Mr. Fatty

Yesterday was hot. Yesterday I was hot. Yesterday I wanted nothing to do with the stuffy subway on my way home from work. I opted for a taxi and the best place to catch one to my place is right in front of a Dunkin' Donuts. There were no taxi's waiting so I went into the air conditioned shop for some relief and to appease my sudden cravings. Lately I have been doing great at getting out jogging at least three times a week while doing other forms of exercise on the other days. I have lost weight and shirts that used to be tight are options for me now. Two donuts to quell a sudden impulse wouldn't be sending me to summer fat camp so I did it. I then went outside, hailed a cab and with my little bag of donuts I started to sit down when the back of my pants split open. Nice.

Dress Rehearsal

Last Friday night started out quiet with me stretched out on bed reading my book when just before ten o'clock I got a call from Joel. We chatted for a bit and then the question about having a beer naturally came up. After more chatting and humming and hawing we chose to meet. I hopped into a taxi, took a the same old route and was soon walking the outdoor stairs to get down to Bliss. I came around the blind corner and noticed right away something was off.

The bar was as busy as normal, Ted and Lucky were hard at work (if you call standing and drinking behind the bar work) and the hulking size of Nick was hunkered down at the corner of the bar with an over sized woman in polyester as his drinking partner. A few more steps into the bar I realised it was the one and only Patti O Doors.

For those not in the know Patti o Doors is Rob in drag and will be the host of Bingo night at Bliss. This has been much talked about for a long time and last Friday was the dress rehearsal. While Bingo sounds (and can be) boring we had good fun playing a couple of rounds with free drinks as the prize. I was lucky enough to come out as a winner despite not being able to understand the way thirty is pronounced in Aussie English. Joel made the right call on heading out that night.


Miss Doors.


The winning ticket. (To win, make sure the cards have a seven on them.)


Miss Doors mingling with friends after the games were done.

Heidi and Min's Wedding

Heidi (one of my closest friends I've met here) finally had her wedding with Min today. It was to be in a luxurious resort in Mexico with each couple having their own separate bungalow with hot tubs on the patio but with the Swine Flu scare they cancelled at the last minute. They are now in lesser resort in Jamaica but after getting a twenty digit number pop up on my phone today, I can say they aren't bothered where they are. They were having a dance off and through the music, laughing and drunken hellos I so wish I could have made it. Unfortunately my holiday (unemployement?) isn't for another few months. Nicole kept telling me that I was there in spirit and that I have made my way into some of the pictures. Not exactly sure what that means but when there is booze involved I'm sure they came up with some sort of plan. I'm thinking some random dirty Rastafarian wig cropped up on someones' hand.

Weekend BBQ

Saturday night's BBQ at Bliss was great. I was one of the first to show and was put in charge of lighting the thing. Ever since childhood when I made the family BBQ jump when I tried lighting it I quickly passed this duty off on William. I took a supervisory role and stood well back from any glass and outside of the range I predicted the tank would blow to. Trying not to feel completely useless I volunteered to scrub off the remains of the last BBQ and nine month old grease is not a pretty sight.

The usual gang showed (minus one who was too busy reading a book) and we got into our drink and talking. The second best part of the night came when a very, very drunk girl who sometimes pops into the bar came. I have spoken to her before but she is loud and not really the kind of person I click with. Having her in the bar was entertaining as she worked her way along the bar bumping into conversations. We were definitely being nice to her and trying to make small talk but when you ask, "Where were you earlier today?" and get told, "I'm a translator" and then told the names of objects on the bar in basic Korean you lose interest. It became a sort of sport to then pass her off on each other whenever we could before excusing ourselves. She finally got placed in a bar chair and eventually figured out she was too drunk to be out and she quietly left.

The best part of the night was to finally meet Tony's friend JS. Tony talks about him often but we have never been able to meet him as he's in the military and rarely gets time off base. He had the past week out and he came by for some drink. He is a younger Korean and unfortunately he got cornered by Joon and Saejin who went into doing shots and downing beer like water. Poor JS played the role of younger Korean and super politely drank when told to. Whenever any of us Westerners came up to tell Joon and Saejin to let the non-drinker drink slowly they gave us an excuse that it's "Korean military culture" to drink this way. Basically telling us we don't understand the unique culture and he would be fine. He did his best by eventually hiding in a corner but not until Joon ran up a huge tab at the bar and seeing as he's older he had to pay. All in all it was a fun party and under my new drinking rules I wasn't hung over the next day.

Summer of '84

I found out about this list of summer movies released in 1984 and was amazed by how many of these movies are still well known. There are many out there saying 1984 was the best summer for movies. Now the summer movies are all big budgeted, full of explosions, bad stories and brands that expect people will go to them no matter how shitty they are. I think the reason so many of these movies are still popular is that they were some of the first ones on video (in both Betamax and VHS), movie channels and replayed every holiday.


These are my top three picks from that summer and I would still sit though them now.


These are my next three picks and The NeverEnding Story is the only one on this list I actually saw at the theatre.


Comedies and Sci-Fi movies end my top ten from that summer.


Honorable mention to this next group and I remember seeing all of them but I imagine they are as bad as their movie posters sell them as being. I would give the Muppet Take Manhattan another go because I remember having ordered the picture book for the movie at school from the monthly book sale. They used to send home fliers full of books you could choose to order with a cheque and five weeks later it showed up, do schools still do these sales?


I have never actually seen these last four but imagine now they would be the ones I would watch. There were a bunch of other movies also released that summer (May to August) but I didn't know any of them. Anyway yesterday was test day and as you can tell I had a lot of free time on my hands. Can't wait until this weekend and the planned BBQ for Saturday.

Korean Porridge

This past Saturday my friend Hyun Jung invited Saejin, Chanyeong and I over for some boiled chicken and Korean porridge made from the leftover chicken stock. I know it sounds plain and boring but it is Korean comfort food and it was delicious. Since that meal I have been craving chicken porridge (it's made from rice) all week. When Saejin came home exhausted from working out I asked Saejin about getting some. He is always prone to getting excited about food but this time his reasoning for it was classic, "Porridge is good because I'm too tired to chew."

Parent's Day

Just outside a car service station near the school is a jeep with all it's windows smashed out. The front windshield has been taken to town and the two side windows no longer exist. The back window clearly shows the shape of a bat being used to inflict all these damages. There are several reasons why this may be.

The work of a short tempered gangsters looking for a return on a loan.

The work of a short tempered jealous lover, probably a female.

The work of a short tempered parent not getting a bouquet of carnations from their kids on parents day.

Today is Parent's Day and the past couple of days the kids have been busy at work doing origami and making carnations for their parents. For those not in school outside every subway station there are tiny baskets of real carnations for sale. Almost every shop wants in on this action and street food stalls, convenience stores and even cosmetic stores all have cheap flowers for sale. With the number of baskets for sale if I were a parent I too would be worked up if a son or daughter forgot to get me something. There are litterally thousands of baskets for sale but shops don't have to worry too much about excess stock.

Next week is teachers day and by changing a printed ribbon the flowers have one more chance of being bought up. This is when we get them (public school teachers miss out on the good gifts) and two days later they die and have to chuck them out.

Swine Flu

Koreans aren't the only ones falling for the media scare about the swine flu but they are the ones I get to see daily. Here are a couple of comments passed onto me this weekend:

Number 1: Don't eat Samgyupsal. Doesn't matter that the media is saying pork is alright there are people out there scared of the stuff. More fatty bacon for me then.

Number 2: Avoid Itaewon. There are too many foreigners that hang out there and they are obviously the ones who would be sick. Nice to see prejudices in play.

It's stupid how people can be made to panic but like last year's American beef scare it's fun to see how quickly Koreans can be made to overreact.

TGIW

An hour away from a six day weekend. Tomorrow is the school's birthday, Friday is May day, then comes the weekend where a picnic is is the plans (weather permitting) and Monday's classes got forfeited for an extra day off before Children's Day is celebrated on Tuesday. This is a holiday I desperately need before the final three months on my contract.

Field Trip to the Space Museum

Last Thursday we had a field trip to a Space museum out on the main island off of Incheon (the name escapes me now). It took just over an hour and a half to get there and we stopped off at a fortress to have a potty break for the kids which they used by buying more snacks and toys from the convenient store.


The space museum is privately owned and they did a great job.


There were three floors of rides and information all about space. The older kids were a tad bored but the young ones seemed to love it.


Luckily it was a one of the few sunny days of the month and we were able to eat outside.


First graders taking a break from rolling down a grassy hill.


Fifth grade girls before security yelled at them for climbing on stuff.


Sixth grade boys trying to convince me that the prawns they were eating were actually chicken.


More first graders.


Water fights helping in the digestion process.


Kindergartners doing their thing and looking cute.


After lunch we wandered around the outside gardens. Here is Robot land.


A couple of the moving dinosaurs in Dino Ville.


Ending the day with tube rides down the hill. Good fun and much better than teaching.

How to Fail a Breathalyzer Test

I download the Best of YouTube podcast to my iPod each week and loved last week's clip. Somebody should have been policing Saejin when he decided to spend some money at Soho and ordered a bottle of Vodka at nearly 3am.

Ten Reasons

My co-teacher has been grinding on my nerves for the past couple of months and today after her incompetence in class yet again I finally called her on it and we had a blow out. Here are the top ten reasons I hate working with her:

1. She doesn't listen. If I ask her something I get a blank expression from her. If students call out flashcards many times they are saying the wrong answers and she doesn't catch the mistakes.

2. She runs everywhere in a panic.

3. She runs everywhere in a panic in high heeled slippers.

4. She sees the younger kids as cute and talks to them in a fake baby voice instead of as a teacher talking to students.

5. She walks around while the students are doing worksheets or working in pairs and instead of helping them she asks them important distracting questions about their pencils cases or what they like to eat.

6. She reapplies make-up for lunch.

7. She told me once that boys are more important than girls in Korea so we should help them more with English.

8. She teaches to the same high leveled students everyday instead of forcing the poor ones to be involved in class.

9. She doesn't listen. I've asked her to teach the flashcards a certain way so that they will be prepared for a later test (making them translate Korean into English) and she refuses because she thinks the class should be all in English. I also agree it should be all in English but the test is set up for them to translate and I can't help them here. Without practice the kids fail the test as we learnt last year.

10. She is useless. I want Betty teacher back.

Playoff Time

The playoffs are currently going strong on the computer this morning. I know things look bad for the Flames but I want to believe they will beat Chicago. (They won't but I will still watch.) My predictions are Boston, Washington, Carolina and Philly out of the East in the first round. Anaheim, Detroit, St.Louis and Chicago in the West. I will also pick the final right now as Carolina vs Detroit with Detroit repeating as the Champions.

In the Rain

Some day's work is hard (I'll post a top ten reasons why I hate working with my co-teacher soon) but usually it's a breeze and today was a great Chinook of a day. Ten minutes down the highway from our school is another teeny tiny school like ours and so when things get planned for extra curricular activities our schools join forces to cover the costs. Today was a sports day. Today was also the first rainy day of the season. I have to admit I hoped the whole thing would of been put off until next week but I wasn't so lucky. Come three o'clock we were told to head downstairs for a barbecue. It worked out because they popped open the tents, set up tables and the best part was that there was home made makoli along with a box of soju to go round. With the rain pouring down it looked like the volleyball game was off.

As the first floor filled with the smoke from the fried pork and drinks were consumed the rain slowed to a drizzle. The planned game was suddenly back on. The winning school would have a dinner paid for out of the other school's funds so the pressure was on. It didn't look good for us when the other school brought along their four army workers along to play. (These guys work in public school's instead of going to the army for several different reasons including well connected parents.) We had three teachers play, the head of the PTA joined us and our head teacher (the only woman brave enough to take on the acid rain). It was five vs eight. It was also muddy, fun and we came out on top.

My favorite part was when the two principals joined their respective teams and then all rules left the game. They both were like children playing a board game against a parent and when they touched the ball no matter what happened the respective Principal's team got points. I was definitely confused but when all the others agreed with the call I just went along.

Locked In

With spring there is nothing better than airing out the house with every possible window wide open and creating a breeze. The one problem with this is the screens in Korea don't always shut as tightly as they should, inviting the mosquitoes in for their nightly meal. Last night I killed my first hungry mosquito at 3:00 am. No more airing out the house after dark and time to reload on the mosquito pads that are sold here.

It's Spring...

It's spring so that means I start actually jogging instead of talking about it and it also means it's time to post pictures of the flowers. Here goes:

Around School:





Around the neighbourhood:



Boramae Park: