In Country

Seoul is overwhelming. 

I fight to stay awake in the back of the cab that is taking me from Incheon International Airport.  I fail at this spectacularly.  The last time I slept was days ago, and that was drunken sleep.  I spent 17 hours in the air watching "The Big Bang Theory" and doing puzzles. 

Every now and again my head falls back.  My eyes want to shut but I force my lids to stay open.  The cabbie might be weirded out as I am sure he looks into his mirror and sees a guy with his eyes rolled into the back of his head.  I look like a tweaker, maybe. 

I am met on the street by a Korean guy, impeccably dressed, named Chris.  We make small talk as he leads the way to my apartment.  I ask his real name and he tells me that it's "only Chris."  I am too damned tired to ask much more. 

I am barely aware of my surroundings when a door opens in front of me and I am shown my "apartment."

"You will be here only 3 or 4 days," says only Chris. 

It is a nightmare.  The room is not much bigger than a bathroom despite actually containing a bathroom.  A tiny bed is jammed into the space between the toilet and the wall.  A glass divider keeps me from rolling into the bathroom.  A long desk occupies another wall.  With my luggage there is no room to walk. 

Bummer, I think.

I am given some keys and then taken to the school. 

I take in very little.  My systems are shutting down.  I try to be polite.  I meet the guy I am replacing and the other native teacher, both Canadians.  I ask the names of some of the Korean teachers but I make almost no effort to remember them.  This day will exist in my memory as only a blurb. 

On my way "home" I buy a roll of kimbap.  As I eat it with my fingers I notice there is no strip of crab in it. 

This might all work out afterall, I think.  I then pass the hell out. 

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"I've Got a REALLY Big Gun"

Sometimes my life is a lot like that of Michelle Pfeifer in DANGEROUS MINDS, or like Steve Urkle in the episode of FAMILY MATTERS in which Laura’s friend gets shot for not giving her shoes to some girls who wanted them pretty bad.

One of my classes has a tendency to get out of hand. Actually, most of them share that tendency; but this class is so reliable that I would be concerned if at least one of the three little boys didn’t blitzkrieg my smart board at least a few times in the 30 minutes I have them.

We were doing an exercize in which I said an emotion and they made a facial expression to go along with that emotion. Now, this was done as a ploy. I was teaching a lesson that would last, if unaltered, a maximum of 5 minutes. This was a means to drag the time on and maybe get a few chuckles: these kids are pretty hilarious.

For a while, it was pretty tame stuff. They went into hysterics when I said “sad” and turned into maniacs when I said “happy.” I know that “crazy” is not really an emotion, but seing as these kids seem to have one foot in that state of mind anyway I wanted to see what they would do.

Mistake? Maybe.

The kid in the photo is the Skinny Boy. He, I believe, is responsible for the departure of Angry Girl. She simply couldn’t put up with his antics. He can be difficult to mange at times (in fact, right before this “episode” I had had to throw him over my shoulder and carry him to the back of the class to keep him from smashing his head into the smart board) but he is a good kid. He makes me laugh a lot. I tend to favor the kids who make me laugh.

I them them to be “crazy.”

He immediately goes into convulsions. He hit’s the ground and screams like a hyena. He stands up and yelps to the back of the room. The other two boys are put to shame. He comes back all cross-eyed and squacking like a bird and says “I haaavvvvvveee aa reallybiggun!!”

I laugh immediately. Kid really nailed the “crazy.”

Was not prepared for him to reach into his bag and pull out the most photo-realistic, gigantic handgun I have seen in person.

For a moment, my heart got all fast and my belly felt hot.

This is how it ends folks, I thought, blown away by a 45 lb 10 year old in an effort to demonstrate what a crazy face looks like.

It was a toy. Obviously. They sell these things everywhere. Guns are not an issue in Korea as they are generally outlawed. Therefore, apparently, police are less apt to blow somebody away with a toy gun: despite that said gun is bigger than the kids head and looks like something out of PULP FICTION.

I laughed a bit more after he packed up to go and I realized that the only things in his bag were an introduction to English book and a giant gun.

That kid totally earned the 4 stickers I gave him.



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A New Semester

Well, it seems that the powers that be at my school have settled on having 4 teachers for the foreseeable future and almost certainly until I hit the road.

On paper, having four teachers (Han, Boram, a newer teacher named Hajin, and myself) seems pretty solid. In truth we really only have around 40 to 50 kids. The thing is that being a private academy our classes are based on what kid comes at what time and how many days a week. Most kids come in every day at the same time. Some come in most days and others come in at all different times.

In the past I have had problems with somebody at school dumping a class into my lap with less than a minute before it began and then looking shocked when I appeared to be a little flustered. At times I have to remind my coworkers that I am not a proper teacher and it takes a significant amount of preparation to even function at a marginally competent level in class. In fact, even with preparation there are times when it is embarrassingly obvious that I have lost my train of thought and am writing on the board incessantly just to buy myself time.



Both hands visible.  Working on the most
complicated craft on earth.

There are times when I must confess to being a pretty phenemonenaly bad teacher. Do I feel bad about this? No. This is likely to be the only time in my life I am ever employed as such. I will not be signing on for a second year (which my boss asks me about once a week) and it is nothing I lose sleep to. I do my best and sometimes it works out great. Sometimes not so much.

There are notable editions and missing faces in my school at present. We have a new little boy whom we affectionately call Hands-in-his-pants Boy. There isn’t really much description needed. He is about 6 years old and if his hands aren’t otherwise occupied he usually is using Han’s compact mirror to apply makeup or put his hair in a ponytail. A few kids are gone. One of them being the Angry Girl. I was the last person to have her in class. For a time it was a one on one class but recently a new student was tossed into her class.



How do I describe this kid? He is incredibly skinny with long hair. I would say he was quirky as eccentric implies some significant age but he constantly wears this old-man fly fishing hat so I will go with eccentric. We call him Skinny Boy despite Bat-Shit Crazy Boy being more accurate.

Skinny boy and his class.  He is in the hoodie next to his friend:
The Chair.

He has the attention span of a moth in the void but he is smart enough to keep on everyone’s good side and understands enough English to intentionally make me laugh. In his new class the three of them (Angry Girl had since left) were saying something like “Let’s play computer games.” A second boy would say “OK, after let’s play soccer,” to which Skinny Boy would in theory say “OK. After, let’s play baseball.” Instead he looked at me and stone cold said:

“But I am not OK,” and through a fake temper tantrum.

Another time I was doing “Eanie Meanie Minie Moe.” Thin Boy had run to the back of the class like he does every ten seconds. I pointed to him and he threw up his hands and dropped dead after apparently being shot.

Point is, Angry Girl had one class with him and decided that it was not going to happen. So, she left. No goodbye.

The fact that she has called and texted me every day for the past two days is a little reassuring / completely creepy.

My 2:30 class is with a 9 year old we call the Missing Boy because he went missing for a solid 3 hours after getting on the wrong bus and getting out god knows where. The school was in full blown panic mode at this and his mother called up every 5 minutes to scream us out. When asking if it was our bus driver’s fault Han told me that it was all of our faults as we had given him this ridiculously random schedule (actually he comes in at 2 every day but Friday when he comes in at 1). To this I would like to submit that nobody tells me jack about anything and that therefore eliminates any guilt on my part.

He turned up eventually and his mother kept him enrolled. It is very difficult to keep his attention for more than 2 minutes at a time and he frequently pulls out a bouncy ball or Pokemon comic book in the middle of class. His new class mate is rocking some pretty horrible ADD which I do not have the know how to deal with so that class is almost a complete loss as far as learning anything significant.

Older Girls Conversation.  Sorry Kid.

I have an older boy (no nickname) whose class I have forgotten about 3 of the 4 times I have had it which means that he spent too much time staring at me as I went bombing into the class with my book and no lesson plan.

My new favorite class is my Older Girls Conversation Class which is a girl and boy. In the boy’s defense I wrote the name on the folder before he was enrolled in the school. In my defense he acts like a 87 year old woman 95% of the time so I haven’t yet bothered to rewrite the class name. These two kids are 13ish and advanced enough so that by the time I get to their class (they are my last class on my two worst days) I breathe a sigh of relief at not having to put such a huge effort in making myself understood. It’s tiring sometimes to have to put such a continuous effort into being understood. So by the time I see him complaining that he is cold and putting so much effort into his coughing one might mistake him for a chain-smoking old man, and her looking like she wants to deck him, I know the hard part of my day is over.

There is one class that has caught me completely off guard as far as the capabilities of a bunch of little kids driving me nuts.

Little Kid Conversation. It started off well enough. It even had some of my favorite kids. There was Rock Paper Scissors Boy, this really loud girl (I actually know their names but they’re all Kim’s and their full names would take a page, so I’ll call her Loud Girl), this adorable girl that looks like a rabbit, a new quiet kid, and this kid who has a huge problem with pronunciation (I took years of French and I can appreciate this). All at once everything hit went down the tube.

I was too nice. They, particularly the cute little girl, walked all over me. For a few classes it took a lot of work to keep them in their seats and focused. Then I got mad at the cute girl for NEVER paying attention and trying to read comic books while everyone else repeated my every word (oh the power!). Then the boy with the bad pronunciation started to act up. They would routinely get up and try to play games on the computer so I stopped being nice. I started yelling and giving homework, hoping to put an end to the plague.

Didn’t work. My classes with them descended into anarchy. The boy threw a hissy fit after I gave him a slightly torn photocopy. The cute girl wouldn’t participate as she was mad at me for denying her stickers. The Loud Girl just wouldn’t shut up and what is worse RPS Boy turned on me. He shocked me. I’d always pictured him as an ally as he always seemed to yell at kids to shut up for me.

The current bane of my existance.

Monday was what I hope to be rock bottom. I tried to play a game. Somehow RPS Boy and the cute little girl got into a tug of war over a spay bottle. I reached in to try and muscle it from both of them, they ended up ripping off a bunch of skin from my thumb and I sprayed them both in the face and gave them all homework.

Mature? No. Effective? No. Only one kid did the homework.

My current plan is to blindside them with kindness. Today we studied for 20 minutes and then watched 10 minutes of America’s Funniest Home Videos and then gave them all pennies. They now think I am the greatest again.

And that’s my schedule for the foreseeable future for the new semester. This doesn’t actually mean too much as I am averaging one new class a week and generally don’t know what is going on anyway. Tomorrow is my last day of class before the Chuseok holiday for which I am beyond excited. Hello My Name is Earl!





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Intensives and Minnie

Summer is getting on here in Korea. At home kids have been out of school for at least a few weeks; here kids began their summer vacation yesterday. How do Korean school children celebrate the kick-off of Summer? Go to school!

I feel bad about my job sometimes. I feel bad that students and co-workers put so much effort into trying to communicate in English when it should be me that puts the greater effort into learning their language. Still, I am trying. I can say “I’m hungry,” “are you hungry,” “I’m tired,” “are you tired,” a few swears, and I can now count to four… sometimes.

I feel bad that I am profiting from the misery of little children. Who the hell wants to go to the English academy on their first day of summer vacation? For crying out loud I didn’t want to be there today. And these kids made it pretty obvious that they didn’t want to be there. I walked out of the office and found one of my favorite students crying. I thought perhaps he had gone and done something stupid (I have had to tackle him to keep him from trying to body slam the Smartboards). I asked Han what had happened and she said: “Nothing. He doesn’t want to study.”

I don’t blame the kid. It seems like that is all these kids do: study. They go to school every other Saturday and then go to a number of academies for math, music, English, whatever. We are open until 9 pm and for some of them we are not their last stop. Where they find the energy to do everything that they do is beyond me. Intensives are starting and I can’t even drag my ass out of bed for 9am.

Intensives. Before I came here I gathered that Intensives were a period of intense studying so that students passed some god of a test. In order to do this they spent more time at academies. This, I think is only part of the reason. Until sometime in late August our school hours are 9:30 am until 7 pm. Kids stay longer and our student body has increased by a good number. There is so much pressure for kids to succeed and get into the right schools that it is largely their parents dragging them to the academy. What is worse, the older kids come in earlier so that my first class of the day is now my last class. So now, instead of waking up early and going to school they get to wake up early and go to academy where they are greeted by me trying not to fall asleep on my desk.

This all seems like such a pain or annoyance, but its important to know that South Korea has the HIGHEST suicide rate in the developed world. The pressure of genuinely living in Korea is immense. Kids (and parents) want entry into the best schools. When I say that I am from Boston (more recognizable than Massachusetts) they ask if I went to Harvard and that I must be smart. I then usually hold my hand as high as I can and say “Harvard: there. My university: here” and make the sound of bomb falling to the ground.

So, I try to make it fun. I am a novelty here and I have no teaching experience so I do what I can. I try my hardest to tell when a kid is on the verge of a total meltdown. It is hard because even when a kid looks like they can’t possibly take in any more verbs or nouns academy teachers know that the mother will ask their kid what they learned. If the kid says “Oh, we played a game for 15 minutes” we could be in trouble. I already have two parents who want to come in and observe a class.

The parents (moms) are those of two of my favorites: Billy, who looks like a non-animated Chicken Little, and Minnie, the cutest little 8 year old ever. They are both smart kids. Hell, even the kids who are having trouble can speak bits of English. I am 26 years old, have been here for 3 months and can only count to four half of the time.

Billy’s mom speaks no English and just wants to see what my classes are like and that I do not cheat and speak Korean with him. This is what I am told and I understand. Minnie’s mom announced she wanted to observe my class an hour after Minnie left and probably told her Mom that we played games all class because she was starting to spread a little thin.

I like Minnie. She is smart and her English is impressive. I remember “interviewing” for placement in the academy and she was so quiet and shy. Now she constantly sticks her tongue out at me and locks me out of the class room when I go for water.  Every time she does this she looks through the lower porthole window of the yellow door and sticks her tongue out at me.

So, she is more advanced than kids a lot older than her. It doesn’t mean that she isn't a little child who can handle day after day of TO BE pounded into her brain because she is having trouble with it.

And she is having trouble with it. We have been going over past and present forms of TO BE for a couple of weeks now. She is starting to understand it more consistently but she is getting burnt out. She doesn’t smile or joke when she walks in anymore. She just sulks to the back of the class (she is the only one in the class) and plops down. When I walk in she looks at me and says “game?!” and I say no.

I don’t say: “well Minnie, I want to play a game with you because I am sick of doing this and we need a break. Only thing is I think your mom doesn’t think I am teaching you fast enough and I don’t feel like her complaining to my boss and having to deal with the consequences. If you mom pulls you from the school she will probably also pull your brother. That is a lot of money Minnie!”

Last week was particularly rough. I tried breaking things up. I let her play on the computer for five minutes but it was not enough. Every day was various forms of “Minnie, where WERE you YESTERDAY?” or “where ARE you NOW?” I try to do it different ways and make it seem fun but she is no fool. I made a game out of it once and she looked at me and said: “What!? This is game!? Real game?”

I told her that no, we had to keep going. She looked like she was going to cry.

The next day I didn’t have Minnie for class. I saw the receptionist wrapping a little Minnie Mouse purse in gift wrap. I asked her what it was for and she told me in a panic that she had forgotten it had been Minnie’s birthday the day before.

What a jerk. I almost made Minnie cry on her birthday.

So, today, at the start of intensives Minnie and I did absolutely nothing in class. I gave her a quarter from Mississippi that she seemed pretty thrilled with. I showed her photos of Mississippi and it took me a while to convince her that it was hers and that it was actually from America but her smile and laughter was back. She pointed to her eye to indicate she wanted me to make a squishy noise with my left eye (my eye is screwed up like that, but kids love it). She then whistled because she thinks whistling is her own freakish talent.  We played “Rock Paper Scissors” and “Heads or Tails” (Minnie wouldn’t flip the coin because she was scared she would lose it) and she wrote down her real name and I wrote mine. She now calls me Thomas and I call her Minnie because I can‘t pronounce her real name. Tomorrow it is back to TO BE and I will probably get yelled at for wasting a class with her but oh well.

If only proper adults could be won over by a quarter and my defective eyeball.

Oh!  You should all totally check out my buddy Marcus' site.  There is the first/only/last ever interview of yours truly.  Aside from being a cool dude, he you can find a million links to his various projects.  He is organizing a GREEN music festival complete with music and vendors that you should probably check out if you are in the Worcester County area.  On top of that he makes some pretty sweet shirts and plays in a band.  I once photographed a concert put on by Marcus at Tammany Hall at which my car was stolen.  I probably shouldn't have left my doors unlocked (or forgotten my keys ON THE CONSOLE) but when the cops found it it had a bunch of beer in it so go me.

What did I eat today: a tiny hamburger that was stored at room temperature for three hours that was pale beige and immediately made me sick. Kimbap. I am starving.

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A Normal Day

I have been here a little over two weeks and already there is a routine in my life. I have no internet and I have no TV so my entertainment is largely self made. One of the things that I do to keep myself busy and avoid the homesickness (I figure if I keep my mind occupied I can delay it another 11 months and deal with it on my flight home) is write. I would say write in “this blog” but at this stage my writings are just on my computer. If I were a girl it would be a diary. Thankfully I am a guy with a journalism degree so I will call it a travel journal or something to the like.

Well, I have finally caught up to present time and have nothing else to write before I have the internet and go “live.” This means I am bored. Like, really bored. I would play solitaire but the other day I had as close to a perfect game as they come. I’m actually pretty stoked and I wish I wrote down my score but you never expect something to amazing to happen when you are sitting around in your underwear now do you? Almost every card dealt by the computer was in order and this will probably never happen again unless I get a physical deck and cheat. Come to think of it I probably spent my allotted luck in life on computer solitaire.

Here is my average day here in Korea:

10am - Wake up and decide against sitting around and playing solitaire until work. Set my alarm for 12:30pm or hit the snooze 30 times and go back to sleep.

12:30pm - After rolling around for an hour finally get up and get ready for work. Before work I usually walk to the convenience store and buy Kimbap and hope that is not filled with something disgusting.

1-2pm - Sit at my desk and read email and Facebook messages while drinking coffee and water from the machine.

2pm - 4pm- Help out in a few classes by reading various sentences and then repeating them. On really bad days I have to sing or do the hokey pokey or both.

4pm - Usually have lunch upstairs. This usually consists of rice and a half-dozen side dishes. I try to sample each dish but tend to veer away from the ones that have eyes that are still intact. Also, Koreans have a tendency of masking squid legs as noodles so beware!

5pm - There is a rush of various kids coming in. The three boys come along with a few girls of the same age. The girls walk by and say hello to me having briefly peeled my eyes away from Facebook. The three boys say hello only if they are physically dragged over and forced to. Also the girl called Clara comes in and usually plops herself down in the chair next to me and tries to talk to me. She almost never understands me and also sometimes forgets who I am and will speak Korean but she is a hoot. On the day of this writing they did not give us lunch and I skipped my Kimbap and was beginning to die from starvation (or at least get a bit honery). In walks Clara with a bag of food. She gave me half a jam sandwich and I didn’t even pretend to be polite and refuse it. So we sat eating our (her) sandwiches while everyone else worked. I felt kind of bad being the teacher that takes a students dinner but she did have two sandwiches and I didn‘t take any of her yogurt…

6pm - Teach a class or two and then return to Facebook to talk to Kelly who wakes up horribly early in the States.

7pm - Eat a dinner much the same as lunch. Once there were two cold chicken nuggets in the side dish container. I was pretty stoked about this. Also, sometimes they put out the sesame oil and a kind of spicy and thick ketchup that adds a whole ton of flavor to the rice.

8 - 9pm - Sit around on the computer (read: Facebook or the T&G website) while everyone else writes out progress reports.

9:10pm - Go home or, if I am still hungry, go buy another Kimbap or ramen.

9:10:45pm - Get home, perhaps drink a beer or two (or eight) while reading or studying. Currently, I am reading The Silmarillion despite the fact that I have tried a few times before but never made it through it. I already finished The Hobbit and I will read the rest of the trilogy after that. Hey, just being abroad does not cure nerdiness! I am also learning Hangul, the alphabet and written characters of Korea. I don’t have much hope in learning the language in just a year, but at least knowing the letters and pronunciation should improve my quality of life. As it is signs and menus appear to be written in Wingdings.

12 - 1am - After showering, go to sleep while listening to people talk as they walk into the building. The other day I heard Americans! I must find them and make them be my friends!

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Wandering, Part One

My second Wednesday was a holiday: Kids Day. It is a nice concept now isn’t it? Once a year Korean kids are given the day off from school to presumably be doted on by mom and dad. I asked one of my students, a really bubbly girl who is called Clara, what she would be doing on Kids Day.

“I will be…. Studying!” Crazy Koreans.

After Kids Day, students would return to school and celebrate Parents Day on Saturday. Here, they would presumably worship mom and dad for their praise on Kids Day; or at least they would be less pains-in-the-asses.

A Korean construction site.

I spent my Kids day determined explore at least a tiny bit of Cheongju. I was also determined not to lose my way as I had yet to change the rest of my money and was down to my last 8000W (about $8) which I was hoping to spend on a dinner that didn’t involve rice ramen. Therefore I became the foreigner drawing a map on a piece of cardboard at every intersection.

A word on food. Everything here is fresh as fresh can be. Even the convenience stores that sell pre-wrapped meals sell fresh food. My hunger has gotten the best of me in the States and I have been doomed to spending a good chunk of days on the toilet, but that does not seem to be the case here.

Take Kimbap for an example. The convenience store variety consists of a triangle of sticky-rice, a little bit of sauce and topping, all wrapped in a dried sheet of seaweed. Pop it in the microwave for twenty seconds (or just hit any button and count to twenty as no microwave here seems to have roman numbers) and you have yourself a solid snack. Really, these things are amazing! You run the risk of getting something you don’t particularly want if you cannot read Hangul and some companies vary on their color coating a little bit. Red seems to be beef. Yellow was not chicken. I do not know what the hell yellow was but it was not chicken.

I digress. I walked out of the side street of my apartment and school and decided to go left. I do not know what direction it really was, but I was in a lefty sort of mood so that is where I went.

After a few blocks, the hustle and general chaos of my little urban neighborhood gave away to quieter, if a bit dirtier, streets. I passed a heap of junked scooters and a store selling Buddhist statues and shrines made of bronze. Restaurants became more traditional, exchanging bar stools and whiskey signs for floor mats and shoe cubbies. The people too seemed to change, if in fact people can change within blocks. There were fewer kids and teens walking about. What children there were clung near by their parents who poked out of a shop for a cigarette. Every now and again I would pass a stooped old woman as she walked past me in the opposite direction.

I walked for a good mile or more before I came to a great intersection at which I stood for too long waiting for the pedestrian light to turn green. I crossed a large bridge and saw that below a river was running. I marked a bridge and the river on my map and found stairs onto the walk way.

The path around the river was pretty clearly marked. There were two lanes for bikes going in either direction and one lane for people on foot. That being said I played a few games of chicken as old men with sour looks seemed intent on running me down head on.

The path is surrounded by reeds, rocks and speakers pretending to be rocks. It was nice to see the green and brown, and to hear the river running next to me. The Cheongju that I have seen seems to be one of grey, neon and smog; the river and reeds seem only to be an oasis in chaos.

The plaque before the Unity Bridge
of Cheongju.

I walked beneath a couple of bridges (and marked them on my map) that shaded old men playing croquet on flattened square courses. They reminded me of the old Italians playing Bocce at the victory club back home. Both seem to be unaware of the day and neither seem to ever be anything more than vaguely pissed off at something.

Off in the distance I saw the red and blue spine of the Unity Bridge. Ah! This would be my destination of the day. I marked it on my map, pocketed the cardboard and kept on my way.

The place was hopping much like it was on that second day. If anything, the place was even more chaotic with families walking or riding about for Kids Day. Still, if you are as red as I am or as blonde as I am or as monstrous in size as I am people tend to get out of your way; it’s easier for them to stare if they are off to the side.

I meandered across the bridge, back and down to the fountains to take a few photos. At every hose it seemed there was a family. At every other hose there was a kid trying to stick his face in the jets and a parent screaming at him.

The Unity Bridge of Cheongju.

The skating rink was a mess. I couldn’t figure out where to safely make a few shots as every now and again one of the older guys would decide they didn’t want to ride with anyone and would b-line it in my general direction. Finally, I simply found a step further to the back and watched.

Koreans love those screwed up bikes that nobody in the States would be caught dead on. Hell, they probably still love pocket-bikes. The wheels were often tiny, or one would be giant giving them the look of the bicycles of old. I saw a grown man riding a tricycle with two front wheels and one back. In his defense, he didn’t seem to know how the hell to operate the thing. I saw those odd scooters where you hold the handle bar and pump in either direction with your feet on two separate bars. I saw a girl on roller blades trying to use one. Talk about multitasking.

The Rock Formation.

On my way back I passed a massive stone structure that seemed significant and meaningful, but my Kimbap had worn off and I didn’t care anymore.

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By the time I got home it was well past dinner time, I was tired and I would have been sweaty if the sun hadn’t baked it all off of me. My stomach groaned as I walked the streets near my apartment looking for something of substance that I could order without looking like an utter moron. I tend to go for things with pictures of food on the wall as my pointing skills are not lost in translation. Then I found what I was looking for.

Pizza Manu.

Koreans love pizza. They love strange toppings like sweet potato, hot dog, mayonnaise and any number of other things. I am spoiled when it comes to pizza. I have had pizza in Manhattan in the middle of the night and I have feasted on deep dish in downtown Chicago; but I am eternally bound to Village Pizza in Shrewsbury.

A collection of junked scooters.

By American standards Pizza Manu is actually pretty horrible if you are craving good pizza. For one thing, their dough has less flavor than Dominoes, their sauce might actually be ketchup and there are no brick ovens here. Instead, I watched as my pizza was put onto a conveyor belt that ran beneath a heater and came out five minutes later. The pie was then put into a box and wrapped with a red bow, I shit you not.

As much as I complain here, I ran home to eat the thing. I plopped onto my floor and turned my music on, opened the box and found a surprise! It was a little dish of what must have been garlic or marinara sauce. I opened it, more excited than I should have been about something to dip my crust into.

Pickles. I am in Korea, of course they will give you pickles with your pizza. Hungry I was, though, and the pickles were a nice break between slices.

Spending 6000W of my last 8000W was acceptable. What isn’t so acceptable is the fact that I ate the entire damned pizza. Not only did I eat the entire damned pizza but I did so in less than half an hour.

So, incapable of moving more than a few inches for the rest of the night, I sat on my bed with my computer editing photos. The photo software on my netbook is no Photoshop to be sure and has some kinks (there is no option to crop with a photo ratio and the auto-leveling is pretty friggin horrible) but it was free. As much as I bitched about all of the time I spent editing at home and for work it is actually something that puts my mind at ease. All was right with the world.

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Fish and Norebang (re. Nightmare)

My first week seemed just a countdown ‘til Thursday, like so many other weeks in my life. Thursday, Albert told me, was a work party day. Having experienced the welcome that I did, I assumed that it would be, well, a shit show. It was indeed.


Albert owns two schools: a high school and an elementary school (mine). This evening would be an occasion for both schools to unite and welcome me and say goodbye to the other girl. I feel like a jerk saying “the other girl” because she was really awesome and put up with me checking Facebook on her computer, but I do not remember her name.

My office consisted of myself, Han, Boram, the Oder Receptionist and the Younger Receptionist. The High school consisted of a good deal more.

I should have known that I was in for one hell of a night when the Young Receptionist showed up as the last kid was leaving with a bag of bottles she claimed would kill the next day’s hangover. The stuff was putrid and it was all I could do to swallow the brown stuff . I could not even pretend to like it. This gave everyone a laugh, but it was really very horrible stuff.

From here, the Young Receptionist drove us to a further part of town that was home to all of the hot discos in the area with such amazing names as Don’t Tell Momma. We arrived to the kick off meal already in progress.

We sat at a collection of tables on one side. At one end were the teachers of the high school, including a Korean-American whose husband had remained in California. Around her were several girls who obviously thought I was funny looking and kept staring at me. Next to me were Han and Boram, and further down was Albert and three Korean guys.

When asked if they were English teachers Albert spoke for them with a laugh.

“These boys, they are very bright in many things, but English? It is not one of them.”

All the same they tried the hardest of anybody to talk to me, asking me what teams I liked and so on and so forth.

Now, about the meal: I will try anything if only so that I can say that I have had something outlandish. I once made myself bone marrow and had to leave work because I had gone and gotten myself sick. Generally speaking I hate seafood. I used to like the standard fried clams but now I just don’t like any fish. That being said I was at a dinner that was being paid for by the boss and I had decided that I would not turn anything away for fear of looking rude or ungrateful. Han knew my aversion to seafood and turned to me when she heard what was coming our way.

“Tom, I am sorry!”

The first dish was soup, brought over and placed on top of three propane heaters. It looked tame enough. When the waiters brought over three decent sized, thick octopi I knew I was in trouble. After they hit their respective bowls and 24 arms shot up in panic, I too began to panic. After a short time the waiters picked up the recently departed and cut them into not so small pieces. The boss’s wife made sure that I had a couple of the purple arms in my dish.

Octopus arms are hard to eat. They are not soft for one thing, and another thing is that their suction cups add a bulbous and funky sticky factor to the whole meal. I choked down the smaller pieces but was left with the thicker base of the tentacle. Han, feeling sorry for me, tried to cut them down a bit but was promptly sprayed by a rupture that spewed black ink. I tried dousing the things in wasabi and soy but it wasn’t much more than a hotter and saltier monstrosity.

The next dish was sashimi. Being fairly popular at home I figured it would be easier for me to down than the octopus. I was wrong. I am a baby when it comes to texture and I could not get through more than one piece without gagging. I am serious; I gagged a bit twice and once more would have brought the octopus back to what was left of him on the table.

I was relieved when the final dish came. Chicken. Thank God! I smiled and finished my drink to have another poured by the Older Receptionist. I asked Han what this was and she smiled and told me to just go for it.

It looked like little hunks of pale grilled chicken. It didn’t taste like much and it certainly was not horrible, but it was tough! No matter how hard I chewed the piece would not break down. Here, Han looked at me and told me the bad news:

“Err, it is, I do not know the real name in English, but it is chicken ass?”

Then I remembered my Anthony Bourdain. The chicken was, in fact, chicken sphincter muscle. It was also the best thing I had eaten at that point of the night. Soon, there would be chafers of baby snakes and monkey brains in the skull and I would be off to free the slaves of the Temple of Doom.

At that point the food was done and the general drinking commenced. I was mostly left to my own devices as multiple Korean conversations popped up Albert came over to me and we smoked one of his very thin cigarettes and he seemed generally happy to talk to me.

Afterwards, we walked to my biggest fear: norebang. Karaoke. We took the stairs to the fourth floor of a neon-lit building and walked into a large room with a horseshoe couch surrounding a long table, all facing a huge television.

The singing began instantly. Asians seem to love this concept, but to me it was a nightmare. Han rocked the place like no tomorrow with rehearsed moves and crowd involvement. I was too soon to realize that I was not nearly drunk enough and I couldn’t get any courage from the whiskey fast enough: it was too soon my turn. I stood up and walked to my doom in front of virtually total strangers.

I had hoped I would feel better with the whine of the harmonica but I looked at my crowd and realized that there would be no way out of it, that I wouldn’t find myself suddenly and pleasantly hammered. Hell, vomiting or wetting my pants would have been an acceptable alternative. So, I sang.

The place was generous enough so that there was a fair amount of sustain added to my voice as I butchered “Piano Man.” At a certain point Albert, who was completely hammered, came up and sang with me all the while banging on a tambourine. Not so soon enough it was over. I received a few whistles and much applause, but my ego had already pulled the trigger.

The night becomes a fuzzy memory at this point. We made it back to the cars at 4am and I remember walking with Albert when he began to hold my hand. I am told that it was a mix of Korean culture and the fact that he was totally wasted, but it was an awkward walk. When we sat in the car he mumbled on about something and could not sit up straight and began leaning on me until finally he pulled it together enough to lean against the door.

We were driven home by some sort of chauffeur service for drunks. I was let off at my apartment to pass out at 5am. At work the next day I came to the conclusion that the anti-hangover potion did nothing. If I was doing horribly, my cohorts were not doing much better; kids learned nothing from us that day. Also, I suddenly remembered being told to dance with a big group in front of the television. It is something I wish I could get out of my mind’s eye.

At about 2pm, Han told me that I would be moved that day and that I had to give the keys to the Young Receptionist. I only wish I had been sober enough to pick up all of my underwear.

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Kids and Blood

The first week of real life (or as close as you can come to it) is nothing but a blur with peaks of excitement and valleys of total fear. Albert picked me up each day so I could arrive at the 1pm starting time. The earliest he ever arrived was around 2pm.

Each day he said the same, “Thomas, I am very sorry. I am very tired from drinking.”

Often left in my room with nothing but The Hobbit to occupy my time. I would have played solitaire on my computer but it was having trouble holding a charge and I was beginning to stress as it would be my main means of communication with home. It was during these mornings of idleness that I felt bits of homesickness and the twangs of melancholy.

The school is something to see but would be hell for a migraine sufferer. The walls are all neon green, orange and yellow. The glass doors slide open with the touch of a button and a trekkie wush! which is supremely satisfying. There is a wide open reception area with two giant flat screen televisions! There are four classrooms, one of which being a computer room with several very fancy computers with Skullcandy headphones. Each room is equipped with a Smart Board and speaker system. The teacher’s office is a tiny little room with strange angles and two computers. This is my favorite place to be.

In this office is Han, myself and another girl whose name I forgot because I am an ass. In a week the other girl would be leaving to pursue her major and I would be taking over her computer. Boram sits at the computer in the reception, next to the receptionist, a funny lady who finds it absolutely hilarious when I try to say anything in Korean. There is another girl as well, a younger receptionist, who turns up at random points in the day. What she actually does at the school I can not say.

My first week involved standing next to a proper teacher and reading passages of The Little Mermaid (the original version in which Ariel actually dies and becomes foam in the sea, to little kids who would then repeat what I had said back to me. There is not much to mention here as this is the extent to which I have taught. I don’t talk to kids, I talk at them.

I did, however, meet the three boys. If they weren’t so hilarious they would have been kicked out of school a long time ago.

I stood next to Han and watched the Little Mermaid Lesson go from simple recital to one or all of the boys standing up and punching each other, dancing or simply opening the classroom door and running away. At one point, all stood up and switched seats. If you try to give them a quiz, they will cheat. Try and stop one of them and the other two will just walk out the door while you are not looking. Bad teacher that I am, I can’t help but laugh.

This happened a good deal later (I am a week behind in this thing and am trying to get caught up for when I have the net) but it is related. I was standing in the room before Boram came in to teach and I watched the goofier of the three boys manage to tie his hands together with balloon ribbon. Take it to mind that I watched this and did nothing about it. When Boram walked in ready to teach he tried to take the papers he was given and write on them but he had somehow made some pretty solid handcuffs and could not move one hand without the other more than 3 inches away. Finally, Boram got pissed off and had to cut them off with scissors. I, meanwhile, could not stop laughing.

One morning, instead of taking me to school Albert took me to the hospital. I knew this was coming but I didn’t much appreciate being hoodwinked. Here, I was given my check-up to complete my paperwork. We started off with an x-ray of my chest. From there we followed a line on the ground to a room where I was weighed, measured and given a blood pressure test. Another line led us to a room where they would take some blood.

The first attempt to find a vein did not work. The young guy, perhaps an intern or some kind of psycho, asked if I felt faint and then tried again. Despite his efforts of simply wiggling the needle around he couldn’t get any blood to come shooting out like he obviously wanted to see. At this point the called over a girl who took her turn at jabbing me and tried to make small talk about the Red Sox.

“Success!” she said like she had just won a carnival game.

After this I had to pee in a cup and try and hold swabs on my arm to keep blood from getting on my work shirt all at the same time. After which I put the cup in the wrong place and had to watch my boss walk around with a cup of my piss for a while until he got it all sorted out.

Eventually he bought me food and I told him that we were almost even for the stabbing and the blood on my shirt.

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