today was teacher’s day in korea.  on children’s day, everybody got the day off to have fun in whichever way they chose.  on teachers’ day, we got to teach.  we were showered in gifts all day long.  i got a mug, some lotion, 2 bottles of expensive body wash, a gift certificate good for 2 movie tickets at the theater, 3 roses (one from the girl i reduced to sobs over stickers yesterday), some chinese medicine for digestion (yeah, digestion medicine) and lots and lots of food. 

here’s the wrapping from one of the gifts i got today:

thanks, paris!

every time i turned around, another parent had brought in another batch of junk food.  first it was a cake.  a subtly flavored chocolate cake, with layered with whipped cream and pineapple.  it was also covered with tomatoes.  way to go, korea.  then, we got these cookies that were basically styrofoam filled with a thick, sugary nasty goo.  then we got these fruit flavored puffed rice things.  think really big fruity pebbles.  at lunch, the cook made a special lunch of pork cutlets (of which i did not partake), coleslaw, soup, rice, and kimchi.  then we got these premade lattes that you can get at the grocery store or the convenience store here.  then krispy kreme donuts arrived.  then a sweet potato cake appeared (i stayed away from that.  before you call me closed minded, i’ll point out that the korean teachers wouldn’t touch it either).  a box of duncan donuts ended up in the teacher’s room.  it was ridiculous.  other than the sweet potato cake, there was hardly anything left over by the end of the day!

i partook in very little of this stuff.  koreans eat like they’ve been starved all of the time.  the two foreigners i work with are always bitching about being hungry, too.  my appetite, on the other hand, has completely disappeared since coming here.  the koreans freak out when meat is the entree at lunch and i have “nothing” to eat.  hi.  there’s always rice, kimchi, other vegetables, and soup that is usually without meat.  anyway, the point i’m making here, is that we got a ton of food for teacher’s day and it all got eaten.

despite the festive mood and gifts being forced upon me all day, i’ve been in a sour mood.  i’m getting a little pissy about my work schedule.  i am soooo a night person.  i don’t function well before noon.  if i have to get up much before noon, i don’t function well all day.  i have to be at work at 9:20 every single damn day.  3 days out of the week, i don’t stop teaching until 7:30.  All but 2 of those hours are non stop back to back classes.  i like being kept busy, but i’d like to be kept busy for a little less than 10 hours at a time. 

by the time i walk the 30 minutes to school (i was told it was a 15 minute walk), start teaching at 9:30 am, stop teaching at 7:30 pm, and walk another 30 minutes back home, all i can do is sit around my apartment and wait to get sleepy.  i can’t go do anything because i have a really REALLY bad history of sleeping right through my alarm clock.  i’m afraid to stay up much past midnight (which is my prime time of prductivity) because i don’t want to oversleep.  FUCK.

then there’s the at-work situation.  i was getting really pissed off today about the korean teachers’ habit of asking me or one of the other foreigners about a class, getting an answer from one of us, and flying off the handle in korean for 5 minutes to another teacher.  then, if you ask what’s up, they’ll just say “nothing”.  if you don’t ask, they won’t say anything.  but the second you ask for a phone number or how to get somewhere, they want to know where you’re going, why, with whom, etc.  i typically don’t care, and figure if it’s something important, they’ll bring it up to me.  but today…jesus.  today i was ready to rip everyone’s fucking mouths off.  then, i reminded myself not to care, and alas, i no longer cared.

on the way home, for no reason i can think of other than masochism, i started thinking about the morning i left for korea, and the emotional mess that was walking away from jeremy at the airport security checkpoint.  then i started thinking about how much i miss him.  with my school hours and my self imposed bedtime, I don’t even get to im or video chat with him unless it’s the weekend.  when i wake up, he’s usually working and away from the computer.  when i get home, it’s like 5 or 6 in the morning and he, a night person as well, is still dead asleep.  the hardest part of this whole korea experience is going from 4 years of him being a call away to being half a world apart.

OSIAJFDOIGNJERPYAISOJDAPRMKWEGLJJPIMMK ;SDZLKGRELJNMPOGSPOJMEWIITE,HNL;KBFDZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

now, i’m going to throw this disclaimer into the mix here:  i really did wake up on the wrong side of the bed today.  i was in a foul mood the second my eyelids cracked open and allowed the sunlight to hit my pupils.  why?  i don’t know.  it must have been a dream i was having.  so while i’m finding something in every aspect of my life in korea to bitch about, i’m not unhappy.  just temporarily pissed off and unsettled.  i think a lot of it has to do with the fact that i still don’t really know anyone here.  it’s been kind of crappy to go from having a swingin social life at home in houston to hardly knowing anyone here.  like tonight…i reeeeeally wanted a drink.  at home, i would have texted one of a handful of people to see if they wanted to get some weeknight drinks.  someone or a couple of someones would have been down, i would have ended up too drunk to remember my own name, and that would have been that.  here, i walked home like a sad puppy dog (or pissed off puppy dog), longingly looking at the bars i passed, and locked myself into my tiny dungeon of an apartment.

yes, i am being way over dramatic.  but my point is, i’m a social person living without much social stimulation.  it’s driving me a little mad.

anyway, with that bitchfest out of my system, i already feel better.  the world can’t always consist of unicorns that prance in moonbeams while puking glitter and shitting butterflies in your face, can it?

before the puking and shitting

i’m still glad i’m here.  :-P