Check My Industriousness Out

I want to take a moment to apologize for not having any pictures recently. I have not been taking many at all. My life has fallen into the average category and all the things that may be deemed "weird" to you 외국인 back home has just become blasé for me. Everyday occurrence.

Now, I'd like to retract that apology because I posted two days in a row. Yeeaah, boyee.

Let's talk about buses for a minute. This week I have had the honor and privilege of riding the bus two times a day for my work commute and I have something to say regarding it. If you are standing on the bus in Korea, expect a core body work out. Beats pilates any day. Every bus driver seems to get an ecstatic high from peeling out whenever accelerating and stopping on a dime when braking. Depending on how you swing it, you could tone your arm muscles by holding on to the bar above your head, or you could shift your focus to your abs to stop you from careening through the front windshield every time he stops.

Now, let's move on to the crazy co-teacher I mentioned yesterday. Today, she again thought it would be more important to be absent for half the day and then show up only to draw elaborate English words on the board. She erased pertinent phrases I had written on the board to do so. I had to erase her ludicrous words to use any part of the board during my lesson. What a crack pot. She put her guitar by my desk in an ever-so-suggestive way in the afternoon, but I slipped out before she had the chance to formally ask me to teach her how to play. Now if I can just get through tomorrow without her whipping it out on me, I am golden.

In other news, I went to the eye doctor after school today. Got the ol' eye exam going. The woman who administered it was just tickled pink every time I reacted to what she was doing. For those of you who get eye exams, you will painstakingly remember the part where they blow the air in your eye. She couldn't even contain herself when I reacted, as one does normally, to this procedure. She lost it. Maybe it's because I'm just so durned handsome. I'm gonna go with that.

Anyway, I am all set as far as eyewear for vacation and the next six months in Korea. Too happy. When I should be saving my pennies for vacation, I've gone off the deep end with shopping. On Monday, I bought a pair of Birkenstocks (yeah, I'm turning into that guy) and a pair of Nike kicks. Guess how much. For both, a grand total of $115. I think the Nikes alone would cost that back home and the Birkenstocks would not be far behind. I couldn't resist. Then, yesterday I went shopping at E-Mart(uh) and bought some pants, a couple shirts, and some oh-so-comfy socks. Woe is me. I have fallen in love with material possessions. I'd imagine when I come home, you guys will be like, "What the hell are you wearing?" Well, I'll have you know that I am the trendiest 외국인 on the block here. Maybe I just love the 80s fashion too much.

Also, as you can see, I have taken the approach of sprinkling some Korean into my posts without an English guide to help you. This is a "build a man a fire, he's warm for a night. Set a man on fire, he's warm for the rest of his life" type of lesson. If you want to know what I'm saying, plug those babies into Google translate and I bet you'll remember it a lot easier than if I spoon feed you. You ain' no bebe.

Or, you could just guess. Hmm, 외국인 must mean...obese rabbit. Aaaaaannnndddd Korean has no plurals, so you'll just have to guess at whether I'm saying a singular or plural statement. Good luck, and God speed.

Does Bleach Make Your Hair Fall Out?

Alright, so sue me...again. Again I failed to update my blog in a more timely manner than I would expect from myself, thus I assume that everyone else expects the same punctuality with my posts as I do. As such, you are all scheming to find ways to fly over here and burn me at the stake. Or, you are waiting silently to extract your revenge upon my return to your area. Either way, the future does not look bright for Steven James Danger Holcomb.

As I sit here with my pants unzipped as though I just finished the grandest Thanksgiving dinner man has ever known, I am contemplating how to tell you what I plan to disclose throughout the rest of the post. Don't let those butterflies get the better of you, it's really quite dull in comparison to whatever you're thinking. Let's begin where I last left you...on Friday.

I poorly chose Serpico to watch in the afternoon. The reason I say this is not because it was a bad movie (on the contrary, it was quite good), but because there was, again, boobies and an attempted rape scene. This is not a good thing to be watching on the big screen TV in an elementary school English classroom. Se la vie.

Friday night I experienced an experience I will probably not forget in the near future. I had my feet eaten by fish. You're imagining Moby Dick swallowing my legs just below the knee caps but, as with most things I leave you anticipating for a moment, this dulls in comparison greatly. You go into a "Dr. Fish" clinic where you pay 만원 and take off your shoes (and socks, silly). You sit at the edge of a small pool and look down into a pool of the smallest little carnivorous sharks you've ever seen. Minno size. Anchovy size. You think, hey, this won't be so bad. Then you nonchalantly stick your feet in. Immediately they swarm around your unsuspecting feet. Tens of them. Maybe even twenties. At first a little nibble. Hey, that tickles! Then the full onslaught. They go between your toes, the bottom of your feet, your ankles, your shins, your heels, that weird little callused part on my big toes. It tickles to the point where you can't have a normal conversation without giggling. You then realize that your feet are in there for the next half hour. Rain or shine. Fortunately, it gets easier. Either they lose interest in your cleaner feet or your feet become desensitized to little monsters of the deep blue chomping on them. "Why would you do this?" you ask. I'm glad you asked. After you get out and put your shoes back on, you're walking on silk. You could have nails in your socks (which I wouldn't recommend) and you'd feel like at least thirty bucks. I'm kind of exaggerating, but it's still kinda cool.

Saturday was inconsequential compared to Friday and Sunday, so it just gets an honorable mention. Good job, Saturday. I didn't have to go to school when you came around. I like you for that.

Sunday after a trip to Costco and a panoply of samples, we finally got to see Inception, much to my mother's disapproval. We had tried on four separate occasions to see it and it was either sold out or we doubted our ability to sit through it without peeing or vomiting and opted not to instead. But, finally it happened. Everyone had mentioned how utterly incredible the film was, that it either changed their lives or gave them the most perplexing thoughts/dreams on the following nights. Both of these appealed to me. I can't say that either scenario happened after watching it, but I can say that I was thoroughly entertained. I won't give any plot away, but I suddenly had the realization that I was in utter awe of this movie when I was watching a zero gravity fist fight take place in a hotel hallway. It reminded me of the first time I saw The Matrix. Now, let's not go into that movie, but it was the same type of epic movie. I can only hope they don't run a franchise train and stomp it into the ground. Inception 2: The Last Electric Boogaloo.

Currently it's Wednesday, and I have yet to update you on my summer camp goings on this week. This week I am at another elementary school teaching strange children I've never seen before. Based on the prerequisites for this camp (various lesson planning and seemingly detailed instructions), I, for some reason, assumed that this would be a big deal. Something I'd never experienced before. Something grand. On Monday morning I was proven gleefully wrong. It's not to say that I am disappointed or unhappy, but I just had to laugh when it revealed itself as everything else I've experienced in Korea. They try, they really do. Just like my school tried. But there are always some problems.

In the age of technology when every English teacher I know uses the computer for their lessons, I was told during the lesson that there was no computer in my classroom. I guess it's my fault for assuming that I'd have a computer. The result was me awkwardly singing for the students all class. They liked it, I suppose. I am a regular Frank Sinatra, after all.

The days have flown by, and slowly one of my temporary coteachers has revealed herself to be a complete whack job. There is no other way to describe her except bat shit. This could be exemplified by an anecdote from today. She was my coteacher for the "art" class I led. In said art class, I had the students make costumes for a role play using a scene from Toy Story. This meant we had to make Woody and Buzz Lightyear costumes. It also meant that I would be running around frantically helping students cut fabric, draw lines, staple things and paste things together. All while I'm doing this, she is either gone video recording the other native teacher's class (and leaving a non certified teacher alone in a classroom is illegal in Korea), or she was doing her own "art" project on the blackboard. She thought it would be more important to write in really fancy letters "Art Class" on the board for twenty minutes than to help me with the children. She even stopped me as I was running from group to group to ask me, "What would the students call a teacher in America?" She then proceeded to finish her art project by changing my name on the board from Steven to Mr. Holcomb.

This afternoon she categorized her desk. I also hear that she's quite the hoarder. Her car is full of random crap. She wants me to teach her to play the guitar...in one afternoon. She was inexplicably gone for two hours today and the entire day yesterday. I want to say I saw her picking up plastic bags on the side of the road after school. How do people like this keep a job?

Anyway, I have two more days of actual work (some with crazy lady), then I sit at a desk for a week and then it's VACATION!! My heart skips a beat whenever I think about it. Sorry for the long post and the obscure title. I tried washing some mold out of some white clothing today using a sink full of water and bleach with little success. I still did better than my washing machine would have. So booyah! Catch you on the flip side.

Mr. Lee Strikes Back

I was at school yesterday when my co-teacher comes up to me and says, "your landlord called and he wants to fix your wall," and I say, "ok," and go about my business for the rest of the day, which consisted of watching a movie about food and teaching them how to make peanut butter, jelly, and banana sandwiches, which they really quite enjoyed after emphasizing how they thought it would be really gross based on the ingredients, and then we watched various groups of students perform that one goat play where the three goats try to cross a bridge and outsmart a troll who is trying to eat them and they really did a good job, as I was super impressed and showed it by clapping vigorously for each one and during the awards ceremony that followed.

We celebrated the end of our summer camp by having lunner at Outback Steak House. As soon as we passed through those doors, I felt like I left Korea and stepped back into America. That is to say, until we sat down and they started speaking in rapid Korean and the menu was in Korean and everyone else in the restaurant was Korean. At that moment I had a fit of laughter over the globalization of the world. An Australian themed American restaurant flourishing in South Korea. Three continents represented there. Not too shabby. If only an Englishman and a South African were with us.

So, I got home and stepped inside my apartuh, half forgetting that my landlord had called earlier. Much to my surprise and amazement, the mold problem had been fixed. He refinished the ceiling, put 70s style fake wood paneling around the base of the wall, fixed a light, and...washed my sheets!? Yes, Mr. Lee washed my sheets for me. It's like this guy was sent by the grace of God in a super powered rocket ship straight from heaven to treat me like a foreign 외국인 son or something. I tried to thank him and tell him he didn't need to do that, but he just winked and shushed me. I thought that would be the end of it, but then he starts yelling in Korean about how I, too, can prevent mold from happening if I just follow his easy, incoherent Korean steps to a better standard of life. Out of his five minute speech, I understood when he said "school." I then started piecing the puzzle together and realized he wants me to open windows when I go to school every day. Perhaps also not sweat so much. Very hard to accomplish when there's 100% humidity every single day.

So, the weekend is upon me...in three hours. I spent the morning watching Cinema Paradiso on the big screen alone in my classroom. It was good, except for the awkward parts where people were making the sex with each other. I was watching this in an elementary school with surround sound, so all the glorious sounds of lovemaking echoed through the paper thin walls for anyone to hear. A little awkward. I had a peanut butter, jelly, and banana sandwich from leftover ingredients for lunch, and am currently on the fence about whether I should watch Serpico, Toy Story 3, or read. I suppose I could do work. Hahahahahahahhahahahahahaha!

Party of 1

I am in the midst of one of the best solitudinous nights I've had in a while. I willfully stayed in tonight. Nothing particularly exciting happened. I went to Homeplus to pick up some ingredients for a new recipe I am planning on trying in the next couple of days. I was going to try it tonight, but I spotted some fresh watermelon for a decent price (which is rare to find in Korea. 너무 비싸요!) and decided to pair it with some cheese and wine for a pauper-who-still-lives-beyond-his-means type of dinner. It was decidedly a good decision, as now I feel in rare good form despite my perpetual fatigue. I may even finish The Girl Who Played With Fire tonight. Maybe not though.

This week began rather strangely for me in a disappointing way, but it has certainly changed for the better. Although I'm busier than usual, I am also happier than on a normal work week. At one point, I whimsically diagnosed myself as a manic depressive currently going through a peak in the roller coaster of that terrible disease. I don't think my peaks and valleys are extreme enough to be properly diagnosed as such, but someetimes it feels that way. Nights when I'll have the most bizarre dreams and can't sleep for more than three hours at a time and waking up to a crippling feeling of lethargy to being happier than I have been in years and wanting to do everything. Currently, I'm feeling quite good. I read through some of my old writings of over a year ago with the intent to pick it back up. I've begun formulating what to do with that pesky blank canvas gathering dust next to my TV. I'm reading again, I'm playing guitar until my fingers are about to fall off, I'm working out an exercise strategy I'd like to pick up after vacation (let's be honest, if I start now, I'll stop in three weeks when I go on vacation and won't pick it back up), and with my rekindled interest in cooking, I'm considering eating better. Yes, this is all just planning at this point, but it's closer than I've been to making good for myself in months. Perhaps it's time to come off the five month bender.

This time, there isn't even a girl involved. It seems with me, I usually need a reason to better myself. Doing it for myself is not good enough. Maybe it's the hallucinagetic humidity talking. Maybe it's being tired of the lonely status quo. As usual, I'll let you know how it goes in the coming months. Or, you can decipher how it's going from my blog updates.

The positive highlight of this week has been summer camp. I have been dreading it for the past couple of weeks, but now that it is upon me, I've been having fun with it. The past two days have been considerably more fun than an average work week. Smaller classes, more fun topics, and more laughs in general. Yesterday, I did a music lesson based around "Octopus's Garden" by the Beatles. The last 20 minutes of each class consisted of the kids taking a line of lyrics each and drawing a picture for it. Last night, I compiled them all using Windows Movie Maker and created a fun little video out of it. I showed it to them today, much to their delight and excitement. I would show it to you, but blogger is pretty pathetic when it comes to uploading videos (I left it on overnight to upload and it just screwed up mid snore), and I can't upload to YouTube because there is the real name verification law in Korea that is at odds with the YouTube website. Of course. So, I'll show it to you maybe never instead. Thank the internet.

Today, I did another music lesson around "Yellow" by Coldplay and, although it is a much more polarizing song than "Octopus's Garden," we still had fun with it. The last 15 minutes of class we did an interpretive dance competition. The kids either loved it or hated it, as you could guess. Most of them are at that age where they are too awkwardly shy to perform in front of their peers like that, but a few of them really gave it to us. Unfortunately, I don't have video of it, but my co-teacher for the class does. So, in time, hopefully I can get a copy and send it your way. It will be a huge let down for you outsiders, but it was a blast for me being in the classroom and laughing at/with them.

Tomorrow is the closing day of camp, so my role is somewhat changed. First we will be showing Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs followed by a "cooking" class led by yours truly. The reason I put cooking in quotations is because there will be no cooking, yet the Koreans insist upon calling it that. We will listen to "Apples and Bananas" by Raffi and make peanut butter/jelly/banana sandwiches. The closing will be awards for students who got the most stickers and a play overseen by one of the other teachers involving a troll and a bridge and a blue screen (hopefully. Just insightful speculation).

Friday I have "off," which amounts to still having to come to school, alone, and sitting at my desk for 8 hours. Next week, I have English camp at another school, which should prove to be interesting. I have yet to fully plan for those, but Monday should be a breeze, teaching a recycled lesson from this week and an "airport" lesson that is being written for me. Then, Monday afternoon, I can prepare the materials for Tuesday and so on. It'll be easier than I'm making it out to be, I'm sure. On top of which, I get paid extra for going to another school.

Whee! Vacation is 17 days away!

100th Blog Post Extravaganza!

Yes, folks. We've done it. We did it together, and don't you forget it. You helped me get there and that was almost as much work as me toiling over a keyboard trying to form coherent words. We made it to 100 posts. Now, as a celebration I want you to look back at the top 100 posts of this blog...in order of worst to best. That means you will probably just have to start reading backwards, as they seem to get worse as time goes on.

To commemorate my fifth month in Korea (Jesus, time flies, eh? [Canadian shout out!]) I went to Boryeong for, as I overheard one Army dude aptly put it, "Mudfest Oh-Ten!" When I chuckled he said, "What? It is." He won that one and I tucked tail and ran to the nearest GS25 for a refill.

Anyway, to go back to some semblance of chronology, my trip began early on Saturday morning as we all loaded a bus and had a few hours of painful, headache inducing noraebus. Yes, they put karaoke on the bus. I had the luck of sitting next to the heaviest abuser, who insisted on singing the most cliche noraebang/karaoke bar classics. I didn't hear one "singer" who actually sang on key the whole time, which only made Journey and Bon Jovi sound worse. I guess that's why they're in Korea and not Ronnie James Dio.
We arrived at about 1 PM after an absurd amount of toilet breaks for the drunken frat boys aboard and claimed our spot on the floor of our pension. No time was wasted before we headed down to the rainy beach area and got grub and drunk, followed by a lot of standing and watching and more drinking before finally deciding to get properly muddy. This picture has been posted without proper permission from either of the other people I am hugging. I consider their hug as permission. Yeah, it is about as bad as it looks. What was probably once a peaceful Korean traditional health mud festival has degenerated into mud wrestling, army guys throwing mud at each other in between parked cars, overflowing alcoholic beverages and generally trashing an entire town. I can't decide whether the highlight of the weekend was the guy who passed out on a picnic table, woke up at 9 AM with a dripping ear infection and began drinking and smoking immediately, or if it was the troupe of African American girls who insisted on getting their fried chicken very loudly because they loved it so much. Sometimes stereotypes are true!
Sunday, we were blessed with actually sunny weather for a semi-lazy half day at the beach. Took a couple of dips into the Yellow Sea. Helped it get more yellow with my urine. Yeah, I'm that guy, but I think I'm more of the rule as opposed to the exception.

Anyway, we headed back and ended the weekend to begin...THE FIRST WEEK OF SUMMER CAMPS!!!!

Speaking of, I'd like to thank Joel for posting this to his Facebook for me to post here. It's too funny not to. None of you back home will quite relate to this, but it's pretty funny and hits too close for me.



Tee hee. Hitler.

Only In Dreams...

So, I was on a cruise. A small cruise which just happened to comprise of everyone who plays a prominent role in my life currently. The decor reminded me of a tiny Titanic that was built in a 1930s Bombay shipyard. My friends and I chatted, sipping on mixed drinks at an overly tall mahogany bar when one of them came up to me and said something along the lines of, "Here's a fishing pole."

I headed to the moon washed deck and cast the line, nary a thought about what the outcome would be. Suddenly, I got a strong jerk. A strong, constant jerk that would not relent. It was so strong, in fact, that it had me sliding on the deck, trying to find something to lever myself on. as I fought her, my foe leaped out of the sea and into the moonlight for a split second. "Jesus, that thing must be 900 lbs!" Someone exclaimed. I was determined at that point. I slowly started cranking in the line, click by click. After only a few counts, she wouldn't budge again. I struggled for what seems like an eternity through newly formed stormy weather before someone threw in the towel for me, flicking out a pocket knife. The line snapped with too much ease and the pole struck me in the face. I stood devastated for a while before I woke up.

I'm sure some of you will catch on the hulking, premature symbolism that my brain was trying to communicate in my dream last night. Needless to say, I woke up somewhat depressed this morning, much earlier than my alarm clock. When the alarm went off I did not want to venture out of the minimal comfort of my bed anyway. Ah, life...at least it's Thursday. And my life ain't so bad.

Let's see. What's new? I was to have zero classes yesterday, but instead I got four. I have everything somewhat planned for my camps by now, but I could definitely do more. This afternoon I opted to look at a website with the likes of the following...

...instead of working on things I probably should have. It's a pretty funny site if you have an hour to kill. pbfcomics.com. In other news, tomorrow is Friday and the clock is ticking down to summer vacation. 23 days and counting! Whee!

I Must Be Stopped at Any Cost

Ok, this has gotten out of control. The time has come for themed posts. Since my weekend was fairly unremarkable unless your favorite thing to read about is alcohol and degenerates, I'm going to forgo even mentioning it and move on to a different subject.

Hmm...different subject. Ok, let's talk about this for a second:

This is an origami dragon. It's really good. Some people are really good at origami. My students, however, are not. This may be attributed to the fact that they are not anything above 11 years old. Some of them, I'm convinced, are poor at origami because they are satan's spawn. It's the only explanation possible. I think they used to use origami as a test for witches in the infancy of the American colonial period.

I think we've just about exhausted any conversation capable of being had about origami. New subject. Um...

Ah, here we go. We can always fall back on good old North Korea...Satellite image of the Korean peninsula at night. So, top left of South Korea is the Seoul/Incheon metropolitan area. Bottom right on the coast is Busan, and right above it in that big glob that looks like it belongs on Mikhail Gorbachev's head is Daegu. Notice how bustling North Korea is. At least it'll be easy to spot Pyeongyang when we're nuking it. I'm just kidding. Despite many individuals in America's military being overly eager to bring down the North Korean regime once and for all through violence, I don't think it would be a good idea. I think the North Koreans can do themselves in just fine. Just look at the map, they're already down to one dot of life. They're in the third stage of flashing and spiralling out of control in the corner.

The big question I have is this: when North Korea is in its death throes, will it launch a kamikaze style attack on South Korea so that it can more easily be annexed into China? It's such a tricky situation. I doubt China would let North Korea fall into the hands of South Korea (basically, the U.S.), so it will most likely trigger a second Korean war. I could see, with the way sluggish governments are run by capitalism these days, that it would be us sending forces over to Korea and the Chinese sending forces over there to fight our forces, but we wouldn't be at war with China. No, no. That would ruin our economy and the top 1%'s portfolio. Meh, what am I talking about? I am just as sure that will happen as giant robots invading from space. Nobody knows what the future holds.

Ugh, ok, change of topic. This doesn't seem to be working out in my favor. Let's go for a subject that can't possibly get heavy and serious:

Aww, I'm not even going there. Next:

Ah, here we go. What's with public toilets in Korea (Seinfeld voice)? If you're lucky enough to get a throne, you still have to estimate how much toilet paper you're going to use before you begin your procedure. Sometimes, you have to pay for the TP out of a little dispenser. Oh, and don't even wish for two-ply. One ply or nothin, baby.

Fun With Konglish and a Concerning Development

Instead of doing what I should be doing, which is writing lesson plans and emailing friends (and telling you about last weekend which will inevitably go down as forgotten since I'm obviously not going to tackle that goal), I've decided that it's more important to share with you highlights from my recently gained list of Konglish words and their translations. This is the kind of thing that cracks me up when I read it. I'm sitting there for a hot minute trying to decipher some Korean sign and it turns out to be an English(esque) word. A lot of times, it doesn't mean what you'd think it meant, or it's a bastardization of an English word. It's kind of like it's own Asian version of ebonics. The following is a direct translation of the Hangeul, and keep in mind that these are real live Korean words we're dealing with here, so don't pull the pin out unless you plan on throwing it at someone evil. So, here we go:

더치페이-Dutchee pay - You can guess what this is. Is your date ugly and the toilet isn't situated coveniently by the exit? Just say "Dutchee pay" and you'll save a little cash by going Dutch.

파마-Pama - Perms are real popular in Korea. Men, women, dogs, you name it. I made a half-assed promise to my co-teacher that I'd get one before my year was up. We'll see.

글라머-Glamour - This is a full bodied, beautiful woman. It's more like "Guhlamuh" which sounds akin to the way Koreans pronounce "grammar." So, if you just call a beautiful woman Grammar, she'll be flattered. Hmm, I might actually try that.

스킨쉽-skinship - PDA or public displays of affection. I'm not even really sure how this one works. I guess your skin has a friendship?

헬스-health -a gym or a healthclub. I've seen this one in action. Well, I've seen many of these in action, but I just saw it last night so it seems like it's more fresh.

원사이드러브-One side love -a crush or infatuation. I'm pretty sure you can have a mutual crush, but I guess a lot of the times, you don't know how the other party feels.

샤프-sharp -One of my students was quizzing me on classroom Korean and she held up a mechanical pencil. Stupidly, I said 연필 (yeonpil, or pencil) and she laughed at me. Straight up. I should have known they called it a "sharp."

컨닝-cunning -When a student is cheating on a test, you can call him (usually a him) out by saying "cunning!" In Amurrica, the student would probably be more flattered than anything and continue to cheat. "You're so cunning!" I like to falsely think that I can be cunning.

리모콘- remo-con -remote control. Same goes for air conditioning: air-con.

츄리닝-training -a track suit. Apparently, simply wearing the track suit is a perfectly acceptable way to get into shape or get better at a sport.

아이쇼핑-eye shopping -window shopping. We've run into this one before on World Class Flaneur. On a previous episode, Mr. Lee took me eye shopping. I didn't realize it was actually a Korean word until recently.

Now I need to talk to you about a serious problem in Daegu. Put your game face on. Hard hitting stuff. Front page news. Last week, a 50 year old public school foreign teacher got caught molesting children. We don't need to go into how despicable that is in itself. On that we can all agree. The dude touched elementary school children, and then quickly "resigned" and fled to Japan before the authorities could catch him. Why they would even mention his resignation baffles me. Did they let him resign? There's more holes in this than in the JFK assassination. What I want to talk to you about is the parallels between this and the 9/11 aftermath.
I am not here to make light of the tragedy that happend on 9/11. I'm talking about the reaction to it. The news broke on Monday and the guy fled on Sunday. Tuesday, I learned about it and everyone was freaking out. The DMOE sent all Native teachers a letter, which was well worded and attempting to stay positive. My school is getting CCTVs installed. Teachers have to wear name badges to identify themselves. Doors will be locked. Teachers will take turns patrolling school halls. Police have started appearing on my morning walk to school. There will be papers to sign, DMOE checks to have, and a lecture to be given on codes of conduct.

I understand their reaction. Nobody wants their children to be unsafe. But, they do criminal background checks for a reason, and there really is no way of anticipating how each teacher will act once in Korea. It's the nature of the beast. Unfortunately, it happens. However, what I am going through is a trickle of an inconvenience compared to what those poor children went through. I can't imagine how they feel. It's really terrible that someone would even think about that. Anyway, sorry to begin the post on a light note and end it in a downer, but hey, I'm no writer for the Korea Herald. Keep it real, y'all. It's weekend time.

Happy Birthday, America

Happy 234th birthday, America. Have a beer. You deserve one. You've been through a lot of rough patches lately, and today's the day to kick off your shoes and rest them on your brand new ottoman while 400 million of your children get drunk and light things on fire. I know I did my duty as an American abroad.

Yeah, I know I've lost all credibility when I'm late congratulating America on her own birthday. I was even so ashamed that I changed the date of the post back to the 4th like I'm a good American or something. How did my life end up like this!? I used to be so prudent, blogging more days out of the month than not. I didn't even break double digits in June. What's wrong with me?

Like America and her downward spiral of self destruction, I too feel a cathartic life change is warranted pretty damn soon. Not something as big as moving to a different country (psh, that's just crazy talk), but something in the way of lifestyle. I feel that perhaps my Korean learned hedonism has put me on the fast track to 1) an early death and/or 2) a future as Jeff Lebowski. The first step is becoming less lazy.

Laziness has plagued me for years. Ever since, probably, puberty. Late middle school is when I stopped doing homework so much, when I stopped playing baseball, etc. My laziness became a way of life. Even my decision of where to go to college was based on laziness. I didn't pay my taxes on time out of pure laziness. I'll get excited about something new for a little while and do it a lot, but then the laziness starts taking hold. If you made a chart of how many blog posts I've made since the inception of World Class Flaneur, you can see how this general trend plays itself out. Somebody kick me in the ass so I at least clean my apartment periodically and exercise. Two biggest problems for me. Uncleanliness and lack of exercise. I'm a real lady killer with that combination.

I'll try and update (separately, as to up my post count) about my weekend later.