jobby job

i've been in ilsan for a little over a month now; but the first 3 weeks of my new job were spent commuting to and from seoul or other areas relatively far away from my home for work each day. despite the fact that i spent a large amount of time on the subway every day, it was okay, masturbation trauma and odd vegetable/soju combination smells aside. i sort of miss having a reason to take the subway every day. it made me feel important for no particular reason. i would spend my whole day trying to figure out just what important meeting/appointment/agenda was weighing me down. turns out, it was just my mode of transportation, and i'm not really important. damn.

so my first week in ilsan consisted of lots and lots of consecutive teaching. i believe i actually taught 10 50 minute classes on one of the days. plus i taught 4 two hour classes on saturday. this sort of schedule will only continue for one more week though, as it's summer intensive time right now. my students are actually technically on vacation, which really means no sleeping in or playing in the park it means happy fun english hagwon time! so one more week of this heavy schedule, and then it's back to 6 hours/day teaching in the afternoons/evenings. this is a schedule i actually really like. i'm looking forward to joining a gym and having productive mornings. maybe even getting into the habit of eating breakfast again. weird. i might even get a hobby i've been entertaining the notion of buying an easel and some paint or something to that effect. i wouldn't know exactly how to begin, but whatever. i've seen lots of art that looks like a 4 year old created it. i suppose you have to start somewhere. i'm pretty good at drawing bicycles and trashcans?

but back to my job. a lot of people might think i've got a shitty deal in korea, but most people haven't been so totally fucked over by their first gig in korea (chuncheon), so to me every job is a step up. suncheon was better than chuncheon. and now ilsan's better than suncheon. it's pretty easy to get teaching jobs here where you don't have to do much. and i don't want to sound like a self-righteous asshole, but i actually enjoy working hard, provided my efforts are recognized and adequately compensated. i hate sitting around not doing anything. there's nothing that makes me feel so small or useless. moments you can never get back, wasted on absolutely nothing but sitting and killing (however passively) time.

i guess i have a pretty solid work ethic. that probably comes from my parents. or maybe years of playing basketball. hmm, high school. funny. perhaps all that verbal abuse from coach jones and coach thompson actually did affect me in a long-term sense. i mean, besides my continuing and unfailing 3-pointer prowess and inability to take criticism without crying incontrollably in front of all my cunty teammates. good times. i'm digressing here, but my dad used to come and sit in the bleachers sometimes during practice. so any time coach jones was particularly rough on me, i could see him up there and feel a little better about myself, not die running one more suicide. fuck! high school basketball drama. jamie reed's fried blonde hair and her unjustified vendetta against me and jules. not being able to afford the shoes that the rest of the team was buying. some other cunt knocking the wind out of me at practice and laughing while i laid on the floor choking and crying. of course i cried. that's all i seemed to do at practice.

that whole part of my life feels so foreign to me, probably because it was 12 years ago. and yet it was so integral. i guess only the physical, tangible events of that time seem foggy. but there's definitely a part of me that can recall and revisit, with a sort of comforting clarity, the range of emotions i felt 12 years ago. i think a lot of those unresolved high school issues in my head never left me. i'm oddly grateful for that. i don't know why. i'm still as awkward as i used to be, but now i drink, so somehow that counteracts/diverts any potential devastation. i'm still not exactly a part of the cool crowd. always relegated to the periphery. i still dress as though i'm homeless (in the words of my high school crush. how very high school of me indeed...). the things that hurt me or delighted me in high school--words said, deeds done--still resonate. i don't know if that's good or bad. so many people tend to dwell on the "glory days" (note: college had no glory days for me. that was an uphill battle every fucking day in every fucking aspect--financially, socially, educationally. i fucking hated college.). i'm sort of one of those glory dwellers, i guess. but i've done enough significant things in the 10 years since i graduated that i don't feel like high school was "it" for me. but it was definitely a defining part of my life, and i do like to think about the me of high school. the uncertain, awkard me reading the balcony scene of romeo and juliet in mrs. thompson's 9th grade english class. the awkward me that had no idea what the fuck was going on in my trigonometry class. the really good stuff like geography club, field trips, son volt and chert. hmm. insert nostalgic emoticon.

back to my new rad-tastic job. there are maybe 9 or 10 other korean teachers. i teach all of their students one hour per week while they see them repeatedly. so the traffic in my classroom is pretty constant. that's the only part that sucks. i only see each individual student 50 minutes/week (aside from the special weekend classes) so i don't get to foster any real sort of relationship with them. but the cool thing is that i actually am teaching essay writing and debate. each class has a different book (that all the students actually have! a definite plus and a HUGE step up from suncheon and chuncheon ...). every two weeks there's a new topic. for example, my youngest kids had to discuss why fur coats were good this week. next week they have to discuss/write about why fur coats are bad. other topics this week were corporal punishment, organic foods, and elective classes in high school. i get to teach my students proper essay-writing format. so that's very very cool to me. seems to have been my forte back in the day.

i've also spent a good deal of time interviewing students to decide which class they belonged in. after doing this at one of the other branches of my hagwon, two of the teachers there told me i had a really great talent for understanding kids. then they both asked me to please not leave their school. even more than teaching effectively and the praise that came with that this past week, people saying that i can really relate to kids was the best possible compliment.
i truly feel that for the first time in my life i have a real job, with real responsibilities. not that pizza maker, ice cream scooper, set designer and chauffer to asians weren't all real jobs in themselves, but this is different. i'm an integral cog in a wheel, which is something i've never actually been before. my school actually cannot function without me. it's exhausting, but so validating, which is all i've ever really wanted.

my korean co-teachers adore me and think i'm a great teacher, and i feel really energized and even cocky about the fact that i know i'm doing a good job. i have the utmost confidence in my abilities. and that, too, is a completely foreign feeling to me. for all the korean things i complain about, i do have to remember that as far as my actual person goes, korea has done as many great things for me as it has bad. of course i only tend to dwell/expound [up]on the negative, but i think that's just my nature. maybe not everyone's nature, but definitely mine. i've become more self-sufficient and genuinely confident in my abilities (in the teaching realm, not in any other areas. i've probably actually digressed socially. but the cool thing is that it doesn't bother me as much as it used to).

as for other parts of my life, i don't really do much. i've sort of just sequestered myself, taking a break from a social life and the drinking and the bad decision making. i'm probably the only person in the world who would want to be quarantined with my thoughts, so it's in everyone's best interest. which is not to indicate that they're particularly profound or psychotic thoughts i'm having. they're just mine. but i've read a LOT in the past month and i've not really spent a lot of money. it's good. things are very calm right now. i'm sure at some point i'll crave some more excitement in my life. but right now i thoroughly enjoy shutting myself up in my awesome apartment (or starbucks. yeah, i know, lots of people have problems with starbucks. i don't give a fuck.) and not talking to people for hours, even days. some people might find it hard to believe that a person could enjoy not having any social interactions, but right now i feel incredibly free, good and (gag!) introspective. i don't owe anyone any conversation, i don't have to pretend to be interested in anyone but myself. sounds selfish, but i guess that's just how i roll.

oh, i'm going bungee jumping soon. that should be interesting.

day off.

well, not really, i had to teach one class. big sigh. yesterday i taught 9 classes. it's sposed to be summer intensive classes for the next two weeks--denoting reaaaallly long days--but my schedule doesn't really seem too intense. tomorrow i was sposed to have the whole day off, but i have to go in and level test the childrens for my weekend class. yes, i meant to type childrens. it just sounded cute, and since i'm drinking a beer at 4:07 pm, i feel like being cute.

some things. i got a desk. a computer desk. it's real nice. so my computer is no longer sitting on the floor, requiring me to lay on my stomach and type. that was a bit uncomfortable.
here are some things i am currently in like with:

-lists. i feel like i haven't been making very many lists lately. and now that i've started this one, i realize how much i missed them. a list is a nice thing.

-my landlord, mr. kim. when i came home at 6 in the morning the other day, he wasn't judgemental he just wanted me to tell him exactly how many bottles of beer i'd consumed so he could decide if i was as good a drinker as he is. i remember my first night in this new apartment, i asked him where the nearest grocery store was and he walked me to the lotte mart by my apartment. then he made me buy him 2 bottles of soju for the trouble. that set me back a whole $2 or so. he has a wonky eye. and i wonder how one's eye becomes that way. was this a natural part of his aging process (yes, he's old. and also very short). was there some accident in recent or ancient history that made his eye that way. was he born that way. i'm curious. he sort of looks like a turtle, his neck and head sinking--pitched forward ever so slightly--under the bulk of a dirty blue uniform shirt that is 3 sizes too big for his seemingly shrinking stature. he wrote my address for me on a yellow, aged piece of paper in both korean and english. i can't imagine how long that took him. his self-assigned homework. he is always passed out in his little landlord booth in my apartment lobby at 3 in the afternoon, and when he comes to he excitedly yells hello and waves to me as the elevator doors are closing, his greeting abruptly muted. he's a funny, pleasant old korean man. and he says i am his friend.

-the dirty three and blonde redhead. i've been listening to both of them for a few years now, but i guess just not paying attention. many the lengthy subway commute under my belt now, and i have been listening to these two bands over and over and over and over and over....you get the picture.

-my new job. i normally work 6 days a week, but when i'm actually doing my job, it's so easy to be an effective teacher. i'm busy the entire time i'm at work and i feel like i'm valued as both a human being and an english teacher. the korean teachers at my school work infinitely harder than i do and seem to genuinely enjoy their job and my presence. though other foreign teachers seem to complain about basic tenets of their job that they are expected to honor, i have no complaints thusfar about any aspect of my actual job. i'll be honest, the commute was starting to suck, but now it's done. always nice to quit doing something before you reach a breaking point you know exists somewhere.

-ilsan. i really don't know it that well yet (still...this is the first week i haven't had to commute to seoul for some work-related reason). it's very clean. my apartment is great, and there's a nice tree-canopied walkway that runs parallel to the street my hagwon is on. walking under those trees today felt like i was in an urban jungle of sorts. well, not really. but i like the idea of it seeming like an urban jungle, no matter how remotely. things are green. it's muggy. there are several playgrounds (just like in the jungle, right?). no monkeys or other jungle animals, but lots of bikes to dodge, mothers and children haphazardly navigating the pavement together. the pace of life here seems relaxed and lazy. lazy with the good connotation. people, make a note, i'm saying positive things about my life and about korea.
-beyonce. i dunno, she's just cool.

i guess that's a decent-sized list. i had a good weekend. worked on friday and saturday, but saturday night i actually went out and about drinking and whatnot. seems like i haven't done that too much lately (aside from earlier in the week last week when i went out with clayton and co. and ended up doing tequila body shots off another female teacher i work with. NEVER buy the whole bottle of tequila). but back to saturday. met a friend from columbia in the hongdae area. we actually hadn't hung out too much back in missouri, but based on our brief interaction, i knew he was cool as hell. went to a place called skunk hell. didn't actually go in, but hung out outside. something about drinking warm beer outside a punk rock venue made me feel really happy and really comfortable. i know i don't really look too punk rock, but it's comforting to see people who have escaped the traditional sort of roles assigned to them by korean society. if someone had shown me a picture of this place and the clientele, i wouldn't have believed it was in korea. lots of suspenders, pompadour haircuts, tattoos, piercings, plaid. and all on korean ladies and gents. foreigners too, but that's nothing too shocking. i would have expected this sort of vibe in japan, but never in korea. i was pleasantly surprised.

also went to a couple other places. one of which was a dancey sort of place where i sweated my balls off and danced like a fool. the other place had a bunch o' bands playing. i'm never optimistic about live music in korea. i've seen some foreigner bands before, and they tend to be shitty cover bands, as well as painful reminders of the wealth of unique, live music that was at my disposal back in the america. the venue itself was sort of uncomfortable. i guess not the place, but some of the people there. they just seemed condescending, and not even for any real reason. it was a party to promote some indie rock magazine. and yet, at the punk club where the people should have been intimidating and cold, they weren't. anyhoo, only two bands were really notable. the first band was galaxy express, a korean punk band. they were fucking amazing. i was totally blown away. i did not expect to hear these guitars and that sound from these three dudes (incidentally, they were korean. only really notable because they tried to say some things to the mostly english speaking audience, but had some difficulty. it was charming though). the best part was that they played kick out the jams as their last song. a lot of people probably don't think that's too notable, but again, you would never EVER hear mc5 in korea. i don't know how they fucking knew that song! the other band was we need surgery. all foreigners, sort of like clinic i guess, very danceable. i was impressed to see musicians who weren't tools and who actually didn't suck.

there was this other band that was sort of ridiculous. they were a "funk" outfit. but the lead singer/guitarist you would have never guessed could play guitar. so they'd be in their song, where uber-white lead singer is sort of scatting and then he'd just break out into this gratuitous guitar solo that went on for 5 minutes. don't get me wrong, he was very talented, but it all just seemed so random. he was clearly a dude in korea because he couldn't get any pussy at home. and surely that guitar solo was going to win him some points with the throng of adoring [asian] ladies? fair enough.

at the end of the night, went to a park nearby, where lots of different demographics of people were just hanging out, drinking, swinging, playing music, whatever. it felt very comfortable, very familiar. and it was a healthy mix of koreans and foreigners. most of the time in korea you're accutely tuned in to where you are by something that you perceive to be either slightly skewed or totally fucked up. it's not really easy to forget where you are and to not label things as korean or not korean. but on this night, things were just so easy. labels were stripped. people were just people. bands were just bands. the park was just a park. korean, foreigner, it mattered not. i guess that's what i would define as comfort. being able to do things without feeling obligated to put some sort of label on them to either justify or condemn them. i do that all the time and i hate it.

it was nice to come home without the burden of that familiar sinking feeling, the physical manifesation of desperation to which i've been accustomed on many the occassion. i have this habit of staying out way too late, waiting for something amazing and life-affirming to happen. i did it in columbia. i did it in suncheon. haven't really done it too much here. saturday when i got home, i was exhausted. but i wasn't drunk, and i felt like some part of me had been satiated. a sense of satisfaction that's been missing from a lot of my social ventures.

so yeah, got home early in the morning. sun coming up. refreshingly sober. it was a good night. i felt like i had something to show for my weekend, and the past couple of months in general. the music and everything sort of woke me up, jolted me out of this apathetic funk i've been in for a while. apparently there's a music festival in incheon this weekend. haven't decided if i'm going yet, but i think i really have no choice. i owe it to myself and the rest of my time in korea to see whatever limited musical offering there is.

mudfest and masturbation. ho hum...

let's start with the masturbation first, always a good icebreaker. i had to catch the subway very very early this morning to make it to work by 8. still commuting whilst training. starting to get old, but i won't dwell on that. it's good productive time for reading and listening to some jammy jams, provided i can stay awake long enough to make the most of it. something about all forms of transportation makes me really sleepy.

so this morning i pass out. nothing out of the ordinary. zooming along. i wake up two stops before where i need to depart (notice how i decided not to say "get off..."). i was sitting in the very corner of one of the rows of seats. across from me was the very end of the other regular seats, with the doorway and then the handicap seats. some really old man was dozing in and out of consciousness in the old peeps section, but we were both awake enough to see the middle-aged man masturbating not 5 feet from where i was sitting. quite the shock in the am to see a korean man's penis on display in my mode of public transportation. so needless to say, i wasn't quite sure if i was seeing what i was seeing. i sort of just saw his profile (all things included), and then he turned toward the sliding doors, his back to me. the doors opened, so i assumed he was going to exit the car, but he didn't, he just kept jerking off while the doors opened and closed inches away from him. then he turned back towards me, eyes sort of glazed over and looking up at the ceiling. and there's his dinkus in his hand, excitedly poking out of his shorts. so then i turned away, horrified. the old man in the handicap seat and i made eye contact and we both stood up and walked away.

i can sort of make light of the situation now, x number of hours later, but at the time i was really fucking freaked out--this, yet another bout of sexual misbehavior i've been privy to in the last year. i'm all for sexual harassment in jest, but when it comes down to the real deal and a situation being out of my control, i don't deal well. actual sexual perversion and deviance freaks the living shit out of me. unless it's hot and consensual in the bedroom. but a subway car in seoul is not my bedroom (not to mention the fact that it would never ever be a middle-aged korean man with a small dong in my hot, consensual world), and i definitely would not have agreed to be a witness in his scenario. i foggily stumbled up the stairs to get the fuck out of that subway station, trembling and actually nauseaus. i still haven't shaken that imagery from my brain. i dunno. just what if there had been kids on the subway? that would have been horrifying.

in other news, i went to the monet exhibit at the sorry excuse for an art museum that's in seoul. i dunno. i'm just glad i had my mp3 player. in japan, there were hardly any people there, it was a rainy day, it was perfect. here, it was a national holiday, so everyone and all their children were at the art museum. the regular rules of no rules or discernible turn taking or general decency applied. people pushing and shoving, kids and adults (some with corn on their fingers)getting way too close to the art while the aloof girls who were supposed to monitor that shit sighed audibly and stared off into the distance, clearly distressed by their assigned roles. art lovers, all of them, i'm sure (yeah, yeah, like i'm one to talk). what should have been a serene and potentially reflective environment looked like a "play date" organized by all the bored housewives of seoul. and hey, young people, here's some art to play with. plus the inherent whininess of a room full of small children. so yeah, me and the dirty three took in some monet. what i realized, besides the reiterant disappointment in/ confirmation of several stereotypes about koreans that have held true in any public setting, is that i actually like monet more than i thought i did. so that's good i guess. i think my whole day was sort of bound to have a downward, pessimistic slant after the events of the very early morning. had the masturbating man not materialized, i might not have had such a negative impression of my afternoon. moving on...

it was mudfest this weekend, where it was dismally revealed to me that douchebags transcend gender, culture, race, etc. don't get me wrong, i had a great time, but your average foreigner here in the korea is a total fucking alcholic (myself included) who thoroughly enjoys making an ass out of him/herself, much to the chagrin and already arguably heightened judgement of koreans. sure, they should be happy that their festivals are a way for foreigners to spend lots o' money in korea, but it's a double edged sword of sorts. we spend lots of money, but ultimately display a lot of totally regrettable, irresponsible behavior in the process. yes, korea, we are what military personnel and english teachers look like. seems to exacerbate what already seems like a pretty superficial layer of cultural tolerance on both sides. we do stupid shit that begs scrutiny, and then we resent the scrutiny that inevitably ensues. and shit, see the prior paragraph about my complaints. i hate that i've been reduced to this judgemental, culturally insensitive asshole as my very judgment and cultural insensitivity make me the exact same kind of asshole that i silently loathe (i'm not talking about very obvious legit reasons like subway masturbation, i'm talking about my general, everyday sentiments that i try not to speak of because they make me feel guilty, despite their increasing prevalence. i guess i spend a lot of time feeling guilty for not being as culturally sensitive as i would ideally envision myself to be). oh yeah, but a bunch of fucktards kept saying shit when they walked by me on the beach like "yeah, i'd totally fuck you." hey, chad, i speak english. fucking alpha males. so yeah, foreigner alpha males and public masturbation. good times for a gal here in korea. i guess i could argue this whole situation in circles. seems like i've done that since i've been here. problem is, admitting any guilt doesn't make things any better.

anyway, parts of mudfest that were fun...drinking with fike and erica, getting muddy (albeit for a very brief amount of time), hazily navigating my way back to seoul on sunday, with the help of a dude who was a lot smarter than me. oh, and always that initial, startling taste of salt when you wade out into the sea after so much time has passed. the beach at night, being honestly and decently flirted with (aforementioned tactless douchebags aside). so those were the good things.

fuck, i sound negative. i know that, at least today, all my bad vibes should be borne on the shoulders/penis of one guy on the seoul metro.

i'm an idiot. fukuoka part one.

this was the first part of my fukuoka trip, that i posted on myspace, but didn't post here. sorry to the few people in the world who actually read this blog and noticed that part one of my two part series was missing...

i'm in my hostel in fukuoka, japan. typing a blog until i get this elusive confirmation email with some code in it that i will then write down and take to the korean consulate to get my visa. if i was only here for two days, this waiting around for said email would be annoying, but as it is, i'm here until monday, and i still have 2 completely full days ahead of me to be a tourist. and i guess a lot of time to blog too. plus, it's raining. so apparently that's s'posed to affect productivity too. but i think sitting here moving my fingers over a keyboard is the very definition of productive--each second yielding some new object/letter. i'm tired.

a recap of recent achievements is in order. maybe when i finish writing this the email will be waiting for me in my inbox. virtual fingers crossed.

first, it's pretty great that i've been at my new job all of a week and a half, grading those charmingly botched essays, and then they send me to japan for 4 days. i can't really complain about that. they even gave me money for a hotel. i still opted for the cheap hostel, simply because less money spent on lodgings means more money for things that make me intoxicated and accompanying fried food items (i'm thinking tempura. haven't actually eaten any yet, but i'm planning on it. today's the day!!!( hmm, the closing parenthesis doesn't want to work. please note my effort. also, there's always a part of me that likes to think i have that backpacker spirit/ethos/whatever you want to call it. i have a backpack. but then when i got here i switched my room from one of the communal, hey-4-people-who don't-know-each-other-are-going-to-swap-travel-stories-and-one-of-them-is-going-to-snore-and-one-of-them-is-going-to-be-really-fucking-annoying varieties to the more comfortable and anti-social 2 beds, 1 person room. that's how i roll. i already deal with all korea's collectivism on a daily basis. no thanks.

shit, i just remembered that a dude stole my umbrella last night. i say this as i look at rain streaming in through the open window of the common area. it's gonna be a wet one. or i guess it already is a wet one. fudge.

my day yesterday was very long. i was mostly coherant for damn near 24 hours. i woke up at 4:30 in ilsan because i had to catch the bus to the incheon airport at 5:50. this was supposedly the time for the first bus, but i got there early and conveniently, the bus did too. i like it when things immediately go right that early in the morning. a good travel omen, perhaps.

caught my flight at 8 to fukuoka. waited in the longest customs/immigration line known to man and checked my email at the airport. no confirmation number. then i found my hostel, but i couldn't check in for another 4 or so hours so i went temple hopping. there was one subway stop that is literally surrounded by all these different temples. and i've said this so much about asia, but it's remarkable how visible the fusion of the past and present is. high rise buildings closing in on centuries-old buddhist temples. a fact that still amazes me with certain regularity. temple culture (if you can call it such a thing( in japan, fukuoka at least, is a lot different than in korea. all the temples i went to had virtually no people at them. so that was great for me, taking lots of pictures and indulging my inner tourist.

the best temple i stumbled across was also a cemetery. it was absolutely, awesomely beautiful. the entrance to the actual temple was closed, covered by scaffolding, so my intent was just to take a few pictures and leave. but i walked through a totally generic archway and was immediately overwhelmed by a sea of huge, acient looking stones with people's names inscribed in them, an altar for flowers and two accompanying urns. the way the stones had aged, the combined elements of weather and time and dirt and leaves! it was a truly organic atmosphere, the rich peaty smell surrounding. fukuoka also has large, knobby trees, covered in that furry layer of damp moss. i took a lot of pictures. they will be posted to the flickr page at some point.

after the temple excursion, did some window shopping near my hostel. they have vending machines for cigarettes. interesting.

came back to my room and tried to take a nap (remember, up since 4:30 am(, but apparently some people are building something right outside my room's window. the soothing sounds of chainsaws, jackhammers and heavy things being dropped/nailed/hammered/ or otherwise violated. no nap. sad jamie.

decided to go look for the atm machine that was rumored to accept korean debit cards. so after asking 5 different people at 5 different hotels, i finally found it. it's interesting, i think in korea there are more random people with the potential to help you because they speak a little bit of english. i've had a hell of a time here communicating anything. so many people speak absolutely no english, and a lot of the signs don't even have english on them (note: this is mere observation, not judgement. i know. it's japan, why should they speak english or have english signage...(. even my trusty hand gestures aren't cutting it. i guess i underestimate how much the smallest bit of korean that i know helps me in everyday mundane situations. here, i just keep thinking domo arigato mr. roboto. that song's on a loop in my brain. how unfortunate. is that rush or styx? i hope the people who should find that funny....

post atm triumph, headed to the lively part of the city to look for a particular reggae bar. i found it, after some roundabout navigating. the curry was fantastic. and there was no accompanying plate of kimchi, no red pepper taste or smell. a small bar, not too many people. good times. 2 guinness beers consumed. note that i added 'beers'. that's because i don't know how to pluralize guinness. while i was there i chatted it up with a frenchie who's been travelling/teaching esl for the past 26 years. went with him to another bar, met some new people from australia and england. frenchie left, so i integrated with his peeps. me and 2 of the more adventurous of the bunch decided to go bar-hopping. very fun. a tower of heineken. picked up 3 other random people as well, one of whom was an amazing dancer. he took us to a dance club. no one else was dancing, but he didn't seem to mind. shit, what's that movie with the b2k dudes in it? he could dance like one of them. what is that guy's fucking name? omarion. he could dance like omarion. i think it's funny that at this particular computer in japan, the next time anyone googles any b word, b2k is going to pop up.

the real adventure of the day was getting back to the hostel. i had come and gone to/from the hostel several times during the day, when it was light out, when the subway was open. i thought that surely the address written in japanese on the business card would be enough for the cab driver. but it wasn't. he started rubbing on my leg, so i stopped the taxi not knowing where i was. soaking wet in the downpour. i bought an umbrella (yes, the one that was promptly swiped by a convenient mart employee...( and began soliciting help from random convenient store people. taxi driver had no idea where the hostel was, and neither did most of the convenient mart people. i think i was on convenient mart number 4 when i finally lost it and started crying uncontrollably, much to the terror of the young japanese workers around me. it was now almost 4 in the am and i hadn't slept in nearly 24 hours. so that, factored in with being intoxicated, lost, not knowing a goddamn word of japanese, creepster feeling me up in the cab made for a pretty pathetic situation. i finally made it home though, after much map consultation and the kindness of these two gentlemen.

oh yeah, why am i so tired right now. i got back to the hostel right around 4 after being up for nearly 24 hours, and then was woken up by the current construction project at 8 am. yes, even in the rain they hammer away. so all told, not a lot of sleep to show for myself over the past few days.

stuff n stuff

well, back into the proverbial swing of things after my impromptu 6 day vacation in fukuoka, japan on my extended visa run. so i suppose that allows time for me to finish the long-winded two part recap.

but before i begin, i think it's worth noting that my fan has a timer on it. so's i don't die of the fan death. after two hours it automatically shuts off. thank god, i'm not dead yet. if you don't know about fan death, it's a korean urban legend. wikipedia that shit.

so where did i leave off? i think i only covered the first day. yeah, i'm lame. but i was on vacation, so let's all pretend that i was consumed by uber-important site-seeing and cultural enrichment and those are the things that prevented a more timely record of all things fukuoka. day two began early again, on account of the construction immediately adjacent to the hostel. whatever, i'm cool with forced motivation. it's difficult to just lie there in bed waiting for the next hammer in the sequence of ever-increasing hammering. that's one of those small ways i like to torture myself. when the faucet's dripping and i'm trying to sleep, i could just try to tune it out, but it's so much more uncomfortable to count the seconds between drips and then immerse myself in this repetitive 2 second counting cycle. same with the hammering. i would lay there and wait for it, all the while scrambling for random tissues to stuff in my ears. and even with the tissue, i still listened through it because i knew the sound was imminent. funny how routines and patterns ultimately govern our lives, no matter how arguably minute they are.

anyway, moving on...i believe it was on the second day that i began my routine of going to starbucks early in the day to sort of jumpstart myself. reminded me of waking up every morning in europe, totally hungover and requiring espresso and red bull. could be why i'm still in credit card debt. that shit's expensive...

anyhoo, i'm reading saul bellow short stories. i'll try to make any forthcoming cheesy acts of quotation less cheesy by thoroughly disclaiming beforehand that yes, i am cheesy. there are things people say and write that move me, seemingly stoney exterior be damned...

"it might be said that all of these beautiful stories throw out at us, in burning centrifuge, the secular-religious questions: what are our days of awe? and how shall we know them?"

of course such flattery not written by mr. bellow himself, but it's always a plus when you find such nuggets as early as the introduction.

so there i was in japan, and it was nice to have such an obvious distancing, despite the geographical proximity, from the annoyances that are everyday life in korea. you could smell the difference when you stepped off the plane. it was extremely difficult to come back here on tuesday night. it's hard to explain--a lack of obvious judgement, feeling human amidst all these other humans. individuality, some semblance of counter culture. it was just good, healthy and comfortable. how to adequately describe...

events of the days. second day was just as good as the first. it was rainy pretty much the whole time (except the last day, but i was so out of sorts from my hangover that i was sort of oblivious to meteorological factors). but the rain didn't affect my mood or motivation. so friday it rained, but i think i actually preferred it to the alternative of sunshine and heat. so i went to the art museum, some japanese gardens and the ruins of a castle. the art museum was great. i think art museums are probably designed for rainy days and single people. perhaps some people are destined to be creators and others to be appreciators. i guess one couldn't exist without the other. so i am probably the latter. i create things i guess, but those things fall under the extremely stretched umbrella of an already stretched definition of creativity.

anyway, i really enjoy art, or at least i enjoy wandering around an art museum in japan. i bought some interesting paraphernalia by a japanese artist named ohtake shinro. good eats.

after that i went to a japanese garden and once again, let it be noted that i was the only person there. just me and the koi fish. that would never happen in korea, there would inevitably be old women with penciled in lips and walking sticks (no matter how flat the landscape), along with cute girls in mini skirts and stilettos. so i took lots of pictures, got rained on, and it was amazing. things in fukuoka were so green. i thought i had seen green things before, but these trees and plants put my former concept of green to shame. i took way too many pictures of foliage. after the garden, made my way to some castle ruins. they weren't kidding when they called them "ruins." really more just dilapidated walls and wet gardens. huge black crows squawking at me, again, the only other obvious moving life form in their domain. but the cemetery, the castle and the sushi restaurant (not yet talked about) were the highlights of the trip. with the castle and the cemetery there was just something so primordial about the setting. i felt like i had accidentally been granted this great gift of isolation, so it was up to me to spend it in as remote and elemental a place as possible. i was quite happy to not share the events of that morning/early afternoon with any other human beings.

so after wandering around for a while, content in my increasingly soggy clothing, i made my way back to the hostel to take a nap. i met anna, the girl in all the pictures, while checking my email. so we made plans to eat and drink a little later. those are things that are actually very nice, should company present itself. napped, met up with her to go eat a pizza and nachos at some place in the tenjin area of the city.

post pizza, decided more food and brews were in order. found ourselves at a tiny irish pub in japan, the craic and porter. bob marley (sooo irish) on the tv, rogue ale on tap, and fuller's bottles available. holy shit. the bartender was even wearing a samuel smith oatmeal stout t-shirt. that's amazing. drank some beers, ate some lasagna, inquired about where to get really drunk really quickly. the bartender was drunk and molesting anna, telling her her name meant strange things in japanese. still not sure whether that's true or not...

ultimately ended up at a bar called the happy cock. yup, happy cock. not normally the sort of place i'd go, but then again, neither is japan. and for $20 all you can drink, why the fuck not. i probably drank 20 cocktails during the course of the night, including a shit ton of vodka tonics. when we first got there though, it kind of sucked. but we'd committed our cash, so we were in it for the long haul/ met some dude named dan, also living in korea. aligned ourselves with him for the night. eventually we started dancing (ah, the beauty of alcohol...).then it actually became really fun. i'm always a fan of molesting strangers. met some italian guys, one of whom was pretty fucking hot. he was a bigger dude, but he could actually dance really well. so that element of surprise, coupled with the whole italian accent thing, bode well for him. anna and i pretty much danced with them the whole time.

oh yeah, there was a scantily clad russian looking girl too. her thong was pulled up inexplicably high and she danced awkwardly. i guess that's what passes for hot these days. next thing we know, it's 5 in the morning and we need to get back to the hostel. only thing on the agenda for saturday was to find a currency conversion place for anna.

slept in on saturday, but finally decided to leave the hostel. went to the currency exchange, tried to see transformers, but it's not out in japan. resorted to wandering around, kind of hungover. found ourselves back in the same area we'd been in the night before, so why not start the debauchery again. found a head shop, bought some jewelry, then went to this amazing little seafood restaurant/sochu bar. we decided just to try some sochu (tastes like watered down tequila). so that was sort of a waste of money, but the decor in there was so arty and reminiscent of the venice cafe in st. louis. i always really liked that place, despite how difficult it was to find every time i tried...

after that went back to a bar i'd gone to on my first night called off broadway. the owner, louis, looked like gregory hines and was so amazingly hospitable to us. drank/ate there for a while, met some germans that louis knew. then we all migrated to a place called "jackie's bar" where there was an impromptu band featuring a russian dude (replete with handlebar mustache) and some really spry older korean man. it was great fun. the cool part about that bar was that we ran into the italian dudes on the street on the way there. we were all excited to see each other again.

after jackie's we went to a new bar called "infiinty." another one of those places that i would probably never go to, but fuck it, i was in japan, so why not. reminded me a lot of pure lounge in como, back in the days of glow sticks and smoke machines, despite the fact that neither of those things were present here. there was a velvet rope/vip area that louis, because he's also a bar owner, had access to. so we sat there for a while. he bought us beers and shared his cigar with us. but the italians were also there, beckoning us to come dance with them. so we obliged. again, good times. much better dancers at this place. some breakdancer/b boy types. another long night.

next day, anna left at noon and i had some fucking killer cramps that made me sort of curl up in a ball and sweat for a good portion of the afternoon. good gad. but i did eventually venture out. went to some famous row of shops that was actually underwhelming. felt sort of crazy and sweaty for a good 4 hours. i had a vision of myself looking like rick moranis in ghostbusters when he's wandering around dazed and confused.

anyhoo, wandered back to the tenjin area, in said haze, ate some curry and ran into an awkward, uber self conscious canadian guy who liked to get a little too close to me and awkwardly put his arm around my waist. and what made it so awkward was that despite his self-consciousness, he still mustered up the balls to quite physically weird me out. i guess that's a skill. i played that for a free beer at one of the street stalls, then [also awkwardly] left the situation. always shocking to me when i run into people who are actually more socially inept than i feel most of the time. granted, i play it off alright, but the feeling's still there. and this guy couldn't play it off at all. he was just weird.

went back to the hostel and crashed. next day was my embassy day to place my korean work visa order. don't ask me why you have to do this in japan. i have no idea. made my way to the consulate (this was on monday; i was sposed to get that elusive code number on thursday). i also happened to stumble upon a.....MOTHER FUCKING GAP JAPAN!!!!!!!! i don't know that anyone can fully understand the significance of this. but i'm a big girl living in a little country (in every sense of the word). shit doesn't fit me here. but in gap japan, there was so much stuff and everything was on sale. honestly, the highlight of my day, maybe even my trip. made me feel a little more human. humans wear clothing, this store has clothes that fit me, therefore making me a human.

after gap, had another bout of cramps. some self-prescribed bedrest, then i went out to eat sushi. i went back to the cool restaurant i went to with anna before. told the waitress i didn't care what i ate, so she gave me a beautiful variety tray. it had octopus that was fucking amazing. it was so good, so tender, and yes, raw. japanese octopus: 1. korean octopus: 0. i drank a lot of beer while i ate, so i was already slightly drunk when i left. and i guess sushi doesn't make the best foundation for a hard night of drinking, not that i was even planning on that. but i went back to the irish bar because i wanted more rogue beer.

of course i expected there to be other humans there, but no dice. so i was in for some drinking and inappropriate conversation with the guy who had molested anna before who was older than my father and married, neither of which he at any point tried to downplay. creepy. i tried to leave, and then i noticed my rogue beer was refilled or there was a glass of whiskey in front of me. eventually i did escape to off broadway and the safety of louis and company. but it only stayed safe for so long.

louis and his entourage showed up a little after i got there (after already having food and drink purchased for me by a cute little japanese woman. okay, i like free. it was turning out to be a very cheap last night in japan...). at this point we started drinking champagne, then pervy older than my dad guy showed up. there were also some spanish dudes there. they didn't speak a lick of english. and of course i only remember how to say the most rudimentary phrases involving midgets and wooden legs.

when creepy older guy put his hand on my thigh, i escaped to the bathroom, where i encountered one of the spanish guys as i came out of the stall. he looked at me and said "bonita" so i responded with "guapo." and then, with the reflexes of a cat, or just an overly-sexed spanish guy in japan, he took that as his cue to shove his tongue down my throat. people casually throw that expression around, probably never having actually had a tongue shoved down their throat. but there was quite a bit of violence to this kiss. i feel bad even calling it a kiss--even a bad kiss--because there was nothing delicate or pleasant or sensual about it at all. this kiss stripped the very word kiss of any of its niceness for me for a while.

i felt doubly violated because he hadn't taken his time to wash his hands after using the urinal. GEEEROOOSSSS. i fled the scene at that point. the champagne and whatever was on that dude's tongue were combining to make me not feel so well.

ultimately, the moral that was reinforced this night, in shocking and saddening clarity, was that it's never the people that you want to hit on you who hit on you. and it's never the people whose tongues you want shoved down your throat who actually deign to shove their tongues down your throat (i'm talking to you, hot italian guy! where was your tongue?). i'm not morbidly obese. i'm not an idiot. i'm a reasonably attractive young lady. and yet, this is what i've been reduced to. narsty people in foreign bars who have no tact button. both my sisters are married to dudes who aren't douchebags. and i honestly wonder how that's even possible after the number of unfortunate episodes i've had with dudes in the past year.

my last day i went back to the embassy to retrieve the visa. went to fukuoka tower to check off some sort of touristy activity for the day. wanted to go to the zoo, but decided that having to transfer on the subway was waaaayyy too difficult for my aching body/brain to handle in the wake of the beer/whiskey/champagne/sushi/tongue night. so i went to starbucks again. met another guy there who actually didn't suck and was spewing all sorts of facts about saul bellow, faulkner, etc. you never really expect to have that sort of conversation with a guy from barbados who you meet in a starbucks in fukuoka, japan.

so that was my trip. it was great. and because the nice man from barbados talked about saul bellow, here's some more:

"when dr. braun closed his eyes, he saw, red on black, something like molecular processes--the only true heraldry of being. as later, in the close black darkness when the short day ended, he went to the dark kitchen window to have a look at stars. these things cast outward by a great begetting spasm billions of years ago."

sigh. sleepy.

I'm a talented person!

I'm a talented person. Why? Because I can play yo-yo, and painting caractor. Many people paiting caractor and play yo-yo, but I am great. Another person. Why yo-yo and painting is talented? Now we can start my talented yo-yo and painting caractor.

I like my picture, because my picture, is great (?) I like painting a picture. My picture history is very intresting. In eight years, I was like piture, and I had one titleless notebook. Now I see titlelss notebook, I'm laugh on the floor.

I started yo-yo at seven years. In seven years, pride a great, I played the yo-yo. In now, I play ingenuity of yo-yo. I breaked many yo-yo. I think six or seven yo-yoes. One day, Steve told he can yo-yo, but I saw, it is not yo-yo ingenuity.

My talented is two. One is yo-yo and one is painting picture. My dream is cartoonist, and great yo-yo woman (?). Why I has talented? Because I pratice and pratice. Do you want has talented? They you started pratice. It is your talented's manure.

i've been grading a lot of essays over the past couple of days. honestly, i'm impressed with the form that some of these kids utilize. in these parts their fans of the 4 paragraph (or 4 sentence for the little kids) essay. even if the engrish is botched, they're getting the grasp of essay structure.

i just finished my first week of work in ilsan/seoul. i have worked sunday through saturday, with my own branch of the hagwon's grand opening tomorrow (i have to give a speech and wear a dress. honestly don't know which is worse...). despite the fact that i 've had to commute 3 hours/day into/out of seoul from ilsan to train, i am loving everything about my new arrangement.

a week ago i arrived in seoul. i first went to sign the contract and figure out other logistical nonsense, then i went to my hagwon and just scoped it out. on sunday, there was an open house/meet the parents extravaganza at another branch of the hagwon in suwon, so i went to that just to be another foreign face in the crowd. before i went though, i had the opportunity to go to my boss' house. that's saying something right there, the fact that he has an actual house (and a yard!!!!!!!!!) in korea. dudeman is loaded. i gathered from a reliable source that his house cost approximately 10 million dollars. good gad. that's a sign that he's successful and there's money to be made if i align myself with him. and align myself i have. oh yeah, he had a dude drive me and some other peeps in his bmw. that was pretty sweet. i felt very important stepping out of that car....

a lot of people who asked me questions about the new gig were met most commonly with the answer "i don't know" or the slightly varied "i have no idea." here are some facts: my hagwon is brand new. there are other branches, but the ilsan branch is brand new. they're still in the process of recruiting students, so i've been commuting every day to observe other teachers at other branches and to grade/assess copious amounts of essays on varying socially important topics (the most creative essays in response to the prompt "do you think your school menu should change?" seriously, it's so interesting to read the [broken] english logic of little korean kids. endearing to the max). anyhoo...my first day of training was monday. i was going to just observe other teachers, but one of the teachers was in a horrible motorcyle accident, so his girlfriend was staying at the hospital with him. so i got to teach all 5 of the girlfriend's classes. some people might find the idea of that terrifying, but it was actually pretty chill. of course there was a time when the thought of teaching 5 classes at a school that i knew nothing about would have made me shit my pants, but i had already gathered just how systematic an organization this was, so it was cake. rice cake.

also, i had been expecting a one-room/studio apartment. so a porter and myself lugged all my shit up to the 13th floor of a generic korean high rise apartment building on saturday. i opened the door and almost cried. there was the smell of fresh paint and just so much natural light flooding this remarkably spacious area that i have the pleasure of calling my abode for at least the next year (unless i decide to ditch out early on this gig too. that's a joke). i have a kitchen and a really cute bathroom and a living room and a bedroom. plus, my little deck/veranda area is bigger than the one at sidae. it's actually a lot like sidae, but there's more light and it just feels fresh and clean. my judgement could be skewed by the glaring newness of it all. but right now, it's a perfect space for me.

oh yeah, back to the job being very systematic....so all the branches provide all the kids with books. there's a huge room that you walk into full of the books designated for each grade level. they actually do level tests that are standardized. there are consequences if students don't do their homework. there are parent/teacher conferences and there are grade cards distributed. plus, a vertitable fuckton of students are associated with this hagwon. i believe i heard around 11,000 students just in the seoul area. despite the numbers, dyb is a finely-tuned machine. there are a shitton of korean teachers also. all the levels do the same thing, no matter the teacher--same books, same level test. it's amazing. each day is a different focus--listening, speaking, etc. there are also a lot of teachers at this main branch, so it's nice to actually get to build some comaraderie whilst hanging out in a bonafide teachers' lounge.

so i haven't had too much free time in ilsan, because of the commute, but right now my life is good. i genuinely enjoy subway culture too. despite some of the questionable smells and the glaringly obvious lack of convenient trash cans (seriously, why should i have to carry an empty coffee cup for an hour). sitting on the subway, counting down the stops to my ultimate destination makes me feel important. i'm not busy really, all i can do is wait, but it makes me feel busy. it's urgent that i get somewhere. it's nice to have that time to be responsible for absolutely nothing besides listening to music.

in short, everything is adding up (so far, fingers crossed) to me feeling important and valued. i haven't had to struggle for anything either--no pointless weekly state of the union addresses featuring the same mounting, unresolved issues of the past year (hint hint: city hall in suncheon). you can only beat a dead horse for so long. after 9 months it doesn't even look like a horse anymore. i'm just guessing, as i've never actually beaten a dead horse.

dude..............

i'm in ilsan now (seoul suburb. connected by subway).

my apartment rules. my new job appears to rule (only day two and i'm still training).

more details later.

word.

last day in the suncheon

i'm at the miracle library. sitting at a desk just like i have for the past 9 months. typing a blog like i have for the past 9 months. and in a few hours, i'll leave this library, and probably never come back to it for the rest of my life (except in some really hotttt dreams).

leave tomorrow morning for ilsan. not suwon. i don't know anything about ilsan. i know it has a subway line.

since i am at the library, and english storytelling to complacent munchkins was part of the job requirement, i think now seems as good a time as any to reflect on some of my favorite children's books.

there were two authors that the kids went apeshit for, making my life much easier: eric carle and anthony browne. my connection to eric carle was pretty immediate, but anthony browne had to prove himself to me over the duration of 9 months.

the very hungry caterpillar by eric carle. it's the tale of a caterpillar who, as the title would suggest, is very hungry. charts his life from birth until butterfly-dom. many hyjinks ensue along the way, including a run-in with too many sweets and the resultant tummy ache. the library has a huge cardboard version of this book, with holes cut out in each of the foods that a little plush caterpillar can squeeze his way through. it's the favorite, hands down.

from head to toe by eric carle. teaches body parts and animals pretty well. plus, it's really fucking cute to have an entire classroom of little people screaming and pantomiming "i am a penguin and i turn my head. i can do it! i am a buffalo and i raise my shoulders. i can do it!" downside: if your students are mute, sleeping, or in the middle of being breast fed (seriously, last week it was dueling breast feeders. 2 at once. mildly distracting), it's hard to elicit any sort of reaction from them.

other notable eric carle books: the very quiet cricket, papa please get the moon for me, a house for hermit crab. the pictures are always cool, and lots of time they're very hands on, multiple sensory experience books.

moving on to anthony browne. the best parts of his books are the illustrations. i'm thinking of the book changes in particular. lots of weird hidden stuff that you have to look for. plus he's always got gorillas in his book (gorilla, willy the wizard, willy the wimp, willy the champ) and hides bananas everywhere. i'm sure that if any of his books were in large, heavy duty cardboard format with a miniature plush gorilla, i would like them as much as the caterpillar one. but there aren't, so i don't.

farmer duck. poor duck has to do all the work for the fat, lazy farmer. the other animals mutiny, kick the farmer out of his house and share the workload together. "how goes the work?" "quack." my sentiments exactly. fight the power!

happy birthday moon. bear wants to talk to the moon, but it's too far away. so he climbs up into the mountains to be closer to him. has an enlightening conversation with his own echo and thinks he and the moon have the same birthday. so he buys the moon a hat as a gift.

where's my teddy? there's a little dude named eddy. eddy's teddy's name is freddy. freddy's also little, as he is eddy-sized. eddy loses freddy so he goes to search for him in the woods. he stumbles upon a gigantic teddy bear, obviously not freddy, but whose is it? then a giant bear appears holding a tiny teddy bear. clearly there was some sort of mix up--eddy got the bear's gigantic teddy; the bear got the tiny freddy. bear freaks out at kid, kid freaks out at bear. they run away. all is right with the world.

bear hunt. shit, i forgot this one was anthony browne too. anyhoo, there's a bear out walking in the woods. there also happen to be two hunters following him. bear gets himself into several sticky situations, but with the aid of the pencil he happened to be carrying with him he makes it out alive. it's like macgyver, but with a bear.

mouse count. 1 hungry snake on the prowl (with a jar in which to place his dinner) + 10 napping mice = 1 action-packed children's book. okay, not really. but it's pretty damn cute. you get the kids to count and they're really concerned about the welfare of these poor (albeit stupid) mice. the snake gets all the mice into his jar, but ultimately his greed gets the better of him and the mice are able to escape. whew!

pete's a pizza. i do remember that this one is by william stieg--same dude associated with shrek. pete's bummed out because it's raining and he was sposed to play baseball with his chingus. his dad thinks it will make him feel better if he is made into a pizza. always worked for me. (a pretend pizza. i generally try to avoid jesus and cannibalism during storytelling hours).

don't do that. story about a little girl with a beautiful nose who gets her finger stuck in it. my favorite book to read, because there were always about 5 kids with fingers stuck up their noses, watching me read.

other notables: the bear's lunch, the pear in the pear tree, room on the broom, dr. dog.

i drank way too much last night. it just seems worth mentioning. tonight will probably be same same.

baekwons

i took all my baekwon coins to the bank and got 85,000 won. hells yeah!

(it's like if you had $85 worth of dimes).

thank god.

The plays are finished. 3 months of blood, sweat and yes, even tears reduced to approximately 40 minutes of boiling heat on a tiny stage, my students’ nervous english recitation lost in the din of their own parents’ chatter. Seriously, I was 10 feet away in front of the monitor and I couldn’t hear a goddamn word. All I could really do was sweat. A lot. but I was quite honestly appalled by the blatant lack of respect the audience had for these, their children, who despite all protestation, had actually worked their collective ass off. Which is not to say that the beginner play didn’t fall apart before my very eyes. It’s funny that when you’re rehearsing something and people fuck it up it’s really annoying and frustrating, but when it’s the actual performance and they fuck up, it magically becomes cute and endearing. That’s how the beginner play was for me. Captain hook and smee (two students whose real names I never managed to commit to memory over the course of three months) sort of panicked in front of everyone. There was a lot of me shouting from the wings while simultaneously trying to man the large cardboard crocodile I had masterfully crafted for the occasion. Organized chaos would be too generous a term. I was proud of my students, but ultimately I just felt pretty foolish for being so invested in this thing that obviously meant so little to everyone on the periphery. But hey, they’re finished. And hopefully that’s my last foray into esl via english drama.

More about last week before delving into the usual weekend recap. On Thursday I had another tea date with my supervisors. While I was waiting for ms. moon to pick me up, I was approached by yet another jesus freak. And yes, in these parts, the moniker “freak” is more than warranted. Granted, religion in america can be pretty fucked up, but they don’t seem to be so damn pushy about it or overtly judgemental. This chick asked me about god and when I said I didn’t like going to church she shook her head and made a “tsk tsk” sort of noise. Fuck you, lady. Save that shit for your sewing circle. I guarantee that jesus didn’t make “tsk tsk” noises.

Anyhoo, was rescued by ms. Moon. Funny that I consider being whisked away by a middle-aged woman in a minivan who speaks absolutely no english a “rescue”, but that’s exactly what it was. And mr. Bak was only a half an hour late to dinner. And that silent 30 minutes wasn’t even particularly awkward, as we just decided to drink to fill the time. Mr. Bak showed up, we ate dakgalbi. I had a few moments of completely surreal sentimentality—reverie of many a drunken Saturday afternoon with jules and rory in chuncheon, eating dakgalbi and happily gazing upon the dancing soju bottles in myeongdong…

Ms. Moon had to leave to go pick up and deposit her child somewhere. Then me and mr. Bak were to meet her at the tea place. As soon as she left, mr. Bak said “I would like to drink some more alcohol.” So we drank 3 more bottles and I blabbed to him, my korean supervisor, about how racist koreans in suncheon can be. He didn’t disagree.

So dinner was about 1.5-2 hours. Little did I know, I had 3.5 more hours of happy fun korean triple date time left in me. And again, all the events that took place were some of the most relaxing and pleasant times I’ve had with koreans in suncheon, but the sheer length of these endeavors threatens to negate any pleasure I take in them.

The tea drinking locale was actually just a tea aficionado’s house. And indeed, he had lots of tea. But again, there was just the very calming ceremony of it all, the presenation of the tea an event to be taken very seriously. The couple had pictures of their children on the wall at various tea ceremony competitions. And I was pleased to be one of the few foreigners to ever set foot in their humble abode. The man talked about tea drinking as mediation and took lots of pictures of me. At the end of the evening (around 12:15 in the am), I was presented with a tea set, a bag of barley tea and a bamboo teaspoon. All for which I was incredibly grateful. None of which I deserved.

Then the plays the next day. Lots of roses for me, woo hoo! My waygook friends showed up. and I was more grateful for that than I even tried to express to them. I’ve been out of sorts for the past 3 months—feeling inexplicably fragile at times—so it was nice to have that very obvious show of support.

Post plays it was time to get drunk. I could try to rephrase this to thinly veil the main objective, but I won’t. I wanted to get hammered. I woke up on Friday and that was the first thought in my head: “tonight I get to get wasted/hammered/plowed/etc.” my weekend was spent either drunk, hungover or attempting to be both.

Ate some meat with fike and erica, then headed to the 711 in front of juliana’s. drinking ensued, as it typically does there (inside, but mostly outside). [near] fighting ensued, as it typically does there (inside, but also outside). There were probably about 15 people all milling about, drinking in front of the convenient mart. Some crazy korean chick was inside, alternately picking fights and trying to pick people up. she decided to try both with the resident iraqi black belt of suncheon. he was trying really hard not to react, but crazy lady ground her heel into his junk and started punching and slapping him. so he twisted her arm and she fell off the table she was sitting on, faceplanted on a chair, but then still recovered to get up and attack him some more. anyhoo, after the penis and heel incident and her making a fool of herself, she decided to pick up a chair and smash it against the window of the packed bar. and yet, the korean owner didn't immediately and violently remove her. she got to just stand there, curse for a while and look really angry and then be escorted out. All I could think was, “how much fucking alcohol do you have to drink to behave like this woman?” I get drunk. Sometimes I barf. But I never pick fights with people or attempt to throw chairs through windows. But maybe I’m the crazy one.

Drank until the wee hours of the morning. watched the sun rise on shidae apartments. Passed out around 5:45 am with visions of busan in my head. Woke up too early to catch the bus with fike and erica. Nothing too eventful happened in busan—we drank, we ate, we drank some more, ate some more. But it’s just nice to have a variety of cuisine, a variety of drink, a variety of people. that’s how busan’s been for me both times. indian food, thai food, whiskey, beach, live music, dude from princeton, treacherous cable car ride to the top of a mountain. Most of which I have pictures of (to be posted on flickr soon). All in all, a great weekend, despite the brain pain.

today marks the beginning of the end of my time in suncheon. A week from today I’ll be teaching somewhere in/around seoul. The details are still hazy at best, and I don’t even care.

shitballs, i forgot to mention...

the awkward dinner i will have tonight, and an awkward one i already had earlier in the week.

on tuesday i met up with a high school student who volunteers at the library. she speaks less english than i speak korean. but she's very nice and insisted that i eat at pizza hut with her. fair enough. we meet two of her friends and have a lovely, though small, meal (one small pizza for 4 people. apparently even koreans fuck up the korean language sometimes, mostly with regards to menu items, specifically pizza size). after the meal, we walk outside and one of the friends drops the bomb: "we're all jehovah's witnesses. what are you?" yikes. uncountable moments of extreme awkwardness were to follow. and all i could think was "gosh, i really don't want to offend this woman by saying i'm not all that into religion." and yet there was no reciprocal trigger telling her that maybe my religious preferences were none of her fucking business. i already think koreans are judgemental (hey, i'm judgemental too. whatever...), but then you throw some religious zeal in there. good gad indeed.

tonight is a tea date. i was actually looking forward to another one of these 3.5 hour long endeavors until my korean translator boss told me he can't meet me until 8:30 or 9. party with homegirl begins at 7. so that's a whole 1.5 to 2 hours of just one on one time. she speaks absolutely NO english. crickets.

i make those stupid friendship bracelets that were popular when i was in the 8th grade. i like to log it as a talent. anyhoo, i made a woman at the library one of these, and everyone i work with is going apeshit. they're all pissed off that i haven't made theirs yet, despite my obvious lack of time (evidenced by going in to work on a saturday). so please don't ask me for a friendship bracelet. i guess that's the point.

sportsball. plays.

things and also stuff have been going on and also happening.

one of said stufflike items was a baseball game over the weekend. i told myself it was going to be the best day of my life--watching the kia tigers play the some other team in gwangju. all i know is that they WEREN'T playing the unicorns. yes, there is a korean baseball team called the unicorns. a rather silly mascot. unless, it also happens to be a pegasus. a tiger versus a unicorn is no contest. throw some wings into the equation and it's a little more interesting.

anyhoo, hopped on the bus to gwangju on sunday to see sportsball. gotta be honest, i was a little hungover, as the night before had become an impromptu party at the mini stop. 3.5 hours later after arriving in gwangju, in my afternoon drunken stupor, i thought to myself "oh, hey, i was just at a baseball game, wasn't i?" it didn't really even occur to me while i was at the baseball game that i was at the baseball game. although i did purchase a rather large hat and sat in the sun sweating my balls off. that thought was with me the whole time. along with "i want to take a nap." in general though, baseball is a non event to me. unless someone hits a homerun or there are drunk angry people or a fight breaks out. there was a plus though, beer at the baseball stadium in korea is much cheaper than beer at a baseball game stateside. so that was reason enough. add it to the list of things done/seen in korea: baseball.

after baseball, went for a dose of western food in the form of tgi fridays. i don't think i've ever actually eaten at one of those places in america. regardless, i've been daydreaming about the macaroni bites (fried macaroni=fucking genius!). so i had some of those and they did not disappoint. i also ordered a cheeseburger. what i got was a large roundish lump of tepid, unseasoned beef attempting to pass for a burger. looks like a burger, smells like a burger, but does not taste like a burger, so a burger it ain't. geee-rossssss. at least it's hard to fuck up french fries.

tomorrow is play day. peter pan and cinderella/snow white and the 1 dwarf. the past 3 months of my life have been consumed by this thing. i didn't take my vacation in may because of this thing. for 3 months i've been absolutely exhausted for a variety of reasons: anxiety over inadequate helpers, students dropping out, students being rude and/or annoying, hands going numb from coloring and cutting various props. so tomorrow, these months come to a poorly funded, melodramatic (but cute) head. and all i can think is "i can't wait to get fucking hammered tomorrow night." i am a good sonsaengnim.

the end.

hell week. now who's being dramatic...

on friday are my engrish plays--beginners' class=peter pan and advanced class=snow white plus random characters because students kept dropping out (we've trimmed the fat to one dwarf. but all his lines were memorized when there were two or three of them. so there are some issues with pronouns and plurals, but i stopped caring...)

if the dress rehearsal yesterday was any indication, i think i will probably have a stroke on friday. but at least i have freshly pedicured toes to go with that stroke. my advanced class is pissed because i didn't spend all of my weekend making them a huge crocodile and pirate ship like i did for the beginner class. and i'm pissed at all of them for not saying "thank you" for any of these props that took away hours of my life i'll never get back. perhaps i'm too hard on them. but it sure seems like no one else is.

anyhoo, this week are the plays. next week packing and moving to somewhere in or outside seoul. should i be concerned that i still know absolutely no details? eh. they'll fall into place soon enough. i'm looking forward to regular old teaching again. no gimmicks, no arts and crafts (fingers crossed).

in the meantime, everyone's trying to cash in on the limited jamie time. two free meals this week, with more to come next week (assah!) as random people that i've never bothered to communicate with in the past 9 months vie for precious hours of the limited time i have left in suncheon.

eh

i feel like i should post something. seems like it's been awhile. a whole week!

i woke up to the soothing sounds of a loudspeaker blaring from the passing onion truck. apparently it's onion season now--the red hues of strawberries gradually giving way to the muddied whites of onions and garlic.

i'm in a rut. there. i said it. there's this feeling that's been gnawing at me lately. it started out innocently enough, culminating in the current sort of indescribable heaviness which i've only fully admitted to as of late. the feeling of barely hanging on. to i don't know what. and it's not necessarily a depressing feeling, it's more a futile desperation. but this is familiar and therefore oddly comforting i suppose. the end result is again me just waiting for something to happen instead of being proactive. so now i've been proactive. the funny thing is, i felt this way a lot in columbia too. and now it's followed me to the korea. i think perhaps i'm not comfortable being happy. seems like it's something i shouldn't allow myself. i don't really know where that comes from. perhaps it's something a lot of 28 year old people feel. hmm....

i would really really love to eat a cuban pulled pork sandwich from uprise bakery right now. or the big tomato with bacon. a real sandwich. i bet seoul will have those.

i'm feeling sort of homesick these days. of course it's natural, but it makes me feel defeated, particularly in the context of what i'm increasingly willing to admit is/was a shitty fucking job and a shitty fucking life i made for myself here in the suncheon. seems like i was in denial of these things until the day i turned in that flimsy piece of paper citing some superficial reason for leaving (despite the obvious presence of bonafide complaints).

i had an interesting tea date with two of my supervisors last week. i could expound upon the actual tea consumption, as it was actually a positive experience (which i somehow manage to regularly avoid talking about), but what stuck with me was a question my boss asked about us kooky foreigners. he said some teachers complain about not feeling like they're a part of the community or included in regular korean things. and it made me wonder if this was an actual complaint, or if he was attempting to infer based on mere observation of the very obvious distancing from the korean community that some of us take pains to do. i didn't really know what to say to him. seems like a lot of the distancing (at least in my personal experience), is totally voluntary and on purpose. how do i explain to this man--who is both my boss, and a korean--that not everyone wants to integrate into what (to my foreign eyes) feels like an overtly misogynistic, materialistic, judgemental and racist society (not to mention one seemingly devoid of any counterculture that might compromise the confucian values of duty and collectivism)? it might be different if there was anything here in suncheon to detract from these things--cultural elements that temporarily shift the focus off these perceived societal ills, but my small city's not offering a lot of things to contradict my stereotypes right now. two of the main cultural components on which koreans fall back (food and alcohol) only serve to reinforce a seeming ethnocentrism, thus sabotoging their intent--a sense of community and togetherness--and further isolating people. anyhoo, i've got high hopes for seoul. i hate the way i feel about korea and a lot of koreans right now. i really hope going to a larger city will restore my faith in what i know deep down to be a culturally rich society full of generous, kind, well-meaning people.

today is a holiday. korean memorial day, or something to that effect. i have no immediate plans, or any plans to come up with a plan. i like days like that, as long as i don't put undue pressure on myself to be productive.

the move to seoul goes down in two weeks. i should be more specific and say i'm moving the the 'burbs." i'm very excited about what should be a major change.

yesterday i told some of the mothers at my maegokdong office that i was moving to seoul. their response (in korean) was "jamie's moving to seoul because she doesn't have any friends in suncheon." comments like that aren't unexpected anymore, i'm just glad they haven't started telling me i'm fat yet. but it really hurt my feelings. i only see these women 2 hours a week when they hang out at the library, and yet they think they've got me all figured out. i'm some 28 year-old friendless, boyfriendless withering spinster. and again, it makes me accutely aware of living out of context. there was a time when i argued i was creating a new context of my life. a new phase away from columbia, my friends, my family, vulnerably putting myself out there to gain return greater than i could ever imagine. you know, soul-searching. but it's not as great as i thought it would be. ultimately my soul-searching has resulted in not feeling like myself for 9 months.

there are two things that could immediately restore my spirits: a flat branch pub burger with bacon and a boulevard weet. i suppose there are two more: jules and rory. i'm thrilled that i still get to go on my vacation in july. that should help me snap out of the funk.

mothers

i work up this morning to two bizarre text messages from the mother of one of my students. some context here before i cite these messages. she's the mother of a kid at maegokdong, but sometimes she'll show up at my drama classes at the library to watch or to help the other helpers yell at the kids. fair enough. when i went to seoul 2 weekends ago, she happened to be at the drama class on friday that i had to immediately leave once it was finished. so she offered to drive me to the bus terminal. she has also taken me to lunch before with her, 3 of her friends and her child. keep in mind that i didn't ask her for any of these things, and until today i thought this lady was the bee's knees.

last week she randomly asked me "jamie, what is pajama party?" so i explained it was sort of a sleepover thing that adolescent girls would do. to which she responded "let's have one friday at your place." uh, huh? then she said, "we'll eat dinner, go drinking and then have party at your apartment." i wasn't totally opposed to two out of the three things, so i sort of agreed (yes, i'm admitting at least a little guilt here...). again, i should remind myself that i only enjoy hanging out with students or mothers if it falls into the hours of my work day. my free time (and my lunch time) is just that, my time.

but i had actually forgotten about plans i'd already made with two other friends for the same friday. so i cancelled on her last week cause that's how i roll. in america, this is probably not a big deal. in fact, i've done it before with people i like a lot more than this woman. but her kid didn't come to class yesterday, so i text messaged her and told her i was sad not to see her there. so yeah, this morning, 2 text messages:

1: "hi jamie! it let me down that u cancelled on us last fri. im so
disapponted and depressed deep." okay. who's "us?" is this like the royal "we?"

2: "so important cause of only free night a month. if ud like 2heal
me, why don't buy us lunch?" again, who's "us?"

okay, granted, i probably do owe her a lunch, but i honestly can't afford to buy "us" lunch if "us" means me, her, her kid, and the 3 other people who were in tow last time. i'm a girl on a budget. so now i'm in a quandary. part of me feels like i also owe her a lecture on cultural differences--americans cancel on each other all the time, and it doesn't make the cancellee "depressed."

so i finally just texted her and said i was sorry. no promise of a future lunch, no admittance of guilt, just i'm sorry. we'll see how that goes over...

belated continuation of last weekend's recap

i think i left off with hookah bar, guy who thought i was a whore and the lantern festival.

met my good friend clayton in this university area of seoul post jazz bar. went to a hookah bar. i'm a fan of these places. i liked the hookah bar in itaewon more, felt more intimate, darker. plus it had a bitchin cheese plate. i like those characteristics in bars--hookah or otherwise. but this other place was okay, as the general atmosphere of the whole area picked up the slack. didn't really matter after the jazz bar (where i drank some german beer, not cass or hite), my night was made.

went to bed relatively early that night (3:30 ish is early). slept in until around 11, as we had no major plans, other than going to a parade later that evening. when we left the hotel, erica and i tried to evade the front desk chick and just left fike to deal with her, as she obviously saw us and knew that we were three in a room, not two. so we headed outside and just waited for fike. he seems to do well in these situations, as he's mastered the art of being aloof and "i don't speak korean." so erica and i waited for about 5 minutes outside, getting progressively more nervous (you wouldn't say nervous-er, would you? sounds weird if it is a word). then fike emerges, walking hurridly saying "let's go. start walking." so the lady told him he had to pay $10 more for the extra person, at which point he said "just a moment" then left. i think she probably assumed he had to go to an atm, so we just left. that was pretty funny. it was already way overpriced--paper thin walls and tiny rooms, not any different than a motel, aside from jacked up prices. plus, that was $10 we desperately needed to contribute to our "sunday afternoon getting drunk" fund. a moral dilemma, no doubt, but clearly our thirst outweighed the needs of this hotelier.

we headed to the bus terminal to stash our bags for the day and eat. took us a while but we eventually found lockers. hopped on the subway and headed towards city hall where all the festivities were. one of the first things we saw during our festival experience was a parade of raelians. i could spend some time explaining these peeps, but instead i'll divert you to wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raelian they're big in the korea, i guess. you could sort of see the raelian chicks' boobs, so hey, that was cool. then we saw lots of hare krishnas and buddhists, all hanging out parading about and making crafts. along with the thousands of other festival goers. we were hands off festival goers, content to just wander around amidst the throng. erica and i did participate in one booth. we wrote letters to orphans in laos. at least my dude was from laos, i don't remember where erica's was from. that was fun. i might even get a 6 year old pen pal out of the deal.

after some meandering, decided that afternoon beers were in order. so we sat at a soju/kimbap tent of sorts, observing and drinking. this is where the creepy dude who thought i was a prostitute came into the picture. so i have a very large tattoo on my back, and no, it's not a butterfly or a dolphin or some chinese character. also not a lower back tattoo--you know, whore stamps. i was wearing a dress that revealed some of said tattoo. nothing more scandalous than the near ass-baring skirts and slutty stilettos or whore boots that so many korean girls wear on a daily basis. but i guess tattoos make people think you're easy. anyhoo, dude had been staring at us for a long long time, then mustered up the courage to talk to fike first, to feel us out. once he realizes we're all americans, he seems a little surprised but still friendly. so we're talking, he says he's been to missouri but that he didn't like it. okay, whatever. then he very aggressively tries to cover me up with his jacket. so i politely tell him i'm not cold. but he's forcing this jacket on my back. so i violently shove the jacket off of me. and once again i wanted to shout "don't fucking touch me!" i'm not some little kid, i'm not a wild animal, i'm an adult and don't ever want to be shushed or touched by complete strangers. yaaarrrggghhh! shake an angry fist! and besides, can't he see that my tattoo is intricate and beautiful? you think a russian whore has that kind of attention to detail? so after that i just kind of sat there stewing. but if it hadn't been for that awkward time spent with gross dude and us feeling the need to ditch him, wouldn't have awkwardly run into hot dude (and his family) in insa-dong. so i guess it all worked out.

we drank at an indian bar, then hit up a 711 for some cans o' beer, then ate at an italian restaurant, then headed over to the parade. continued drinking the cheap beer. and once again the parade was a magical, otherwordly thing. thousands of pale lights steadily streaming off into the distance, gently punctuating the bustle that is everyday seoul. good eats.

after getting nice and toasted, had to leave the parade early to make the 10:20 bus back to our small town. needless to say, the beer aided our sleeping quite a bit. so even though monday is my earliest day of the week, i felt well-rested.

buddha's birthday was actually on thursday, which meant a day off work. sort of a teaser since you still have to work on friday, and then it's the weekend, but i'll take a day off whenever i can get it. i had entertained going to some temples or going on a picnic, or doing something arguably productive. but instead it rained a lot and i was grateful for the excuse to do indoor things like eating, drinking and passing out drunk during a full theater's viewing of pirates of the caribbean. yup, i'm a responsible adult. so yeah, ate shabu shabu with erica and fike. it sort of sucked--too much dwenjang (sp?)--but i gorged myself anyway. after that we decided to go see a movie. so we get to the theatre and end up having 2 hours to kill before the movie. head to a mini stop, wet and thirsty. wow, that sounds sort of dirty, but i'll go with it... 3 pitchers of beer later, we're sort of inexplicably wasted. sure 3 pitchers will get 3 people drunk, but there's really no logical explanation for just how drunk we were. i dunno. it was bizarre, but fun. so in the theater we continued our drinking spree, finishing a pitcher of beer and then moving on to a bottle of wine. i'll be honest, not a great idea, but an idea nonetheless. then i passed out. woke up and felt nauseaus, went to get a soda. fike and erica met me at the snack bar so we could leave. so yeah, don't ask me how pirates of the caribbean was, i have absolutely no idea. all in all, i think it was a day that buddha himself would have wholeheartedly endorsed.

more weekend update with attractive subheaders

I'm finding it hard to focus today. earlier today I gave my 30 days notice for my job at city hall. It's weird that exactly a year ago I had been fired from my chuncheon gig. Yet here I was today, thinking about contracts and formal letters. Mr. Bak, my supervisor, took it surprisingly well. He was too hungover to be very reactionary about the whole thing. I remember a time when I swore I would never move to seoul, would never want to go to a big city—too many foreigners, life moves too quickly there. But at that point I also had jules and rory with me and they were all the entertainment I needed. Which is not to say that suncheon is without its merits, fike and Erica being my surrogate jules and rory over the last few months. I've also gotten to travel a lot while I've been here, but I think I've spent the whole time in suncheon waiting for things to happen to me instead of being proactive in my life. I like the idea of having things to do. a great weekend in seoul bookended by a shitty Friday drama class and a shitty Monday drama class was what finally made me realize I didn't have to stay here in this city or in this job if I didn't want to. Quite the revelation.

Friday night lights, I just really wanted to type that. Bar nana (banana!)
so yeah, this weekend marked another visit to seoul with Erica and mike. Friday was sort of a stressful day, as I'd bought the bus tickets for 6:20, but didn't finish work until 6. the whole day I felt like I was rushing: rushing to eat because I was nice and kept playing games with munchkins for an extra 15 minutes into my lunch break, rushing to finish my drama class, rushing to get to the terminal on time. I got there with about 2 minutes to spare, thanks to the superior driving skills of a student's mother. She was saying "fuck" and "shit" the whole time she was swerving in and out of traffic.

So we arrived in seoul a little after 10, caught the subway and found a shitty love motel. the next day the plan was the dmz tour, so we didn't want to get too drunk. Went to itaewon, as it seems to be the default when you show up late-ish and indecisive on a Friday night. Not all the bars are full of douchebags, though the random assholes loudly parading themselves down the street would make one think otherwise. Seriously, where do these people come from? Are they all english teachers? That's mildly disheartening. There's one place I've been to every time I've gone to seoul now (at least for round 2 in suncheon) called bar nana. It's great—interesting décor, Korean dudes with tattoos. Sometimes there's good music. Other times it's standard dance-y music. I can deal with that as long as everything else is cool. Normally there aren't too many people, but on this particular friday nite it was packed. Some chick was flailing around quite a bit, so that made for good entertainment. an asian looking dude came to sit down next to me, so I told him the seat wasn't taken and spoke a little Korean, and he's like "dude, I'm American too." So I felt like an ass. But he was really cool and even made his way into some of my pictures that have yet to be posted. Plus he bought us beers, so that's always a bonus. Post bar nana, made our way back to our motel.

Dmz (sans girly mentionings of dudes)
We had to go to our meeting place at 8 in the morning. Bus departed at 8:20. the first half of the day involved going to all the same stuff I went to last time when I was disappointed: tunnel (including the uber-melodramatic 7 minute butterfly film whose only goal seemed to be to diminish the severity of what's one of the most uniquely hostile situations in the world. But whatev), rail station. The first train to north korea had actually only left the station on Thursday, so it was cool to be there so soon after a pretty historic event.

after a tasty lunch in what appeared to be a log cabin in the middle of korea (that's weird, just so you know), came all the good parts of the dmz tour. the sort of shocking, unsettling stuff. First we went to the freedom bridge ("is that freedom rock? Turn it up!" I believe I made that same joke last time…). not really too shocking, but that's where we changed buses to go to panmunjom/joint security area. We drove for a little while to the military base of camp bonifas, where we then had our passports checked again. Met our American military personnel "tour guide" (I don't seem to recall him speaking. But he was hot. I know, I know, sorry, that girly part slipped into the recap…). then we had a briefing and signed a waiver saying we might die and all that shit. And the biggie: "visitors will not point make gestures, or expressions which could be used by the north Korean side as propaganda material against the united nations command." Yikes. Every time I went to brush hair out of my face or adjust my sunglasses, I was afraid I would be shot. Anyhoo, Boarded onto blue UN buses and went to the joint security area/mac conference room. That's the room where one side of the table is in north korea, the other side is south korea. I don't think I even had my whole body on the north Korean side at any point. But I think most of the right side of my body still counts. It's funny that I don't think of those things until after the fact. Stood next to a Korean soldier who looked fucking scary and not real. I think my picture sort of reflects that fear. After the jsa, we went to the freedom house. I'd call it more of a freedom pagoda. surrounded (on 3 sides at least) by north korea. After that we got to look out on a nice vista (?) of north korea. I guess it was pretty. You hear all this stuff about how the dmz is the most-well kept natural wildlife preserve in the whole world (despite the thousands of landmines that remain), but it didn't look particularly pretty. I dunno. But I got lots of good pictures. After that we passed the site of the ax murder incident (go to wikipedia, fools!) and then the bridge of no return. Then the long bus ride home that I seem to recall touching upon briefly in my last blog.

Jazz and hookah and just a general good feeling
Later that night we decided to explore a different area of seoul (this, of course, after eating fantastic Mexican food in itaewon and drinking mojitos. It was quite nice). So we went to another university area and wandered around looking for a love motel for about an hour. Though it sucked to not have our lodgings in order, it was nice to get to wander around in this totally different part of seoul. It actually felt sort of sophisticated and classy. In a lot of really bizarre ways it reminded me of Austin, tx. All those nice restaurants and coffee shops that had actually had some effort put into their interiors. We finally found a hotel, not a motel. Which means it's slightly more expensive, but we were sick of walking around with all our shit (particularly me. When i'm in a rush I tend to overpack, hoping that I don't forget anything by virtue of including everything I own). So we unpacked, snuck Erica into the room (or so we thought), napped, and then went out on the town. We ended up at a jazz club. That was only slightly surreal. In the 8 months I've been here I've been totally starved for music of any sort. Of course there have been the random excursions where I hear traditional Korean music, but hearing and seeing live jazz was probably more overwhelming than I would have thought it could be. They were great. 2 saxophonists—an alto and a tenor—drums, stand up bass, piano. It was so nice and calm and a highlight of the weekend. I felt like a normal human being again for about an hour. Listening to live music like normal people do sometimes. Drinking a beer and just absorbing it all. it's easy to forget how much I miss live music when I've been stripped of it cold turkey. And then I see things like this and it's sort of inexplicably overwhelming, a reminder of what I've been missing, whether I've realized it or not.

I suppose this is it for now. Still have the hookah bar, lantern festival and random guy who thought I was a prostitute to cover. Oh, and the raelians. Fucking crazy peeps!