A Vocab Test that Includes the Word "Poop"

I know it is trouble from the start.

I am sitting in the small teacher's office at my hagwon.  The Korean teachers around me are filling out report cards, talking, or are otherwise doing things that make them seem as though they are doing much more than me. 

They are. 

School is much more chaotic this time around, but still, I make more money and do far less than my Korean counterparts. 

Behind me, my fellow foreigner named Alix hacks up a lung.  It is an illness that seems to have taken everyone but me.  All I have is an earache. 

I look at the topics of two of my classes and cringe. 

Koreans have this thing where they are obsessed with poop.  It is a pretty common thing, I guess, particularly at a young age.  At this school and the last I find that the vast majority of classes at some point have an outbust of "Dung!"  No translation necessary.  I have one little student who, while consistently doing better on her vocab tests (impossible not to as nobody even pretends to try in that class) always draws that ever-so-common-in-Korea seaming pike of shit.  It is like her call sign.  If she ever becomes a mastermind of evil, she will leave a card with a steaming pile of shit.

This is why I am not looking forward to teaching.  Further, I don't know quite how to go about this subject.  I teach a number of "subjects" at school, each a facade for learning English.  It is pretty clever, really.

Why did they dedicate a chapter to the digestive system for elementary schoolers?  Why id diahrea(sp) featured so prominantly in a class called, appropriately enough, We-Wiz? 

In We Wiz, the main character goes on about his family has all of these health problems.  His grandmother then goes on to list a bunch of home remedies.  Eating steamed sweet potatoes before bed helps for diahhrea, by the way.  If you have some pimples on your face then you should wash with lemon juice. 

They handle it all pretty tactfully. 

My big concern is my Junior class.  There are two immature boys and one immature girl.  They are going to have a field day and I won't finish the lesson.

I worry about this because it is becomming increasingly difficult to control most of these kids.  Further, there is one smart girl who looks at me with judgemental eyes when I fail to corral Adam, who seems to exclusively wear sweat pants, and Joshua, who is like a catalyst that only operates when at the worst possible time. 

Last week Adam and Joshua got into it.  I had to keep them apart.  Joshua left class first and was followed by Adam. 

Adam called Joshua to look back and then pinched the shit out of his cheeks until I grabbed his arms.  It was like the lamest grandma-mafia hit ever.

I have been having trouble keeping control and actually finishing the lessons. 

I walk into class and a girl named Lisa smiles and says "Sorry teacher!  I didn't do my homework!"
This is like a joke. She has done her homework precisely one time.  It is kind-of her thing.  Even on review day when we do homework in class she still somehow manages to not finish her homework. 
We listen to the audio for the unit.  A camera has been ingested and it is explaining the roles and details of everything it passes.  I kid you not. 

The kids laugh a bit. 

I try to move on.  I don't want to linger on this whole thing.  The sooner we are filling in the blanks and not listenning to Bob the Rectal Camera tell us about breaking down food and waste the better.
So far so good.

When it comes time for the vocab test I hand out the papers and let them study.  I don't bother to read the list before hand.  This is the simplest part of the job- almost impossible to screw up. 
"Intestines."

"Saliva."

"Mouth."

"Are you serious!?"  Number four catches me off guard.  I didn't imagine it was an actual possibility. 

"Teacher!  Four!"

"Poop." 

There is a brief chuckle amongst kids before it becomes apparent that it isn't quite as hilarious for a non-native speaker.  I burst into laughter and turn red.  I am the least mature person in a room full of 11 year olds. 

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Drool



Until recently, there was a class of three boys at my school. They called themselves Simpson, Kai, and Bell. They were known collectively amongst the teachers as the Three Monsters. When they were together they were impossible to manage without screaming at them or calling in for reinforcements. Nobody gave them homework because they wouldn't do it. Options were limited because they threatened to quit the school if separated.

So, it each day it was a lesson in what a king might feel if his subjects decided suddenly to become anarchists and criminally insane at the same time. They are no older than 13.

Crazy as they were, I did not hate this class. It was slow going, for sure; it took me 10 times longer to teach them anything because I would spend half the time begging them to stop talking / calling me tomato / having hair fights, but they were often funny.

They are all goofy and that is what wins me over. One of them is a bit more malicious and another is a bit more clever but they have this absurd way about them that makes me laugh, even when they are obviously insulting me.

Hair fights are pretty popular with them. I have mentioned this activity before, but it is when you pull out a strand of hair and stretch it out against another person’s hair- first broken hair is a loser. It is perhaps the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen. When they bore of deciding who goes first with Rock, Paper, Scissors they will shout “hair fight!” and then start pulling out hair until they get a good piece.

Anyway, they were finally separated with our switch to 50 minute classes and nobody quit. Two of them are still together but they are thankfully much more subdued with the breaking of their unholy trinity.

This is a story about Simpson. I have been here for nearly a year and I have only seen him wear two different pairs of sweat pants. Usually he wears blue, but sometimes gray. When we were learning “what is he wearing?” his partner would always say he was wearing the same thing he always wear. He also seems to own approximately 4 shirts that he wears on a weekly basis.

Of the three he is the goofiest and seems to be less evil than the others. He often answers in a variety of voices. Once he tied his hands together with some string and had to be cut free. He is awesome.

A couple of days ago he came into class saying that he had been sick. No, he didn’t say that. I asked him why he was tired and he pretended to projectile barf on the floor. Throughout the class he kept falling asleep. I would see his eyes roll up, his head would go down, and then he would jerk back awake.

It was funny. Once, when he was out for a few seconds I did a monster impression and scared the hell out of him. He then looked at me like I had just punched his mom.

He then put his head down and drifted off again. I tried to stop him and keep him in the conversation we were having but he just turned his head to the other side.

He was out cold. I kept asking him questions and he just lay there slumped on his desk. He was not faking.

So, I decided to let him sleep. It was just a review class anyway and this kid looked like he was dead.

I played a game with the other student. It wasn’t even an English game. At one point I took down the clock and we tried to convince Simpson that he had slept for hours but it didn’t work. Finally, right at the end of class he sat up and tried to look natural as though he hadn’t been sleeping. The strand of drool was running down his mouth, onto his shirt which fell past the pool on his desk and on its way to the drool on his pants. He tried to wipe it but soon saw the sheer volume of it on the desk and his pants. He looked around and saw the two of us staring at him laughing.

I then made him wipe it all up. It took two tissues.

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Winter Intensives

The school is a lot different than it was a month ago.  For one thing, we have broken off from our parent company of Kim Hak Su.  I was aware that Albert, my boss, had been itching to do this for a while, but I didn’t expect it to happen so fast.  He had told me over beers that while the man, Kim Hak Su, was very smart and a social brother to him, he was also very selfish.  Truth be told, this hasn’t had a noticeable impact on my day to day life.  We just don’t have a school name at the moment.
Boram has been gone since Christmas.  Since then a foreign teacher at Albert’s other school bailed.  To remedy this, he brought Hae Jin to that school.  She has been replaced with a Korean girl named Ara, who has some pretty amazing English under her belt from Australia. 
The problem with Hae Jin and Boram leaving, other than it being sad to see people I’ve known my whole time in Korea leave,  is that they were the ones who really kept kids under control.  Han and I do not inspire the same level of fear of death as those two.  So, to a certain extent, a few classes have descended into anarchy. 
What makes things worse is that public schools have let out for winter break and again the kids flock to private academies.  They come earlier and they stay for a longer part of the day.  Classes have all changed and with that the general dynamic.  Kids who were subdues and peaceful before are now with their friends and they combined to become a kind of axis of evil. 
Winter Class B would be a pretty decent example.  In the class is one boy and two girls who, on their own, aren’t beyond manageable.  Individually, whenever I told one of them to stop talking they would immediately apologize.  The boy would make a heart with his arms and say “Ok, sorry Thomas, I love you ok very good.” 
Currently, I spend most of the class screaming like a lunatic at all three of them.  A week ago, the boy smacked one of the girls on the head and made her cry.  He spent the entire 45 minute class kneeling in front of the smart board.  He still wouldn’t shut up.
Then, there is the Missing Boy (who went MIA for a few hours a bunch of months ago).  I would be lying if I said that winter intensives have made any difference in his classes as he is all alone but he has definitely stepped up his game.
He is one of my first classes a few days a week.  Everyday, he comes in and we do our little dance.  It ends in two ways:
1.  Trap him in a corner, put him in a headlock or pick him up and carry him to class. 
2.  He sprints into class and tries to barricade the door. 
I win both of these scenarios.  He is a scrawny 8 or 9 year old and I outweigh him by approximately 500 lbs.  One day last week, I joined him in a pre-dance glass of orange juice.  We stood there until he took a big sip, threw his glass and ran for the door.  Ok, I thought, scenario 2.  Generally, my strategy is to get my foot into the door as he closes it and then pull the door handle off of the inside (it is broken).  He then closes the door, realizes that he is trapped inside with nothing to hold onto.  I win.
On this day the door was too far broken and wouldn’t properly close.  I thought nothing of it and reached my left arm in and tickled his side.  He responded by shotgun spitting a mouthful of orange juice into my face and all over my folders. 
The dance was over.  He won. 
The next day, after literally dragging him on the floor and into the classroom, he tried to instigate a repeat of the previous day with a mouthful of green tea.  I’m no fool so I laughed and said “no.”  He then spit his at out into my thermos of water.  I said something to the extent of “seriously” and he grabbed my papers and blitzed around me and hurled them out the window.  Kid is like a sneaky little velociraptor. 
As of today, I have been in Korea for 265 days.  I have 100 days left on my contract and I can only imagine that the time I have left will fly by.  The first thing I did upon receiving a cell phone here was set a countdown for the end of my contract.  It wasn’t so much an issue of me wanting time to go by quickly or the need to know exactly how long I have left so much that I sometimes don’t realize time is going by at all.
When I first landed here, a year might as well have been forever.  There were so many milestones that I needed to get through before I went back home: Halloween, my birthday, New Year’s Eve, Christmas, Thanksgiving.  Now: there is nothing. 
In an hour I will check my phone and see that I am down to double-digits.  I don’t know why it is so significant to me; not really.  I suppose I can remember laying in bed at my first apartment in Cheongju with no internet wondering what kind of mess I had gotten myself into.  I recall laying there wondering how I would feel when I was down to the last 100 days; whether I would be emotionally scarred from a Christmas alone. 
I guess I feel pretty much the same as I did at the half way point; which felt pretty much the same as the 4 month point.  Though I am starting to feel that urgency to start doing as much as I can in Korea; my days are numbered.
In 10 days I have a lot of work to do.  I have been mulling over how to get home for quite some time.  I don’t feel like jumping onto an airplane and being home 20 something hours later.  Somehow that seems so anticlimactic to a year abroad. 
Part of the reason I like travel writing and books about journeys (The Hobbit / LOTR) is that they acknowledge that the way home can be an adventure in itself.  I am getting a decent wad of cash when my contract is completed and I feel it would be a waste (both personally and with the whole photographer thing) to skip out on the rest of the world.  As it is, I have not so much as touched my portfolio in a year or so. 
The plan is this: Ferry from Korea to the eastern shore of Russia.  Rail from there to Moscow.  Moscow - Europe (avoiding Belarus).  Eventually I mean to make my way to Barcelona to see an old friend before I finally get on a plane head back to Boston. 
It’s a plan anyway.  A Russian Visa seems to be require a horrible amount of patience, but the embassy told me that it was possible to get while living abroad.  So, I am going to make a go of it.

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The Angry Girl II

The weeks keep coming and going at a pace that is rewarding and alarming. Today marks my 80th day in Korea. Before I came here I spent a long time watching Michael Palin try to circle the globe following the way led by the fictional Phileas Fogg in 80 days without an airplane. I watched this series knowing that I would soon be leaving on my own adventure. Though my own trip would be longer than 80 days I wondered how I would fare and set that as my first benchmark.

So far, so good.

I have come to the conclusion that Korean schools are just as full of bullies as are American schools. It is pretty easy to tell when a kid is using brute strength and emotional abuse to strong arm another person into fear and anxiety. The bruises may fade but the mental anguish can last quite a long time.

It is hard for teachers to say something about the bullies sometimes, particularly when it is the teacher being bullied. Yes, I am talking about myself. I have a tormentor and she is 10 years old.

I have mentioned the Angry Girl before. She is often the topic of conversation amongst my coworkers and I as it seems that she scares the living daylights out of all of us. We have many names for her but her English name has become the Angry Girl because we felt bad calling her the Evil Girl.

In the beginning the Angry Girl was content with petty candy extortion. She would walk up to my desk, lightly smack my arm and then hold out her hand and wait for me to give her a few pieces of candy. If I didn’t have any candy I would put some garbage in her hand and she would give me another light smack and walk away.

The Angry Girl right before she smacked me
for taking her picture.

Sometimes, she would come up and make a typing motion with her fingers and say “Lady Gaga” or “Ke$ha” indicating that she wanted me to pull up a photo on the internet. I don’t like doing this because both of those people tend to have some pretty raunchy pictures that pop up but, well, I don’t want to die so I do it. She then smiles and says: “I hate Lady Gaga!” and walks away.

Last week she had a tiny sharp piece of metal in her hand. She walked up to me and pretended to be interested in what I was doing on the computer and then proceeded to rub the edge into my shoulder until it just barely hurt. She then smiled and walked away.

Once when I had her in class she tried to erase my tattoo and when the eraser wasn’t working she used her fingernail.

Anyway, general consensus was she either hated me or had a crush on me. Either way I thought she was hilarious (I still do, actually).

Last week I was sitting at the computer when I felt that familiar slug and she indicated that she wanted me to look up Michael Jackson. As I was typing I knew exactly where she was going with this but I figured she probably spent a significant part of her night thinking this one up so I went along with it.

“He die,” she said, her lips curling into her trademark super-villain smile.

“Yes, he did die,” I said.

“You die!” She said. Yep, saw that one coming and I am pretty sure thats the end of the “crush or hate” conundrum.
Still, there are times when she seems to like me. No, that’s not true. There are times when she seems to hate me less than somebody else in the room.

I was trying to teach her class which consisted of her friend, a new girl, and a boy who constantly picks on the new girl and has a loaded vocabulary of English and Korean swears. On this day the boy would not leave the new girl alone and I could not get them to shut up. I was getting frustrated and starting to get a little frazzled.

When I passed by the Angry Girl tapped my finger and made a hand movement that seemed to say that she wouldn’t tell on me or think any less of me if I just pulled back and decked the boy. In fact I think that might make me OK in her eyes.

She had been absent for a while and school had become a little bit stale. A new teacher started at the school today. She seems to be a nice Korean girl. I was talking to her as I saw the Angry Girl walk by the door and I mentioned that the little kid hated me. She laughed and asked me why, to which I shrugged my shoulders. She then said that she didn’t believe it and I walked out of the office to grab a cup of coffee.

I saw her as a shadow in my peripheral vision. By the time I turned my head I saw that maniacal grin as her feet left the ground. For a split second I thought I was going to get a hug. Then I realized that was probably not going to happen and that I would likely be dead in a second.

When I say this girl's feet left the ground I mean it. She jumped about three feet away and went totally airborne so that in addition to her own ability to induce pain she would have gravity to back her up.

I wish I could say that it sounded worse than it was. The whole school was quiet and the new girl looked as though she might not be sticking around for the rest of the day. I wish I could say that but the fact that I spent 30 minutes with a perfect red copy of her right hand on my arm would make that an utter lie.

Hopefully things don’t escalate too much further into the realm of shooting and stabbing.

Anyway, I've been feeling pretty lazy as far as photography goes so I started a little photoblog.  I am trying to put up a photo every day.  Check it out if you want!  Head this way

Things I ate today: No idea but it was spicy as hell.

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Conversation Class

I have come to dread Thursdays recently. On Tuesdays and Thursdays Albert comes to our school and teaches grammar during several of the classes that would otherwise be taught by Han, Boram or myself. Many of these classes end up being an hour long with one teacher (as opposed to two half-hour segments with two teachers). In the past I had lucked out and had been the odd teacher out and enjoyed a couple of hour-long breaks scattered through out the day.


Then Albert changed things and now I have to teach. I didn’t sign up for this! Oh, wait, guess I did. I do not mind the new class that I have, I really don’t. The way it was handed to me is what I wasn’t too happy with but it seems to be a typical Korean situation.

I was sitting at my computer at 7pm doing what I always do: nothing (read: Facebook, comics, blogs, news, etc.), when Boram came in and told me that soon I would begin teaching a conversation class. I said okay and asked when we would be starting it.

“On Monday?”

“Actually,” said Boram, “it will start right now.” She then handed me a book and ushered me into a class full of some of our older middle school students.

Truth be told, even if I had some warning of just an hour or two things in that class probably wouldn’t have turned out much differently. I have never taught more than 4 kids at once and never anybody out of elementary school. While these kids were better behaved they seemed to be judging me as I walked into class with a book that I had never taught before.

I took a few minutes to glance over the book as 9 kids stared at me and said things in Korean that probably had something to do with the idiot teacher who was turning red and realizing that the book had nothing to do with conversational English whatsoever and was in fact a different edition of the beginners vocab book we use with the younger elementary students!

There was a moment of panic but then recovery. These kids weren’t going to know what the hell I was saying anyway. I opened the book to the first page and read some sentences that were completely useless unless given a freakishly specific context and involved such important vocabulary words as ice cream, ball, and pencil sharpener.

I ran out of coherent sentences in all of 5 minutes and decided that it was too much of a bother to try and walk around and show each kid the book as none of them had the stupid thing. What Albert was hoping for these kids to get out of that pathetic monstrosity of a class I don’t know. What they ended up getting out of it was a 25 minute long game of hangman.

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Humidity

The weather in Korea is becoming exceedingly hot. It is not even mid June but already temperatures are hovering around 90 degrees. What is worse than that is that a humidity hangs about that I am not used to. Weather extremes were always a point of pride for me as a resident of New England with often brutal winters (ice storms that change the landscape for years) and summers were generally hot as hell thanks to the humidity. This humidity, though: good god.


I was told upon moving into my new apartment that I would soon be purchased an air-conditioner but to this I shrugged and told my director not to worry too much about it. I hope he knows that I was just being polite because official summer has yet to even arrive but my apartment is unbearable.

I leave my sliding door open when I am home and that seems to work well enough to steal an occasional breeze to circulate stagnant air. However, thanks to crappy wiring, the screen does not seal firm against the door so any bug clever or lucky enough can fly in unabated. To my luck, a smallish spider has set up watch at the to of the opening so that I have not seen more than one elaborately marked moth and one mosquito (who pent an entire night biting me, little bugger).

For a while, when I was at school I would close the window in an effort to keep the heat out. After today, I will not do this anymore. Frequently, these little Korean studios develop a funky smell. It doesn’t smell terrible and seems to come and go but it’s origins have to be the pipes that carry toilet and sink water to god knows where. I do not know for sure but Korean pipes don’t seem to be as efficient at carrying away waste water. In fact, most Koreans seem to employ the “wipe and toss” method when it comes to the toilette so there doesn’t seem to be the pressure for businesses to strive for nice smelling and clean bathrooms.

Anyway, I returned to my place today and opened my door to be greeted by what might have been the smell of a hundred dying zombies. I have no food to rot and I am generally good about taking out my trash so the smell is a mystery to me. In any case, a weekend ago I walked to Uptown and purchased a boatload of incense that I burn almost constantly.

They smell like grape children’s Tylenol. I hate the smell but it beats the alternative.

Each room in school has a ceiling mounted air conditioner that is made of shiny white plastic, turns on with a chirp via one of three remote controllers. Now, I won’t bore you with details about fancy air conditioners but these things are awesome. The bigger units, for example, have several flaps that are constantly opening and closing to distribute cold air evenly. They are efficient and futuristic enough for me to pretend I am on some Star Wars space ship. Thing is we barely use them.

The school is pretty well insulated and the windows aren’t usually open all the way so the temperature is generally reasonable, but it still tends to get a bit warm and stuffy. Perhaps adult Koreans have more of a heat tolerance than I do but that has yet to be picked up by the kids, particularly the Three Monsters.

Classes with them have become more and more difficult, though just as hilarious. Every class that I sit in with Han teaching involves her having to force them to do anything but lay their heads on the desk and every other word out of their mouths is “ice cream?”

For a long time they demanded that Han bring them ice cream. When that didn’t work they tried their hand at extortion.

“They told me that if I brought them ice cream that they would behave for the week,” Han told me.

So, she brought them ice cream that they devoured. They then welched on their end and went back to being little monsters.

“They tell me,” Han said, “that the ice cream was not delicious enough.”

The Three Monsters have become so desperate that they no longer ask Han to bring them ice cream, only that she end class a bit early so they might go out and buy their own ice cream.

This doesn’t usually happen as it is hard to get through any material when you have three boys screaming ice cream at you. The goofier one (the one who tied his hands together with balloon ribbon) took things into his own hands.

A week ago one of the AC remotes went missing. It wasn’t a big deal but we were left having to look for the remaining controllers whenever we wanted to turn on the air conditioners. Assumedly, the missing remote was beneath papers or books in the corner of one of the offices.

Today I was sitting in with the Three Monsters before Han came to class. It was stuffy and Han had already refused to turn on the air conditioner. I watched as the goofy one pulled the missing remote from his pocket and turned it on himself. Turns out he had been doing this for the past few days whenever he felt it was too hot to effectively give you a headache.

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Concerning Children and the North

A few days ago I passed my One Month mark here in Korea. I will not say anything to the likes of “I never thought I would make it this far,” as that would be melodramatic and untrue. That being said, I never thought my first month abroad would go so smoothly. Homesickness has been negligible (owed majorly to the wonders of Skype) and teaching children my perverted knowledge of grammar has turned out to a heck of a lot more fun than I anticipated.

In the month that I have been here, my school has grown from 15 kids to 25. Classes are filling up (I have a class with 7 kids as opposed to a maximum of 3) and I am getting to know the kids a lot better. Also, I am becoming much less of blonde-haired enigma to them. A few of them, I would dare to say, don’t actively dislike me.

Rock, Scissors, Paper Boy (RSP Boy) has quickly become one of my favorites because he is so goofy and hyper that he has me cracking up at least once a day. His class has two other boys, all of whom seem to be friends. Each worksheet we give them become a race with correct answers always sacrificed in the name of speed. Most kids would look around with a silent satisfaction if they finished first, but he throws up his hand and shouts.

There are two kindergarten aged girls in the first class. The first calls herself Alice. She is adorable and tries so hard to understand English even if she doesn’t understand concepts. Everything spoken in English and aimed in her general direction is repeated with enthusiasm, whether you want it to be or not. Also in the class is a girl called Amy.

Amy might be the cutest little girl I have ever seen. This is what I thought for about a week. Currently, this girl is the biggest problem at the school. She will not repeat anything and generally won’t participate at all. When she feels like saying anything it comes out in the creaking voice that sounds like a possessed Danny Torrence in The Shining. And, her eyes, my god! This girl looks as though she is constantly trying to suffocate me with her mind. More than anybody, Angry Girl included, this girl straight up hates me.

There is a new group of young middle school students who come in for the last two classes of the night. They aren’t but a year older than the Three Monsters but the maturity gained in a year can be shocking. Where as most of the Three Monsters wear the same shirt every day of the week, each of these kids are impeccably dressed. Also, with the exception of two giddy girls who sit in the front (and routinely rob be of any gum I might have) nobody uses the class as a screaming match.

I can say that after a month in Korea I am much happier than I thought I would be and I am happy that I came here. But, alas, I have not been living beneath a blissful rock these past weeks and neither have you. Something wicked looms just above the smog of Seoul: North Korea.

As somebody who has followed the news of the world religiously for a VERY long time, I must say that this is a very interesting time to have come to Korea. A day into this sojourn I crossed over a symbolic bridge that beckoned for a united Korea but was flanked by the haunting faces of those that perished aboard the Cheonan. There was the façade of doubt and uncertainty then, but as of a few days ago that is all but gone.

How does one dumb down an extremely complicated situation? I don’t know. Han will make an occasional joke about my coming to Korea at a comically horrible time, but there is genuine fear mixed in. Sitting to lunch Boram admitted that in reality she was really scared that what is happening could lead to something very bad.

General consensus is that neither side would welcome open war as the results would be catastrophic for all parties. For the North war would be suicide, simple as that. Kim Jong Il and his propaganda machine aside, the North is a shamble of a country made up of a population that knows nothing but bad times. The South, much of which lies within artillery range, would be brought back to a time that they do not want to return to. It wasn’t so long ago that the Peace Corps was here and as Larry points out South Korea has come extremely far in a short time frame.

Still, there is no telling when a lunatic will finally crack and turn the South into a “sea of flames.” Earlier today the South Korean Navy began firing artillery and dropping anti-sub charges in a show of readiness. Soon, the US Navy will join them in a demonstration of brute force so as to scare the North into common sense. Earlier today, Kim Jong Il rendered an agreement to avoid trite naval clashes null and void. The North will now fire upon any ship that passes into their disputed waters.

Four North Korean submarines have vanished from radar and their whereabouts are unknown. Optimists remind us that tensions have been high before without any dire results. Pessimists point out that things have escalated beyond the norm and either Kim Jong Il will lose face and retreat or the man who was irrational before his stroke might do something rash. Posters on news forums want the nukes to fly and let the Koreas deal with their own problems.

“Dear Leader” is again in the crosshairs of the civilized world and he could be soon to lose the only “friend” he has: China. China has announced that after their own investigation they will condemn the nation that sank the Cheonan, whether or not that announcement will bring turmoil to its own border.

As it is, the South has begun to blast their own propaganda over the DMZ and will soon erect billboards whose purpose is to draw those that they might away from the cause of a dying homicidal maniac. To this, the North has promised to open fire on any billboard or loudspeaker in the DMZ.

So, I sit and watch like the rest of the world because I don’t understand it all and anyway there is nothing else to do. That being said I have decided to register with the US State Department. I’ve seen Cloverfield; I wouldn’t last a second on my own.

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The Angry Girl

I have been in this place for over three weeks and it is still entirely foreign to me. On days in which I am not fed at school I find myself eating triangles (despite knowing their true name, I will continue to call them triangles mostly because my coworkers get a laugh at it). I have put a decent effort into learning Hangul if only so that I might be able to order a simple meal or two at the place next to my apartment.


Tonight, I walked into that place with my Lonely Planet in hand. The lady behind the counter looked at me and smiled. I looked at the menu on the wall and decided that this was not the day and just pointed to one of four photos of food they had above the kitchen.

Tteokbokki. I’ve had it a few times before but everything tastes a little better when you order it on your own. This was after all the firs meal that I had ordered what wasn’t a pizza or Mc. Donalds. Sure, I was still pointing at a picture but at least it wasn’t a recognizable picture.

Actually, it is more of a snack or a side than a meal but it hit the spot while I ate it sitting on my floor. Tteokbokki is a dish of pressed rice cakes, veggies and sometimes fish cakes in a spicy red sauce. It is not so far removed from a pasta dish at home and the rice cakes have the texture of gnocchi so it didn’t seem so foreign.

While three weeks has not been nearly enough time for me to learn the true names of the students at my school, it has certainly given me time to see their personalities. The prospect of standing and teaching a bunch of kids was daunting to me before I came. A lot of people at home have been given the impression that I hate kids. I do not hate kids; they intimidate me. I do not know why this is, but I never knew how to interact with a kid of any age. This, if nothing else, is being remedied.

I like all of the kids here. They are all hilarious beyond even that Kids Say the Darndest Things: Foreigner Edition level.

There is Clara who continues to come into the office and sit down next to me and give me candy or gum. Once she offered me a hunk of her dried fish. I would have politely accepted it but I had already politely accepted dried squid from the director’s wife and had just thrown it out the window when nobody was looking.

There is another boy who is just a bit younger. I do not even know this boy’s English name, but every day he comes into the office and plays with the magnetic darts or wants to play “Rock, Scissors, Paper.” We could be in the middle of class and I will just barely make eye contact and he will be shaking his hands ready to throw down rock. He always throws rock. He is hyper as hell but he is one of my favorites.

There is a group of three older girls that always ask me questions that they forget to translate into English and then laugh as I stare at them. Usually, they ask if I am married or if I have a girlfriend. Today, they asked why my hair looked so funny.

Then there is another girl in the same class as R.S.P Boy who hates me beyond anything else in this world. When I first had Angry Girl in my class I thought she was terribly shy. She would rarely answer any questions, seemed miserable playing any games, would not sing and simply never looked me in the eyes.

Being extremely shy as a kid is something I can relate to. Heck, I am still shy. I never pushed her to sing, and I never said anything to her about speaking up. I tried to be nice to her.

Over the past three weeks most of the students have warmed up to me. As they filter in through our sliding doors they always walk by my door and say “hello,” as I sit there and wave. Angry Girl will turn her head and walk by despite my waving.

Turns out, this girl is not shy: she might be evil.

It started with the Weather Game. The Weather Game is an incredibly lame game played on a board made of paper, with a big die made of paper. It is a simplified game that is something like Pictionary without any of the fun stuff. In turn, each player rolls the die and then moves their piece (usually an eraser) to the photo that matches the weather condition on the die. Needless to say R.P.C Boy loves this game. We played one round and he kept playing. Having nothing else planned we all kept playing. At one point everybody’s attention was turned elsewhere and Angry Girl smashed the paper die and threw it to the floor in one motion. She then acted as though the die never existed.

A few days ago I was standing in front of the Smart Board as the class came in. Each kid said “hello” to me. When Angry Girl came in she simply looked at me and said:

“No Hello!”

No smile whatsoever.

Her mannerisms give her away too. When a kid has a question or wants something repeated they will usually say something in unrecognizable English or in Korean. Angry Girl will just point at me and tap the desk with her fingers twice. Also, I kind of figured out she hated me when she flung a small glass of water at me when nobody was looking. Nothing vague about that one.

In an effort to make friends with her, I handed her a piece of gum a few days ago. She took the stick and demanded more, to which I obliged because I did not want her to stab me in the neck with a pair of scissors or something. She walked off with 5 sticks.

Honestly, I do not care if this girl hates me. I do not hate her and actually think that she is funny and at times I can’t help but crack up when she does something outlandish. On Friday we were demonstrating the concept of giving. The other kids “gave” me their pencils or books.

“Teacher, here is my pencil / book / bag / etc.“

When it came time for Angry Girl to give me something she looked around her desk until she found a piece of garbage.

“Here is some trash,” she said looking terribly pleased with herself. Point is, it was hilarious.

The reason I tell you all this is because I got my revenge. She walked into my office to find me chewing my last piece of gum. Without saying so much as “hi,” she walked over, held out her hands and said:

“Gum.”

I looked at her and she was not even smiling. To this I (a 25 year old man to a 10 year old girl) responded by spitting my gum out into my hand, holding it up and saying “here you go.”

“Ugggh! Teacher, you dirty!!”

Am I proud of myself? Yes. Yes I am.

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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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