that i sometimes fail to realize i need. i guess not in genuinely exhausting doses, but whether in academics or in physical exertion, it's always nice to realize exactly what you're capable of.

back to this increasingly roundabout travelogue....sapa was at the top of my list while i was still loafing on jules and rory's couch back in july, so it was quite literally amazing to actually be there after all the issues i'd been having with my chinese visa whilst in the 'nam. so i flew to hanoi on a friday afternoon (the second time i'd flown there in 2 weeks. that was some fucking poor planning).

as soon as i got to a random travel agent's office planted down some little back alley in hanoi, i was promptly picked up and deposited at the train station.

i arrived at about 7:45 am in lao cai where it was dumping rain. remember back in an earlier paragraph when i mentioned a typhoon or some other natural disaster? this was the only thought running through my head as i struggled to stay dry. weather had never made me nervous before. ultimately it didn't matter. we tourists were ushered to a vanthat then drove us the 30 km or so to sapa.

sapa used to be significantly less of a tourist trap, but apparently a whole lot of people had the same great idea as me to come to this place. resorts and "pubs" practically popping up overnight, all founded on the intrigue of getting to see local people who come downfrom the hills to sell their traditional wares and give us rich tourists a glimpse of "real" vietnamese culture. it's very cool, but it also seemed to sum up most of vietnam. yes, i know there's plenty of tragic history here that i could touch upon that's about as "real" as you can get, but i'm focusing on my own selfish wants and desires as a tourist.

6 hours of hiking on the first day, uphill, downhill. i think it was about 12-15 kms that day. and all these ethnic women with their braids and their colorful weaving and their large jewelry and their blue-stained hands swarm you--down from the mountain in droves--selling silver, selling handmade bags, selling scarfs. and the setting was unlike anything i've ever seen. a sea of green punctuated by terraced rows of rice. and the fog threading about the landscape only heightened this sense of utter unreality.

the easy trekking was the very basic part of the tour. after lunch on that first day, 7 other people from our group of 9 went back to the hotel. me and one other chick had opted for the homestay in one of the neighboring villages. so we walked there and got to take the coldest showers of our lives. we slept upstairs on mosquito-net shaded mattresses. then we wandered random village trails.

dinner time meant "happy water," which is the 60% rice wine that the homeowner had made, from the rice he'd cultivated with his own hands. good gad. not easy to drink. it was drinking so much of the happy water that led linda and i to sing karaoke (yes, in the village). it was quite expensive because apparently, electricity in a village is really expensive. makes sense, i guess.

woke up in the morning to a variety of noises--all the sounds of a village waking up. ducks, chickens, roosters, cats, and the wailing of one unfortunate pig. i was mildly disappointed that i didn't witness a pig slaughter, but apparently this old girl wasn't quite fat enough. the farmer was just weighing her and lifted her by one ear and her tail.. i'm quite certain i would make such sounds too if some vietnamese villager were hoisting me by my two flimsiest body parts (yes, i have a tail). ultimately the pig seemed pleased with her outcome.

day 2 was perhaps the most dangerous, on account of all the prior rain. it was downhillfor half the day. couldn't have done it without the help of the ethnic people. how very strange to be hiking through bamboo forests with tribal women flanking you, holding your hands as you descend a cliff face. eventually we parted ways, but i felt that the least i could do was buy some of these women's handicrafts. the next part of the of the way was uphill, but i much preferred that to going downhill.

after a ramen lunch, linda headed back to sapa, and my guide and i began the trek down to banho (where this summary started). immediately after arriving at the stilt house in the village, the guide and i went to some hot springs near the village, no other people in sight. headed back to the house in time for dinner.i guess that's pretty much it. hiked back up the mountain, went back into town and back to the hotel. headed to the train station the next evening. my guide met me there and got me good and drunk with the locals before i settled in for the 10 hour journey back to hanoi. i splurged on a $25/night hotel and slept all day. back to china the next day.

and here i am. and despite how hectic this first month has been, i'm still in a good mood. that warrants a "holy shit!."

schtuff

well hell's bells. i am now living in china. always good to start any new life abroad with a visit to the hospital. once, twice, three times a lady. 3 times in 2 days. i don't have the hiv or nothing. in fact, i still don't know exactly what i had, but it was a shits-producing, stomach cramping, brain-bludgeoning thing. what's important is that it's no longer in my possession, whatever "it" was.
worth noting that the "jiaxing first hospital" fell far far short of clean. which begs the question, was it only first in materialization? or is there some other area in which it bests other hospitals. i've gotta go with the former, as this place was a study in irony, fecal coliforms and a general lack of efficiency that i've come to expect from anything large, asian and resembling an office.

let's see...things of note: people smoking in the oncology ward (which also happened to be full of freshly squirted out babies). perhaps the most memorable event of the day (not that i would choose to remember this) was when i had the misfortune of supplying a "stool" sample. there are two words i hope never to encounter first hand again. i'll go ahead and laugh politely at any foul puns that arise out of that.

anyhoo, a nurse accompanied me through the labyrinthine corrider of hospital trailers. this was also shocking--sort of like in elementary school when the school outgrows the main building and teachers are relocated to these lego-type add on trailers. jiaxing first hospital was the exact same way. so the doctors i saw didn't even get to be in the main building. i wonder if that bothers them. "yeah, we MADE space for the real life savers and important people inside."

back to that pesky stool...first i had to get to these elusive doctors in their lego huts and produce a stool sample in a bathroom whose corrider was full of people laying around with "infusions" dangling out of their arms. unfortunately, the lab that needed my shit was actually in the main building. which meant navigating the labyrinth and the corrider of iv laden peeps again, little cup o' stool in hand. i probably would have been embarrassed if i'd had enough energy to concern myself with anything besides not splashing my own shit on myself in full view of a very busy hospital. yes, i said "splash." it's been that kind of month.

got to the lab window, where people were butting and jostling, just like they do everywhere else in china. then i noticed that these other people had brought their own stool samples from home--little, pink plastic bags and bright papers crunched up like christmas packages, then opened to reveal the treat within. christmas packages of smeared human feces. the old timer in front of me had taken a particularly tar-like b.m., which he was altogether too eager to get through the window of the lab. "i produced this for you. i even brought it from my abode. you may now graciously accept my gift."

other than that, not too much to report in the way of hospitals. i got my blood drawn by a woman who didn't change her latex gloves beforehand, although she did give them a healthy dose of what i gathered to be hand sanitizer. isn't that the point of latex gloves? that you can throw them away after use? also got an infusion. not sure what all the hype is about that. waited 4 hours in an unconditioned, smoking-permitted waiting room to have a doctor tap on my knees with the magical reflex wand. that was a mite frustrating.

so that was my hospital experience. i hope i never have to go back.

other things....adjusting to actually working again. it's strange to have technically been "off" for 2 months. it's the longest amount of time i've ever gone without income. so the fact that i'm not totally destitute right now is really sort of a head scratcher for me. how'd that work out? i paid for this expensive course in vietnam. ate 3 meals a day. drank a veritable shitton o' alcohol. traveled around (including gratuitous domestic flights. gratuitous unnecessary, not gratuitous free). wanted for nothing, and now i still have money and didn't put anything on a credit card. it's a little bizarre, and more than slightly out of character for me.

right now it's more than slightly daunting to work at my school. and that piece of paper that i worked so hard for (CELTA) didn't really prepare me at all for lower level kids and issues of classroom management. i can't wait for a month from now or 2 months from now when i've worked out the kinks and feel comfortable in my teaching skin again. i guess i should specify--my child-teaching skin again. still, in korea i had no structure and here i do. also random observations by my peers, my sister and the other bossman. the first month will be stressful, but after that i'm looking forward to otehr people actually holding me accountable for my actions and requiring something of me as both a teacher and a human.

at some point i'll have to write about my last week in vietnam--sapa. that'll have to be an uber-mega long post though, and i'm honestly not sure when i'll actually have the time to type that.

oh yeah, i get a 6 day vacation starting on saturday. isn't that crazy? i'll have worked for 2 weeks and then i get paid vacation. going back up to weihai, where jules and rory first lived in china. midgets, baijo, beaches and whatnot.

trekking near sapa, northern vietnam

trekking to banho village. near sapa, northern vietnam.

the time has come for halong bay bloggage

i'll let out a preemptive "good gad." that about sums up the whole excursion. i will also save the suspense and go ahead and dispense the valuable lesson i've learned over these past few weeks: i don't play well with others. i should have learned from my european vacation of yore that i don't like traveling in "packs." anyhoo...

first things first. booked the halong bay trip through the frat house of a hostel i was staying at with the other 2 ladies from my celta course.

i really really liked both of these girls while we were studying together, and i still like them, even if i haven't talked to them for a while, but i think after the near week of "togetherness" there was sort of a mutual avoidance. i hate that it came to that, but i should have exercised more caution in agreeing to travel with 2 chicks with significantly different traveling agendas than my own. only because i know how i am in these situations. would have been better for all of us if they'd traveled together and i'd traveled...together with myself? i dunno. but it was my own fault. seems to be a pattern in my life though, close quarters leading to less-friendly terms--roommates, traveling buddies, etc...anyhoo, from now on, only traveling alone or with people who have no choice but to like me (close relatives, bound by unconditional love and other bullshit like that).

a note about this particular hostel in hanoi. they have a downstairs bar and a rooftop bar, so drinking is inherently involved. i've stayed in plenty of hostels in the past (europe, japan, the states) and none of them has been as intent on "partying hard" as the one in hanoi has been. which is okay, i guess, but by the end of the week in hanoi, i never wanted to stay in a hostel again. i also had never been so acutely aware of my age. i felt old, or at least extremely "mature." the hostel felt like the setting for the tv show temptation island, where everyone is trying to hook up the whole time. which is okay if that's what you're looking for (this is my attempt at trying to sound less judgmental).

at 8 am on a thursday morning, a group of traveling folk assembled in front of the hostel to embark on our halong bay journey. i believe there were 28 people total, some of whom were along for 2 days, the rest for 3 days (i was one of the latter). we were also introduced to our uber-enthusiastic guide, stacey. he was a brit and he liked to drink. a lot. case in point, by 10 am on the bus, our fearless ringleader had led the bus to consume 2 bottles of vodka and 1 bottle of whiskey. the whole time he was gyrating, shirtless and sweaty, to a shitty techno/pop soundtrack provided by one of the many germans on the bus.

so what do you do when you realize you're stuck in exactly the nightmare you predicted--i.e. you're at a frat party that's out in the middle of nowhere and you have no ride home? that's the question i found myself pondering about 5 minutes into the trip. and i really had no choice but to grin and bear it. i hate doing that. all it does is foster contempt for everyone around me.
so yeah, 3 days of being surrounded by mostly people that you have absolutely nothing in common with sucks balls. i should note here that the people themselves were okay, but again, we just had different agendas. of course i like to drink, but i don't like being forced to party. i didn't know i'd signed up for a booze cruise/singles party (though i had that sinking suspicion as i handed over my money). anyhoo, it was at this point that i thought "i told you so." knowing that i had been right all along did not make me feel better.

eventually we make it to the boat and everything was fine, and the scenery was actually quite beautiful. halong bay itself is pristine--limestone cliffs dramatically jutting out of the water. it was sort of strange though, while we were kayaking through these caves around the cliffs, all i could think about was how similar a lot of it looked to missouri. gots to love that karst topography. i think i even dropped the word "crinoid" but i was the only person interested in missouri's state fossil. go figure. of all the useless, unimpressive information i could retain, i've decided to keep "crinoid" in my brain.

later that night, post-kayaking excursion and swimming amidst rampant jellyfish, ate on the boat and were given keys to our rooms on the boat. that was pretty cool. i'm trying to remember if i've ever slept on a boat before in an actual bed. pretty sure this was the first time. i figured the two chicks i was with would want to room together, as they'd already done lots of bonding in the days prior while i wandered haplessly around hanoi. so i paired up with a scottish nurse named bernie. she was lovely. and that's a word i never use.

most people stayed up late playing drinking games. i went to sleep early-ish. beer on the boat was sort of expensive, (and by expensive i mean $1.50/can. ha.) so i wasn't really too keen on drinking a lot. plenty of other people picked up the slack and got retardedly drunk and naked. it was fun to hear their goings on at 5 am.

got up early for breakfast on the boat. after that the 2 day tourists left, which meant that the young, irish girls were gone, so the germans had to repeat all their mating rituals with the scraps left on the boat for one more day. i think it was actually before noon when someone did the "helicopter" before skinnydipping in the bay. that's not a pleasant thing to see in profile.
we all went kayaking and swimming again. this was actually sort of funny. this fleet of kayaks paddled up to a beach where there was already a boat. we start disembarking and notice that there's one table romantically set for two on the beach. some couple had planned their private getaway on a very public beach. so we just said sorry and raided their romance.

of our group, 2 people had signed up to do the rock climbing part of the package (an extra $40). so we made our way to the little rockclimbing island. this was where i slept in a hammock for approximately 2 hours. that could have been one of the best naps i've ever taken in my life: hammock, island, palm tree, beautiful rock climber bodies to look at should i choose to wake up. which i did. rock climbing looks like something i'll never ever be able to do.

anyhoo, after that we made our way to cat ba island, where we would dine and sleep for the night. my lovely roommate from the night before was one of the 2 day peeps, so i was the odd chick out. ultimately one of the chicks who was hooking up with a german decided to room with him, so i got stuck with her uber-complainy (and totally immodest) friend. good times. cat ba island was actually the highlight though. it was nice to actually interact with some of these partiers during dinner after i'd already judged them so harshly (see, i'm admitting some sort of guilt here. that's a good thing! i'm not too proud to admit i judge too harshly). so that was cool.
after dinner we headed to a karaoke bar. that's where all the good vibes from dinner suddenly disappeared. damn. back to the nightmare. i hated norae bongs in korea, so i still hate them, even in a different country in a different form. but this is where vietnamese rice wine (60% alcohol if you drink the clear shit) came into the picture. yikes. my shot-taking face is not pretty.

after the rice wine the very very attractive rock climbing guide from earlier in the day (with the cool name of onslo) came to the bar. party animal/guide extraordinaire, stacey, decided he would try to physically pour rice wine into this guy's mouth. mr. rock climber man was having none of it. stacey asked him what his problem was, and i believe i chimed in, "dude, his body's a temple." that seemed to be enough to stop stacey and to impress rock climber man. i made small talk with the rock climber man, then he said he had to leave because he was jet-lagged. fair enough.

5 minutes later i noticed that he was still there. i guess i looked sort of bored, so he asked what i thought of the bar. when i described it as "hellish" he invited me to another bar with him. hells yeah! i seem to remember him saying that a girl who looked so bored at a place like that bar was the kind of person he wanted to hang out with. hallelujah!

so he said we could take his bike. i was assuming that a big, strapping man like him meant a motorcycle. but no, he actually meant a small, one speed bicycle. so i hopped on the back and he pedaled me uphill to another bar. i was impressed by this small show of chivalry. funny shit. not sure if it was at this point or later when i returned to that bar that i rode up and down the street on this bicycle while he said goodbyes to people inside. anyhoo, i hadn't ridden a bicycle in a very long time, so it was really fun to zoom up and down these dark streets on a relatively remote island in vietnam.

so we go to the top of this hotel restaurant/bar, and it's just me, him and his two vietnamese friends, sitting on a patio, looking out over the bay/gulf and drinking beers. no karaoke. no rice wine. no music whatsover. but there were rats scurrying around the dark restaurant. and it didn't strike me as gross, it just seemed to add to the understated and perfect atmosphere of the whole place, in sharp contrast to the tackiness of other locales i'd found myself in on this trip.
it was so nice to just banter with another human, or "volley" as he said. he wasn't hitting on me or making me feel uncomfortable, like i've grown accustomed to in asia. sure, he was a hot dude, and i wouldn't have minded one bit if he had been hitting on me, but it was so much better that he wasn't. every once in a while i get to meet people that i have a very natural connection with (again, not talking about romance, though that's been in there before too, on even rarer occassions), and it's nice to be reminded that i can indeed carry on a witty, intelligent conversation with someone i've just met.

oddly enough, the more i travel, the more i realize i have very little in common with most people. so if i can find common ground with someone without having to compromise myself in any way, that's a rare treat. this goes back to my earlier statement that i "don't play well with others." what others may view as fleeting and innocuous conversations carry so much weight to me. the idea that on this planet there are complete strangers who actually are a lot like me. i've lamented before my woeful unrelatability. the times when this well-known [near] fact is contested comprise the very marrow of all my travels. and they are infrequent. and they are these hallowed things to me.

so yeah. the highlight of my trip to halong bay/hanoi for sure. maybe even the highlight of my trip to vietnam (aside from passing the celta, but that feels like ancient history now).
after drinks we walked back to the other bar so i could figure out how to get back to the hotel. and that was it. said goodbyes, shook hands. after that i went nightswimming (partially neked, such a hypocrite!) on an idyllic beach remarkably close to my hotel. there were about 20-30 meters of just sand before you hit any waves. it was absolutely beautiful. a very nice coda to the day and to the trip, aside from the amorous advances of two dudes from the boat. fellas, keep your penises away from me. not interested and/or desperate enough. at least not yet...

next day headed back to halong bay and then back onto the bus. significantly less hard liquor consumed on the way back to hanoi. but the beer was flowing. let's just say that 1 of the girls i was traveling with was downright trashed at 5 in the afternoon.

flew out of hanoi and i was so fucking relieved to be away from that hostel. traveling alone now. went to the mekong delta earlier this week. finally procured a fucking chinese visa (today!!!!!). heading to hanoi (again) in a few hours. once i get there, i'm immediately ushered to the overnight train to sapa, where i'll spend 5 nights/4 days trekking in the mountains/hill country of northern vietnam:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sa_Pa

this is what i wanted to do before i was even in this country. so it should be a nice note to leave on, especially since my time here has been very stressful and largely uneventful. thanks for that, chinese embassy.

arise chicken. chicken arise.

was woken up about a week and a half ago by what appeared to be a marching band. this was at 4:55 am. so i stumbled outside in the pre-dawn haze and realized that it really was a band, not a marching one, but a band nonetheless. and they were playing directly below my window. no, it wasn't some sort of lovely and skewed vietnamese serenade to rouse me from my beauty sleep, i think it was a wake. so, sort of appropriate that i "awoke" to it. okay, bad pun.

there were lots of tiny men with large brass instruments huddled around an alley shop front. it was very strange to see this man in what looked like a boy scout's uniform, with a trombone bigger than he was. they also sang some songs--remarkably akin to irish drinking songs--while they played. very cool. very strange. in the shop front were monks, candles and incense surrounding a makeshift altar on a tiny plastic stool (the same ones at the 'bia hoi' draft beer places sprinkled throughout the city) with a person's face in a frame. of course, tourist that i am, i had my camera at the ready. but some of the vietnamese people around told me "no pictures." apparently i wasn't the only ex-pat woken up, but i am the only one who heeded the explicit instructions of mr. monk man.

i went to a few touristy places last week while i was still in ho chi minh city. it was nice to do something besides kill time and drink beer. went to the war remnants museum and was made to feel adequately shitty by lots of graphic pictures of the war crimes and brutality of american soldiers in vietnam. great! a real downer. but there was also this feeling that i didn't feel quite bad enough. because as clear as the horror of that particular war was, war in just a fact. there can be rules and conventions and things like that, but it's never nice, nor is it pretty. the reality of the near apathy yielded by this dismal fact was more depressing than any photo documentation testifying to this specific war in which my country was the bad guy.

oh yeah, and it was very surreal to be surrounded by these horrific photos of janky-limbed agent orange victims and beheaded civilians, and all the while tourists from all over the globe were posing for pictures with these images, smiling nonchalantly and waving hollow peace signs. it seemed rather cruel to head outside and pose with tanks and helicopters afterward. went to the jade emperor pagoda next. it's a temple for both buddhism and daoism, which i thought was very cool. i took a ridiculous amount of photographs there. most of the temples i've been in before (i'm speaking mostly about tibet) don't allow photos or charge a lot of money for you to take them, so i didn't have many pictures of the inside of actual functional temples. now i do.

other two chicks opted out after this, but i hopped on a motorcycle taxi and headed to another temple, famed for its golden buddha. there was no one there, and just this huge room with, you guessed it, a golden buddha. there were some monks hanging out, washing their clothes, but other than that it was just me (and buddha) in this yuge hall. so i wandered around the grounds for a little bit and stumbled upon a little artists' wing of the temple. there were people in what appeared to be a library wrapping lots of packages of framed caligraphy painting. it was the workshop of some famous vietnamese artist and they welcomed me in to watch what they were doing. i communicated roughly with one of the women who was studying under this other much-accomplished artist. so she explained what many of the pictures meant and then volunteered the artist's services to make me some scrolls for my parents. he made me two of those (which i paid for) and then two more that he just gave me. it was a great, serendipitous chunk of time in an otherwise lackluster day. yes, i said serendipitous. i hate that word.

i just got back from hanoi. seems a lot different from ho chi minh city, in both tangible and intangible ways. people seem a lot friendlier in ho chi minh city. also seemed to rip you off a lot less. haggling for absolutely everything gets really fucking old after a while. a nice precursor to my impending daily life in china. i guess that whether i realize/admit it or not, i have sort of settled in in ho chi minh city. also, the bars close later. not that that's a valid point to hold against hanoi, just an observation.

spent 3 hours on monday morning last week in line at the chinese embassy in hanoi. that was a fucking nightmare. felt a wee bit claustrophobic, and got manhandled by a bald-headed she monk who acted like she was trying to get front row at a [insert now defunct classic rock band name] concert. i would have thought that showing up at the chinese embassy in your monk getup would be a no no, but i guess not. anyhoo, in 3 hours i think about 20 people entered and exited the actual building. the rest of us were made to wait outside in some sort of holding pen area. so at lunchtime i had no choice but to leave, having accomplished absolutely nothing. i'll just have to wait until tomorrow to try to figure this shit out at the embassy in saigon. i already went there once 2 weeks ago and it was a breeze. fingers crossed that everything works out. sort of ridiculous how the chinese governement requires you to have your round-trip tickets paid for and confirmed, but then they make it so fucking difficult to be able to actually use them.

because i thought i had to go the embassy last monday, i missed out on a trip to sapa that left from my hostel /frat house on sunday night. the other two chicks i'm traveling with got to go on that trip, so i did a little sight-seeing last monday afternoon after the bunk embassy trip--went to a pagoda, a temple and a water puppets show. the water puppets show was just okay, but it's nice to be able to say that i did it. the music was very cool though. there's some instrument called a "danbo" that is traditionally played by men, but at our show it was sposed to be impressive that we had a female danbo player. all in all a solid day of touristy activities. trying to make sure i pepper my waning days in vietnam with this sort of shit. and i say "shit" with the best intentions. it's just too hot to actually enjoy myself thoroughly. all i want to do is stay in my air conditioned hotel and watch general hospital. yup, that's actually on tv here.

did some other fun things while i was in hanoi. some better than others. that will probably be a future blog.

on tuesday i got up early to head to the perfume pagoda. let's just say that "dysentery" (how kind a term) is not a nice addition to a 2 hour bus trip and then a 1 hour boat trip. so everyone else got to eat this great lunch and hike up a mountain, while i was just trying very hard not to shit my pants. good eats. i headed to the bathroom once and i saw little chicken legs sticking out from under this wall, twitching with their last attempts at life. so i guess it's really not too much of a shame that i didn't get to partake in the consumption of said chicken. the pagoda itself probably warrants more description. let's see...

there were 6 people actually in the tour group--3 vietnamese (one of whom lives in belgium), 2 english, 1 me. it was nice to be part of a smaller group tour. less waiting for people. also nice to be away from people at the hostel, as that wasn't exactly my kind of place anyway. side note: staying at this particular hostel in hanoi made me painfully conscious of my age. or maybe less conscious of my age and more conscious of how much liquor and promiscuity color the lives of the average early 20 year old. so yeah, that's how the hostel was like a frat party. i hate to judge these goings on, but if it's not you're scene and you're stuck in it, there's really no other coping recourse. i like to drink just like everyone else, but i hate how much of a singles party my whole hanoi trip was. designed for people to hook up, like big brother or some other shitty reality show. moving on...

arrived in a city somewhere after a two hour scenic bus ride through rural vietnam--rice paddies, water lilies, locals, oh my! i'm definitely not a city mouse, i've realized. i generally don't like most people, so if you remove a significant chunk of them from my daily equation, i'm far far happier.

hopped in the vietnamese version of a canoe (this one sat 5 peeps though) and we were all rowed for about 1 hour by a woman who must have been pushing 60. the whole time you're in the boat, other women with coolers and the archetypal vietnamese conical hat sidle up next to you hocking their wares--hats, beer, coca cola, etc.

eventually we docked at the base of a small mountain. it was at this dock that i saw a large jug of alcohol with dead birds in it. funny that it was surrounded by other equally large jars full of snakes and lizards, but those already seemed like old news to me. the birds piqued my curiosity, to say the least. after a small bit of hiking, we came to a cable car up the mountain. i've been on plenty of cable cars, but this one was definitely the longest. it was weird too, when we got off there were all these large german shepherds lazing around. i dunno from whence they came (uh, germany?), but it was very odd to see them dotting the trail up to the pagoda, along with a monkey on a chain (nope, not a metaphor) and lots of chickens. eventually we made it to the gate of the pagoda, where the descent into the cave commenced. from the mouth of the cave, incense smoke and the muddled voices of tourists and worshippers wafted up, punctuating the mid-day heat with an eerie, ghostlike sanctity. in the cave, small groups of people carried trays of offerings to the various altars. to underestimate, as i tend to do, the whole thing was "pretty cool."

got home from this day trip and realized that my all-girl room at the hostel had morphed into a dude pen in the 8 hours that i'd been gone that day. i walked in and the place just fucking reeked of cologne. strange to be the only girl in an 8 bed room. the nice malaysian man i met suggested that i move to the top bunk, you know, to avoid gang rape and whatnot. i stayed put. no rape. whew. don't necessarily need to add that to the list of traveling accomplishments. the next day i headed to halong bay, home of tia carrera's character in wayne's world: "i was born in halong bay!" yup, that's all i can think about. halong bay will require its own blog. it was just that good and bad together.

heading back to china on september 11th. i honestly can't wait. sick of vietnam. sick of living out of a suitcase. sick of compromising travel plans. i want to be settled and back to hanging with my homies (all 2 of them).

anyhoo, this is all for now. sure i'll acquire more travel stories and come up with some sort of summarizing assessment of how traveling in vietnam made me "feel." i'm nothing if not consistent/predictable.

'nam

sort of difficult to begin to compose a blog after such a long hiatus. which is not to say there's nothing to report. i'm in ho chi minh city, for fuck's sake, there's too much to report. okay, that's a small lie too, i've been way too busy to initiate (or even partake in) much debauchery. but i have the rest of my life to make up for that. starting tonight! rugby games=broken bottles and knife fights. if i'm wrong on this, please don't crush my dreams by correcting me.

yesterday was the last day of my CELTA course here in ho chi minh city. hard to describe what the whole experience was like. it was simultaneously excruciatingly difficult and bearable. there were the obvious issues of time management and attempting to muster up the focus required of being a student again (albeit only for a month). but perhaps the most difficult thing about all of it was being surrounded by lots o' people that i have absolutely nothing in common with. sure, we're all taking this teaching course together so some strange force of nature brought us all together in ho chi minh city at this time for this common purpose, but that's a pretty small blip on the radar of my entire life.

i guess i should take a minute to explain what the fuck the CELTA is. it's a 4-week long teaching certification course. i was in a group with 5 other people and we went through 2 tutors in the course of 4 weeks, teaching 2 different levels of adults. tutors observed and assessed our teaching, and our peers smugly judged and nit-picked (okay, only some of them). i learned a lot of esl/efl teaching methodology, simply so i could be more effective and professional in my current career path of teaching english abroad. so that's that. in a nutshell.

there were initially 24 people on the course, but i think 1 or 2 dropped out along the way. of this number, about half of us could be categorized as young-ish, and the other half were older than my parents. so roles were already inherently assigned, simply by age. both of my parents are still alive, so it was strange to have some of these older folks patronize me, just like the parents i already have DON'T.

anyhoo, that was my biggest complaint about the course. seemed like groups were assigned simply to make things more difficult than they needed to be. but overall, i guess it was a rewarding experience. rewarding in that i will soon have an actual piece of paper issued by cambridge university that says i can now demand more money at whatever lucky school gets me in the future. woo hoo! time and money well spent. plus, it was an excuse to go to another country in asia. funny thing about that is that i've seen absolutely nothing of ho chi minh city aside from the walk to and from my school. i hope to get out and about starting next week. traveling north will ensue, in the company of two cool chicks from the course, mary and carli (representing south africa and kansas, respectively). the tentative plans cover halong bay, hanoi and sapa. sapa might be a bust as that area just had the shit flooded out of it a few weeks ago. we shall see. after that might head over into laos and then down to cambodia. this is all an idea in my head, there's been no fact-checking or timetabling. seems like both of those factors could quite limit this as yet fictional vacation. i guess just because countries are close together doesn't mean they can be frequented and then departed in a quick (or efficient manner). a travel agent should clear things up a bit.

anyhoo, this is all the bloggage that time (and a shopping date) allows me at this point. more celta/other asian country musings will ensue.

more china

i'm sitting in the chinese version of a pc bong, but this one has two floors and significantly less smoke and ramen than its korean counterpart. there are rivers of sweat rolling down my back. and all i can think is "fuck, what the fuck will vietnam in july feel like?" i can't believe i actually used to play basketball in heat like this. so yes, the show me state games of my adolescence are what immediately came to mind the first day i wandered around this arguably remote city in china. a strange association...

feel like i should do some quick comparisons between korea and china before the newness wears off. so here, in list form (my favorite!) are some things i've noticed:

1. fashion and whatnot. not as many suits here in china. the nearly iridescent men's suit was as ubiquitous as the women's stiletto and frilly, doll-like dress. my guess is that fancy suits cost money, which is something china doesn't have a lot of. anyhoo, it's quite refreshing to see people who look, well, normal. people of all different sizes. people who clearly lack fashion sense and favor the functionality of their clothes (which in these days means not dying from heat stroke) over anything else. but don't worry, the whores in jules and rory's hood still sport heels, which, in a way, is functional since they spend most of their time on their backs...or knees...

2. modes of transport. let's see. i use my legs a lot, nothing too special there. but in the past week i've traveled by plane, train, taxi, strange archaic cart thing with a sputtering engine (pictures forthcoming), manual pedicab (and uphill at that, pedaled by a very strong 57 year old man), and the cheating pedicab with an engine. me likey pedicabs.

3. people. the people here are really friendly and seem shocked to see me, or me and jules and rory, or any group of foreigners. seem to be a relatively limited number of us here in this most populous country. it feels so much different to be pointed at and stared at here than it did in korea. here i'm quite aware of how foreign i really am to most people who see me. in korea the shock (and awe) of my presence was totally unwarranted and annoying.

4. foreigners. i haven't met a lot of foreigners (see #3), but the ones i met have been in a sort of professional capacity. i say "sort of" because i don't work for ef yet (fingers crossed for working with jules and rory). but it seems like china attracts a much different crop of people than korea did. they seem to have their shit together a little more than foreigners in korea and most of them take their jobs very seriously. there actually seems to be some sort of methodology to teaching that i've seen at the two ef branches i've visited. i'm very excited about the chance to get my celta and then actually, immediately use the techniques in a professional setting, as people at both ef branches actually talked about teaching in teacher terms. a little intimidating, but it also makes the "i'm an english teacher" line feel like less of a sham.

so this was from the other day. a few days later now, and i have the pleasure of internet usage at jules and rory's apartment now. i've also been offered the job at ef in jiaxing after i finish my course in vietnam. fuck an a.

i'm not feeling very long-winded today, which shocks even me. but i would be remiss not to mention how fucking therapeutic it feels to be in this new country with people i actually like. seriously, this hot apartment in a small-ish chinese town is exactly the mental health sanitarium i needed. who'd've thunk. i like words (real or imagined) that have two apostrophes in them.

china grove

i am in china. so there.

it's hot and there's a strange squeaking sound in this computer place, so i'm not in the mood for lots o' typing.

"that's just, like, your opinion, man."

well, i guess it's been a while. but not without good reason. i've had the misfortune of being ass-deep in a bunch of logistical bullshit lately. and for those of you who've never been in that position, it's not a fun one.

for starters, i'm getting the fuck out of korea (yes, let's all let out a giant, rallying cry together!). that happens on the 28th of this month. which means that my current job did not, in fact, make me an offer i couldn't refuse. if i thought nearing the end of my first solid year at one job in korea would make me feel validated, happy, satisfied and/or more like a teacher--or i guess any other amalgam of generally positive things--i was sorely mistaken. the fact is, i can't wait to leave. with increasing frequency i find my days colored by the overwhelming urge to punch strangers, acquaintances and pretty much everyone i come into contact with in their fucking face[s]. and yup, that's probably not healthy. but let's examine these feelings, shall we?

wait wait wait. don't want to "blow my wad" all at once (yes, i typed that. as much as i love sexual euphemisms, some of them are just better (or worse) than others. case in point: i find the term "blow my wad" completely derivative and banal. so what does that make me? hmmm...). so first things first, it seems appropriate to expound on the aforementioned logistical woes.
there's a little event going on this summer known as the beijing olympics. in other words, "the event that has seriously tried to fuck up my world." i'm starting this CELTA course on july 21st in ho chi minh city. my job here in the korea finishes on june 25th. so that adds up to an ample amount of time to do something besides work for 6 fucking days a week at a place where i'm underappreciated and that sucks a little more of my ever-waning soul each day (apparently the jobby job replaced the soul chunks with chunks of melodrama. woo hoo.).

my favorite people in the world just happen to live in china. seems pretty convenient. after all, the last time i flew to china to visit jules and roar, it consumed far less time than my usual subway commute. so the first step in all of this was to add more pages to my passport, in preparation for my new visas. went to the embassy in seoul, got the pages in a day. easy enough. and free. and uber-patriotic (seriously, the new pages all have america-loving tripe printed all over them. AMERICA: FUCK YEAH!).

after that, i thought it would be as easy as going to the travel agent with my passport and a lil' wallet picture to get my chinese visa. just like the other two times. then i found out that i had to have proof not only of my flight into china, but proof of my departure from china as well. because of the olympics. fucking sports.

flight to china from korea was no problem. but the flight into ho chi minh city from shanghai was a total bitch to find. i attempted to book 4 different flights--one of which required some execution of my more than rusty spanish skills (yeah, i know. spanish for a flight to vietnam? it's all part of the nightmare that has been my last few weeks...)--and each of them were confirmed then cancelled. yikes. so i have been doubly panicking--1) oh god, i'm not going to be able to get to china to see jules and roar; 2) oh god, i'm not going to be able to get to this program in vietnam that i already paid for. there was also the 2 day train ride from beijing to ho chi minh city, but again, olympics fucked that all up. 2 days ago expedia.com rocked my world. i've got bonafide PAPER tickets en route to my apartment as i type this. old school shit there. sweet tits! hallelujah! thank you, jesus!

so yes, on the 28th, i will be going to china (visa in progress now. cross your fingers) until the 18th of july. then i fly to ho chi minh city. start my course on the 21st. after 4 weeks i have a lot of free time before i head back to china to work with jules' school. so now i need to start planning some more in-depth vietnam travel, along with the very real possibilities of laos and cambodia. sort of strange to wrap my brain around the fact that i am going to do all of this. and yeah, all by my lonesome. that's cool enough to warrant a smiley emoticon.

:)

oh yeah, but i still have to mail all of my possessions to china. let's just say one tends to accumulate many things over the course of 2 years...but even the relatively small amount of purging i've done has felt really good. molting off the badness of my past year. so i guess this segues nicely into the less than forgiving stance i've taken on korea.

list form seems like an appropriate way to burn one's bridges (assuming any koreans and/or fucking annoying foreigners in korea read this). truth be told, i've been trying to give korea the benefit of the doubt for the past two years i've been here. and yes, there are some people who defy my own educated stereotypes, but these are the [arguably unhealthy] observations i've made:

1. ethnocentrism. living amongst a culture that is so immersed in itself for this past year has taken a very tangible toll on me. sure, there are people in america who are staunch patriots and skinhead racist types, but here it's sort of overwhelming (uh, they're not skinheads. but they are racists. i'm done acknowledging what i've come to accept as a very dismal fact in my usual friendly-type way). koreans are so proud to be korean that they shun all other cultures or just make fun of everything about different cultures that makes them so, well, different. it's the most disturbing in the context of my job. any time there's a picture of someone who's not korean, there's immediately a barrage of stereotypes that would never be accepted or ignored in an american classroom. then there's all the shit i pick up on that's not in english (either through my admittedly limited knowledge of the korean language, or through body language). the worst part of all of this is that the korean teachers, some of whom might have actually earned both respect and friendship from me, don't do anything to curb such behavior. one teacher said "they're young. they don't understand." i guess i don't think 4th and 5th graders are that young. they're not too young to be fluent in english, so why are they too young to attempt to appreciate the myriad cultures that employ that language? the point is, with all the fucking foreigners in korea, it doesn't seem at all justified or acceptable to point at another human and say "other." i also don't agree with the implication that it's okay to hate other cultures, or just grossly misunderstand them, up to a certain age.

this ethnocentrism also begs the question of "why the fuck are you learning english if you don't actually have any desire to leave your perceived korean utopia?" and yes, i know english in korea is all inextricably linked to government regulations, standardized tests and overbearing mothers, but i don't think the average korean kid has any concept of the large (and varied) world beyond his/her own meager borders. i guess that's where i really feel like i've failed as a teacher. ever the idealist, i thought that being my charming [albeit different] self could convince students that language enables travel and adventure and an actual "world" view and all the things that motivate me (or used to before i hit this most recent wall) on a daily basis. uh, yeah. failure. bummer, yo.

2. cultural identity. this ties in closely with the ethnocentrism. for a country that co-opts everything that is japanese, chinese and/or vaguely western, they sure still hate all these places. funny to hear little kids talk about how much they hate japan. or how terrible china is. never mind the fact that the haircuts, fashion and food are japanese; the language is dumbed-down from mandarin/chinese (the chinese didn't seem to have a problem with their language, and i doubt they're all geniuses...), with some butchered english "cognates" thrown in for good measure. i guess this is more about how families instill values in kids. for a long time i didn't listen to led zeppelin because i seem to recall one of my parents saying they were overrated.

3. vanity. you can't fully understand this until you've been in the elevator with a korean. or sat next to a korean on the subway. i'm not just talking girls here. the perpetual adjusting, applying, preening, straightening, pouting, photographing of an entire country. it's exhausting to witness. not even worth further explanation. again, not totally understandable unless one has been to korea.

4. work ethic. seems to be some confusion over the concept of efficiency. here, it's not so much about getting the job done as it is about putting in the time. i think the average korean is a glutton for punishment, simply because "that's the korean way." i've heard this so many times in reference to the long hours people put in at work. but how much of that time is spent simply for the sake of appearances? this should more accurately be labeled confucianism or collectivist culture, but i wouldn't want to imply that everything about a collectivist culture is bad. i don't think it is completely, but it does serve to foster this worker bee attitude (if one allows oneself to enjoy their life, that person is obviously not working hard enough for the greater good. the greater good being hard to define, but from what i've gathered, i guess it's just the image of hard-work, even if that hard-work is actually just a lot of sitting around. definitely quantity over quality round here).

it also perpetuates stereotypes--if one person thinks something's bad (be it another culture or cutting out of work once the actual job is finished), then it must be. a person could find out for him/herself, but that's not how koreans roll. this collectivism pervades every aspect of daily life--from the communal lunch to the girl passed out in a bathroom stall surrounded by her own vomit. you take your meals/drinks together, and you can only leave when everyone else does.
5. foreigners, ex-pats, whatever the fuck we want to call ourselves in korea are inherently fucking douche-bags. except for me. that warrants another smiley :) uh, yeah. the vast majority of foreigners i've met here are weird, alcoholic, misogynistic, overbearing and/or cliquey losers. and if you're not at least one of these things when you get here, you sure will be by the time you leave. i'll gladly wallow in my solitude, because the alternative is soooo much worse. my point is, i'm pretty great. yeah, i know.

6. extreeeeeeeeme homogeneity. sort of the link of all these societal ills (aside from number 5...). everyone looks the same. i guess the concept of homogeneity is not one that really warrants too much explanation. all cities look the same. all the people dress the same (be they college girls or old women, they've all got their unofficial uniforms). the standards of beauty are all the same. the bars are all the same. the food all tastes the same. everything here is "same same."

i suppose 6 seems like a solid number of complaints, and this is long enough. i guess i need to make my overriding points here...i think no one has the right to complain about anything unless they've been intimately acquainted with it. so i guess in some ways i feel like i've earned the right to makes these critiques.

perhaps it's hypocritical of me to talk about xenophobic little kids in the context of my own arguably stereotypical diatribe and whatnot. but i don't think so. i came here with the best of intentions, with the same genuine starry-eyed wanderlust that i can only hope beautifully "afflicts" everyone on the planet at some point. and yes, there have been some amazing experiences in korea, but the frequency with which they happen has been in decline from the onset. the wanderlust was instead replaced by this feeling that my own life in korea was something i had to "endure" to become a better, stronger, more charismatic person. i'm done giving this country the benefit of the doubt and feeling guilty about the less than stellar review i've given it.

i'm excited about vietnam. i'm excited about china. i'm excited about the opportunity to live elsewhere and about the chance to do so in a simpler way. i've made a lot of money in korea (or at least more than i could have made stateside). but instead of any sort of relief i assumed this would give me, i've become consumed by finances and materialism. i hate that part of me. there are days when the idea of what is considered physically beautiful repulses me, when the idea of wealth repulses me, so much so that i want nothing more than to look disgusting or to burn a large wad (there's that word again!) of money, simply because it would be something different.

i'm ready to be done with very obvious manifestations of wealth. always been a bigger fan of subtlety (in pretty much all aspects of life). and poverty. i mean, if you want to talk about building character, i'm sure there's nothing better than being dirt poor...just ask someone who's dirt poor.

i guess it's my blog. i don't need to attempt to further justify my own opinions. let's just say it's been a rough year. and the goal when i came here was not to be more bitter. i am stronger (that's a nice, vague word when you think about it), but not without a cost. i guess it will take time to figure out whether it was worth it.

oh yeah! i was in a car accident on saturday night with my co-teacher. her car is slightly fucked, but no one was hurt.

teachers' day and some angst thrown in for good measure

here's a fact. i probably need to stop hitting the sauce. and yet, as i type that, all i can think about is how i really really would like to be drinking a shitty beer at precisely this moment, because that would have to mean that i wasn't at work, which is all my life's been reduced to lately. not that it's a bad thing to be "reduced" to the position of english teacher. that's no huge failure. unless of course, you're not a fan of the organization for which you work. been wavering back and forth lately between loving and loathing this place. guess i should restate that "lately" part, as i know that my bloggage for the past year would reflect a pretty consistent "wavering." however, as this precise writing will reflect, i'm of course unhappy with it right now. things are pretty quiet on my end when i'm satisfied and/or content (2 words i hate) with things in my life or when i'm insanely busy. but seriously, folks, what good is writing about things that make me happy? booorrring...

anyhoo, those were yesterday's musings. and yes, i did ultimately end up drinking. combining all the drinking for the week into one weekend evening seems like a pretty smart plan to me. it was a busy night of barfing (not on my part), as the bathroom at one local drinkery was a veritable "who's who" of passed out korean girls and their friends. on two separate ocassions i went into the bathroom and saw crowds of girls and boys huddling in stalls, literally dragging passed out girls out of them by their hands. not to mention the vomit in the sink and clogging up at least 3 of the toilets. silly me, i always find something comforting in all that havoc, because i know that i've never been and will never be that fucking drunk. any women's bathroom in korea is also a nice reminder that it doesn't matter how cute a korean girl's shoes are or how small her waist is, she's not quite as pretty in the context of her piss, shit and blood-smeared toilet paper on display in the trash cans next to all the toilets. i'm not implying that "my shit don't stink," as that most eloquent of sayings suggests, but i think i'm a little better at not dripping menstrual blood all over the seat and/or stall of a public restroom. i guess we've all got our own talents.

moving away from period blood, but staying with the drinking theme...

the other night i saw a man in a snappy business suit weaving down the street. he paused for a few seconds, just long enough to projectile vomit through his sprawled fingers. then he continued his walk, shaking the vomit off his hand. covering your mouth when you barf has always seemed to me the most futile of gestures. if you're in the privacy of a bathroom, there's no need for coverage, so that means the gesture is invariably executed in a public location, in an attempt to hide the inevitable. but you can't really hide barfing, especially not barfing into your own cupped hand. so instead of having the 2-pronged embarassment of "hey, yeah, sorry i just barfed in front of you" coupled with the "hey, yeah, i've now got barf all over at least one of my hands," why not just omit that last part by letting it fly? shreds of dignity are still dignity, and those shreds are precisely what not barfing into your hand earns you.

moving on, teacher's day was on thursday; thus, thursday was a terrible day. i had been "invited" to what had been classified as a "secret" work meeting near the main branch on thursday. apparently it was an honor or some shit to be asked to go--a hand-picked bunch of we foreign teachers, how exciting! but no one ever told me exactly what this event that i would be attending entailed. they did inform me at the last minute on wednesday night that i had to wear black or white formal clothing. uh, define formal. me in jeans that are actually clean is pretty fucking formal in my book.

so after finishing work that night, i headed over to the lotte mart to try to find some korean-sized clothes to fit american-sized me. ended up buying two dresses that were ultimately too sexy to wear while representing my school. i suppose "too sexy" is a phrase that also begs definition, as i'm in the land of teachers who wear midriff-exposing shirts that attract many the guffaw from cleaning ladies on the elevator....if you've got it, flaunt it. particularly in the domain of elementary school children.

needless to say, i was the only chick at the photo shoot wearing a blue dress. i was also a giant as i opted for heels to make myself more presentable. so this was the first annoying part of the day (wait, there was already a 1st annoying part--getting up at 6 was pretty fucking annoying, and damn near painful). i'm sort of morally opposed to looking nice, specially round these parts. perhaps i should rephrase...i'm opposed to adhering to the korean ideal of beauty, which is a very homogenous, stale commodity. and on this day, i looked like a korean girl with my dark hair, my heels and my oversized sack dress, and i felt totally uncomfortable. i heard a lot of "you should dress like this everyday." barf. random interjection: i hate the word "should." anyhoo, the whole day i carried around my version of a security blanket, which was a grocery bag with my "real" clothes in it--jeans, cowboy boots, crappy button down shirt. after all, being a teacher isn't a fashion show. or is it?

when i first got to the coex mall we had a photo shoot for about an hour. a sea of teachers in black and white (and one in blue!) being herded around like cattle (but not american cattle, mind you, because it's all teeming with "crazy beef"--the why-we-hate-lee-myung-bak flavor of the month) by a man who was very cavalier with his uber-expensive camera.

after the photo shoot we all headed to some little convention room where an old korean lady with green hair gesticulated wildly and had the crowd in stitches, i tell you, stitches. we foreigners were forced to sit in the very front row, so there was no opportunity for doodling, snoozing or commiserating. so yeah, 2 hours of her talking about i don't know what, peppered with uproarious laughter in response to jokes that i'm quite certain couldn't be as funny as my dad's. then there was some terrible singing (think of a really bad quartet at state music contest. okay, now throw in a guitar and you've got the talent for that day) and more speeches. ate some grub, then had to immediately head back to ilsan to start teaching at 4:30. it was teachers' day, and i watched my two korean co-teachers get more cookies and flowers and general adulation than i did. had i not been so tired, i wouldn't have minded as much, but it just hurt my feelings. i teach as much as they do (sometimes more) but sometimes it feels as though the foreign teachers at the school are still not viewed with the same respect as the korean teachers. and since i'm never in a bad mood while i'm at work, people don't really know how to act around me when i am upset. which is just annoying. i've worked 6 days a week for the past fucking year. and i'm not a chipper person. also, none of the korean teachers could understand how i could be more tired than they were--after all, we were all at the same meeting--completely oblivious to the fact that sitting and listening to peple talk for at least 2 hours and not understanding a fucking word they say is, actually, quite exhausting. allow me the freedom, just once, to be in a bad mood.

oh yeah, i was also sposed to meet with my school's head honcho sometime on thursday to talk about my salary, should i choose to resign with my school (i know, i know. why the fuck would i do that? obviously, the money is too good to pass up). but that didn't happen, which made me really really fucking pissy, as my current contract is finished in one month, and i still have no idea what the fuck i'm doing after vietnam in august. so fuck yeah, i'm more than a little stressed (note all the "fuck"s). after no meeting on thursday combined with several unanswered text messages, phone calls and emails requesting a meeting with said head honcho, i was on the verge of tears friday night. and honestly, it's been awhile since i felt like i was going to lose my mind at work. probably a good thing, i realize, but also quite interesting considering my history of fragile emotional states. it's just such a sinking feeling when something that's a top priority to you is so utterly insignificant to someone else. completely helpless is how i've felt for the past week. but hey, my meeting's tomorrow, it only took some mild harassment. so i should, in theory, have some clue as to what i'm doing with myself at the end of this summer after 1:30 tomorrow. yikes.

i suppose this is all. i just hate this indecision. it's been very hard to sit still lately, or to focus on anything. i've felt incredibly busy, with nothing tangible, only my own worries, to show for it.

weekends and stuff

it's been a while, so i feel obligated to post something. as the weekend just ended, i should probably talk about that very subject. i'll start with last weekend.

last weekend was more interesting in retrospect than it was whilst in the thick of it.
friday night:

finished work at 10:30, then headed to the only bar i've gone to with any sort of frequency in ilsan, torro's. met up with a korean dude that i'd met there before. the last time i saw him, he was talking about studying for the gre and going to america. told him i didn't really have any drinking buddies, so we should get a drink sometime. anyhoo, as soon as i show up to this bar, i can tell that he thinks this is more than just two peeps getting liquored up. rut ro. awkward from the very beginning. highlights of said awkwardness:

-he complimented me ad nauseum. yes, of course i like compliments, but when you say them just to fill the silence and look at the floor while you speak, it makes it a little uncomfortable.
-when i went to the bathroom, he offered to escort me.
-when he went to the bathroom, he said "i'm just going number one. not number two. i think it's cute to tell people which one you're doing." is it cute? maybe i'm just old-fashioned...
-when we decided to quit drinking, he said "do you see any cops around? if there aren't any cops around then i can drive you home. " uh, no thanks.
-i got in the taxi and he just stood there looking like a sad dog.

i have a real problem when i find myself in these all-too-familiar situations. people might think, "why don't you just leave?" and i ask myself the exact same question, but when i'm there, i think it's my duty to uphold whatever the obligation is. i guess i'm sort of a pushover in many aspects of my life. this was a very clear reminder of that.

saturday i worked until 8 pm, then i headed into seoul to meet my friend lesley, from the asian affairs center in como. we went to itaewon and started off the night with a pitcher of margaritas at poncho's. headed to gecko's after that where my toe was nearly impaled by a wayward stiletto heel. interesting to me that that's my only real observation from that bar. after that we followed some other peeps to a bar on hooker hill, the name of which i don't recall. danced for a while, drank for a while, then needed a change of venue. this is where it got slightly more interesting, as some mischief which has been grossly lacking from my life ensued. we headed down a side street and stumbled upon a bar at the table. lesley became engaged in what appeared to be an engrossing, or at least mildly entertaining conversation. the next thing i know, the dude next to me has his arm around me and is trying to kiss my neck. eww. at this point i tried to send some distress signals to lesley, but it took a while for her to receive my transmissions. in the meantime, this dude says he wants to marry me and that he doesn't want another man to ever touch me. yikes. we eventually made it into the street, with my new husband's arm on me. he sure didn't want to let me go. nervous laughter. so i finally removed his arm from me, and we went on our merry way. then we noticed one of the other dudes from this bar was following us. it was fun to hide behind street signs and tents in order to evade him. but we did. ended up at bar nana, where the guys with tattoos who have consistently ignored me in the past decided that i was finally cool enough to acknowledge. headed to mcdonald's at about 6 am to round out the evening. post-mcdonald's headed back to lesley's hotel so i could gather my things. then i had to go to seoul station to catch the ktx train to busan for a friend's wedding. so yeah, a whirlwind of a night, which explains why i was awake for 40 straight hours over the course of the weekend.

moving on to my first korean wedding experience, also known as the least romantic event i've ever been privvy to. i guess a pap smear is pretty unromantic too, but let's not split hairs.

i got to busan where my friend gun (yes, his chosen english name) picked me up from the terminal. then we headed to jack's wedding. let me first note that i'm a tall girl. and on this day i was a tall girl wearing heels, so i got many a stare. so yeah, we walk into the monstrosity that is a korean wedding hall, the fast food restaurant of nuptials. people book these big banquet type rooms by the hour, so it's just a big building that's constantly full, shuffling wedding parties in and out of the rooms. so for every wedding that's going on, all the guests of all the weddings are sort of bottlenecking at the elevators. it was strange and crowded and i didn't know anyone. but i did get to see jack for all of 2 minutes. then he had to go get married.

the service itself was interesting. there's not really a lot of pressure on the bride and groom, as they didn't even have to speak during the whole ceremony. the parents were all wearing hanbok (traditional korean clothes), while the bride and groom were wearing bastardized, arguably gaudy versions of western wedding clothes. i seem to recall a lot of sequins. like the deb or rue 21 version of a dream wedding dress. the bride did look very pretty though. or at least i think she did, as she never looked up from the floor the whole time i was there. she did cry a lot, and there was a woman who worked for the wedding hall whose job it was to dab away her tears. very strange to have this woman in plain clothes shadowing the decked out bride. there was nothing inconspicuous about it at all. but back to the service. there was some cctv screen that all us peeps in the back could watch. the bride and groom just stood at this alter while a man talked a lot. there was no exchanging of vows, no exchanging of rings, no sentimentality in general. but there were some prerecorded commands that were played, announcing things like "this is the part where the groom bows before his new in-laws!" then there was a disco ball light that was turned on while the cake came out. i also recall a projection on the screen behind them of some little anime-type bride and groom characters. some chick sang a song about jesus, then some dudes sang a song about something else. and that was it. then we all shuffled upstairs for the free buffet. the buffet was also for all the other peeps attending all the other weddings in the building, so there was no sense of community, or of the worlds of the bride and groom nervously(beautifully?) colliding. it was just "hey, food's ready." i didn't even see jack and his wife in the buffet room. but, there was beer on the table, so that was cool. efficient is an adjective i would not usually associate with anything korean (same for romantic, and that holds true...), and yet, this wedding was the epitome of efficiency.

after the wedding, i was really planning on just hopping back on the ktx and heading home. i was exhausted, hadn't slept, smelled sort of funky, and had no motivation whatsoever. but gun had decided to be my tour guide for the day, so i wasn't let off the hook that easy. i felt bad for him, as i was basically this comotose zombie he dragged around the whole day, but we managed to do a lot, consuming lots o' coffee along the way. my tired, limited hours in busan made me rethink my whole negative attitude about korea. seems like that happens every time i go there. the air is different, the people are different. and i found myself wondering, "why the fuck am i in ilsan? i should be in busan." but, only two more months here, so i think i can hang in there.

anyhoo. we went to a beach first. not hongdae, but close to it. at this beach, there were people actually surfing. granted, the waves were too small to yield much success, but it was still cool. always wanted to try that, but i didn't even realize you could go surfing at beaches in korea. so we sat and watched the surfers and the kite fliers and the families engaging in general beach merriment. quite nice.

after that we headed towards hongdae, which actually took a long time. on the way, there's a scenic point where you can look out from a cliff onto the water. there were lots of vendors out and about selling food, used clothes, random toys and drinks. you can definitely tell when the weather changes in these parts, as the homeless people, beggars and vendors come out of the woodwork.

made it to hongdae and went on a quest for some keychains. these aren't regular keychains, they're keychains with dead fish in them, and i just think they're cool. or at least the last one i had was cool until it broke and oozed dead fish oil everywhere. eventually found the keychains, then bummed around the beach, drinking more coffee. gun wanted to try his hand at frisbee, so we hung around some foreigners, waiting for the wayward disc. he wasn't pleased with his frisbee prowess.

left hongdae, ate some samgyupsal, drank beer, then i headed back to the train station. i had some time to kill, so i fell asleep briefly at the coffee shop adjacent to the terminal. a very kind older woman came and woke me up and checked my ticket to make sure i wasn't going to miss my train. finally got to seoul, then had to get to ilsan. there were no buses convenient enough for me, so i said fuck it and took at taxi. taxi drivers in korea sure are chatty. i have the phone numbers of so many of them, too. in korea, it's hard not to get someone's number, because as soon as they see that you have a phone, they think you're going to be best friends. nevermind the fact that i live an hour and a half away from you, you speak no english, and you're 60 years old. yeah, sure, i'll call you next time i'm out drinking! rolled in at a cool 1 am in the morning. thus ending my 40 hours of being awake. you know, it wasn't as hard as i thought it would be. and i didn't even sleep well when i got home.

so that was last weekend.

on tuesday night i hung out with lesley in myeongdong. we tried to take a taxi elsewhere, but apparently that's impossible when it's raining. so we went to some random, generic bar. then we ended up in a street tent in the rain, drinking beer out of dirty bottles and eating clam soup. rather, i ate all of the clam soup. i'll eat whatever you put in front of me.

this weekend was a little less exciting, but still good. pretty much ruled out any sort of friday night, as i had to work at 8 on saturday morning. gross. my friend is in amsterdam now, but he wanted to get drunk on saturday before he left on sunday. so of course i agreed. headed to seoul after work, started drinking. we ended up in gangnam, which is losing whatever lustre i had previously afforded it. one drinking 'hood in korea is the same as any other. drank in a pseudo-tent, then went to the czech bar with meters of beer, met up with some dyb peeps at another bar. it's been awhile since i've been around that many foreigners who i sort of know. but it was good. i've given up on making friends 'round these parts, and i'm quite comfortable with that decision. ended up drinking until about 4 in the morning. felt bad for my friend, who was looking a little rough around the edges. but hey, he made it to amsterdam (i think), so no harm done. i, however, felt like shit all of yesterday. way too hungover, considering i just drank a shitload of beer. hmmm.

in other news, i got a new class at work. it's full of the lowest level 5th and 6th graders combined. they're beginning readers, so they don't really understand what they're reading yet. at any rate, the class certainly requires a lot of pantomime on my part. roles acted out so far: a stork, some frogs, and the god jupiter. but hey, they seemed to understand the story, so i can't be too bad.

good news, bears

i was accepted into the vietnam program. so at the end of july, i'll be spending a month in ho chi minh city [hopefully] getting my CELTA certificate. cool beans.

i have funny students.

today in one of my classes, we were talking about the story "the king's new clothes." i was explaining to these fourth graders that the term "birthday suit" meant naked, like when you're born. and james, a pudgy kid who is perpetually sweating and flustered, says to the korean teacher "maybe if the mother eats clothes then the baby will be born with clothes." i thought that was pretty funny.

in another class full of my mega-smart kids, we were talking about college and jobs, so i asked "what do you call a person who studies insects? and a kid says, "an insector." ha ha.

sickness and sadness

today is my first sick day since i started this job last june. i am very sweaty. there is snot-crusted toilet paper strewn all over my apartment. when i replace the tissues in my nose, a thin stream of goo pours out. also, the korean medicine i was given makes me more than slightly loopy. and i've drank a lot of nyquil in the past couple days. so that covers the sickness part....

now for the sadness. a few days ago i went to my favorite drinking establishment here in ilsan, the rosenbrau brewhaus. said brewhaus is known for it's meter high beers and for my favorite filipino band, featuring the vocal stylings of lloyd. lloyd needs no last name. usually, i go and get hammered drunk and embarass myself in any number of ways: 1) screaming "LLOYD" at the top of my lungs the whole time while the rest of the restaurant glares at me; 2) having lloyd sit on my lap for photos; or 3) going onstage to dance with the band and being forcibly removed by korean security. anyhoo, i show up the other night, ready to get my lloyd on, and his band's fucking gone. no more. replaced instead by a marc anthony wannabe and his jiggly, whorish side kicks. i don't want to hear shakira, folks, i want to hear journey. so my point is: fuck the brewhaus, i'm never going back.

seriously, i was really pissed. so yes, i had a crush on the lead singer of a filipino cover band in ilsan, south korea. and now my world is shattered.

here's a picture from the ol' good days:

more vacation bloggage. super exciting!

some notes from while i was home, with sprinklings of the present day thrown in for even more self-examining happy fun time!

v-a-c-a-t-i-o-n, we're gonna have a ball! if any place can be simultaneously depressing and uber-mega-clarifying, it would be missouri. i think i'll always have this sense of nostalgia for this place (see the sentimental end of this blog), but vacation was really great in that it sort of helped to quell this lingering and arguably misguided mystique i've let hover over the columbia, mo of my mind (only sort of. while i was home it seemed definitive, but now i'm reviewing these words from my korean perspective. one week back and i've already hit a wall. i'm nothing if not predictable.). there is/was something sterile and depressing about this oft revered/reviled pseudo-utopia that i had built up in my mind. nothing changes. sure, building facades, college students and hipster fashions change, but there was also this familiar feeling of stasis. it was honestly as comforting as it was tragic. but a lot of the same people leading their same lives and existing far below their potential. reminds me again of a hesse quote:

"a newly formulated, but strong resolve to place his actions and his life under the aegis of transcedence, to make of it a serenely resolute moving on, filling and then leaving behind him every stage along the way....let no sentiments of home detain us."

i really like that idea. life as a progression. i'd like to think i view my own life this way, despite how slow-going the progress tends to feel sometimes. i sort of interpret this "resolute moving on" as a fear of settling. which i don't think is exactly what hesse meant. he certainly wasn't suggesting "fear" as motivation, but rather the pursuit of "empowerment/enlightenment." i guess that could be a contrition vs. attrition argument. the end result could be the same, but how honest is the motivation. anyhoo, i feel shitty being so judgemental of others (or at least i'm willing to recognize that i SHOULD feel guilty), but i should emphasize that this judgement isn't unique to my korean/abroad perspective. i was one of those peeps who felt trapped in my own life (still do, funny how that sort of looming issue follows you around the globe). this is also not to imply that i see all people who live in missouri as pathetic or without overriding desires and motivations that color their lives however vibrantly or dull-ly. in fact, there's nothing i would like more than to be in columbia, mo and to be HAPPY to be there, like so many others genuinely are. isn't that what everyone wants (substitute your own city)? a good friend told me a long time ago that "happiness isn't a place." true dat. unless it's the name of a restaurant or bar or something. i guess it's just fascinating to me when people AREN'T torn up inside over a palpable lack (yes, i've argued this in my brain--"nothing" can actually be felt) of any life pursuits, any "transcendence." i was listening to some sort of horrible half-formed semantic argument (in english!) in a coffee shop in my home state. and it was nice to be annoyed by this supposed comfort. so if i must come to a point, both related and unrelated to all this other bullshit i'm spewing, i guess it's this: so many people seek validation from outside sources (hey, i'm guilty too!) instead of taking it upon themselves to enact positive changes in their lives. and yeah, this is a microcosm of my life in missouri in general. the familiarity of even the most dismal of prospects is still comforting.

moving from that rambling to other rambling...let's do a recap of vacation events, shall we?

day one: mikey picked me up from the airport, and i was convinced at this point that sitting in a car with him for 2 hours made my entire trip home worth it. he listens to me but doesn't judge, like so many other people close to me do. sounds like a simple enough idea, but it's rarer than most would expect. so he delivered me to columbia, mo and shakespeare's and my parents. my vacation was a big surprise for my mom. tried to keep it quiet, as i've never been big on undue (or due, for that matter) fanfare. dad had concocted some huge lie 2 months in the making just to get mom to come out to shakespeare's for the surprise "reveal." it was pretty great to be able to give her that gift. when i first told dad i was coming home, i thought it would be cool to surprise mom. so dad ultimately told mom they had to go to a friend's intervention, at shakespeare's of all places. but because dad's not half-assed he started planting the seeds for the impending fake intervention months ago. he even involved other friends in the whole deal. which probably made the surprise all that more, well, surprising. so yes, we ate, drank, made merry, and took pictures in a korean hooters shirt.

day two: met mom's co-workers for lunch and got insanely sick after eating taco bell. the good news is, a grilled stuffed burrito still tastes good coming up, half digested. it was slightly embarassing though. everyone was very nice and insisted it was okay if i needed to yak in the office bathroom. i made it home though. korean food's boring, but it's sure healthy. pretty much abandoned any plans and slept all day. news flash: jet lag is real, folks.

day three: ate an amazing sandwich at uprise bakery and had really good conversations with relative strangers and people i'd known for a long time but never really talked to. god bless these sporadic, innocuous conversations that made me feel warm and fuzzy. went to the asian affairs center (where i used to work, place that motivated me to come to korea in the first place) to meet up with scott and lesley. gotta be honest, being in an office full of korean students in columbia, missouri while on my vacation from korea didn't really sit well with me. it just made me very tense. went to booche's and got beers. met another friend, then we all went to addison's for more beers and appetizers. their nachos fucking own. then it was off to flat branch where i couldn't keep my eyes open. sort of passed out at the table, much to everyone's thinly-veiled disappointment. slept at lesley's. her house was amazing, filled with all sorts of tokens of her world travels. i like this chick a lot. regret that i didn't get to know her better while i was still in missouri. i'm sort of lacking in the girl friends arena, so when i do meet a girl that i don't want to punch, it stands out as a significant event.

day four: woke up and had a really good conversation with lesley. yeah yeah, again with the "conversation." people converse everyday and take their ease of communication for granted. but for the first 7 months i worked in ilsan, "conversations" were things that didn't really occur on a regular basis. met a friend for breakfast at ernie's. scrambled eggs, french toast, sausage, buttery coffee (perhaps only i notice this). hallelujah. it's relatively easy in korea to find "western" food, but breakfast food is where i most feel the void. anyhoo...after breakfast went and ran errands, then went home to jc. took the huey dog for a long walk. we threw the stick around. or i threw the stick and he fetched it, as dogs tend to do.

day five: went out. drank at klik's, where jen brouk is the bartendress. fucking great to see her. slept on kelsey's couch. drank with scott. or, i drank and he watched.

day six: hung out in jeff city after driving home at 7 am in a car that has no heat. my knuckles were very cold. spent all day watching deliciously terrible cable tv (ahh, channel surfing). if anyone would have predicted how much "rock of love" i would watch during my vacation, i certainly wouldn't have believed them. but yes, i consider my life enriched by brett michaels' dating show. went back to como with the folks later that day to meet erica and scott for dinner at murray's. drank beers at flat branch first. i really miss erica. she's one of my favorite humans. she and scott were two of my partners in crime in suncheon. after murray's we went to do more drinking: mcnally's, lame 80s night at the blue note, blue moon with orange wedge at teller's. crashed on scott's floor. i remember drifting in and out of consciousness while they tried to entice me awake with domino's pizza. side note: domino's pizza is the most expensive pizza in korea.

day 7: lunch with lesley, scott, erica. then met mom to get new ink. it rules. german rilke quote. she got a shel silverstein picture on her ass. jon bush and kath are amazing humans. unfailingly nice to undeserving me.

day 8: dinner with chris at the korean restaurant in columbia, which i found to be eerily spot on. even the little dishes were the same. introduced chris to soju. they seemed to get along. went to a disappointing show at mojo's--call me lightning. live music was a big goal of the vacation, and when i'd seen these guys before at eastside, they were fucking crazy good. but this time there were only about 10 peeps there. bummer, yo. crashed on jen's couch.

day 9: dinner with mr. kim. he wanted to go to the korean restaurant again, which i was a little bitch about all day. actually dreading going there again (not that the food was bad. it wasn't. but the thought of going to a korean restaurant with my korean friend sounded like exactly what i didn't want to do). he called at the last minute and changed it to flat branch. thank you, pub burger. then i called a friend and proceeded to get retardedly drunk.

other notes about being home...i sort of stopped specifically cataloguing events after day nine, just seemed a little tedious.

being home wasn't as much of a shock as i thought it would be. there were some shocking things that came out of the mundane (woefully taken for granted) minutiae of missouri life: the first taste of boulevard weet after years of enduring the equivalent of mgd here in the korea; at the airport in seattle trying to comprehend a sea of different sized/shaped/colored people. sure, some americans are fat, but at least it's something different. it was also quite shocking to see normal people. it was clear to me that only in korea is everyone rushing to a fashion show.

hmmm, what else? wide open spaces, rolling hills, a visible horizon, cows. cemetaries. driving was also an incredible experience--i had a vague recollection of that giddy day a long time ago when i first drove alone. to wal-mart in a shitty white car with failing power steering. but this time i was headed to a bar and the tunes were vintage neil young. blissfully happy. i've turned into quite the sentamentalist round these parts, as inspiration and beauty are two things i rarely find. so when i stumble upon them these days, it really is a laudatory, revelatory experience, worthy of all the emotion i can conceivably heap upon it. missouri was a lot of those little, surprising nuggets of beauty. and then there were larger things of beauty, much more tangible and unexpected, but equally fleeting. ho hum. but i'll save those things for myself. which will be what gets me through these next 3 months until my current contract ends.

so yes, i've already hit a wall after a week back in this country, but i somehow view it as a less depressing wall than the so many that have preceeded today. sigh. there are still notions of my uncertain future to address--always a self-deprecating mess of a topic. THE FUTURE!!!!!!!! gross. i guess i would potentially find it as depressing to have it all figured out, much as i hate plans and concrete courses of action--or maybe i just claim to hate those things because they conveniently support my mindset. my contract ends in 3 months. so i have to do a lot of thinking about what comes next. here's what i'm entertaining:

-stay in korea for another year and clear my student loans/credit card debt. never been too keen on carrying those things around with me for years into the future. whether this means to stay with my current school or not remains to be seen. would require some serious negotiating on my part to put myself in a work situation that doesn't make me dread 6 out of the 7 days of the week.

-vietnam. take a month-long course there this summer and stay on for a year after completion of the course. this idea based on having yet to enroll for the course (meant to do that today, but instead i did nothing) and having never been to vietnam. woo hoo!

-china? hmmm....

-columbia? ha! bigger hmmm....this won’t happen. but i would be lying if i said i hadn’t considered it.

other vacation nugglets:

-house party replete with kegs o' beer and bands.

-through the deluge in springfield, mo, i spied a white trash man navigating the wet streets with a huge dead white bird slung over his shoulder. for reals. was it a swan? was it an albino turkey? was it a hallucination? i dunno.

-soup. casseroles. miracle whip. sour cream. grape gatorade. samuel smith oatmeal stout. velveeta shells and cheese (in case there was ever any doubt, it is indeed both the creamiest AND the dreamiest). chicken fried steak. foccacia.

-watching my older sister teach middle school choir and being fucking floored by how great she was at her job. i was both proud of and humbled by her. that was a fucking cool sensation.