Let's see. I've been having strange dreams again as of late. They seem to come in clusters. Dreams tend to reflect reality, and tumultuous reality creates tumultuous dreams. The perplexing thing is...what is so tumultuous about my life? It's the same as it has been for two years, right? It's certainly less tumultuous than this currency, right? Oh see the 200?
Well, yes and no. It's true that I am now used to the ways of reality in Korea (mostly, more on that later). Seeing old men peeing in public doesn't phase me anymore. But, I have changed apartments (more on that later, too) and a majority of my friends have left Daegu, if not Korea, thus congealing my solitude a little. I still have friends here, of course. And life goes on.
Hey, 200th blog post!
In other news, lately I feel like this is a representation of my life:
In that the trend at the end will continue. The blue line will skyrocket (or plummet, depending) when I settle down and have little tots running around and the red line will slowly wither down to zero because I have no time for my immature wants. It's funny when you kind of reach a point where sometimes it's better forward planning to stay in on a weekend night than to go hard and crazy all over downtown. Partially event driven, I admit, but still a reality (and still nothing compared to the "after settling down" phase, which is why the graph only goes up to 40%).
Ah, speaking of reality, I mentioned being accustomed to the reality of Korea. That is both true and false. As an outsider, I think one can never truly be accustomed to the reality of this culture. There is the romantic viewpoint (the rose colored glasses, if you will) that gnaws at our perception constantly. Korea is full of such opportunity and the people are so pleasant and innocent and it's the ideal place to live, like the United States in the 1950s. And on the flip side, the "negative Nancy" constantly nagging at us about how everything in this country sucks. God, Korean people are so backward and the weather is too damn cold and it's so noisy all the time. So what you get is a reality based on two overused cliches. As an example, people seem friendlier when the weather is sunny. Is that because you feel more content when the weather is nice, or is it because, in general, everyone is more friendly when the sun is shining on them and they are being enriched with essential vitamins (and harmful UV rays)?
Something irked me today, in fact. I know I've touched on this subject before, and it's something that I hope will change in the near future, but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting. I had two classes of third grade today. Being my third year, the 3rd graders are the only students I have that are new to me. They are adorable little farts, unlike last year's batch of 3rd graders. In the first class, in the front row, sits a pleasant, but mentally challenged child. This particular child is well behaved, but rather clueless as to what is happening around him, and today had a solid trail of snot on his upper lip. His presence has created an environment where his classmates guide him and wipe the snot from his lip, thus teaching them nurturing skills at an early age out of necessity. That's the optimistic view. Now, let's move on to my second class of third graders I had today. I am not even kidding, the second class has the twin brother of the child in the first class and he is also mentally challenged. Now, I'm not even going to touch on their parents' assumed frustrations. The twin brother, by contrast, is disruptive. He spent the entire class walking around with a roll of toilet paper like it was an airplane, not listening to his teachers. In this example, the other students completely ignore him, teaching them that if you are different, you are forgotten.
Both examples are bad, in my opinion. In neither case is either child receiving the care or specialized education that he needs. Both also disrupt the classroom. Even if the other students ignore the child, it's like having a TV on in the background while studying. There seems to be this cultural idea that everyone should be the same, and if you're not, everyone tries to pretend that you are. And life moves on without you. I don't agree with this and it's difficult to come to terms with "that's the way it is." To me, it's kind of messed up, but then again, their ideal must be, "what's the point? If we either fill them with a false sense of hope or teach them by ignoring them as society will mostly do later, they'll always be the same." To some extent, that's true, but it's awfully defeatist. Ah, there's negative Nancy assuming what she doesn't know. I can no more easily enter the mind of a child than enter the mind of a child with autism. I'm just an observing third party, and an observing third party from a very different culture.
Ah, optimism! Uh...my new apartment! I'll cover that...
...in the next post.
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