today is the 7 month mark in my stay here in korea.
while i greatly look forward to seeing the lovely faces of all my family and friends back in houston, i’m a little sad i’ve only got 5 months left. i miss home, but leaving korea is going to be a sad, sad situation.
enough of that crap. i’ve got 5 months left! i’d better spend it wisely.
i’m trying to kill time and keep up the momentum i’ve regained regarding writing in this blog. i don’t really feel like thinking much, though. thus, i bring you this blog’s first ever inane, self indulgent, stupid survey.
1. First thing you wash in the shower? my face. i hate having a wet oily face. or a wet made up face with eyeliner and mascara running in my eyes.
2. What color is your favorite hoodie? the only hoodie i have here is off white with grey things printed all over it. it’s pretty awesome, but i got it at target so it fits me like i’m wearing a box. my other hoodies are IN boxes at home.
3. Would you kiss the last person you kissed again? yeah.
it’s thanksgiving day in korea. for the first time in my life, i’m spending it away from my family.
boo.
i did, however, decide to cook for the occassion. i paid out the ass for some salmon filets, had my mom mail me some stuffing, mashed some potatoes, and put together some homemade macaroni and cheese. i kind of forgot to cook the vegetables. oops.
so i’ve got another holiday away from home under my belt. it really wasn’t that bad. the only thing that really bothered me was the fact that i had to work today, while everyone back at home on twitter and myspace was tweeting and talking about having the day off. oh, well.
as i said a few posts back, i’m supposed to be going to thailand at the end of december. as of yesterday, the main international airport for the country is being occupied by protestors who want the country’s current leader thrown out of power. this means all outgoing and incoming flights are cancelled! awesome! and though the head of the military says he will not lead one, it’s looking more and more like a full on coup is about to break out. keep your fingers crossed for me…i’m going to be a little angry if my week of vacation is spent in my apartment looking at my $1500 e-ticket.
all in all, i’m not that worried. what happens will happen, and whether we’re here or there, at least jeremy will be hanging out with me. so i still have something to look forward to.
i spent all day following the thai news and the news coming out of mumbai. at one point, i was staring at the home page at cnn.com and was a little taken aback at how horrible all of the headlines were. i guess i can’t really complain much about the potential of missing out on a week of bangkok and beaches.
so to my friends in america, happy thanksgiving. to my american friends in korea, hope it was swell.
on my first day at my job, the very first thing they made me do was observe another teacher teach a class called “kinder 3″. there’s also a “kinder 1″ and a “kinder 2″. they’re classes of kids who graduated from the kindergarten program last year but decided to continue learning english at our school. the ability and intelligence level increases as the numbers decrease. so the kinder 1 kids are more disciplined and intelligent. and the kinder 3 kids…
well, they’re weird.
if you recall from the early days of this blog, this was the class that coined me “ramyeon head”, comparing my curly hair to the appearance of ramen noodles. calvin, still my favorite student ever, was in this class. he quit back in august, right after summer vacation, and i was devastated. i had just fought tooth and nail to teach this class 5 days a week so i could teach calvin every day. then he up and quit. i was left with ricky, who has a perm and, an adorable face, and is dumb as a sack of hair, ryan, whose finger is permanently stuck up his nose and apparently made the higest score in his public school on a standardized test not too long ago but has serious deficiencies with the english language, dennis, who is totally overdramatic and loves the word “brazil” because it contains the word “bra” in it, and sue, who constantly has snot crust on her nostrils, food smeared on her mouth, greasy fried and frizzy hair atop her head, and dirty clothes clinging to her nasty body.
so these were the kids i was stuck with. 5 days a week. i thought about trying to give the class up when the new teacher came, but i decided against it. i had already taught them for 3 months, so at least i knew who i was dealing with.
slowly, i’ve begun to love them. ryan still needs to work on me a bit, but all of them are MY kids. they piss me off, make me yell my ass off, and make me want to run back to america on a daily basis, but i know i adore them and they know i adore them. i often bring them candy or oranges for no reason. i let them get away with eating snacks in class, even though we all know they’re not supposed to. it’s a strange class/teacher relationship that we have, but it works.
oddly, the one i’ve grown most attached to is sue. i went through a phase where i couldn’t stand her. her attention span was terrible, she didn’t listen to a word i said, and she’s just dirty and gross. after about a month of teaching at this school, i caught her squinting to read things on the board and asked her if she could see. she said no. having not ever seen her in glasses, i asked if she had any. she said yes. i asked where they were, she replied that they were home. i told her to bring them the next day, and she did. for the next few weeks, i praised her when she brought them to school and got onto her when she didn’t.
finally, i promised her a “special sticker” every single day she brought her glasses to school. i also told her i wuld take away three school stickers every time she left them at home. we are given stickers by the school to give the kids. they’re boring, monotone square stickers that come in red, yellow, green, and blue. once they get a certain number of stickers, they get a prize. so while there’s incentive to get those stickers, i’ll buy my own stickers at the office supply store to give them extra motivation. animals, hello kitty, power rangers, whatever. those are the “special stickers” i promised sue. and suddenly, she got a lot better about bringing her glasses to school every day.
the longer i teach that class, though, the more she improves. i no longer have to say “sue…SUE…SUE!!!!!!” to get her attention. she listens. she knows all of the answers to all of the questions i ask the class. she’s more interested overall. i just bumped them up a level in their reading books, and her reading comprehension is great even though the material is much harder. she has become, by far, the best student in her class. 2 months ago when report cards were sent out, she had a glowing review from me to bring home to her mother.
so today in that class, we were practicing the lines from the play they have to perform at the end of december. i had all four of them standing at the front of the room, scripts in hand, reciting their lines. none of them were paying attention to when they had to read, all of them kept sitting down, they would scream their lines instead of saying them, they were hitting each other, they were dropping their lines, they were reading the wrong parts, they were driving me CRAZY. and i had developed painful hiccups. finally, we got through the 4 page script i had written and i told them to sit down. i sat down in my chair, looked them all over, hiccuped, and said “you guys make me want to die. i am dying.”
sue cried out, “no! don’t die! teacher, don’t die!” then, she grabbed my arm with both of her hands, put her head down on the table, and whined, “pleeeeeeeeease, don’t die!”
amused and slightly touched, i said, “aww. sue, would you be said if i died?”
and sue said “YES! you give me many many special stickers! no special stickers if you die!”
filthy little brat.
Tomorrow is Pepero Day here in Korea. What is Pepero Day? It’s similar to Valentine’s Day, except it’s named after a product, not a saint. Additionally, you can’t buy just any candy…it has to be Pepero. But you buy everyone Pepero, give it to them, and then they…give you Pepero back.
Pepero is like a Pocky Stick, if you’ve ever had one, but way nastier than Pocky. It’s basically a long, stale, flavorless cookie dipped in waxy, flavorless chocolate. At least Pocky Sticks are good.
Lotte, the company that produces Pepero, is making a killing. Every convenience store I passed today had giant Pepero displays out front. Everyone on the bus today had Pepero sticking out of their shopping bags. It’s ridiculous. At least Valentine’s Day is named after a saint.
Anyhow, I bit. On my way home today, I picked up a big 8 pack of Pepero to give to my Korean coworkers. They haven’t discussed this holiday with me, so I’m betting they’ll be surprised when I show up with Pepero for all of them tomorrow. Guilty, too, when they have no Pepero to give me. 
I like saying Pepero. Every time I type it, I say it out loud. Pepero. Pepero. Pepero.
With that, I’m climbing into bed and drifting off into a stale Pepero dream filled slumber.
anyone out there?
November 23, 2008 · Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged bangkok, BARACK OBAMA, broken ondol, christmas, cold, comments, costco, costco pizza, creepy indian guy, electric mattress pad, family, friends, get the fuck away from me, greg, halloween party, homesickness, jeremy, november, obama, paparazzi, pattaya, pescatarianism, thailand, thanksgiving, transporting dogs, turkey
is anyone even reading this thing anymore? hello? HELLO??
the hits i get have dwindled. at one point i was getting close to 300 hits a day. now i’m lucky to break 20.
could this have anything to do with me being horrible and not ever updating this? naaahhh.
really, though, as childish and attention seeking as it may be, when the views and comments i receive dwindle, so does my drive to write in this thing. i know that years from now, it’ll be awesome for me to go back and read this. shit, it’s already a little insane to go back and read what i wrote right before i left and when i first got here. but that doesn’t motivate me. i need instant gratification. attention motivates me. if you’re reading this stupid drivel, speak up. please.
so it’s the end of november in korea. it’s cold. like, below freezing most nights. it even snowed a little earlier this week. i know that compared to winnipeg or russia, the winter here is mild, but come on. having lived in houston for the past 22 years, i don’t know what it’s like to function when it’s this cold. plus, it’s only NOVEMBER. everyone is reassuring me it’s going to get much worse. i’ve already got my winter coats out and in use. i bought two very awesome scarves from a vendor in a subway station in seoul and i’m using them. my mom sent me a package, including a beanie with earflaps that i’m already wearing.
what in the hell am i going to wear when it gets colder?!?
to make things more awesome, the heater, or ”ondol,” in my apartment does not work. miraculously, it’s staying at a cold but liveable temperature in here. i think i’m getting a little free heat from my downstairs neighbors. i invested in a new thick comforter that is seriously uglier than sin, but is soft and velvety and plush and wonderful. I also bought myself a heated mattress pad, and i think it’s the single greatest thing i own. i don’t want to leave my bed. ever. seriously. which is a problem, as the plan was to clean my apartment this weekend and have my boss come over to look at and fix the heater during the upcoming week. lo and behold, i couldn’t get out of bed all weekend. i seriously spent all day saturday in bed watching tv shows on my computer. i only got out of bed to smoke, pee, and to make spaghetti for dinner. this morning, it took me 3 hours to get up and into the shower for the costco trip i promised myself i would go on this weekend. so no cleaning. no heat.
along with this dilemma, i have to deal with thanksgiving here. which is to say, not having thanksgiving. i’ve been invited to a turkey dinner at the church my two american coworkers go to. it’s on saturday, not thursday, so i don’t really see that as placating me. plus, i’ve agreed to help transport 75 dogs from a shelter here in daejeon to a new shelter outside of seoul on that saturday. given my nearly 12 years of “pescatarianism” (which, i admit, has gotten incredibly lax while living here…i’m not munching on giant hunks of meat, but i find myself picking meat out of my food and still eating it and/or consuming soup and other foods in mystery broth that i know damn well is probably of animal origin but really, i don’t KNOW so it’s ok), i’d rather be playing with dogs than awkwardly sitting there watching other people eat turkey.
i’m making myself dinner that night: marinated salmon steak, mashed potatoes, vegetarian gravy, stuffing, and steamed broccoli, cauliflower and carrots. i can cook well, so it’ll be tasty. it just sucks that i’ll be doing this after a 9 hour work day and i’ll be by myself. sure, i could invite my coworkers or my friends over, but i’m just not feeling it. i want to hoard all of my deliciousness for myself. MUAH HA HA!
i miss my family. really, i do. my mom got her house sold and moved to alabama. that sucks for me, because i’ll be returning back to houston with no mother to go visit and my childhood home adulterated with the life of a new family. an elderly couple bought the house. they moved from clear lake or somewhere around there to be closer to their grandkids. apparently, they’re really nice. blah blah blah. my only concern is that they’re applying their icy hot and consuming their metamucil and boniva in MY house.
irrational bitterness aside, i’m glad she’s out of there. my brother and my grandparents are in alabama, so she’ll be spending thanksgiving and christmas with her parents, sister, and kid. one of my worries about moving out here was her spending holidays alone, but now i don’t need to worry about it. my conscience is clear.
point being, i miss my family, but it’s been my friends lately that are making me homesick. everyone comes home to houston for thanksgiving, so every year for god knows how long, we’ve gotten together at a bar called molly’s the night before thanksgiving and gotten wasted before spending countless hours with our families the next day. it’s seriously a giant affair, with like 40 or 50 people, and it’s awesome. friends i saw every day, friends coming back home who i only got to see that one night a year, and friends that had drifted off a bit…everyone seemed to show up. not this year.
i hope it still happens this year, but i hate missing out on it.
i guess this is the time of year for a concentration of traditions that i’ll miss out on. first, it was the halloween party. greg and i have spent the past couple of years throwing the most awesome halloween parties houston has ever seen, and this year i spent my halloween scaring children and getting wasted in a bar wearing a dracula cape and a frog head.
next was the election. i was more involved in this presidential election than i have been in any others in my entire life. granted, this was only the second presidential election i was old enough to vote in, but whatever. in februrary, i stood in line with greg for like 3 hours in front of the toyota center to see obama speak. we weren’t even sure that we’d get in, since we had standby tickets and we were in line about 35 miles away from the building. luckily, we got in. weeks later, i stood in line to early vote in the primary, and since texas has a caucus, i went a few nights later and stood around for hours waiting to caucus. i attended a democratic party meeting. i turned down a nomination to go to the state convention because i knew i’d be in korea when the time came. from korea, i jumped through a bunch of stupid hoops to get my absentee ballot sent on time. when i got my economic stimulus check (thanks, dubya!), i turned around and donated almost all of it to the campaign. and where was i when he was declared president elect? was i with the friends i had spent every election celebrating or mourning with since my first year of voting eligibility? no. i was in some park next to a mountain officiating the wonderland school mini olympics, getting text messages every 15 minutes from a friend in seoul that was good enough to keep me updated while he was glued to cnn.
i do need to go off on a tangent for a second and talk about something that has been cool about being abroad for this election. the opportunity to see, firsthand, the reaction from the international community has been kind of cool. my canadian and australian friends are all stoked that obama won. when i was at the mini olympics, getting my text updates, i kept sharing them with everyone out of my own excitement, not because i thought they would really care. but they did care. the koreans were actually more excited about my updates than the americans i work with. both leading up to and after the election, conversations with taxi drivers about where i’m from quickly turn to “ah. america. obama? obama!!!” some of my really young students are even bringing up obama, which shows the excitement in their households about him. and last weekend, i was in seoul waiting for a train back to daejeon when i heard obama’s voice coming from a tv behind me. i got up and walked over, to see a giant group of koreans crowded around the tv listening to his post-election acceptance speach. i looked over at the other tvs, one about 20 feet away in each direction, and no one was watching those. while obama was on tv, everyone’s eyes were on him. when the obama segment was over, everyone went on with their business. it was weird, standing in a foreign country as an american with a bunch of nonamericans completely transfixed by MY new president. and for once, my president wasn’t a source of ridicule.
back to sad, missing-out-on-tradition-time. this week, i’m missing out on all of the thanksgiving fun, both with friends and family. the next big thing will be skipping out on the annual greg and rachel christmas shopping extravaganza. this is an event where greg and i purposely pick the worst days possible to go shopping (the friday after thanksgiving and the day before christmas eve are always top picks) and proceed to be the only two people in the malls and stores that are not frazzled and are having any fun.
it sucks. it really, really sucks. it’s so strange being somewhere like this and having so much fun but still being so homesick.
but BUT BUT…jeremy’s leaving houston on christmas day and heading to thailand. i have to work the friday after christmas (stupid), so I can’t fly out until saturday morning, but on the 27th, i’ll be in sunny, hot, and humid thailand with my boyfriend. it’ll be awesome. we’re going to spend a day in bangkok, a few days on the beach, and then a few more days in bangkok. on january 3rd, we’ll both fly to korea, probably spend saturday night in seoul, and be back in daejeon by sunday night. he’ll stay in daejeon through the 12th. i am so so so excited about it. i admit, my first few months here, i had so much going on with my new surroundings and the new culture and everything else that resulted in complete sensory overload that it wasn’t too hard to be away from him. but things have gotten routine here, and in the past couple of months i have missed the hell out of him. if anything, us being so far apart for so long and having pretty much no drama or issues come out of it has shown me how awesome he is and how awesome WE are. awwww. go ahead and puke. the blog will still be around after your hurl, blow your nose, wash your face, and brush your teeth.
anyhow. as i mentioned earlier, i went to costco today, and it was ridiculous. the cheapest way to get there is to take the bus from my neighborhood to the nearest subway station, then the subway to the neighborhood costco is in, and then a shortish walk from the subway station to the store. the walk may be relatively short, but it sucks when you’re lugging a heavy load of goods that’s too big to really wrap your arms around and have a purse full of more heavy crap. all i bought was some salmon, some honey nut cheerios, some soup, some starbucks doubleshots, and some fiber rich breakfast bars. by the time i got home, though, my arms wanted to fall off.
the best thing about going to costco is getting to eat the pizza there. they have a small food court area and they sell pizza, hot dogs, clam chowder, drinks, and some other things. but the pizza…it’s definitely the best i’ve had in korea. for one, it contains real cheese, and lots of it. a lot of the time here, pizzas have this rubbery white crap called cheese on it. who knows what it really is. second of all, it’s got real pizza sauce on it that isn’t heavy on sugar. they don’t put corn or anything else crazy on it. 2.500 won for a giant, heavy, cheesy, greasy slice of heaven. the first thing i did was eat a piece. i was starving, and it’s never a good idea to shop at a wholesale warehouse when you’re starving.
at one point in costco, i was pushing my cart past this indian guy and he said hello to me. being the incredibly social creature i am, i acted like i didn’t hear him and kept walking. when he said hello again, this time too loud to have not heard, i said hi back. thus, i got roped into a stupid conversation. after about 15 seconds i said i had to “go find my friends” and ran away.
then, i rounded the corner to the cheese section, and there he was. this time, he wanted to know my name. and if i liked to drink. and if i had a boyfriend. and to show off the crumbs on his mouth from some free sample he had apparently partaken in. my refusal to make eye contact didn’t deter him. the affirmative response to the boyfriend question didn’t get him to go away. before i knew it, he was asking me out on a date and telling me that it didn’t matter if i had a boyfriend in america, i was single in korea.
i finally told him he was annoying me, i was not going to dinner with him, and that he needed to stop leaning on my cart so i could push it away from him. he obliged. i was done with him.
OR SO I THOUGHT! about 10 minutes later, i was checking out some overpriced almonds and he rounded the corner with his phone in his hand. he walked up to me and said “please…” and i thought “can i have your number” was going to be his request. i geared up to get bitchy, but then he said “just one picture”. stupid obnoxious motherfucker wanted my picture?!? blown away by the creepiness of it all, i yelled “NO!” and threw my head down into my cart with my hair covering my face and the cart’s built in baby seat. then, i just stood there, not knowing what to do. with my head still buried, i heard his phone’s camera go off. i said “no, no, go away” and waved my hand around, hitting his phone. i finally picked my head up, and he still had the stupid phone pointed at me. at that point, i literally screamed “I’M FUCKING SERIOUS. GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME”, bringing all koreans around me to a screeching hault. he just stod there like a tool, so i finally walked away. i tried to quickly round a corner to get away, but as i did that i heard his damned camera go off again. he took a picture of the side of my face just as i was getting away. i felt like fucking brintey spears trying to escape the paparazzi.
and i was sufficiently creeped out. really. i don’t really have much else to say about that situation.
and now i need to place my weekly call to my mom and thank her for the giant package she sent me.
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