OUR HERO has not, in fact, perished.He has just been very busy. Festivals, snowboarding, essay grading, essay writing, essay revising, application making, and some work as well. I do earn my paycheck. Occasionally. On Wednesdays, anyway.
So stay your concerns, unless they are in the form of cookie-laden care packages. (No raisins! Raisin-laden care is scarcely care at all; if you must send old grapes then potable, if not portable, is preferable.)
* 3 months left
And I still haven't learned Korean. Sure, I've picked up the odd phrase here and there. I can have broken conversations to the effect of:
[CAPS = me speaking korean. italics = korean person speaking korean.]
In the taxi:
"Where to?"
"JANGHANPYANG STATION."
"Where?"
"JANGHANPYA -- JANGHANGPYEONG STATION."
"Where?"
"JANG. HAN. PYEONG. STATION."
"Where?"
".... KYEONGNAM HOTEL."
"Oh, by Janghanpyeong station?"
"......... YES."
On the phone:
"Hello?"
"Yobosaeyo?" (Standard Korean telephony greeting.)
"... Hello-oh."
"...Yobosaeyo?"
"... WHO IS THIS?"
".....Yobosaeyo?"
"Hi! I'm speaking English! You probably don't know me!"
"... Yobosaeyo?"
"WHO IS THIS??? I AM AMERICAN PERSON. I DO NOT SPEAK KOREAN. THERE IS NO KOREAN PERSON HERE!"
"... Yobosaeyo?"
"........... ONE PEPPERONI PIZZA, PLEASE?"
"....Yob-"
"DO YOU WANT TO DIE?!"
On the street:
"So, where are you from?"
"I AM AN AMERICAN CITIZEN."
"Oh, America. You hegemonic bastards sure love to go to countries without learning their languages, huh?"
"....YES PLEASE?"
"Oh, no worries. I simply love the 'civilizing influence' of roving bands of drunken soldiers and 'teachers', going around like God's gift to Korean women."
"TEACHER, YEAH, ME TEACHER. AT ACADEMY."
"Oh, I would never have guessed. So, will that be one fish ball stick or two?"
"ONE FISHBALL STICK, PLEASE, YES, THANK YOU, YES, GOOD BYE!"
On the bright side, I still have time. The grammar's supposedly not so hard, and the writing is pretty tractable; it's mostly lack of necessity and abundance of other things to do that have kept me to the caveman-smalltalk conversational paradigm.
* Doctor's visit
In keeping with the forewarnings of my parents, and the imperitives of Disturbed, I have indeed got Down With The Sickness during my first stint teaching. It seems like every other week, some part of my body rebels against all the other parts, generally by trying to secede. The mucus which once protected my stomach and greased my brain has long since formed its own self-sustaining collective in a Kleenex shantytown. In one week, my Gastro-Intestinal War Complex produced enough gas to ween the US off foreign oil.
There seems to be a strange belief in this country regarding soap in the bathroom i. e. there is none. Like, anywhere. With the exception of those Dirty, Foreign restaraunts and their primitive beliefs in soap, most bathrooms here consist of cold water and toilet paper next to the sink. Find me a bathroom with soap, and I will show you a jackalope impersonating Elvis and the Lindburgh baby's love child.
I blame my constant medical maladies on this practice, as well as the fact that nobody covers their mouths when they cough everywhere. Common sense?! Yes. Culturally insensitive? Maybe. Disgusting? Always.
Regardless of which particular problem I've had when going to the doctor, the solution seems to be the same: 3 packets of pills, and a shot in the buttocks. Coughing? Pills and a poke. Rash? Pills and a poke. Bubonic Plague? Pills and a poke. No idea what this cocktail comprises; judging from the Korean attitude towards their food and its health benefits, I'm pretty sure they're kimchi pills and a soju shot.
Due to popular demand (i.e. internet whining) I'm going to stop here and fill you in on the other stuff later.
The next post, due out soon (really!) will include such topics as:
* Ice-fishing festival!
Attended. Did not die.
* Lunar New Year
Ate Joowon's cooking. Did not die.
* Expensive water, with a twist!
"Premium Deep Sea Drinking Water From 1,032m"
* Dry erase = regular marker?
Koreans don't know the difference!
And pictures of all these things.
* Classroom Chronicles
I leave you with another glimpse into my working life:
In response to the prompt: If you could, would you move to the moon?
We have...
The patently ridiculous:
"I'd like to move. Firstly, the moon is environmentally clean. So we can breathe fresh air and drink fresh water."
The rhyming ridiculous:
"And think about strange flowers and trees, special river and seas, it becomes the wonderful world we want!"
The scary:
"If I can own the moon, I will keep the moon clean. And build only PC room.
And house, and supermarket. I think it will be fun."
The incomprehensible:
"We must to drink water and spresh the air and also i can move myself to easily."
The best:
"Moving to the moon could be a lot like to get windows Vista. It was new and we tried it our family. We thought it would be very good because it was new. But it was very not good. Nothing was worked. Like this, the moon could also be new but also be very bad."
- K
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