prayer and a song

2010-03-17T09:13:00.001-07:00

i'm home.

2009-12-28T00:26:00.000-08:00

well, i'm on winter break now. i didn't realize how long the days were until i didn't have to work. you see, all of my friends kind of left. coleen, rachel1, rachel2, danny, and june. now kai is leaving in a few days. i only have a couple of friends left. i guess this is what contracted work in korea is like. jackie warned me that everyone would leave. so i'm not really making any attempts at meeting people since i only have 2 months to go. needless to say, korea can be a place full of crippling loneliness! it is so easy to make friends in america. i don't know if i've lost it or something...but i just remember how i would meet someone and then we'd be friends...maybe that's because i met a lot more people with similar interests/common ground. lots of douche bags in korea. i had a big discussion with my friend about how you see koreans and their fashion would indicate a certain counter-culture element, but how disappointing it is that not all girls with thick frame glasses, skinny jeans, and a carefully selected "thrown together" look does not indicate a hipster status. it just means she dresses like everyone else, is probably getting a worthless degree, and will stay at home with her 2 kids once she gets married. not that it's a bad thing necessarily...it's just weird because a selected fashion that means something in the states means nothing here.

it snowed a few inches yesterday. today it's all brown and disgusting from the cars. i walked a couple of miles to the library to get a card and see what they had in their english section, but for some reason, even though they were open last night when i went in, they were not open today (monday). i have no money until the end of the month, so i've been walking to yeongtong (4km) everyday so that i can check my email and get out of the house. tonight's big plan to go to starbucks and then possibly the bar to study korean. korean is difficult as hell by the way. my teacher explains that they use two number systems because it is easier...easier than one number system? i don't believe her explanation...i think they just didn't want to concede to the fact that the chinese numbers were much more efficient and made more sense.

i'm looking at jobs already. i'm just seeing what's out there...but i'm thinking more and more that i want to move to busan. it's got nice beaches, i could have a scooter, and i could make more money there. i don't know why i'm not as psyched about living in seoul...but my friends will be everywhere. june will be gone. i'll have to start over wherever. i'm looking forward to coming home and just relaxing for a while and collecting myself. it's been a bad month.

my name is yoo, yookulele.

2009-11-04T00:28:00.000-08:00

i haven't posted in a while. this is because i will never have the internet at my apartment, because what good would it do my bosses for me to have it? it wouldn't do them any good at all. in no way is it beneficial for them. there's my "i hate my job" rant for this post. i am actually happy with work this week and that is because i don't have to be there. i was lucky enough for one of my coworkers to come down with swine flu and so they closed the school for a week. i don't have swine flu, but i get all the benefits of having it. i'm sure my bosses will be in sour moods next week, but the important thing to remember is that they won't be mad at me for once. my coworker with the swine flu has not stayed in bed as she was supposed to and has been going out normally as if she weren't sick. they're pretty mad about it, but i don't live at the school and don't have to deal with babysitting her. so, here are some pictures and then more on my life:

i went to the asshole of korea for halloween. it's a place called itaewon. all the foreigners seem to flock there...and that's precisely why it's a bad place. i didn't have much choice since everyone seemed to be going there. i was harry potter. i had a lot of korean people shouting "hally poata da!" (it's harry potter) and it was cute. i met a korean harry potter too. my friend rachel went as g-dragon, a kpop star in the group big bang. they're actually pretty listenable. june was a vampire, but really she just looked a hot korean girl. things are going well on the june front. i've seen her every weekend since i met her and if i'm correct, she likes me. i'm about 80% on that. she's pretty great, we have common interests, she has a sense of humor, and look at that picture...is there any reason i should be allowed within 500 feet of her? the answers is: God, no. we went to a dance club and i actually tried to dance a little. once i figured out that i wasn't the only person not picking up their feet i felt more at ease. then june and i broke off and went to a hamburger joint and went to the hotel. we talked till about 4:30 when rachel came home and we pretended to be asleep. the next day at lunch she asked me if i wanted her to take me a palace. i answered yes, but in my mind i was thinking "duh, i'll go anywhere with you." we totally held hands and it was awesome. the longer i don't have a girlfriend, the more i appreciate the subtleties of a relationship...and girls...my english girl friends tell me to go slow for various reasons and my korean girl friend is like "this is how korean girls act when they like a guy! are you stupid?! just kiss her!" either way, that's that and now i will see her this weekend, i think. she might have the pig flu as well. right now, i just went to seoul to a music shop. i had bought a ukulele about 3 weeks ago but i wanted something nicer and with a pickup...so kai called them and asked if i could trade it in and pay the difference. they said yes. so he gave me 200,000w for my old one (i only paid 180,000w for it) and i paid the difference plus a leather strap, which came to 370,000w...total comes out to be about 600,000w...which is more than i'd like to admit...but if you go to a currency converter, you can find out how much i spent on a ukulele and shame me. i'm about to meet hyunji, june's cousin for coffee and english lessons. i'm getting about 240,000w for 8 hours a month. i gave her a discount, or else i'd be getting about 320,000 an hour. so hopefully it will go well and she'll refer me to others. alright, going to go now.

what good would living do me?

2009-10-25T18:39:00.001-07:00

we went to a cow farm this week. we milked cows and made cheese and ice cream. it was a nice day, though i've been sick for a while. luckily, i got some medicine last thursday and i think all i have is a stuffy nose, a sure sign that things are getting better in my book.

i went costume shopping with rachel and seeing as how korea doesn't really enjoy halloween so much, the selection was rather limited. seeing as how i didn't want to go as "mexican" or "bed sheet ghost" i went with a harry potter outfit. i have the gryffindor cloak, a tie, and a scarf. it was only about 35$ total.

i then went to insadong to meet with june and her cousin, who will hopefully be my new private student. i went to the nagwon music arcade and bought a ukulele and hardshell case for about 200$. it was pricey, but worth it. i love it. great purchase. i then met with june and watched her get her hair cut while i read chesterton's biography on st. thomas aquinas. we went for sandwiches and met her cousin who was very shy. i convinced them to come back to yeongtong with me to meet up with our friends. we went to the laos bar, a horrible place full of horrible people. her cousin lives in the next town over and so june went to help her find a cab. they were gone for about 20 minutes and so i went looking for them and walked everywhere, knowing june's phone was dead and that she didn't know the area. finally, i found them and they couldn't get a cab cheap enough. so they stayed with me and i slept on the floor. most of the night was spent by them asking me which celebrities i found attractive. here's a sample conversation:
june:do you think nicole kidman is attractive?
me: maybe in the year 1843.
june and hyunji: (korean)
june: you are crazy.
i cooked them french toast and basil/cheese omelets the next morning, which they found "divine" and other adjectives that indicate a glorious afterlife. all in all, it was a good weekend and i'm looking forward to halloween weekend...except i know i will not like going to "clubs." i never do. oh well, time to go to class.

channeling astrud

2009-10-18T00:30:00.000-07:00

well it's been a while since i've written, but i don't have the most to say these days. things are going relatively well. i am still researching on how to get into universities over here for my masters degree...but if it doesn't work out, i'll just come back to work. i'm not done with korea yet!

june came down yesterday to record vocals on a song i wrote. it sounds really good, i just still have a lot to do. thankfully, jessica calleiro has offered to do the mixing/mastering duties for me so that it will actually sound good this time. then we went out to dinner with some people and went to a bar. one of rachel's student's parents was there. he bought us beer, but was very annoying. don't get me wrong, he was friendly and all that, but he just sort of sat down with us and wanted us to hang out with him afterward. he also sent his wife away. she was trying to get him to leave and he just shooed her away and she left. he was drunk. we then went to a game room. you pay like 1.75$ per person/per hour and you have a bunch of board games to choose from. we played clue. i found out how to win at clue: cheat. if you just always deny having any cards, but no one else has anything and you have one of them, you can at least figure out what 2 of the right ones are and at the same time, make someone else lose when they make their guess. so it works out really well.

then i went to church this morning with colleen, june, chelsea, and frank. i didn't care for it very much as i had some sort of theological disagreement with something said and i don't like to have hour long praise and worship (especially when they only sing about 4 or 5 songs). we then got some chicken for lunch and i walked june to the bus stop so that she could make her two hour journey home. it was a good, but short, weekend. since i've only eaten korean food for the last few days, i'm going to reward myself with pizza tonight. i rented "an inconvenient truth" cause i never saw it before, so maybe i will watch that or finish up the last 2 episodes of buffy season 3 tonight. that is all for now.

surprise ice

2009-10-05T04:36:00.001-07:00

ok, so maybe i posted something a couple of posts ago that was rather impulsive. i removed it. either way, things are starting to get really good or really bad, but i'm happy about it.

boredom is a day without work.

2009-10-04T22:48:00.000-07:00

i understand there's no excuse for doing a survey...but i'm bored and i have a day off...so this was on josh austin's facebook and i figured i would attempt to not lie about something. due to the relatively unscandalous characteristics of this quiz, i've decided to ignore many questions.

Tell no lies!
Can you fill this out without lying?

1. What was the last thing you put in your mouth?
cigarette

4. Name someone who made you laugh today?
i haven't seen anyone today, so no one...does internet laughing count? because that's just "haha" but i don't even crack a smile in real life.

10. How do you feel about Dr Pepper?
it's called dr. pepper because it tastes like medicine, i will only drink it if it is absolutely necessary.

13. Who was the last person you took a picture of?
a wonderful girl named june.

19. Night out or night in?
night out, unless season 3 of buffy finishes downloading soon, then i have my plan for the week.

23. How do you feel about your life right now?
i don't belong anywhere, i hate my job, but everything's great.

27. Has anyone ever called you perfect before?
no, unless they didn't say it to my face, then perhaps someone did. so let's just go ahead and assume that all of you get together and talk about my perfection.

28. What song is stuck in your head?
"wings of love" or "pentacost hotel" by nirvana (the original one, not that crappy 90's band)

29. Someone knocks on your window at 2:00 a.m., who do you want it to be?
a man with a check for 50,000,000$. he will be a man in his mid-50's who has realized that his greed has filled his bank account but has emptied his emotional wallet. he views the money as a curse and wishes he had never gotten it. he's giving it to me in order to cleanse himself and to cast off his embarrassing riches. i accept the money and make him a grilled cheese sandwich and i think to myself "i'm going to buy the good cheese at the grocery store next time."

31. Name something you have to do tomorrow.
go to the gym, take medicine, 한국말 공부해요.

i dare you not to write.

2009-09-29T01:41:00.000-07:00

nothing has been going on.

i almost got fired because i didn't have a song in my heart while doing something. did the "right" thing though and apologized to my boss for caring so much about the contract that we both signed.

lloyd and kay visited from japan. they brought me scotch.

i still don't have the internet at my place.

anki software is amazing. flashcards but without the waste and time.

i swear i was in a better mood like 2 days ago.

another night in 홍대 and thoughts on black metal politics.

2009-09-06T01:20:00.000-07:00

dear blog, how are you? this week has been relatively uneventful. jon's girlfriend, tara, went back home after a couple of months spent in korea. i got a package. that's about it.

last night, i made plans with a girl i met in jeju (not those kinds of plans, she has a boyfriend who just doesn't like to do anything). we decided that we would find mexican food. so we went to sinchon to go to an on the border there. it. was. amazing. needless to say, there's not much in the way of dirty tex mex in south korea. so i got flautas and enchiladas with black beans and rice. it was phenomenal. it was really hard to order because this restaurant is easily an hour and fifteen minutes from where i live, so i doubt i'll make the trip that often.

after that, we went to hongdae in an attempt to find the ice bar. the attempt failed. we wondered for a good hour and asked a lot of people and even though this place is in every travel guide, no one seemed to have heard of it. she ultimately had to leave because it was 11 and the subway was about to stop (because while great, the public transportation system doesn't understand why anyone would stay up past 11pm on a saturday night). so i waited for kai in hongdae. she was with 3 japanese friends that she had studied with. they took an hour because the subway train they were on stopped (see parenthesis above). we then met up with another one of her friends from japan whom she was sure i would be in love with. i really wanted to be like "you don't know me, you don't know what i like!" but she was right about me all along.

we went on our own excursion to find the ice bar, which again failed. we settled on a restaurant and everyone but me and some greek guy and his girlfriend drank a lot. because the subway had stopped, i made up my mind that i was going to stay awake all night and one must pace himself. if you order a lot of food or whatever at a restaurant they give you "service" which is just more stuff, but for free. we had two pitchers of kiwi soju smoothie stuff and about 6 bottles of soju and two big plates of food. it was only 60,000won (about 44$?) and we were there till about 3 am. we then had to say goodbye to 3 japanese friends. me, kai, and her wet dream of a friend then went to a club. this was not some lounge, this was like a really loud scary club. it was several floors below street level and it was just deafening music and lots of creepy people standing around while slightly moving (this was dancing). i got a call from my friend verve and decided i should leave.

i met him in the park and got a drunken lecture on the history of black metal. he basically retold the Lords of Chaos book. it was intense. he loves black metal and all, but every time i hear about it, i've just got no real interest in these incredibly f*cked up people. a lot of these black metal bands he was telling me about were these horrible nazi/white nationalist bands...like full blown "eradicate the jews" nazis. i know he's not a racist and he just likes the music, but whatever, i've got no interest in it. this got into a big debate about nationalism in general and how i think that it's messed up, especially from the black metal perspective. consider the senseless murders, church burnings, racism, suicides, and general misanthropic qualities that are contained in black metal and i think it's clear why i don't think these people have anything valid to offer in the realm of politics or social philosophy. it's odd though because to some extent i believe in certain kinds of nationalism ("kashmir for the kashmiris" etc.) but it sort of falls apart when you talk about the west/america. he started talking about spangler and his philosophies/theories of why societies fall apart (they lose their core values and thus their own sense of their culture), but i don't understand america to have a solid culture. maybe there is and i just don't see it because i don't belong to it. all the same...you can go to korea and see there is a korean-ness to the place or england and see the english-ness. of course that's too simple and there is a broad spectrum across any society. what it comes down to is that i prefer the mixing of culture instead of the preservation of it. if culture was all it's cracked up to be then we should all be living it up in utopia by now...but the fact is that people needlessly cause each other grief because of their culture and own self-inflated sense of superiority. and that's what i think about the current state of black metal.

we left the park and i saw kai's friend again at 6:30 in the morning on the street. kai was out drinking with some guy she said. her friend spoke very little english and i only remember a little japanese, but we pinched each other's cheeks and parted ways. i fell asleep on the subway, woke up and looked out of the train and saw it was my stop. i ran through the doors as they were closing. i went to krispy kreme and had two donuts and a milk. caught the bus home and then again i fell asleep only to wake up at the right moment yet again. so here i am, i slept from 8:30-3:30 and i don't know what to do...i will take sleeping pills tonight. sleeping pills are the only answer, ever. below is a picture of me and kai's 4 japanese friends. see if you can figure out which one i liked. i'm sure it will be difficult.

i got a package

2009-09-02T20:09:00.000-07:00

i got a package today from home. it contained:

2 boxes of tazo zen green tea
1 box of tazo china green tips tea
1 bag of fun size butterfingers
1 bag of peanut butter m&m's
1 bag of reese's peanut butter cups
3 .005 micron pens, black
4 boxes of kraft macaroni and cheese

so a box of contraband items...i can't find any of this stuff over here...it's disappointing...but i'm excited i got it! i'm eating mac and cheese tonight...maybe hot dogs?

holy s***

2009-08-29T07:47:00.000-07:00

so ok...the date didn't happen. she called in sick...i feel like i got blown off. i saw her last night though and she was very apologetic etc., bought me a drink, said she would call me and we would go out...but i don't know, maybe she was sick...i am usually skeptical of convenient ailments though. however, one of the other bartenders (whom i also have a crush on) told me that she was jealous of the one girl...and so now that makes some more confusion...and then a girl at the bar came up to and struck up a conversation and asked for my number and asked me on a date...how is it that after 6 months that all the sudden this is happening? i still shower the same number of times per day (1...maybe 2) and i haven't done anything noteworthy to my appearance...either way, it's confusing as hell. why can't girls just go back to not liking me?

i shaved my head and tried to be a monk

2009-08-22T02:06:00.000-07:00

so as last updated, i have a crush on a bartender and she likes me too. well, we are going on a date. hooray, i'm coming out of retirement. in korea, bartenders are allowed to drink on the job. go figure. but we did some shots and i tried out my korean.
me:namjachingu isseuyo? (do you have a boyfriend?)
her: ubseuyo (no).
me: namjachingu wanani? (do you want a boyfriend?)
so i asked her on a date and she said yes and gave me her number. i'm surprised that it was so easy...too easy...either way, i have no idea what we'll do or what we'll talk about. my korean is so limited and her english is as well. she told one of my friends that she's worried that she's too old (she's 29, 30 in korean age). then we danced (well, she danced and i kind of shuffled my feet because i can't dance). when i was leaving she walked down the stairs to say goodbye and i slipped on the stairs. it was embarrassing. i wasn't looking at the stairs because i was looking at her while walking. oh well, i'm trying to figure out what to do on a date. any suggestions?

no internet...again!

2009-08-15T22:44:00.001-07:00

so a lot has happened recently and i haven't been able to really get on the internet because my new place doesn't have internet.

1. vacation- i went to jeju island for my vacation. jeju is often romanticized in korea. it's the honeymoon island. well, i figured out why: it's a great place to go if you want to stay in your hotel room for a week. that's not to say it wasn't pretty, but it is certainly boring. the first two days i had friends from seoul in town. they left. i was alone for a few days and then kakki and chad came and i spent the rest of my time with them. i saw lots of waterfalls and ate a lot of ramen. i went to some mountains. it was hot as the devil as well. one morning after i took a shower, my shirt was soaked with sweat after a 30 minute walk. i met some people from oregon who actually live in the next city over from me. we went to nore bang and the guy got a little destructive when he got drunk. it made it an uncomfortable experience. all i could think about was "this guy is going to break a t.v. and i'm going to have to pay for it." they were both nice otherwise though.

2. guitar pickup- i went to seoul yesterday to buy a guitar pickup for my classical guitar. i guess i never really thought about it, but classical guitars have smaller soundholes than steel string guitars; they're just smaller in general. so my pickup didn't fit. realizing that it wasn't worth the trouble to go back to seoul because of a cheap pickup, i decided to modify my guitar...i did this by using a butterknife to saw out two little squares in the soundhole. i'll post pictures, i'm proud of my butterknife skills...long story short, i put the pickup in and it doesn't work. i'm pretty sure the cable i was using was fine, but the pickup made not a noise. so i seriously hurt my guitar to install a non-working pickup. fml (for those of you less web savvy, that stands for "f*ck my life." all the kids are using it these days).

3. padraig's gone- my best friend in korea left. padraig was rather unhappy with various things about our school and other various things so when the opportunity to receive a scholarship for his phd back in the u.k. presented itself, he did the right thing. i got a call from him on wednesday during vacation and he was at the airport. he had kept it a secret, which i can understand. all the same, now i do things alone a lot more often. the school is very mad. they're filing charges which can't really do anything. he won't be able to work in korea again most likely, but he'll have a doctorate and so i can't imagine why he'd move back to a place that made him so unhappy. they're telling the parents that his father is sick and he has to go home for a while. in a few weeks, they're going to say his father died and so he's not coming back. that way they don't look bad. pretty sick, huh?

4. new place- one of my coworkers had a place that was about a 20 minute walk from school and i have a scooter, so he just said he wanted to move to the school and i said i'd consider trading with him. the boss heard this and immediately said "oh, so you're trading with michael?" and i said "well, we haven't talked about it." the next day, this same conversation took place again. he then told michael to go ahead and pack his things and did not tell me this. i packed up everything in my room on a day's notice. talk about being filled with hate. well, i moved in a day before vacation. i love it in my new place. padraig left during vacation. 3 days into the next week i was told that i would have to move back into the school. i had not lived in the apartment for even a week. i told him i'd really not like that. it would be the 4th time i've changed locations in the last 5 1/2 months. this has made me really pissed off. the location of the school is not great. there is no privacy. you cannot have guests. there are cctv cameras in the hall and we've been told before "oh, you came in late last night." if i live at the school i have to do pickups, which means that every couple weeks i have to go to work an hour early for no money. the bosses work sometimes till 10 at night and want to chat it up if they see you. the bills are insanely expensive, our electric bills basically pay the electricity for the whole school. so i've decided that i will move back to the school under a few conditions: the ad for the school said the job paid 100,000w more a month than the actual contract i signed in korea. i would ask for backpay and a raise of another 100,000 on top of that. i would also ignore any pesky rules about having guests. if they do not want to do this and still force me to move back into the school, i will give them my notice because i could easily find another job in korea...and since they just lost a teacher, they cannot afford to lose another, it would sink them. if they don't want to give me a release, i'll just tell them that i'll report them to the labor board if they don't. they have engaged in various illegal activities such as not providing us with health insurance until after 5 months, still not giving us pension, and breaking all sorts of general labor laws associated with how many hours we have to work a day. of course, they could just let me stay and everything would be fine.

5. darts- i play darts now. i bought my own set. everyone here loves to play darts at the bar. there are people who can pretty much get bull's eyes every time. it's amazing.

6. the ladies- it turns out that the waitress i have a crush on at the bar also has a crush on me. this was related to me by my korean friends last night. she's 29 and doesn't speak english very well, which is her concern. i can't say i don't understand. not speaking the same language is sort of a big deal when you want to know someone. she came to our table and put her arm around me. she said in english that i was "her man," which is funny on many different levels. she then explained to my korean friends that she likes me but is afraid because she can't speak english. oh well.

7. books- i finished "hocus pocus" and "bluebeard" by vonnegut. bluebeard was maybe better. hocus pocus was maybe my least favorite vonnegut book so far. i went to the book store to find something more heavy to read. i got "critique on pure reason" by kant. i've trudged through the massive introduction and i understand about 30% of it. i consider this a huge accomplishment, the 30% that is. i think i'm going to start on pynchon's "vineland" again. i started it a while ago and then moved to something else. my friend kakki also has "the crying of lot 49" which i might borrow.

that is all. i've been here for nearly 6 months. i think my big plan is to come back and study for my master's degree. i met a guy who did that. with a 2.7 gpa, he got a 75% scholarship on tuition and a 50% scholarship for the dorms. why? because korean universities love white people going to their schools...or foreigners in general, it's just that most of those foreigners are white folks like myself. so that puts me here for 2 more years. hopefully i will speak a lot of korean when i come back for good. it would be a shame not to.

counting out time...

2009-08-05T19:37:00.000-07:00

i have to get off of this island. i just want to go to my apartment and cook dinner and see my friends. i want to go to the crazy duck and have the waitress fawn over me. i want a rotibun. maybe there's a movie playing. i don't know, anything is better than this.

jeju is a really beautiful place, but there isn't anything to do. it's ridiculously boring. in the town i'm staying in, there are no people in the streets. it's really odd. it feels oddly deserted. there's nothing to eat except sashimi and pork (which, i've discovered i hate pork, except when it comes in breakfast form). it takes like an hour to see a waterfall. you get there, you look at the waterfall and think about how similar it looks to the last waterfall you saw an hour ago. i think it would be fun if i had people with me, but i'm alone on a honeymoon getaway because all my friends had their holidays already.

my best friend in korea ditched out yesterday in a "midnight run." this is where you don't tell anyone you're leaving and you just go home to get out of teaching at your horrible school without honoring the full contract. he called me yesterday around lunch asking me to give his contact info out. he said he had received funding for a phd back in scotland so he had to go back. i had to call our boss and tell him what had happened. he was very angry...but the truth of it is that we are treated like garbage by our school. i hate it very much. i'm currently job searching myself. i think my letter of release will be easy to come by. i'm going to tell them that if they don't sign it then i'll turn them into the labor board for all of their shady dealings. we'll see. oh well, enough of this, going to the beach i guess...

NIRVANA (UK)

2009-08-03T07:37:00.000-07:00

nirvana (uk) people! listen to it. love it. live it. seriously, my favorite new band.

jeju, day 1 (and a little of 2)

2009-07-31T22:23:00.000-07:00

well, i got into jeju last night and got on the bus going to my place, not knowing if i'd have a place to stay or not. after i found the hotel i talked to the guy and he gave me a room. it's the size of a cardboard box, maybe, but this trip has only cost me 288$ for the flight and for a week's lodging. so i'm pretty happy with it. i went out around 11 to find out what was going on in town. the answer was surprising: NOTHING. i'm not in a really hopping part of town and need to figure out where to go.

i went to the roof this morning to read some and a british guy and his sister started talking to me and then we were joined by their parents. they were friendly and gave me a beer at 10:30 in the morning. me and the guy got along and so we made our way out and tried to find some sunglasses for him and went to the batting cages. again, batting cages are everywhere.

i called my friend padraig to ask him something and he told me he had bad news. apparently, one of the students at school died yesterday. his name was james and he was 5 years old. he was being watched by his cousin and he fell off of a balcony. it's really sad...sorry to be depressing. here is a picture to cheer you up. irene! my favorite!

a clock that sings...

2009-07-26T08:34:00.000-07:00

today, i went to seoul to see all those experimental music crazies bang out some noise. it was fun as usual. i will post the video soon, but i saw a pretty amazing performance from a guy who used bowls to make music. they were "singing" bowls, if you've ever heard of those. they're just bowls that resonate tones very well and sound almost like tubular bells. before that though, i had a really phenomenal experience: a chicken quesadilla.

let's just say that it's the second time i've had mexican food in 5 months...and the first time doesn't really count because it was horrible mexican food...like "i will spew you forth from my mouth" mexican food. but this, this was a legitimate quesadilla and it had nacho chips with salsa on the side. i normally don't clean my plate, but i threw caution to the wind and didn't care if i was being an american stereotype. i'm very conscious of being an american and so there are things i do and don't do over here to hopefully reflect well upon myself/my country:
1)i attempt to use korean as much as possible, even if they speak english.
2)i do not go to mcdonald's
3)i hold open doors for people and offer my seat on buses/trains to elderly folk (this is just a holdover from georgia i think, most of the times people are surprised because this is not something that's done here) it's almost like they can't conceive of a stranger being polite. more often than not, if you're a stranger, you might as well be dead to everyone you don't know. strangers do not talk and people do not mingle. it makes the social aspect of this country perplexing. it's also ironic that one of the main t-shirt slogans pushed by polham (clothing company that EVERYONE wears) is "world without strangers."
so i guess you could say that i am ultimately the greatest person to ever live and that i am worthy of your praise and respect......just checking if you were still reading. if you've gotten this far, i will tell you now that i'm none of those things.

recently, i've had a fascination with darts. electronic dart boards are at every bar in korea. you can see how high you can get your accuracy and what not. there are some really amazing players. i saw a woman last night who can hit anything on the board as many times as she wants. she was playing someone who wasn't as good as her and she would begin each turn by missing a shot, etc. people buy their own darts. i need to buy my own darts. the game of cricket is pretty amazing. padraig beats me most of the time. for some reason he's really good at bar games. oh that's right, he worked at a "fecking" bar for years.

glenfidditch is only 5,000w a finger at the crazy duck. easily the best scotch i've found in korea. everything else is johnnie walker or some bizarre ones i've never even heard (which padraig, the scot, hasn't heard of either). the staff at the crazy duck (loud,obnoxious,militarily occupied bar) are really nice. i only go there once a week or so, but they remember my name and talk to me. victor shows me card tricks (i've learned how to do magic tricks with cards, so sue me), bonnie works on her english (her electronic name tag says "hi, i'm bonnie. i'm cute and sexy! do you think? haha! i love u. have fun!" and jessica holds my hands for inordinate amounts of time when greeting me before going in for the hug (which is fine, because i have a fantasy crush on her).

for some reason or other, i'm talkative tonight. i think i said last night i want to come back for a master's degree here. my school really sucks still and i'm thinking that i might need to get them to release me due to their severe breaches of contract.

in other news, the song "wings of love" by nirvana (uk) is really one of the best psych rock songs around. if you go to http://bizarre-garden.blogspot.com/ you can download a bunch of nirvana (uk) stuff. i have most of their stuff, but if you just want a best of then the third entry should be what you're looking for. if you like the zombies, the left banke, the kinks, kaleidoscope, etc. then i suggest you get it. the bizarre garden guy really has some excellent albums on his site, you just have to search around sometimes. he'll get on a kick about a band and post everything they have for a month. go check it out.

but where it's going no one knows

2009-07-25T10:59:00.000-07:00

nothing's happening here but i've thought about a change of plans. i was considering coming back to korea and teaching next year, but i'm considering coming back here instead on an education visa and getting my masters. it's about 1/4 of the cost compared to the states. so i might come home for a few months and come back in august for my master's in english literature. the classes are in english and all that. i'd have to stay in a dorm, which would be fine...but the only thing i'm wondering is how i would live. i could do some private lessons, but those are much harder to come by than i was hoping. i figure that if i taught 5-10 hours a week i could live a relatively normal life, making between 500,000-1,500,000w a month. i just don't want to take out a ton of student loans. the thing is that the programs over here are based not only on your academic standing but also on your interviews and gre scores and personality. so it seems like a good deal. i think that maybe i'm starting to think of this place as home. it feels like so much has changed since i left and that home will never be the same. oh well, so it goes.

i bought a t-shirt today. i like it for some reason or other. the perplexing array of t-shirts here baffles me. there will be a shirt and it will have an amazing design and some random english phrase that somehow makes sense in a way that an english person couldn't. for instance, one is a shirt with these geometrically arranged cassette tapes and the slogan is "slow life." i like this one for the fact that it's sort of an obvious yet still bizarre phrase. "when changing the way you think, there will be a...wonderful change." it's rather obvious but still evasive in a way that only a non-native speaker could be evasive. it's still odd though because koreans for the most part will never understand the irony of things like a "three wolf moon" t-shirt or even that new threadless shirt with the three cats playing piano under a full moon...i guess most americans don't get it either.....all the same. i think i like the shirts here because they are equally bizarre to anything you could find back home, but they're worn in complete sincerity. often times they have no idea what they say. i saw a guy wearing a shirt that said "fuck you!" on it and a girl wearing one that said "about our conversation earlier...i never said shit." in a way, i don't think they appreciate the innocence of their t-shirt choices in the same way i do.

pour your oil in our hair

2009-07-24T10:12:00.000-07:00

had a flea market today at the school. parents brought in things for the kids to buy with fake money. i stole a stuffed animal for myself though. it's a hamster thing. i call him funnel cake. it's cute. the older kids were helping to run the booths, but were charging outrageous prices because they were told that they could spend whatever fake money they earned. so each kid got 15 fake dollars. i sold stuffed animals for 2-5$. the older kids were selling everything for 5$-10$ so they'd have money. it was sad because these little 5 year olds were just forking it over and not having any money for anything else. so when the older kids tried to buy something from me i'd say "for you, 60$" they'd complain and i'd say "ok, ok...80$" i gave them a lecture in the afternoon when i taught them about how i was disappointed in them for price gouging kindergarteners.

feeling a bit down today. realized i haven't really spoken to anyone in weeks. i'm starting to feel a bit isolated. all my friends here are on vacation or out on dates. my vacation is a week after everyone else's and i don't intend to ask a girl on a date anytime soon/ever. i'm having another dip in mood...but a week from today, i'll be on jeju island and i hope i'll feel better sleeping somewhere where i can see the stars (it's been a few months since i've seen them)...i'll probably sleep outside the first night because my hotel was booked that night and so i have nowhere to stay when i arrive.

i still miss people.

i had sex with a whore and have herpes

2009-07-21T09:41:00.000-07:00

not really...i'm just seeing if you're paying attention. things have been slow lately. i'm getting into a pretty normal routine. after work, i eat dinner and go to one of three places afterward to do some reading: holly's coffee, rotimum, or the now bar. i've been trying to change it up though. i bought some traditional groceries in order to cook at home upon occasion. this week's menu: fettucine alfredo, a rare dish in korea.

i also took a taxi to the next town over to get an iced grande no classic green tea from starbucks. this was a phenomenal experience since it has been nearly 5 months since i had last had one. by the way, if you work at starbucks, feel free to mail me china green tips or zen since they sell neither over here. i met my friend kakki. she's going home to the states for a week and is going to buy me cigarettes. i gave her a lot of money for their purchase. korean smokes just don't do it for me...maybe i should quit 3 years ago.

after that, i walked over to a bar called the crazy duck to have a quiet beer and to read "bluebeard" by vonnegut. crazy duck is never quiet, due to the kpop blasting out of the speakers, but there weren't many people there. i studied korean for a bit, read a bit, played a game of darts by myself, admired the waitress who speaks token english phrases (i speak token korean phrases), and then my friend rachel walked in on a date. she was shocked to see me because of various reasons which are personal to her and not to me, and so i won't go into it. i then came home to brush my teeth with my newly purchased electric toothbrush. did people even brush their teeth before electric toothbrushes were purchased by me in korea? i know i didn't.

work sucks. i'm advertising this saturday for a few hours because i was coerced by my boss. supposedly, i'll get paid.

doubtful.

i made a kid cry today. he cried for about 20 minutes. why? i took away a water bottle he had fashioned into an improvised watergun (achieved by poking a small hole into the cap and applying pressure to the body of the bottle...a trick they picked up from me, as i squirt them when they are behaving badly). i told him to "man up." fat tony (his secret nickname) has been giving me trouble for some time.

women of the world...

2009-07-19T03:44:00.000-07:00

here's some videos i spliced together. there are some random subway shots, a little bit of bongeunsa temple, a little bit of dongdaemun, etc. this is the second time i've done anything with imovie. i liked playing with it, but it certainly made me long for my imac...

a smattering of korea from Josh Nelson on Vimeo.

boys becoming men, men becoming wolves

2009-07-12T06:43:00.000-07:00

let's see...on friday, i went to a trampoline park with the kids. they told me to get on the trampolines. it was fun...oh, except for almost breaking my tail bone. turns out that the trampolines were only about 2 ft. off the floor, so when i jumped up really high and landed on my bum to bounce the kids, i almost blacked out in pain. wtf is up with me sustaining physical injuries in korea? i landed squarely on the ol' ass bone and crawled away...i thought about seeing a dr., but they can't give you an ass cast...they can only charge you money to say "take advil." so it's still hurting, but is a bit better.

i went to the casino in seoul today. i didn't lose any money! i actually made 33,000w...which is not a lot. i went with 100,000w and at my high point had 200,000. i should have quit there...it was texas hold'em and it was fun. casinos are bizarre and wonderful places. you're telling me that there's a place where they will give you free booze, you can smoke free cigarettes inside, you can play a game you like, and make money? i'm there. when i cashed out they gave me two of the new 50,000w notes that were just introduced a week or two ago. i feel rich having them. it's like walking around with 50$ bills...no one will accept these, i don't want to spend them.

i am also happy to say that i will get to see harry potter a good day before everyone else. i'm going to see it at the imax 3d at some point too. it's harry potter week! i've also watched almost two seasons of 30 rock in the past week. oh, tina fey...

random pictures

2009-07-08T08:54:00.000-07:00

photo 1: this is actually a tag i found in hongdae. i liked it.
photo 2: claustrophobia. myeong dong was packed. i felt like i couldn't move most of the time. i found myself making for less crowded pockets, you know, like in diffusion.
photo 3: a bunch of disgusting looking ginseng roots. in the jars, they look like animals or organs or something else that is dead.
photo 4: two of my co-workers, kai and nara, keeping me "out on the booze" on a school night.

"i'm the guy who sucks, plus i got depression" -roast beef

2009-07-05T05:40:00.000-07:00

photo 1: a park in hongdae where the fringe elements of seoul gather
photo 2: that same park in hongdae around 5am
photo 3: a bird on a lamp post as the sun was coming up.
photo 4: some graffiti in hongdae. i particularly like "art is over." i can only assume that because of the font and arrangement that it is a homage to "war is over."
photo 5: a young man after a long night of dancing and fornicating. this photo reminds me of the minor threat album cover. i think this photo somehow encapsulates the youth culture in seoul.
photo 6: a young lady standing in the window of the apple store in myeong-dong showing off some ipods. (this is actually a photo taken by my friend jon, i was too embarrassed to snap a decent one myself).

i'll try to post another entry about my journeys in seoul. i went to namdaemun market around 3pm to look for trinkets from home...but found nothing. i purchased the following items: a sketch book, 3 microns, a cannister of oatmeal for briana, a tripod for my cameras, and one of those apple world travel kits so i can plug my computer into a normal outlet over here. i thought there was an apple store in seoul, but it turns out it's just a reseller. it was odd because the layout of the store and everything were exactly the same, but it's called "frisbee." since i guess they were all refurbs, all the computers and the products in general were significantly cheaper than back home.

the big plan of the evening was to pull an all nighter in hongdae. hongdae is a university area and the people who go there are generally of an alternative ilk. it was fun, but exhausting. it was me, rachel, briana, colleen, and two new teachers that just joined their school. they had intended to go "clubbing" but as it is, they wore open toed shoes and so they were not granted permission to enter. so we went to a bar and sat for a while and then went to a nore bang where i performed a rendition of "bohemian rhapsody" which i'm sure rivals the original. there is video, but i might have lied a bit about how well i sang...i did that one, "goodbye yellow brick road" by elton john, and a duet of "under pressure" with rachel. we then went back to the park and waited for the subways to open up again. i didn't get home until after 7am. i was exhausted. if i come again for another year though, i'll be sure to be in seoul. i can't stand having to travel for 30 minutes by bus just to get to the subway. oh well. it was fun.

today i slept till about 1 and then met up with a girl from craigslist to buy some books. i got some haruhi suzimiya books from japan, that i'll be sending home to the boys, and some korean language study material (you can never have enough). i drank some tea, read a bunch of brothers karamazov, studied korean, and rode around on the scooter. it was a pretty lazy day and now it's over and school is happening again tomorrow. i can't wait for my vacation. i'm going to jeju, an island off the southern tip of the peninsula. it really looks amazing. i don't know what i'm going to do there, probably a lot of sleeping/reading. until then...

korean exercise

2009-06-28T08:48:00.000-07:00

fig.1- parallel bars in the park.
fig.2-rope climbing/pole dancing in the park.
fig.3-chest-high wheels in the park. i have not yet established what these are supposed to do.
fig.4-leg press with no resistance in the park.
fig.5- ergonomic walking machines in the park, similar to what that buff enthusiastic guy with the ponytail used to sell on television.

i've decided to chronicle the mystery that is korean public exercise machines. these machines are in every park. there is even a nearby mountain that has them at the top of the trail, just in case you wanted to work on your lats after your hike. it should be noted, if not obvious, that these machines are relatively useless in terms of providing any real benefit. there is no resistance except that of your own body. so some of these machines can be as strenuous as "standing up" or "walking normally." the only people i've seen use them are: 1)little kids for fun 2)old people and 3)young people on dates, which can be cute.

i wish i could tell you that i've seen a lot of new things or something, and i probably have, but now it's commonplace and this is just the place i live now and you don't take pictures of the place you live too much. i bought a scooter in order to move about the town a little more. it's only 50cc but it can really fly. it maxes at 40mph, but it can go a little faster than that, though even approaching 30mph makes me feel like i'm endangering my life. i've told a few people i think, but south korea has the highest auto-fatatalies per capita in the world. this is because everyone drives like the devil is chasing them. i've started noting references about "korean brakes" which is what foreigners call the horn. i've heard many a horror story about people driving scooters, since they are on the bottom of the food chain. so i bought a helmet. good for me then.

i brought a two volume edition of the brothers karamazov with me. i finished the first volume today and am about 40 pages into the second. needless to say, i didn't accomplish much other than reading today...there are some pretty profound and intense things said by father zossima in his final moments. it's a wonderful book so far, but i can never establish how i feel about the characters. one moment i love alyosha and then next i lose faith in him. i hate characters one moment and then realize that i must hate myself also. it's an exhausting book but it's very edifying as well and if i'm not a better person by the end of the book, it's my fault and not dostoevsky's.

i was going to come home for a week in august, but sadly the tickets went up by about 400$ in the past few days. so 1,500$ isn't really worth a 7 day trip to atlanta i'm afraid. i've thought of coming home christmas, but that will still be very expensive considering that i'll be home in 2 or 3 months anyway. i might just hold onto that money in order to travel for a while before coming home. i want to see thailand, japan, the philippines, and china. this vacation though i'm just going to try going to jeju island since it's relatively cheap and it also happens to look like heaven on earth. google some pictures, you'll see. ok, bed time.

why teaching koreans profanity is a mistake

2009-06-13T13:37:00.000-07:00

me, padraig, and briana met up w/some koreans we met last week. we had dinner and as the conversation rolled on they asked us if we knew korean slang. we didn't know what he meant, but he meant profanity. so he taught us some choice phrases, one of which was "you are so f***ing beatufiul". this phrase is supposedly one of the more offensive things you can say to someone who is not a very close friend...like offensive to the point of tears. i don't quite understand, because at the very worst in the states it would still be taken as a compliment, if not a coarse compliment. they seemed to already know our curse words and so in order to teach them something new and interesting, we taught them (forgive me) "cum dumpster."

once they understood what it meant and that it was maybe one of the most offensive things you could say to a woman, they started using it a lot.

we went to a bar later on. some korean girls were hanging out with us and we were teaching them how to play pool and darts. one girl was a bit of a handful, but the other was perfectly sweet and agreeable. both girls were being flirty and stuff. it's not as though they spoke any english...but it was just nice to hang around girls again and i know that i am impervious to flirtation at this point in my life and to feel sort of...special? (maybe not the right word). we hung out with them for 5 or 6 hours and around the time the sun was coming up, we were finishing up a game of darts with them. we were playing teams and someone scored a bull's eye and so someone jokingly referred to someone else as a "cum dumpster" and it was exchanged back and forth a few times in jest (but only between the males). our korean friend decided it was a good idea to share the meaning of this phrase to the perfectly sweet and agreeable girl. she stormed off and sat in the booth. she cried and then tried to feign sleep. it was obvious that she thought that we had called her a cum dumpster. she had been flirtatious all night and then a word is explained to her that signifies a loose woman. i told him to tell her that it was not the case. he said that she knew or something along those lines...and still she had obviously been deeply offended. so i've not felt this bad in a very long time...and i didn't do anything as far as a know. the worst part of it is, she had told him (i'm guessing before the incident) that this was the best night of her life. so this evening makes me feel dirty and sick of myself. i can only hope that i see her again w/a different korean who can explain what happened and that i thought she was really nice and that i'm sorry...but now it's 6am and i should go to bed.

in silver piles of smiles

2009-06-07T03:32:00.000-07:00

so, i have put up pictures! this is a picture of some of the kids hanging out on a giant wooden frog. it had rusty nails sticking out of it. that's korea for you! the picture below is a crazy upside down house. it was an incredibly disorienting experience and i felt like i was going to fall up the whole time.

then below we have a picture of padraig and briana w/some korean dudes we met in the park on friday night. we were having some beers in the park and b. and p. had to get more from the convenience store. so there were some 40 westerners at the park and these 4 koreans off to the side. so while they were gone i went and started talking to them. they were really nice. they had a guitar and played some songs, accompanied by their soulful/drunken croons. it was pretty smooth. one of the guys wants to make music. he told me he was making a "digital single" and that "it's going to be all about sex and will be r&b." i got their numbers at the end of the night when one of them said that it didn't matter if we could communicate or not, we just need to get together and have fun and drink. that seems to be the mindset.
the picture below is of the door to the restrooms in our school. "happy toilet! have a nice time with our special love." i have no idea what that's supposed to mean, but i do know that i didn't notice it for a few months.

and lastly, here is a photo of me looking real classy with a mustache. for the record, everyone here liked it more. koreans hate my facial hair, that combined w/everything else about me is the reason why i will never have a girlfriend here. but i shaved the mustache and had nothing but stubble for a day or two...but in two days or so, i'll have a beard again regardless of what any korean girl says.

2009-05-31T22:47:00.000-07:00

i am sick. and still i am at work. i tried to ask off. i said "i would like to take the day off" and he said "you can take the day off" and then proceeded to tell me all of the reasons why i couldn't actually take the day off. one of the reasons was because they didn't have any lessons planned for me, which when do they ever? i feel like crap and can barely speak. it hurts to eat, so i haven't. i just want to go to sleep.

oh discordia

2009-05-30T09:01:00.000-07:00

i finished "shalimar the clown" tonight...at the bar...by myself. oh, it's saturday night. you see, i'm terribly popular and i meet people really easily...=(

i learned the alphabet yesterday. it's really fun. it's kind of stressful though because now i try to read everything even if i don't understand it. when english words are spelled with korean characters, it's called konglish...there's a place near where i live that i now know the name of. i read it and it's called "psycho tea." it makes me want to go there now. so i'm glad i got it out of the way and can progress in learning what little of the language i can retain.

another concert in seoul tomorrow, maybe more videos. i have pictures to put up as well, but not tonight i'm afraid.

absent friends

2009-05-28T08:10:00.000-07:00

so i'm going to try to post more. i am having the blogger's existential crisis of "it's not like anyone reads this anymore" etc. but i'm waiting for a new media player to download so i can watch some anime w/a funky file format. who posts videos in .mkv files?

my friend adam quit his school the other day. it was a story i myself was familiar with...that story being: korean boss pays you and feels that treating you like s*** is acceptable. so he quit. he's staying around for a while though, at least long enough to see some world cup qualifiers in june and then i suppose he's off to japan for a bit before he goes home. this is the thing i've been talking about, people come and go and so you feel like stability isn't possible. so we went and had bibimbab tonight and then went to the batting cages. there are batting cages everywhere in korea and i found out i'm quite good. i could be better of course, but i almost never miss the ball. tell hoot fisher that i don't know about 100mph, but i can get 80mph 9 out of 10 balls and so the batting cage challenge is still on when i get back.

i would post pictures, but i haven't taken any in a while. i think i'm becoming desensitized to the place and am forgetting that i will want to look at these pictures one day. i think "oh, that's a nice _____, but they have nice _____ everywhere." so i'm trying to live like a normal person and make this my home and no one takes pictures of their home all the time. i'm going to record some this weekend and soon i'll have finished my first korea e.p. entitled "what hath god overwrought?" it will hopefully include a lot of the random instruments i've picked up here: ocarina, melodica, alto recorder, and various percussive things. maybe if i set a deadline then it will get done in a more timely fashion...oh well, off to bed.

death by pop

2009-05-26T07:28:00.000-07:00

so i thought i would post some of the music that i am constantly immersed in. i think that korea has about 4 or 5 songs at any given time. these songs are played so much EVERYWHERE that even those of us who can't speak korean can sing along. people blast these songs out of their cars and store fronts. on any given day, i could hear all of these songs 2 or 3 times. i don't mind it though. i love them for some reason. so i've decided to share some of these songs with you.

this song is definitely my favorite korean song. i put the video w/the subs on because the lyrics are adorable. be careful, it is infectious. the second song i find really annoying, but it too is catchy and gets stuck in my head a lot. the third song is really popular right now. the fourth song is everywhere i go i feel like...i can't avoid the lollipop song...and the last one is an advert for a cell phone. i only ever saw this video before movies and i LOVE the song...i think i probably went to a movie just to see this song. when it would come on and i was with friends, i would sing along in the theater.

maigo wa sora ni migoto na kinoko no kumo

2009-05-24T05:03:00.000-07:00

i went to insadong this weekend and bought a midi keyboard. i suppose i'll use it eventually to make horrible synth music. i got lost for a while, but i ultimately found my way to one of the few music stores in the country. it was easily the best music store i've ever been to. rows and rows of shops. window after window of fun things. i almost bought a ukelele instead, but i figured the keyboard would be more useful.

i often go through periods when i am "in a mood." right now, i would say i am in one of those periods. i spent a few hours today reading "shalimar the clown," which is a book about kashmir and the clashing of culture that occurs there in relation to the west (of course it was written by salman rushdie)...i don't know what the book said, but whatever it was has been with me all day. i think with "satanic verses" there is definitely a clear mantra ("what kind of idea are you?") and it's a question that demands answering (along w/the follow up question: "what do you do when you win?") "shalimar the clown" doesn't have anything like that, but it has left me with a sense of futility. the thing i keep hearing in it is: "what is the point of wanting anything?" i don't know for sure what my answer is, and maybe it's because i'm a bit down right now, but my answer goes something like this: desire/want was created in order to humiliate us in the purest sense of the word. well...maybe it still holds both meanings...like the man in the chariot whispering in your ear "you are but a man," desire serves the same purpose...and yes, i think it also serves to embarrass...so while that is a short answer on what i think wanting/desire does, i think that the "point" of it is that it's pointless...unless you categorize your life into a series of successes and failures, which seems pretty depressing in and of itself when the numbers are added up. i don't want to want anything anymore. i just don't want to be disappointed anymore.

somehow though, a few pages of a book influenced my mood wildly hours after i had put it away. this is how crazy people think. it's so frustrating because i keep deleting things and i keep trying to sound coherent and explain what i mean because it makes sense in my head, but not in blog form. how do you explain that the thought of "mantras" occurred to you this afternoon as you were walking home from homeplus in suwon, korea and a phrase kept repeating in your head that you hadn't read anywhere...that it was just a sentiment snatched out of the air...and the phrase makes you want to turn off? i am waiting for the sound of rollerblades behind me. i want the last year of my life to have been a dream.

the magic of a kind word

2009-05-20T16:29:00.000-07:00

it feels like my job just got much better. they fired the woman i was having so many problems with. it's an incredible relief. they said that they finally realized that she was the cause of all of the drama occurring at work. so to celebrate we all went out to get barbecue (which is korean for "cook your food over some coals" and not what we think of as bbq). korean barbecue is an especially long meal when in a large group of people...especially when alcohol is involved and there was plenty of that. it seems that our bosses thought that wednesday night was the perfect night to have a celebration involving soju.

i snuck out around 9 or so. in korea, everyone leaves at once and it is frowned upon to leave early (or to decline the request to attend a pseudo mandatory work dinner). i met up w/briana and a guy we had a met a few weeks ago and had a beer or two. at some point or another, i guess it was around 10:30, they decided i needed to either a)go get whore or b)at least go look at the whores with them. i can't quite explain how it got there...the guy we met told us about this street that's just lined w/sliding glass doors w/"the most beautiful women" etc. well, briana took my cell phone and said she'd give it back once we were in a cab on the way to whore street and that i would be home in bed by midnight. i stole my phone back and called rachel...
me: rachel, please call briana and tell her i don't want a whore
rachel:what?
me: briana wants me to get a whore
rachel:it's a new country with new experiences
me:but i don't want a whore!
rachel: oh like you've never had a prostitute before
this last sentence was said w/complete sincerity. we went to whore street and there were whores alright. i'm not going to say that none of them were good looking, but they were not the pearls of the orient or anything. somehow this led to us having another beer and me getting home much later than midnight. when i got to work, i noticed the light on in the school and my boss and 3 other coworkers were drinking water and having a bonding time talking about the lady they just fired. she even apologized to me about everything which was nice. vindication,etc. so i'm running on fumes today. good luck, me.

UPDATE: I AM IN THE DOWNSTAIRS GYM WITH ABOUT 30 KIDS UNDER THE AGE OF 6 WATCHING THE MOVIE "THE MYST!!!!!!" I DON'T THINK THE DIRECTORS HAVE SEEN IT BEFORE OR THEY WOULD KNOW THAT THESE KIDS WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO SLEEP FOR MONTHS AFTER SEEING IT. SUPER VIOLENT!!!

a brief apology and then a story

2009-05-17T07:57:00.000-07:00

so one of the many reasons i came to korea was to work on writing a book. i fished this out and decided that i would begin to work on it again this week. if you've not read it yet, feel free to criticize it. if you have, then you can ignore what follows. the story is rough at best as plot points have been boiling over in my head for the past few months...but i think i have enough of it to sit down and write it all. i certainly need to re-read genesis and i've recently gone through "paradise lost" again...but i am one of those people who can rework something infinitely and never be satisfied...so anything you read here will almost certainly change.

to those of you who will be offended by what i've written, don't be. understand that i am simply attempting to give a pseudo-humorous retelling of adam and eve, which i find to be one of the more fascinating stories ever told...and i am invested in it. i am also writing a letter. most likely, this letter is not addressed to you. the dialogue is stilted and is attempting to be in the style of something along the lines of a morality play or a medieval drama (which are distinguished by their lack of subtlety).

the point of the story (the whole book i'm writing) is very vonnegutian in nature. it is something like this: everything is so fucked up. i believe i read vonnegut say that in an essay from "palm sunday" recently. did adam and eve simply walk out of the garden and forget or did they regret it for the rest of their lives and think about it every waking moment? the story of adam and eve is about the greatest loss ever sustained, at least, i think it is. the bible talks about the alienation from God which follows sin, but it does not really address the alienation that adam and eve must have certainly felt from one another. i imagine that it was trying on their marriage. so the song is in the key of regret and the profound helplessness that goes along with it. so as for my story, i will not say that i have written it well and i certainly think it is a bit of garbage right now, but that's why i will rewrite it again and again...so forgive the errors as well. -j.

chapter 1

In the beginning, there was void and the void became voice and it said, “let there be light.” The LORD cast forth cosmic spittle with these words and thus all creation began. It wasn’t quite so haphazard as all of that though. He had in fact set aside a grand natural amusement park on a tiny far-flung ball of dirt, which he ultimately knew would be more trouble than it was worth. In this magical garden, he placed all sorts of ridiculous looking and impractical creatures. This was his sixth time doing this sort of thing which is a very conservative amount of universes to make considering how long he had been alive: always. His other experiments had all gone terribly awry and quite honestly, he had grown weary in his attempts.
This time though, God said to Himself “Let’s make a creature in our own image.” And so God made Adam. Adam was a fleshy pink thing with neatly cropped hair and sideburns that would not become popular for millions upon millions of years.
“Hello, Adam.” God said.
The pink man looked around and then back at God and asked,
“Who?”
“You,” God said, “Your name is Adam. I created you.”
“So what does that mean?” the ruddy man asked.
“That you are created, that you are you.” God said.
“But what does that mean? What does it mean, that I am me?”
Adam asked with no idea that this very simple question would plague his kind for their entire existence. And even though God had clearly answered his question already, He and Adam engaged each other in a conversation about existentialism that lasted many days and nights. On the fourth day of the talk, Adam briefly became an atheist, but he ultimately resolved to continue believing in his new friend. In the end though, God changed the topic of conversation, finding this strain of thought to be entirely unhelpful.
“You hungry?” God asked as he tossed a banana to Adam. “Open it from the bottom; it’s easier that way. That’s how I taught the monkeys to do it and they’ve had very few problems with it.”
Adam had indeed noted the monkey and though there were many variations, he knew them by their rowdiness. A grimace passed along his face as he thought of the loud, malodorous, and often times condescending monkeys. He felt that he could eventually adjust to the monkeys and their shit-throwing shenanigans, but they certainly did not give off a good first impression. He did as he was told and ate the banana. He found it to be very delicious.
________________
God had given Adam a tour around the garden Eden and had showed him the various animals. However, God did not tell Adam what the names of the animals were.
“No, no…I’ve already had my fun,” said God benevolently. “Go ahead, you can name them. What about that funny looking fellow over there?” God pointed to a large orange feline with a white belly and black strips pouring from the top of its back. God had always thought of this animals as a “tiger,” but He felt that He would give Adam the joy of naming since God had already gotten to do so much. “Let him be me for a day,” the LORD thought.
“I can name him anything I want?” Adam asked boyishly.
“Of course, son!” God said, obviously enjoying this exchange.
“Then I name the orange one...a MAMOOT!”
Adam was joyful at naming something and danced over to the mamoot to pet him and feed him bananas. God furrowed his brow and felt inwardly disappointed. He felt guilty for feeling disappointed. For had He not told the boy he could name the animals whatever he liked? “But ‘mamoot?’ Where did he get such a non-word? ‘Tiger’ simply sounds better,” God thought.
“Mamoot, would you like another banana? Mamoot, are you listening to me?”
The mamoot rolled onto his back, yawning and stretching his frame across the perfect green lawn in disinterest. He was having none of it, but Adam was in no danger, for the LORD had created all of the animals as tame and as vegetarian as house rabbits.
“Mamoot, shall I rub your belly?” The mamoot allowed for this and found it quite wonderful. He had not yet had the pleasure of a good belly rub and it seemed that belly rubbing activated a motor within him which caused him to let out low, tremulous, rolling sounds. The mamoot and Adam were friends from that day on.
“Do you like the name I made, father?” Adam was too joyful. He was giddy and God found that He could not break the news to him: that this animal was obviously a tiger.
“Oh, I mean…it’s a fine name, Adam…but you know, you don’t have to decide on a name right now. You could maybe think of other names…like tig-“
“Mamoot! Mamoot! Mamoot!” Adam proclaimed, laughing and jumping through the air. God relented, smiling on the pink thing He had made and had enjoyed naming Himself.
“Excellent” God consented, “ We shall call these ‘Mamoots.’”
Many millions of years later, the word “mamoot” would be forgotten along with Adam and eventually the word “tiger” seeped into the collective conscious…somehow.
“This way, Adam. There’s a lot more to show you” God said.
“Alright” said Adam as he waved goodbye to the mamoot. The mamoot was unresponsive.
God led Adam through the garden, pausing occasionally so that Adam could name animals as he went. After an hour, the names Hernü, Flackimaw, Búnta, and Scruffipøm had been given. It took many days and many more animal names until they arrived at their destination. There was a large clearing and in the center of that clearing stood a tree. The tree was not special by any account other than it was the only tree in the garden that produced quinces. God assured Adam later that these were not all that spectacular.
“This tree,” God said, “just don’t eat anything from this tree. Stay away from it in general if that will help you not eat from it. If you like this place, stay away from this tree.”
Adam stared thoughtfully at the quince tree.
“Is it poisonous?” he asked.
“No.”
“Is it-“ God not wanting to go down this path again told him that He would explain it soon, but it was just important to remember what He had said. Adam nodded acceptingly, thankful for all he had received apart from the quinces, especially for the mamoot…not so much though for the monkeys.
______________
Adam was left to his own devices for a while. He continued naming animals and eating bananas. Slowly, he learned that bananas were not all there was and soon he had a taste for grapes and oranges as well. The boy had also discovered nuts and blackberries but God had not yet revealed the mysteries of the salad to him. As it turns out, Adam would never enjoy lettuce, onions, or tomatoes all that much.
One day as Adam was walking about the garden he saw two creatures. Adam called them “Artillos” while God thought of them simply as “Bears.” They seemed to be awkwardly positioned, one of them on all fours with the other one mounting it. They seemed to engage in a repetitive motion that ended fairly quickly. The one who mounted the other laid down and went quickly to sleep. The one who had been mounted did not seem to appreciate this and pawed at the other as he groaned and rolled over.
“What an odd event…what a strange way to play…” Adam was not sure, but he had a hint of what had just happened. When he was first born, he didn’t notice this behavior, but soon he saw the animals fucking all over the place. They seemed to enjoy it, or at least the males did. It caused Adam to become forlorn and wistful. He too wanted to put his penis into another creature, though it seemed there were no others of his kind. The LORD sensed something amiss and approached Adam.
“What’s wrong?” He asked.
“Nothing…” said a clearly glum Adam with a vacant expression.
“No, no. Come on, you can tell me.”
Adam paused. He sat bare-ass naked, plucking at the grass and tossing it carelessly aside. He was pouting.
“it’s just…all the other animals…they have each other…to you know…”
“No, I don’t. What is it they do?” God asked, really wanting to know the answer.
“You know, they…well, they get on top of each other and it seems like it would be…nice to, you know?” Adam told the creator of everything.
Sex.
“I see,” God said, His brow furrowed, his head spinning. He knew that every time He had given his creatures sex that they had invariably become slaves to its desires. This was because it was His best creation, the ultimate recreation! However, it almost never made one happy and was almost guaranteed to make one miserable at some point.
“So, you want a mate?” God asked.
“Yes, I suppose that would be nice…” sulked Adam.
“And why, might I ask?”
“Because I am alone…”
“No you’re not! We hang out, don’t we? What about the mamoot? You like him right?” God was practically begging Adam to reconsider. Certainly the LORD would get credit for sex at some point and that was what He was afraid of. “It is too good to remain holy.” God felt this sentiment resonate within him. The ruptured holiness of creation, He knew, was only a matter of time and so the heart of the LORD was broken for the sixteenth time.
“Yes…I am much pleased by the mamoot you have given me. It is a wonderful place and I enjoy our conversations, but…I do not know how, but we are different. Are we not?”
The LORD knew that Adam spoke true and so His heart was changed for the eleventh time. God said to Himself, “It is not good for man to be alone.” And though Adam would be given Eve, he would be alone still…not always, but certainly he would be very alone.
“Very well,” God said, “Lay down, boy. You must go to sleep now…and when you wake up, you will have ‘Woman.’”
“Woman…” invoked Adam, as though he was chanting a word that would open sealed doors…a word that would change him. Boy, would it.
God sat doing nothing for a long time. The mamoot approached to have his belly rubbed by He who made him. God looked at the mamoot.
“Would you like to help?”
The mamoot stood by. God began His work, working from one of Adam’s ribs, more dirt, some mamoot whiskers, and He spoke light into her as He had the whole universe. He rolled the bone, whiskers, dirt, and light about in His hands, multiplying her essence and gifting her with His. When he was done, He looked at the sleeping woman. He was worried, very worried. He had done too well. He had always done too well. This woman was too beautiful.
“She’ll be able to play him like a harp” the LORD thought.
But He was moved by the loveliness of His creation. The holy mother of mankind was born without sin, but that is not how she would die. No two people would ever fall as far as those two. For this world, she would be the second mother, the first being God Himself. Her belly held the secrets of endless variation...and variables, God knew, always fucked things up.
Her very being was physical perfection. The modern man upon seeing her would either run in fear of his life or make a shameless attempt at raping her. Adam was roused awake by the gentle sounds emanating from the form lying next to him. Eve snored. However, it was an ingratiating feature not to be confused with the snores of a morbidly obese man. No, these snores were like childish whispers, sleepy childish whispers.
Adam looked at her long ebony hair. It was nearly waste length and hung across her breasts. Adam then noted he did not have these and that made them all the more appealing. He had no others to compare it to and so he was never fully aware that Eve had quite a nice rack. He traced her features with his eyes and then with his hands. He felt the shape of her nose that made his seem oversized and comical by comparison. Her lips were far more full than his, her neck more slender, her jaw more round, her chest soft and hairless. Her form was all at once more pronounced and less defined than his. Finally, he found the part of her that was certainly not like him. In this case though, it was her lack of something that excited him.
He looked over all of these things with awe and wonder. It was truly the first and only time that a man could say to a woman “You were made for me” and be telling the truth. She was his inverted mirror. She was weak where he was strong. She was beautiful where he was not. She was soft where he was coarse…and he was thrilled by all of it.
“Do you like her?” God asked.
“Yes…very much” Adam whispered reverently, not daring to take his eyes away from her.
“Her name is Eve. Would you like to wake her?”
“Eve…yes. I shall wake her?” he said as if asking permission. It almost seemed wrong that this image of his own completion should ever possess any state other than the one she was currently in.
“Eve…” Adam ran his fingers through her hair, “Eve…wake up.”
She opened her eyes in a slow flutter.
“Hello, Eve,” Adam whispered.
“Who?”
“You,” Adam said, “Your name is Eve and He created you.”
“So what does that mean?” she asked.
“That you are created, that you are you” Adam said.
“But what does that mean? What does it mean, that I am me?” Eve asked.

you are the place that spaceships merely dream of.

2009-05-09T02:18:00.000-07:00

photo 1: mounds of disgusting dried fish. little guppies and what not...but to see them in this setting and not on my lunch plate, they look like mounds of pure silver.
photo 2: this was a streetside fish cookery. rachel bought a piece of fish and it was one of the best tasting fish i'd ever had.
photo 3: this is general view of the market. every shop looked like this one except that it went on for what seemed like miles.

we went to the fish market in busan. when rachel told us that we were going to go (and it was not asking, it was definitely telling) i was not too thrilled, but i must admit that it was well worth it and i had a great time. we went to eat at a fish place but there was no menu for us and ultimately a nice korean guy who spoke english came over and helped us. he asked what we wanted and ordered for us. he said he ordered us 4 different fish, but instead of getting 4 pieces of fish, i'm pretty sure we got 4 different types of fish, but much more than 4 pieces. between the 4 of us, our bill came out to be 4$ each for some really fresh and delicious fish. i don't really recall what we did that evening. at this point, my battery died on my camera and i didn't get to take anymore pictures. ultimately though, one person split off and the remaining three went to an underground market where i bought some converse knock offs called "only star". we then went and saw a movie, a bad one, i won't even tell you the title...but it was pretty horrible. i'm not going to tell you what it was because i knew it was going to be bad...i'm ashamed. after that, everyone crapped out and wanted to sleep. so we ordered pizza and watched tv. the end.

birthday in busan pt.1

2009-05-05T05:16:00.000-07:00

photo 1: rachel, briana, me...in our hostel, roll of toilet paper, preparing ourselves for maximum fun.

my 3 friends and i took a trip to busan last weekend. my birthday happened to fall during this time. i left work after a rather rotten day, we met up w/the girls at the subway station and took the train into seoul. we then boarded the bullet train to busan. the thing apparently goes about 300km an hour. so it only took 3 hours to get to the other side of the country...my birthday happened on the train! we arrived and took a cab to our hotel. the drivers in korea are like stock car drivers. at one point during our journey, he hit 160kmh...roughly 99mph. the 4 of us were laughing and nervous because we realized how easily this man could kill us all. our little hostel was really nice! but it only had one bed and so we had to rotate our sleeping arrangements. but considering, for 3 nights, we only had to pay about 16$ each made it manageable.
photo 2: haeundae beach as i will always remember it.

the next day we went to haeundae beach...which was probably the greatest beach i've ever been to in my life. i've got some pictures to prove it. i've never been to a beach surrounded by mountains before, but as it would turn out, this is the best kind of beach. we then ate fish. the first were gutted and then cooked whole w/all the scales and eyeballs, etc. it was really great! i'd never eaten fish like that before. usually when you order fish you get this sterile piece of boneless meat in front of you, but with this, your fish had a face and certainly had bones if you didn't eat him properly.

photo 3: have you fed the fish?

that night, we drank beer in our hostel room, then in the chicken restaurant, then on the beach, and then at a bar. everyone was very cheerful...so as most cheerful people do when they go to the beach, we bought some fireworks! it is hard to light things at the beach though, due to the constant wind...but we managed somehow and played w/the fireworks for a while. i had mentioned to the group that i wanted to do nori bang/karaoke for my birthday but that it would be great if there were koreans w/us. it just so happens that some korean guys (obviously interested in the girls) started talking to us on the beach.we went out w/them to a bar and they bought us beer and then tagged along w/us to nori bang. one of them was named "mistayoo" and he told us his english nickname, which was forgettable and so i gave him a new nickname: Mr. U. i told him it made him sound like a gangster and he acted so incredibly happy. he said "me?! gangster!? thank you!!!"it was fun, but something was bothering briana. it seems that she had become uncomfortable when she saw the guys "choosing" which of the girls they were going after. she didn't want to say anything because she wanted me to have fun. how thoughtful, briana!

photo 4: fun w/fireworks

i really needed a break from work...i'm ready to be done w/this job...it's not that i hate the teaching aspect so much as i hate my work environment. the trip has made me grateful for having good friends here. so here's to padraig, briana, and rachel!
photo 5: padraig, briana, rachel, me and my sunburn.

iphones making music

2009-04-28T09:16:00.000-07:00

at the concert i went to in seoul on sunday, there was an older japanese guy who put on this performance. he was a professor somewhere and he didn't speak any english (as i discovered when i tried to talk to him after the show)...but he wrangled 20 iphones into this piece. he set them up and then had the audience participate and touch them while he was manipulating it from his computer somehow. it's pretty wonderful.

2009-04-26T07:32:00.001-07:00

i have many adventures to speak of and many photographs and videos that document said adventure...but i am tired. i was out all day and fell asleep on the subway and on the bus. so i will now spend the rest of the night writing letters and sleeping. tomorrow, i am hoping that i will post my pictures (i went to the lotus lantern festival which took place in a picturesque buddhist monastery). i also went to a crazy experimental music concert. it takes place once a month and it was pretty phenomenal. a japanese guy made music with 20 iphones...no, not itouches...iphones...20 of them...how much would it cost to have 20 iphones? 5k? it was really great and i recorded the majority of his performance. so tomorrow.

nothing more than a green mist

2009-04-21T16:04:00.000-07:00

so hey guys. having a bit of homesickness. i don't know why really. it's cold here, really cold...my clothes haven't dried yet from the wash. i'm on bus duty this week, so i have to wake up an hour earlier to get the kids. i still can't go to bed before midnight though. so i'm sleepy. all the time. my friends and i booked a few nights in busan for vacation. i don't really care if we do anything. i just don't want to work for a few days. i want to talk on the telephone. i want to like kimchi. i want to not be a stranger in a strange place. don't forget about me.

booking club

2009-04-20T06:00:00.000-07:00

so i went to the booking club...but it didn't work out so hot. to refresh your memories, a booking club is a place where guys go, buy a table, and then the hosts bring girls to your table so that you can hit it off...girls go to meet guys and get treated like pieces of meat and to get free drinks. padraig and i went, but we were with our friends briana and rachel.
they didn't understand that we weren't their boyfriends even though we told them over and over. we paid 40,000w for the table, a table that seats 4. there were four of us. since we were sitting with the girls, it made it look like we were doing what we were supposed to be doing, talking to girls, so they never got dragged away and we never had any girls brought to us. it was funny. we left eventually so that the girls could meet some guys and as soon as we left they took them to some. one was apparently very good looking, but his friend was passed out drunk. it was a crazy place to be. there were light shows, dj's, bands w/choreography, and a "sexy show" in which the male dancers ultimately went down to thongs. they cater to a female audience mainly...i think that 90% of the people in that place were women...we were told that we have to go w/out girls one time...but i can't foresee that happening. i can meet girls at the grocery store or something. i'll post more pictures of this event later, i took some video as well. in the end, padraig and i went to the bar to play pool and were quickly joined by rachel and briana who told us that they didn't find what they were looking for and decided that they would settle for second best.
and this picture is just of me and irene, the best little girl in the world.

new song

2009-04-19T06:13:00.000-07:00

a single bird - holding rabbits
i recorded this song last night. i need to add some alto recorder and some more guitars...maybe i should mix it some as well. i wrote this song last november and have only just now gotten around to recording it. oh well, hope you like it and that it doesn't make you want to shit yourself with despair.

some videos/update

2009-04-18T00:46:00.000-07:00

the first video is of dean/doy-un. everyone says "dean-gu" and it makes me think: "a dean-gu ate my baby."

irene is my favorite kid at school. she is tiny and sweet and it is easy to throw her in the air. all the other kids were giving me flowers at the park, but she gave me a rock.

it's been a rotten week. i don't really feel like writing about it...but my job got bad again...or correction, my bosses got bad again. i woke up this morning (saturday) to get my health check at the hospital for my alien registration card. my good boss took me out to lunch for some amazing chinese food. i ate some mysterious seafood creatures that i've never seen before. one of them was a full blown squid, but it was a baby one that you could fit in the palm of your hand. one bite and mr. squid was gone.

tonight, my friends brianna and rachel want to go to a "booking club" and they want me and padraig to come as well. a booking club is a place where people go to meet each other...i guess it's for shy people, or at least that's how it was presented to me by my boss...but the guys are seated at tables and then the waiters bring girls to your table so that you can talk to them. it's like a bar or something and you (the male) buy the drinks. so girls go there to meet guys and get free drinks. padraig and i are a bit dodgy about it, but supposedly they have been before and it's fun...but they're girls, they are the reason that the boys are there, etc. so it's under consideration. if i go, i'll definitely post pictures of me with a bunch of korean girls who can't speak english.

speaking kong-lish

2009-04-13T08:12:00.000-07:00

oh so let's see. i went to the korean gym i joined. it was the first day i could go and so i went with my friend padraig so he could show me about. my wrists still hurt from lifting the most minor objects, such as a laptop, some books, or a child...i must post pictures of the cutest little girl i've ever seen. her name is irene and she runs to me in the mornings and i get to carry her around for a bit. effing adorable. either way, i can only do the treadmill right now, which sucks because they don't seem to have an adjustable incline. also, everything's metric over here (and everywhere but america) so kilometers don't mean much to me, nor do kilos. i did find out my weight tonight at the gym though and i've lost 12 lbs since i've been here which means that i've lost 42 lbs since last summer. that sounds crazy. i don't feel like i look any different...maybe i've just lost 42 lbs of water weight...i think the fact that i live on the fourth floor of the school and have to walk flights of steps to do anything or the fact that i walk a few miles a day doesn't hurt anything...

i went to the cherry blossom festival on sunday. it was great. i saw a lot of...cherry blossoms! it was a fun day overall...went to yeouido for that, then went to itaewon to have a burger. it seems crazy i know, but there's NOWHERE you can get a burger except mcdonald's (which i have boycotted)...even outback steakhouse does not have burgers...it's not a great loss, all the beef is from australia, and is not as good as american...at least not to me. me and padraig have made a tradition of going to outback every 3 weeks or so. it's about as expensive as it is in the states, but that's still MUCH more expensive than everything else we could get. one of the waiters at outback said he had seen us at the bar we go to and was really nice. he gave us each 3 loaves of outback bread! he told us a few days later when we saw him at the bar that there were girls asking about us who thought we were cute because, get this, GIRLS IN KOREA SUPPOSEDLY GO TO OUTBACK (and other western restaurants, i imagine) TO PICK UP WESTERN GUYS. i thought that it was hilarious. for one thing, i don't think much of myself in terms of the looks department, but certainly i think most of the asian girls are terribly attractive...so maybe the combination of my insecurities and their insecurities will make for a great time in korea.

i'm getting my alien registration card soon, which means i can get a cell phone and video store membership. homeplus has dvd sales all the time...this week i bought akira kurosawa's "seven samurai," queen's "we will rock you," and a john lennon tribute concert for 2,800w each, or, a little less than 2$ each. i found out after buying "seven samurai" that the dvd's work on my laptop. i'm excited about "seven samurai" because i've never seen it all the way through.

well, i don't have time to post pictures right now...it's 12:30am, but i will tomorrow. have a good day.

friends of mine

2009-04-11T04:30:00.001-07:00

congratulations ben and jessica!

two of my old friends are getting married today. they've dated for like 42 years or something and so it's a good thing. i can only hope that ben listens to my advice...i can only hope...

elton john and sad memories.

2009-04-10T13:10:00.000-07:00

i played poker tonight w/the koreans again. i paid 20,000w and won 40,000w! apparently, i could've cashed out way earlier...if i would've known this before 4:30 in the morning, i would've done so when i was around 150,000w at 1:30am.=( but it was fine...i made enough to pay for my whole night out at the cost of being terribly anti-social towards the people i had met up with.

me and padraig ate at a "barbecue" place. "barbecue" in korea means that you cook something over coals and has nothing to do w/any type of sauce. tonight though, we ventured to a new one and they didn't have a picture menu so we just let the waitress pick our food...it was some sort of pork dish (of course) and THERE WERE BONES IN IT...little tiny bones. tongue is one thing, but bones are a different thing altogether...especially tiny little bones that crunch when you accidentally bite them...it became clear to us that we didn't understand something about this dish...i bit into a bone and it crunched and i gagged so hard that i nearly vomited.

on the way home from the bar, i walked because i don't even try to get cab rides anymore because they won't give them to me anyway...so it's about a 20-30 minute walk. i took the long way home and got here around 5am. i didn't see another person on the street at all. it's got a population bigger than atlanta and no one was out. it felt like a post-apocalyptic zombie movie and freaked me out. this place is bitterly alone.

i'm going to record some this weekend and then i'm going to the cherry blossom festival. the cherry blossoms only bloom for about 10 days a year and then it's gone. the trees are all gorgeous and have light pink and white flowers all over them. so i will put up a lot of pictures soon hopefully.

guam pictures

2009-04-05T04:19:00.000-07:00

first picture: our hotel was a bit far from everything and it was a 10$ round trip cab ride. so i hung out at the hotel on friday night. i walked to the gas station and bought 2 of the nicest beers they had (rolling rock) and read a book on the balcony. it was one of my favorite recent memories.
picture 2: this is me standing in front of our island. i lied when i said i didn't meet hurley or time travel. am i or am i not wearing the perfect beach attire? it wasn't really planned. i was walking and it was like "oh, there's the beach"

picture 3: my obligatory postcard picture.
picture 4: another picture of the island. i had never seen the ocean be blue before. if you go to florida or wherever, the ocean is brown, but here it's a perfect blue. people were taking little canoes or swimming to the island because the water is especially shallow right here.

what else...i finished "god bless you mr. rosewater" a while ago. i thought the ending was phenomenal. vonnegut really knows how to pull it together sometimes. i felt so thrilled that he ended it the way he did. i started "shalimar the clown" by rushdie yesterday. it's great as usual. rushdie has yet to disappoint me, for which i am grateful. i have postcards to mail, so send me your addresses.

josh, get your plane right on time...

2009-04-04T06:03:00.000-07:00

my co-worker vanished. no one in the hotel has seen her. she's not in her room. our flight leaves in a few hours and we have to be at the airport in advance. should i just leave her? this is open for discussion. in spite of really not wanting to hear her talk anymore, i think it would be bad for me to go back without her.

in guam

2009-04-02T19:35:00.000-07:00

i arrived in guam last night at 1:40am. i was pulled aside by customs and questioned for about 1/2 an hour. the whole time i was thinking "don't look at my visa application...i don't want to go home"...you see, doing a visa run is illegal. you have to get it before you leave, but i didn't have that kind of time.

i was wearing a sweater and a jacket in seoul, but when i got here it was 27 degrees celsius or 80 degrees farenheit...and that was at 2am...right now, it's 90 degrees. i'm sweating like crazy... it's been so cold in korea. i was ill prepared. so i slept 4 hours and went to the consul this morning and put in all my work and they didn't even interview me. so i was very happy. i should pick up my papers this afternoon and then i have all day and tomorrow off to do whatever...but i do have a 3:20am flight back to korea on sunday morning.

i also got a haircut about 45 minutes ago. i thought "i need to get a haircut where they speak english" and it's a funny way things go, but i just walked into a salon and they gave me a korean woman who didn't really speak english...so it goes...but i'm pleased with it and i won't have to worry about it for a while, so i'm happy. what am i going to do in guam? suggestions?

bruce springsteen is the only boss i listen to

2009-04-01T08:49:00.000-07:00

had some drama at work today. i'm not really going to go into it...but a third party spilled the beans about the drama that occurred on friday night. so we had conferences w/our bosses all day about how it wasn't okay to date co-workers...and they asked us all sorts of details which were completely inappropriate. so i'm leaving for guam in about 16 hours...i am freaking out about being rejected for a visa. i don't have much to say...

but congrats to shane on getting married (that is, if she actually did and it wasn't an april fools facebook joke).

going to guam

2009-03-31T08:46:00.000-07:00

the cute girl in the "hardcore seoul" video i posted a few weeks ago added me as a friend on myspace...i should deny her, right?

so i guess things were much better at work and i hope they continue to stay that way. i don't think it's going to be any better anywhere else to be quite honest. i don't care about the work load, but i just want my employers to be civil...either way, i guess i'm going to guam this week. i'm leaving thursday night and am staying there until sunday. i looked up the temperature and it seems to perpetually be room temperature outside...the only bad thing is that they have these terrifying snakes that have no natural predators on the island...oh, and they're "slightly" venemous...for me though, there's no "slightly" about it...they're either poisonous as fuck or not, and either way, it's not the poison that scares me about snakes...it's the idea that there is a legless creature that can move much faster than myself and IT BITES YOU with FANGS. even indiana jones was afraid of snakes and he was a man's man, so i don't want to hear anything about it.

the only thing about the trip i'm bummed about is that i have to go w/one of my co-teachers. this girl is a self-proclaimed church girl who is dating/sleeping with a married man. he's a soldier and his wife is back home. i've made my disapproval known. initially, my disapproval took on the kindest tone possible (eh, you probably shouldn't do that) and slowly it's evolved into (look, you're kind of a bad person)...it turned that way because she started talking to me about her sex life (and i am not in any way interested in her or her sex life) and she sort of glories in the wrongness of it all. so perhaps my approach is a bit off...some people have shared with me upon occasion that i can be...hmmm...abrasive? yes, that's exactly the word. but i don't know...me and stick in the mud have to spend the weekend in guam together. i'm taking "brothers karamazov" and saying that i'm busy all weekend. go to the beach, get sunburned, bitten by some "slightly" venemous snakes, and call it a day.

shopping: the clothes here are almost always incredibly nice looking (at least on koreans) and so i went to look at clothes. a pair of levis was about 70$ and a sweater i liked was about 100$!!! where is the south korean thrift store??? luckily homeplus, the reportedly ethical version of walmart in korea, has some relatively cheap stuff...now i just need to get some of my girl friends to take me shopping...you don't understand, being here makes me feel like such a slob. the way that people dress is...so thought out. i imagine people buying outfits and putting it all the same hanger and never separating the items. i wear t-shirts and jeans and my too-big-for-me hoodie w/the frayed sleeves. they wear nice clothes all the time...i can't compete with that! how is hardcore seoul girl going to feel if i can't keep up with the times!? what will others think!?

p.s. showers are not a pleasure here because they only last for 5 minutes because i have a very small heating tank. baths are not an option and it's not that i took many, but i miss the option of the bath.

uh-oh

2009-03-30T16:15:00.000-07:00

so i got into yesterday with one of my bosses. luckily, it was not the big boss. it's a long drawn out story and i don't have that much time to tell it...but basically, i told my main boss that we keep getting talks about how we need to be more respectful of our co-workers (even though we walk on pins and needles trying to please them) but that basically we don't get the same treatment. our korean bosses can be very rude to us, but of course if we were to act in kind towards them then it would not fly at all. so i just told her that unless boss#2 quits being condescending, sarcastic, and all around unpleasant in the workplace that i'm going to quit. hopefully, that will make something change.

MEH!

2009-03-29T16:28:00.000-07:00

oh my goodness, just pray that my arms get better. it's been more than a week and i have these awful bruises, which i don't really care about one way or the other...but i have terrible pain in both arms. it's difficult to do things like opening doors or unscrewing the cap off of something. i've been taking medicine for joint aches, but like the doctor said: it's not in my bones. so my blood vessels or whatever have been hurting still and it's really starting to bother me because even the simplest task hurts like hell. alright, there's my vent before i go to work.

please leave me the bones

2009-03-28T00:09:00.000-07:00

so we had a birthday party at school yesterday. the first video is of the kids playing their new favorite game. someone shouts the name of a teacher and the children consume them until someone suggests they move on to another teacher. the second video is of me being told to sing in front of the kids. we didn't really know what to sing and so i tried to remember how to sing "if you're happy and you know it" while fending off that monstrous little boy, ryan.

last night me and some people went to a bar. there was drama. person a likes person b, person b likes person c, person a sees person b kissing person c, etc. i left and tried to get a cab, but again, no cab driver would give me a ride...so i walked home around 2 am again only to find that person b was already back and that they had brought person c home with them. i should point out here that i am not person a, b, or c. it was just a very awkward night...i guess that's what i get for going to a bar...

i have a skype account now! this means that i can call you from my computer. i tried it out today and talked to a few of you...so i'll call more people when the time is better. right now, it's about 3:30am in georgia...which sucks because it's 4:30pm here...but to make unlimited calls for a month is only about 3$ for me, so i'm rather pleased...oh, my phone is dead as well and i don't have a charger and so i can't get your numbers unless you send them to me. if you'd like for me to give you a call, please email your number to me at holding.rabbits@gmail.com feel free to include other numbers for people i might want to talk to. i think i have a number as well, but i don't know it. in other news, i'm going to guam next thursday to get a work visa. oh, i got a letter in the mail from courtney burton. she always makes the best cards and her handwriting looks like a font or something because it's so perfect. either way, it made my day. so you should all write me letters. hope everyone's well.

UPDATE: i figured out my whole online number thing. if i call you from skype, the number 678-500-9326 will show up and that's the number you can call me at as well. i have to be at my computer to answer, but i have a number now. so put it in your phones! this way you can screen your calls and decide whether or not to answer me!

sorry about that...

2009-03-26T08:10:00.000-07:00

well, i had to briefly close down the blog because a relative found it...i don't know how...either way, it's been an eventful week. a bad week, but an eventful one.

1) the other night, i went out to eat with patraig...we thought we'd go local instead of taking the bus into the main part of town. we just randomly picked something off of the menu and when it came out he said "oh..." and i said "what?" and he let me know that we had just ordered a meal of pig intestine and tongue. a really big plate of it. so i tried it. the tongue was actually pretty good. it tasted like turkey, but a bit more chewy...before i tried the intestine, i asked him how bad it was on a scale from 1-10 because he had had it before. he said a 7...i tried it, it was only a 4 though. i think the thought of it was the most alarming thing...i only ate 3 pieces, he ate 1...leaving us with about.....oh, a whole f***ing plate of pig instestines. so we got it to go and gave it to one of our american co-teachers who is a notorious stick in the mud and refuses to try any of the food. we told her it was sausage. we asked her how it was the next day and she said she liked it and had eaten about half of it. then we told her what it was. it was pretty great.

2) went to the hospital three times because of my arm. my bruise got really bad. the second visit, they mentioned something about an mri...luckily, i didn't need one and they said i'll be fine...

3) my job is horrible. i left a comment in a student's book saying they were very good and not very disruptive...the truth is that the kid is the most disruptive student i have, but we're not allowed to write anything negative, because we wouldn't want to upset the parents by letting them know that their children were bad at school. the mom called, completely read it as me saying that her kid is always very disruptive (which he is) and is very mad. i asked if she knew english...the answer was "not really" but my boss still believes her and thinks i wrote something horrible. so i told my boss "well look, i'm the one who speaks english fluently and she admittedly doesn't...so excuse me if this sounds like a misunderstanding" and she then told all the other teachers what i did and is expecting to find fault in whatever i wrote in order to push more classes on me (for which i expect overtime compensation for, since i'm working 45 hours a week as it is).

i don't know. it's just been stressful here. the days go by much more quickly now and that's nice. i'm kind of easing into it...and for the most part, the bosses have laid off me...it was just hard because i only had one arm and couldn't really be normal this week. it's really cold and windy! i don't get to walk or ride my bike as much...i'm getting a paid skype account soon so i'll be able to call people on their cell phones and stuff. ok, i'm going now. hope everyone is well.

i hurt myself today

2009-03-22T06:05:00.000-07:00

i went to itaewon today. i tripped and fell flat on my face, literally. i'm scraped up a little...but mostly i landed on my left elbow. i couldn't move it. so i went to the hospital. nothing's broken, i just really hurt my muscles. i have some pain pills for a few days and have to go back to the hospital tomorrow. it was only 150$ for the xrays, medicine, splint, and pain shot. amazing.

you've got to be kind

2009-03-21T00:15:00.000-07:00

went on a field trip yesterday to plant some flowers. there were rabbits!!! there were also some naughty children. one of the korean teachers named isaac is a really big target of the children. they love to jump on him and make him throw them in the air etc. so we decided to sic the kids on him and he turned it around on us, the other teachers...so it was kind of like tag except that it was everyone chasing one person instead of the other way around. i had also made the mistake of staying out until 2am the night before. so by the end of the trip, i was exhausted. notice the bags on the childrens' feet so that their shoes wouldn't get muddy. at some point while i was running down a hill i hit a really big patch of thick mud and lost my shoe completely. so it's time to go buy new shoes, for my vans are covered in mud and seem irreparably damaged.

so, as a warning, i will tell you that the following is going to be gross and will have some crude language in it. not for shock value, but because i'm an adult and call shit what it is: shit...not poo, or excrement, or leavings, etc.

so all of the teachers got a talk yesterday about how we can't flush out toilet paper down the toilet when we take shits. my question was "well, what do we do with it?" and the answer was "put it in the bin." apparently, us flushing our toilet paper caused shit to come out of the sinks downstairs and there are major plumbing problems now. so for the next year, i have to wipe my ass and put the toilet paper not in the toilet where it was intended to go, but in a tiny trash can, so that i can make my bathroom smell like shit all the time! what a wonderful place to shower...

now the language should resume to relative safety. i've been watching shows i've downloaded. so now i'm caught up with flight of the conchords. i started watching "eastbound and down" last night and it's so awesome. i love it. i've also got 4 seasons of "it's always sunny in philadelphia" downloaded, which from what i've seen and heard is a pretty good show.

i walked to town this morning to go buy some stuff. i bought a large wooden alto recorder from the music shop and i thought they were in keys, but apparently it's chromatic. so i'm pretty happy to have bought it. i then ventured over to the english bookstore. they mostly have learning materials for children, but they have a small section of popular novels as well as classics. i bought "the assassination of jesse james by the coward robert ford." i remember seeing the movie and thinking i needed to read the book, so i got that. on the way to the bookstore, i ran into one of my korea friends who was out w/one of her friends. they went to the bookstore with me and then we went out to lunch for kimchi tuna soup. it was...not so great, but my friend's friend was easily the prettiest girl i've seen in korea, and that's saying a lot since pretty much every girl is drop dead gorgeous (she was also chinese, not korean). it's not to say i even developed a fantasy crush on her, but it's like the leonard cohen thing about how even if you're not with a beautiful girl, her warmth is shared with everyone, etc.

after meeting up w/them, i went to a very large tree. this tree to be exact:

i sat and read for a while. i'm halfway through "God bless you, mr rosewater." by vonnegut. on the last page of chapter 7 i had a bit of a revelation. i was thinking "i'm about to read something and i know what i'm about to read." and lo and behold, i did read it. the thing i had read many times over had never had a context. i didn't know where it was from...but i sat beneath the tree of all seeds and read it for the first time on my own. it filled my eyes with tears and i closed the book. i walked home listening to joanna newsom. in a lot of ways, i came here to get away from things halfway around the world, but it turns out that i brought just enough stuff in my suitcase...it's not that i'm in any way trying to forget those things, why would i want to forget the best things? i don't, it's just that they've forgotten me.

pictures of where i live

2009-03-18T07:29:00.000-07:00

the above picture is titled "the yellow dust cometh." it was out pretty bad the other night but not as bad as it's going to get supposedly. it looked foggy, but under the unforgiving glare of my camera's flash, you can see the tiny granules of dirt floating in the air. i'll be buying some surgical masks tomorrow...no joke.

the above picture from left to right: kai, catharine, patraig, me. i met catharine my second day here and we bumped into her while we were going out to eat. patraig and kai assumed that she was my friend and invited her along...the truth is that she offered to be my friend and never followed through and this was the first time i've seen her since. they had quite a nice laugh at the perceived awkwardness of the situation when i explained this while she was in the bathroom.
this is me in front of a typical building. shops are on multiple floors and you have to walk through scary stairwells to discover what's in said building. this one has a club on the top floor for older business men. ladies get free drinks. the men try getting the women liquored up so that they can cop a feel basically. at least, that's how kai explained it to me.
the above picture is part of the main drag taken from a bridge. it goes on and on and looks like this. this is the section of town with the ex-pat bar. there are also a good number of restaurants. in suwon, at least 65% of businesses are restaurants (not exaggerating) and most of them just serve deep fried pork (bleh). there are sushi places and american places as well, but we americans have it very nice back home in terms of the diverse range of cuisine we have to choose from. this section of town is about 10 minutes by bike from me and so i go about every day. i need to buy a helmet though...i feel stupid wearing one and having to carry it around because no one else does...it's just that i had about 2 close calls tonight with cars not seeing me and me having to rapidly accelerate in order to avoid being hit.

they can be cute sometimes

2009-03-17T15:51:00.000-07:00

here are some videos of my classes. the first is my smart class. they actually behave...and the love flash cards...the second video is my homeroom class during lunch. they still don't understand that i don't speak korean...so they ask me the same question over and over and get to the point of almost crying...there's not a whole lot of substance to these videos, just a glimpse at my day to day...hope you enjoy? i'll post again later.

guitar

2009-03-15T05:25:00.000-07:00

new guitar!!! i played a few and liked this one the best, and it was one of the cheapest ones. the guy also gave me a free capo, strings, picks, and a gig bag. yay for guitar!

p.s. don't mind the unshowered picture of me.

sick.

2009-03-14T08:31:00.001-07:00

hey, i'm sick. it started on thursday and has gotten progressively worse. i need to see a doctor on monday. let's see...friday, i got off work early due to said sickness and i slept for a long time. then me and patraig took one of our korean co-teachers out to eat and for drinks. she's the only korean teacher we work with who speaks english and she's our age. she gave us her number last week and said she was going out w/people and that we should call her so we could meet up...we ended up not calling her and i brought it up in the middle of the week and she said that she had waited on us to call her and didn't go out...so we felt pretty bad. she's going to give me private korean lessons soonish (or at least she claims) in exchange for english writing/spelling lessons. we kept asking her to stay out w/us and she kept telling us she needed to go home...but she stayed out and ultimately around 3 or so she revealed that she had to go because she had another job on the weekends and had to be there at 11. why she didn't mention this until 3 is a mystery to me. we probably would not have let her drink as much as she did. while we were sitting down i looked over and saw some korean guys playing poker and i had her ask if they were playing texas hold 'em and was it for money? and so yes, and i was invited to play. so i did. i put in my 20,000w and was doing pretty well for a while...but ultimately, i hit the point at which i became too reckless and lost. but it was ok because i had left the people i came with and needed to get back to them.

today i went to dongdaemun w/patraig (pictured above) it was not as good as central seoul, but it was fun all the same. dongdaemun is a big shopping district and so there are a lot of giant skyscraper super malls but i found the random junk shops on the side streets much more interesting. if you got away from the main shopping area, there was basically a huge open air flee market that went around for miles. there were odd electronics, record players, watches, speakers, clothes, etc. there were so many things i wanted to get, but i could never send it all home.it was soooo cold though. the wind was pretty bad. there was ice anywhere there was shade...it certainly didn't help how i was feeling...but the great thing today was that the subway all the sudden made sense to me! i got a map and figured out how to do it! i know it's not a big deal, but i've never had subway access and so it's really intimidating initially. someone just told me that they've lived here for 10 months and still don't know how the bus system works though...oh well, time to sleep. will write people back tomorrow. i'm tired right now.

but as it is, i'll dream of her tonight...

2009-03-11T05:04:00.000-07:00

so the parents came and it was just as bad as i thought it would be. we had to go down to an assembly and stand in front of everyone and introduce ourselves with a microphone...they no doubt did not understand a word of what i said. i think maybe a couple of them speak a little english...but from what i'm told, no fluent speakers. they came into the class for 15 minutes and they were looooong minutes. i had the kids for about 2 hours before and we basically practiced those 15 minutes over and over. "sing the fish song!" and "what are these pictures of?" and "do you know how to shake hands, wave, smile, nod, etc?" and "oh, that didn't take up as much time as i thought it would, let's make an origami fox!" then we went to the bank and i opened an account but we didn't have time for me to make a deposit, so i have a card and account w/no money..."oh, it's easy," says the native korean speaker "just go in and deposit money some time." as if it were the most natural thing for me to walk into a foreign bank and do this w/out speaking a word of korean.

i realized that i haven't really listened to music for about a week. i charged my ipod last night and took a walk...it was great. i realized a few things: 1)the beatles are definitely the best band, not the kinks and 2) "help!" is a terribly underrated album! the song "i need you" alone is a forgotten gem and the song "i've just seen a face" is a classic for a reason...oh it's so good...on the way back from the megastore, where i failed to figure out which cleaning item was laundry detergent, i listened to "abbey road" and sang on the way home. surprisingly, i didn't get that many looks, but i don't have a car anymore and so i have to sing along to music at some point. i called it an early night tonight...i think i'm just going to have a beer and watch flight of the conchords and maybe some colbert report...i found that i can watch colbert online over here, though hulu and most other online viewing outlets remain locked in to the US. i need to buy a guitar soon. i can't stand not being able to play. i bought myself a nifty melodica or as they call it "air horn." it has about 2 1/2 octaves w/real keys and a big tube so you can blow into it with it sitting on your lap. it was about 18$ and well spent it was. hope everyone is well.

all i wanna do is...BICYCLE!

2009-03-10T05:33:00.000-07:00

hello again. let's see...new news. i guess last night i did some serious shopping and bought a lamp. that was a big purchase...it makes everything in my room more bearable. i can read at home now and i don't have to keep going out to find a place that's nice to read in. the kids have been horrible and the principals want us to plan lessons like we're at a private school but want us to discipline like we're at a playschool. the fact that they can't just come out and say that it's a business and they don't care if the kids learn or not really bothers me. it would save everyone so much trouble...i have a kid who falls asleep in 50% of our classes and so in her daily little book that i write comments in for the parents,i said it...but i'm apparently not supposed to write negative things about how children are brats in the school their parents are paying potentially half their income a month for. if i had a kid i was spending half my income on, i'd be sure they were learning...but i supposedly should only write good things, even if the child is the devil incarnate...and tomorrow we have the parents coming in to watch a class...i can only hope that the kids are more well behaved in the presence of their parents...

i'm listening to noel hart's album right now and i think it's pretty amazing. he did it all in a month. i should probably apply myself too and maybe i'd make something worth listening to as well. i guess buying a guitar is in order...but i shouldn't spend too much money right now because i bought a bike today. i don't quite understand the concept of the gears because things are in korean. so there's something i turn on the left and something i turn on the right...so yeah...it probably means something...but i bought it at the homeplus and it was 99,000 won, so about 66$! it's my early birthday present to myself. so i got it and took all the plastic stuff off and rode it home. it only took about 10 minutes instead of 30...so it's a really great thing to have because the town i live in is only 121 square km. so i could basically ride from one end of the town and back. so i'm excited about my newfound mobility. tomorrow evening is exploration time. i'm quite shocked that i rode as well as i did seeing as how i haven't really ridden one in a while. they're even letting me keep it in the basement so i don't have to worry about it getting stolen at night. huzzah! i also splurged tonight and didn't eat korean food. i know, i know. i went and got a pepperoni pizza from a place down the block called "i love pizza." i was skeptical certainly...it was about 4$ for a freshly made medium size pizza and so i went for it. surprisingly, it was pretty great. not much to speak of in terms of sauce...there wasn't really any...and the pepperonis didn't look red, they looked more like ham, but they tasted like pepperonis...it hit the spot and not the wallet. there's a papa john's, but the prices are astronomical. like 22$ for a pepperoni pizza! oh well, i cheated. maybe it's okay if i have american food once a week. the lunches at school are just devolving rapidly...even the other guy who's interested in trying the food can't stand it anymore. cold soup is the real killer. they have some pretty phenomenal salad in korea that uses yogurt as the dressing and i can't believe they don't do this in america. i eat salad almost every meal now because of this! oh! i almost forgot!!! funniest thing in the world...so one of the teachers hired with me is what i would call a stereotypical american...i mean, this is what people must think we all are...but i found out from patraig that he apparently BROUGHT MEAT FROM AMERICA IN HIS LUGGAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!! oh my goodness, i thought i could've just died right then. it makes me hate him a little...but it's really funny to me...you don't understand...i'm a big guy, but he has me by at least 100lbs...and he deep freezed meat and kept it in a cooler during his 18 hour flight because i guess he thought they only eat dogs and tiger penises over here or something...

ok, well, i'm going to go now. i have downloaded flight of the conchords which demands to be watched. write me back, jerks.

but i'm a lucky guy...

2009-03-09T17:07:00.000-07:00

surprise, i have all the parents coming to observe a class tomorrow. i was told yesterday to plan something i can do with all of them...the parents are such a big deal. they come and watch the cctv feeds of their kids in class...i hope they know what monsters they are. oh well. i have to go teach now. i'm hoping that they will have something to eat for lunch other than rice, radish, mystery soup, and kimchi. ok, bye bye.

hardcore seoul

2009-03-08T01:49:00.000-08:00

so i went to seoul yesterday with a guy from florida i met at the bar. said guy is straight edge/vegan and likes hardcore music for some reason...so i left my apartment and met up with him at 1pm to go to gangnam and then to central seoul. gangnam is the "manhattan of seoul." i can see that...we took a bus and he helped me figure out how to get an electronic bus card that i load money on and swipe so i don't have to have correct change every time. from there we took a series of subways, which i cannot keep straight, and arrived in hongde (spelling?). we walked through a nifty part of town with lots of touristy types. apparently there are about 6 universities in this place and so there are nothing but college kids. we went to a vegan restaurant. they had some weird looping video called "supreme master tv" and they kept showing this woman who owns the restaurants and they call her "supreme master." it's all about being vegan...but i didn't get the whole "supreme master" thing...it was pretty good food. i'm putting pictures up of it. my favorite was in the menu where it says "non-alcoholic bear." i would certainly hate to see an alcoholic bear, what a sad and angry picture.

after that we headed to a hardcore show to meet his friends. there were other westerners i met, but i most likely won't see them again, apparently that's how it goes anyway. i explained to them that i didn't like hardcore very much and they all seemed very disappointed. there were a lot of people at the show, i'd say about 100 or more in a little basement venue, total fire hazard. mostly koreans, but about 20 westerners and many of the koreans spoke some english and would strike up conversation from time to time. here's a video of one of the bands:

we stayed late and freaked out about the buses...you see, while gangnam might be the "manhattan of seoul" everything shuts down at 11. so we got on the last subway bus at 5 till 11 and rode that for about 20 minutes. everyone has little portable televisions or nintendo ds's...and people spit on the floor of the subway car...we ran to our bus stop, my pants constantly threatening to fall down (i enlisted the aid of a belt today), and there was a long line...so we waited and got on, but we had to stand for 45 minutes. it was rough because we'd been on our feet all day. i got home around 12:30 and tried to get a cab, but no one would give me a ride. i was really tired and just wanted to be home, and i had money...but 4 cabs refused to take me. so i walked 2 miles home...someone told me today that a lot of times cabbies will refuse rides to westerners...so that was no fun, but the day was pretty great all in all. i got home and watched lost...you can't watch it here on the abc website...so i freaked out and finally found lost-tv.info...man, that episode was goofy...it was great, i'm glad...but yeah, it was crazy ridiculous...i just don't want lost to pull a twin peaks and turn into a romance near the end of its course...what else...today i saw the watchmen. i loved it, though i thought the score music was a bit cheesy...the ambient chord and the soulful guitar stuff...maybe the sex scene was a bit too long and graphic, but overall i was blown away and thought the actors did really great jobs. the theater was great too. big giant seats. it was about 4.30$ to see a movie and the craziest thing was that you had to pick your seats in advance...there is assigned seating...that was weird, but i chose wisely. i did want there to be a giant squid though...sigh...then i ate at a corner shop, i had some udon and fried rice...so i've been a vegetarian all weekend. aren't you proud of me?

more americans

2009-03-06T18:24:00.001-08:00

i met a few americans last night at an ex-pat bar. one of them is this shy straight edge guy from florida who goes to the bar with his friends to be social. tonight, he's taking me to seoul to go see a hardcore show. so that should be good. fancy beer is expensive here. a single duvel cost about 11,000w, so about 6.50$.

last night, me and some people went to the food court at the homeplus and bought food...they have these models to show you what you're going to get, and the one i wanted had beef or chicken and so i copied down the number and the hangul for "chicken" and they lady looked at me strangely. so when i got my food, i realized that it was chicken or beef, it was chicken and beef. so i got the following: fried rice omelette with chicken, fried rice omelette with beef, two pork cutlets, two bowls of soup, one salad, bowl of radishes, kimchi, and french fries. it was only 6$. the rice omelettes were pretty spectacular. i was a bit embarrassed, in no way did i need that much food, so my co teachers helped me eat some and we wasted a good bit. i took the bus and a cab for the first time. i don't know why, but my tolerance is incredibly low now and it doesn't take much for me to have had "too much." last night was one of those cases. so it was a desperate situation, we left the bar around 3am and someone told us that buses close down at midnight...so we were planning on walking 30 minutes home in the cold while drunk. luckily we found the taxi and it was only 2$ for the ride.

drunk korean people like to all put their arms around each other and stumble around. it's cute.

computer charge achieved!

2009-03-05T05:42:00.000-08:00

so i have a lot to discuss. first off, i love south korea. secondly, my job is horrible. i teach 4-7 year olds. in a month there will be older kids, but not yet...i have currently been "making lesson plans" for the last 3 hours, but i have really been surfing the internet because lesson plans go out the window as soon as you realize that your real job is baby-sitting. 4 year olds barely know their own language, much less a foreign ones. there's some dodgy stuff about how much i actually work as well. i'm getting paid to teach 30 hours a week and after 30, i get overtime...so they make sure that you never "teach" more than 6 classes a day, 5 days a week...but that doesn't mean i shouldn't be here at 9am. you see, i have to be there to greet the kids off the bus...then at 9:30, i have breakfast with them. this is usually some rice cakes or a muffin or a porridge, etc. from 10-11 i teach, 11-12 i teach, and then i have my "lunch break" which consists of me eating with and supervising the children in my classroom. 12:40-1:40 i have a class and then from 1:40-2:40. till about 3 i'm helping the kids get ready for the bus. from then till 6:30 i'm making lesson plans. but they don't know what i'm saying still and it's pretty discouraging. you know? it's sort of devistating also because i'm constantly under surveillance. if it's not one of the korean teachers watching me from out the window, then it's the parents or my bosses watching me on the CCTV which is in every classroom!!! that makes me so nervous, and so i'm always going because someone is always watching and by 12 i just want to collapse. my voice is almost gone. i never lose my voice...i guess that's because i've never had to shout this much. initially, i was taken aside a few times and told that i was being too nice to the children and that they wouldn't respect me. so i've been getting progressively meaner and i think i understand what jackie told me about discipline. here's a picture of when my kids decided to hide under the table with a pink gorilla:

regardless, this is the boring stuff. the real reason i'm here is not to teach children, it is to live in another country (and to make money). so let's hear about that:

the city i live in is called Suwon. i love it here. it's about a 10 or 15 minute cab ride to Seoul. i'm afraid to use the taxi right now, so i walk everywhere. the food is pretty amazing so far. i don't like the two americans who showed up with me, but i do like another teacher who works here named patraig. he's from scotland and on the second night he came and asked if i wanted to have a beer. ultimately, we drank about 3 each and talked for a few hours. the only beer they have available that i like is hoegaarden and it's really expensive. a four pack is about 6$. they have asahi as well and that's cheap. a pack of dunhill cigarettes cost less than 2$ and over there in the states, the same pack runs around 5.50$ or 6$.

westerners don't talk to you if they see you. but i don't talk to them either, so they're probably blogging about how a red headed bearded man saw them and didn't acknowledge them...i did meet some westerners tonight in a bout of desperation. everything is recycled. so you have different colored bags for different things...but i couldn't find any trash bags all week. so i asked a girl from oregon and she told me and helped me with some other things. i told her it was my first week and she said "oh! do you need friends?" so we swapped emails and hopefully i will have made my second friend in korea! because of the recycling thing, there are no public trashcans on the sidewalks anywhere. if you make waste, you either throw it on the ground or take it home. most people throw it on the ground.

koreans are funny so far. today, one of the principals asked me to shave my beard because she thought it would make me more handsome. i told her that she had seen a picture of me before i was hired and that i turned down another job that wanted me to shave (lie). i agreed to keep it close, but it's a cultural thing and she couldn't just say she didn't like it or that koreans didn't like it or whatever. korean men all look smarter and wiser than i will ever be. they wear glasses and smoke in their business suits. the young men are all incredibly hip for the most part, at least by what we would consider "hip." but it's the normal thing over here, so they probably have some crazy "hip" that i don't even know about. the korean women are incredibly gorgeous. even the ugly ones are still hot in some way. the problem is that all of the girls are soooo pretty, but no older women are. i can't figure this out still...but surely, these old women used to be young and these young women will be old...the thing i've said is that korean girls are beautiful and then at the age of 35, they get a man's haircut so that they will no longer have to endure the shame of leering western eyes.

ah, communication barrier. it's tough. people keep talking to you even though you obviously can't speak korean. i'm going to try learning soon. but last night, i went out with patraig for chicken and we ordered cokes. she even repeated what we said: "coca cola." and so it was really funny when we were brought beer. i specifically said to patraig that i wanted coke because i don't want to drink beer all the time. oh well.

i have more to say, but this is a long post already. i bought one of the "brick" transformers and it seems to be working right now. it was about 30,000 won (20$)...you take off 3 zeros and then take 2/3 of that and that's how many dollars it is...at least, that's how i've understood it. alright, i'm going to go, but please tell me if there are subjects i should write on specifically. i will put up more pictures at some point. i'm just tired right now and need to clean my room up a bit more. goodnight...oh, and send me emails: holding.rabbits@gmail.com

2009-03-04T04:12:00.000-08:00

i may not be able to talk long. my computer is running out of battery and i have blown up THREE converters. they blow up for no reason. they should all technically work...maybe not the first one i bought, but anyway...i'm afraid it will destroy my computer. the plugs here are 220 or 240 or something...either way, america is 110v, so i have to get down converters. no problem, i buy them...my computer plug says 110-250v and so i was told all i need was a converter, so i got the right one. this was confirmed by many a person...so now i'm almost out of battery life and i have the light as dim as it will go on the screen...that leaves me with 2.5 hours of life left. please help me figure this out since i won't be able to look it up very much and i don't even have an address right now...so i can't order anything to be sent. so i might not post for a while until i can figure this stuff out, just let me know what i should if you could be so kind.

currently reading: palm sunday by kurt vonnegut, it's a collection of essays, interviews, and speeches and is, as always, very insightful. i have only 20 books with me and so perhaps when these are done you can send me more??? hopefully. thanks.

simon, i will eventually write you guys. i just can't charge the computer right now and i'm freaking out about it. it's a problem.

lee, i am 14 hours ahead of you.

pete, yes, teaching is sort of crazy, especially when the kids barely know their own language (some of them are but 3 years old). i will check out m. ward when i have my charging problem fixed.

rachel, had 2 more electrocutions, making that a trilogy of electrocutions. nope, sorry, no one can take that phrase, that's the name of my first korea album, i've just decided it. so yes,there's my first self fulfilling prophecy.

wesley, i replied in the comments of last post

jackie, you have no doubt gotten my frantic emails.

my ducklings

2009-03-01T23:20:00.000-08:00

so much has happened in a single day and i have such a small amount of time to write. i don't currently have the internet and so i'm at my job. i left the airport on saturday morning at 8:45am and arrived in seoul at 5:45pm on sunday and the craziest thing was that there was no night. it was daylight the whole trip. it wasn't a literal day but still...it was about 20 hours of daylight. i got here and really wanted to sleep but i guess the school decided i needed to eat even though i insisted that i didn't (i really didn't). so we went to this crazy meal which i should've taken a picture of. it was massive. i tried so many bizarre things. kimchi, however, is one of the grosser things i've ever eaten. so many spicy foods. i also ate an entire salad for the first time. isn't that crazy? i'm a changed man. metal chopsticks are harder to use than wooden ones. let's see...what else?

my apartment is phenomenal. i love it. there are HEATED FLOORS! did you hear that america? heated floors. think about that. the shower is a bizarre free floating contraption and it just makes everything wet...but that's ok apparently. i have a laundry room that i'm going to record in. i also go in there to open my window and smoke. my biggest fear is that i will forget the code to my apartment and room. i don't have any keys. i just punch in numbers and it does it. the other two teachers who joined are idiots...sorry, i know that's negative...but one curses in from of the kids...one refuses to eat korean food and was talking about how she heard there was a papa john's. i woke up this morning and walked around for a few hours. i bought grape juice. i found out that there are about 3 convenience stores and 12 restaurants within a square block of me. i have pictures but i haven't loaded any on the new computer because i don't have the proper converters. i found this out when i received a powerful electric jolt from my hair dryer which coincided with a loud pop and some black resin on my fingers. it scared the life out of me.

the kids are adorable, but they do not know any english. i teach kids who are 5 years old. they are really cute...and they warmed up to me eventually, but one cried. i never found out why; she was removed. i was told i would leave around lunch time. it's now about 4:30pm and i don't know why i'm still here. i found out that i basically work 12 hour days. there is stuff that i have to do which i have no time for when i am here. so that's for home. i need to continue settling in and unpacking. i need to get some of those converters...i may have to get some sent...the one i bought was FOR koreans leaving the country, not for americans coming in. =( i was also told i live 15 minutes by foot from school...i must live at least 2 or 3 miles away. it took about 10 minutes to drive here. i am excited though. i don't know what i'm going to do for dinner. i think i will fast for the evening and just go to bed.

i miss you all and while i'm excited, this was a horrible mistake.=) well, not really, but i am going to regret not being there. ok, i need to go so that i will have battery left over the next few days. i can only make my screen so dim. alright, i'll post pictures soon. bye bye.

5:30 am, on leaving, an open letter

2009-02-28T02:31:00.000-08:00

to those of you who came to my going away party, thank you very much. i will miss you all. if you didn't come don't worry; i will miss you too. i am so sad that i am leaving so quickly. for those of you who don't know, i didn't find out that i was actually going to be going to south korea until about 30 hours ago. i really wish i would've had more time to see people. however, i am also incredibly excited that i'm leaving and doing something. the job market is not so hot right now, but i decided that i would have to go for more than just money. that's not really a good excuse to do anything. i like having money, but i don't particularly value it...i am leaving for a lot of reasons. i think one reason is to develop a new sense of independence that has been lost to me through various circumstances. i think i need to get away from this place so i don't keep falling into the same traps over and over. i also want to read. i am taking a wealth of books with me. not as many as i would've liked, but still enough to keep me busy for quite some time.

i am flying out in 3 hours. i'll be in seattle for a time and then straight to seoul. i'm working with elementary kids in a town called suwan, about 20km south of seoul. i am excited to have a place of my own and in some regards i'm excited about knowing nothing of the place i'll be living in. i love you all incredibly and as eager as i am to leave, i still regret it in some ways because it's so unreal that i've had to leave this quickly without saying goodbye to so many of you. many of you know that i've had my share of depression and what not...that being said, i can only hope that you will provide me with emails and letters. i will post my mailing address as soon as i know it. i haven't had any sleep. i've been running on empty all day and i've been terribly frazzled trying to get everything together...buying a computer, getting shots, getting clothes, the party, etc. i didn't even get to pack until a few moments ago (i'm sure i've forgotten something)...but what i am not forgetting is friends i've had who i hope will still be there in a year and my great love for all of you.

josh