gone with the mean, in with the clean

so yeah, here's before and after the massacre.

amazing what some clippers will do to make you feel like a new person. anyway, it's been over a week since i last posted. nothing significant has happened. though the breeze has picked up at night, the days have been pretty exceptional. today there wasn't a cloud in the sky so the sun was quite bright. i took advantage of it and played soccer with some of the students at kwang hee for a few minutes in the afternoon. i've been down to the little gym they have here at the co-op a few times but other than that, skooling 8-year old kids in soccer is the only exercise i've been getting. that, and walking everywhere. oh, and badminton once with ben. that's all. i feel alright though and may have even lost a couple pounds but that's mostly because i'm not eating as much as i did back home. don't worry mom, i won't wither away.

been out a few times here and there for drinks and dinner with friends, shopped around the malls in the area, found a few new places to eat, went to another baseball game last week, and am saving some money. other than that, things are good.

upcoming events and such:

fc seoul is playing their final game of the regular season tomorrow so a few of us are going to go to that. it's at the world cup stadium which is still fairly new and the crowds are a lot bigger than the baseball games we've been going to so i'm really looking forward to it.

ozomatli plays a show for like 1,000 won ($1) on thursday. not sure what the promotion is there but i may go. who knows.

starsailor are playing here in about a month. not a huge fan but the concerts here are few and far between. i think i read that beyonce and ciara play the same night within walking distance. whatever.

my teacher buddy caitlin told me yesterday that the shins are rumoured to be playing a show here soon too. i checked out their website and they're definitely playing shows in japan so maybe they'll end up here too. that's pretty exciting and i'll definitely make it to that one.

"male!!!"

a little over a week ago i received a few unexpected gifts from a grade 6 student. yes, i teach in korea as well. sometimes.

during art class, the students were to make little plasticine korean masks and then glue them on to a piece of construction paper. some of them were amazing but i strayed from the rest and made a little stewie griffin. they don't have family guy on tv here and that's probably for the best since only a small minority would understand the type of humour as well as the cultural references. so yeah, i gave this student, whose english name is austin (it's taken from a bad teen romantic comedy that i can't recall at this point) a little stewie griffin in the form of plasticine. two days later, i was more than surprised to have him give me four different mini gifts. one was a little bun in a plastic package. cool, that's nice of him. second was a short little letter that i'll translate in two seconds. third, a four-page question and answer about himself that i've attached above. and fourth, a pretty decent drawing of stewie and brian the dog.

so if you can't read the letter in the picture, here is an accurate transcript of what austin wrote to me:

From: Austin
To: Teacher Brent

Dear Teacher Brent.
Hello! Teacher Brent ~
I'm Austin., frist of all...
Thank you for your present!
I'm happy when you give it to me.
Um, sooth to say I think you are scar
ed. Because, when we met last week
you was cynical.
So, I think that. But and now.
I don't think so. When art class,
you help our team. that time, you seem
very nice! Sooth to say I'd like to
get with you.
So!!! I show.
about my profile
you.

aww. if that's not the coolest thing ever, i don't know what is. he also showed me that he downloaded an episode of family guy on to his cellphone. that scared me because it's a bit of a risque show compared to what they've got on tv around here, especially for a kid in grade six. did i mention he's the student body president? maybe he's just using me to get ahead but my gut tells me no since he wants to get with me and all.

holidays are here again

today is chuseok. it's a national holiday for koreans, which means it's also a one-day (or for some two) work week. it's tuesday now and i've been off from skool since friday, duh. since then i've been busy for parts of the day and not so busy for other parts.

here's a breakdown of what's been going on:

friday: at skool we were to have a meeting with one of the heads of the english language program. she was a couple hours late and this is not of character here. for us though, it's just not done. you don't leave someone hanging when it comes to business back home. but here, it's commonplace because work is looked upon way different. work is life here and everything else is secondary while i'm figuring out that's the opposite, for most anyway myself included, back home. it's a cultural thing for them but more of a respect thing for us. our skool seems pretty disorganized when it comes to this new english language experiment and they're throwing out money like it's falling off trees. for example, the seven english language teachers are getting laptops. however, it hasn't been planned very well and it's making a lot of us upset. there is also constant miscommunication between the english speakers and the korean admin. this is obviously due to language barriers. we found out on friday that they want us to work an extra hour every day and that's not what is in our contract. in exchange they want to give us a two hour lunch break, which is not cool with me and a few others. that's basically a split-shift. on top of that, they messed up my pay on friday so i've no money in my korean account and i won't be able to get it fixed until i get back on friday so i'm forced to dip into the account back home and pay exorbitant bank feeds.

it's tough but we're working through the glitches.

oh, and at night we got quite ridiculous, because it was after all, pay day (for most of us). started by bbq, then soju, then a couple bars and then it got blurry. by the end of the night (ie. 4:30am) we were taking pictures with everyone that would talk to us. i even got a picture of a cop and i but that's not him waving, he just didn't want his picture taken. silly foreigners.

saturday: went to the doosan bears game with nine other english teachers. it may have been the last game of the season. it dragged on and on. it lasted from 5:10 until 10:26pm and it was only eleven innings. each at bat lasted ten minutes. brutal to sit through and i stayed totally sober. possibly the first time in who knows how long that i haven't had a beer. embarrassing.
i also met derek's friend ryan who is also here teaching. he's a good boy from toronto so it was nice to meet him too. after that we walked to the seven luck casino. i didn't gamble but was able to eat quesadillas and drink gin and tonic for free. unbelievable. my boy jason won 120,000 won playing 5,000 won minimum black jack. so he's da man.

sunday: ended up going to itaewon and ate turkish food at the top of hooker hill. lovely name. as well, there's a nice little mosque up there and a whole other community of muslim people as well as nigerians. go figure, smack dab in the middle of seoul. i don't get it but why ask questions. after that we ended up at "what the book" which apparently has the largest selection of english language books in the country. it's a small store and owned by a canuck who's a local celebrity. after that we had a couple at the wolf hound and cabbed it home.

monday: slept in, didn't do a whole lot. went to dinner with bob and jason at fresco's. i had the salad bar. one stop salad bar for 7,900 so i piled it up high. at that point everything ends up tasting the same. i won't be getting that again. after that jason and i headed to bjorn's place, another teacher at my skool and played poker. i lost twice. first buy-in was 5,000, the second was double. i was not happy. i usually don't lose that bad but these things happen. i'll get it back next time. jason and i walked home through outdoor markets where they sold everything from crappy adidas t-shirts to street food.

tuesday (today): today is chuesok so i celebrated by doing some laundry, and then met up with ryan and walked around our area for a whole lot of hours. took some awesome pictures of random "engrish" t-shirts that made no sense and just came back from a bar in our area. there's got to be some type of uzbekistani convention going on behind our residence. they're everywhere but i don't ask questions. it's best that way. now i'm home and that's that.

korean kids and korean skool

the above image is from a student's pencil case. correct me if i'm wrong but i'm pretty sure it's from a kylie minogue song. they think us white folk are such a novelty. everyday at skool i have fifty kids run up and yell to me "hi!" or "hello!" and then they giggle and run off. the advanced ones know how to ask for your name but that's about it. they're mostly hilarious and the sweetest kids in the world.

our skool is building this english education centre for immersion students. parents have to pay for their students to attend it in the afternoon on tuesday and thursday. it doesn't open until october 8th though so we'll only be teaching english in the mornings until then. the class that i will be teaching is Culture so i'll be preparing lessons on everything from national symbols of the world to landmarks of the world to the geographies of europe, north america, south america, etc. it should be pretty cool because, even though i have a korean dude who is giving me ideas for lessons, i'll be developing most of the curriculum myself so i have loads of freedom to do what i want. also, i'll have this insane classroom with a mock bedroom, kitchen and a couple other random rooms so i can use them for demonstrations while teaching. it should definitely be something.
it's also weird because our skool is not the newest and, therefore, nicest and most up to date but they have room to build this english language centre so they've chosen kwanghee.

there are seven of us native english teachers there. more than any other skool probably in all of the seoul metropolitan office of education. we all get along pretty well which makes for a decent working environment because we have been spending a lot of time together in the first week.

first week (revised ed.)

howdy. it's been a couple days. the two pictures above are seoul's version of american street meat. on both hot dog and hamburger they already have on them pre-squeezed mustard and ketchup. they don't give you a choice but they sure do put it on in perfect zig-zags. the fried concoction to the right is basically a pogo with embedded french fries. yes, i bought one out of desperating and ate most of it. i obviously threw out the hot dog (and wooden stick). just awful.
did i mention it's next to impossible to eat vegetarian in korea? i'll either slowly wither away on bananas and vitamin pills or gain thirty pounds because i end up gorging myself on awful pizza (with sweet corn) and beer. i won't say which of the two is more probable.
the other picture is a bar in sinchon. it's either the judas or sabbath bar. they can't decide. there are a few foreign hangouts around there and that night a buddy i teach with named adam played host. another english teacher named alison and i tagged along and drank outside a 7-11 with about ten other friends of adam's. more pictures can be found here.

the last couple of days involved hanging around our new skool: kwanghee elementary school, going to take care of various tasks, eating lunch out at really decent restaurants for dirt cheap, etc.
the two other veggies and i from our skool found a really decent rare vegetarian restaurant yesterday. it's in insadong so i can't forget that.
last night i also went to jamsil sports complex, where the 1988 olympic games were held, and saw a baseball game between the doosan bears and the kia tigers with four other dudes from my co-op residence. baseball definitely ain't the same as back home. it's quite bizarre actually. on the third base line is one supporting section and on the first base line are the fans from the other team. they have all sorts of crazy cheers that they all do in unison using these blow-up balloon sticks. they've also each got a little stage where an enthusiastic dude with a whistle leads the cheers. of course they had four cheerleaders too. oh yeah, the bears whipped the tigers 10-3. none of these guys will make the majors back home let alone be a bat boy. ouch.
tata.