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Frankenstein's monster wears Jimmy Choo

This is my week off and all I want to do is relax and watch movies. One truly annoying thing about my building is that there is absolutely no insulation from sounds in the hallway. It's not the people talking as they stomp their way up and down the stairs, it's that they do it at 2 in the morning while wearing high heels and feel the need to walk up and down a few times before they find the floor that they want. Many times I will be awakened by someone trying to open my door (sometimes with a key, sometimes just trying the handle) or knocking and ringing the doorbell again and again. I try to have a little respect by getting some clothes on before answering, but they are usually gone by the time this happens (remember, it's the middle of the night!!)

Being loud and rude is just a cultural thing here (so to them I guess it isn't rude) but at times it gets annoying. I can overlook the spitting and the nosepicking, but really annoys me is the way they can't walk in a straight line. When I first got here I was constantly having to avoid misguided little Asians from plowing into me. Now I have learned to just go with the flow and not move out of their way. It helps that I am a foot taller than most and have a bit more solid of a frame. Sometimes I get this short-lived feeling of excitement when I nearly body-check a particularly rude looking Korean man [I assume he is looking this way because he has just seen an incredibly handsome weyguk (foreigner) ] but then quickly realize that everybody is doing it to everyone else and I am the only one noticing that this is not normal (for me at least).

The only positive is that I don't grab for my pockets every time I do feel a bump (like I would in Czech) and if I do feel like picking my nose, no one will look on in disgust.

Big disappointment today. I was planning on taking trains from China all the way to Czech but I found out that a Belarus transit visa (just to go through the country, not stop and visit) costs 5 times as much as it does for any other nationality. So I am going to boycott Belarus and take a plane from Moscow to somewhere else (which will cost as much as the transit visa to Belarus!)

A pleasant surprise

I was invited out to dinner with the teacher in the video (Dec 14th post) below and his family. I was quite nervous about it as his English is not very...understandable.

It started with him driving me to the beach to see the sunset (no family in sight) and then drove me to an outdoor market. After that we went to his apartment (still no family) and he kind of yell-talked to me. I think he only has one volume, loud.

Finally his wife showed up and she couldn't have been more than 4 feet tall. A few minutes later his 2 sons trickled in and the whole family was there staring at me. They all spoke English at one level or another so if one didn't know a word then another would. The oldest son was pretty good so he helped out a lot.

At one point when Mr Joh (the teacher) stepped out they asked what I thought of him. By stepped out I mean he was having a cigarette 10 feet away. I said he was very nice and was always laughing at work. They all got this strange look on their faces and told me that at home he is always yelling at them and is always drunk and rarely at home. They told me he was a bad husband and father...ok.

Lucky for me today was his day to be a good husband and father and he took us to eat at a nice little restaurant where they told me a guest is supposed to stuff himself as a sign of thanks, I am never one to be rude and not show my thanks.

After we went back to their home, had some wine and I helped them with their English. It was a surprisingly good time and really glad I went. I heard that it is really rare to have Koreans invite strangers into their home (I barely new him before last night) so I am happy to have had the experience. Thanks Joh family!!!

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My co-teacher had the great idea of teaching a class Silent Night. It wasn't as bad as I thought but I couldn't stop laughing.

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The school gave me an interesting offer yesterday. I was given the chance to live in the "guest house" at the new school which we will be moving to at the end of the year. I went to see this "guest house" and wow. It has no sink, no shower, no cooker, no room, and it is called a dorm room where we are from. They want to stick me in with all the students, share a toilet, shower, and washing machine with all the students. This will give them the chance to know when I leave and when I come home, how often I visit the toilet, and even have me patrol the halls.

After careful consideration I declined their kind offer and they were shocked...
SHOCKED(!!!) that I didn't want it. Why wouldn't I want to eat only at designated times (at the cafeteria) and be surrounded by 700 teenagers 24 hours a day? Oh, and the nearest shop is 10 times as far away.



On another note, I was invited out by the discipline team to have dinner and shoot the breeze. It was a lot of fun and we ate piles of raw fish and soju (Korean whiskey). The lead disciplinarian offered me the chance to join the team. I agreed and next semester I will have the power to beat the students!!! (I am pretty sure that I won't be beating anyone though.) They must have been impressed with my mobile phone confiscating skills.

Grrrrrrr....

Only 2 more weeks of school then I get a month and a half holiday. I was supposed to work at a camp this January for some extra money but wa told last week that I wasn't needed. I am disparately looking for another job but the outlook isn't so bright. 6 weeks is too much time to be off especially since my only reason coming to Korea was to make money. My secondary goal is finding something to do during my extended break. Any suggestions? Leave me a comment about what I should do.

Just in

I just got this picture from another teacher. It was taken during our picnic. Obviously they've never taken pictures of tall people before. Too lazy to use the scanner.

So cold

I moved to Busan because it is in the south and I thought it would be warm. I was wrong, it is cold as hell. The big problem is that the school has no central heating, only small gasoline fueled heaters throughout the school. The one in my classroom keeps a corner warm but the rest of the room is freezing.

I know most of you have never experienced a Korean bathroom but let me tell you right now that you aren't missing a thing. They all stink horribly and our school hallways reek of feces sometimes. The men's room smell so bad, even to Koreans, that the windows are all left open. That was fine during the fall but now it is just plain shitty. There is one upside to all this... the $300+ toilet seat. This wonder of technology washes you (a teacher nearly flooded the stall trying to show me what the buttons do) and even keeps your bum warm! That's right, the bad boy is heated! There is nothing like having a warm tookus while contemplating the meaning of life.

I went to visit my friend Steve in Yeosu this past weekend. It was good to get out of Busan for a couple of days and nice to meet other no Koreans.

One negative thing Korea has brought on is that I am again susceptible to motion sickness. I get car sick now with little effort. On the bus ride back from Yeosu I was miserable since the bus was kept at a constant temperature of hot as hell and the bus driver felt that subtlety with the gas and brake were beneath him. I am shocked that I didn't get sick all over the bus. Now if I am in a car or anything for longer than 2 minutes I get nauseous.

The other week we had an "English Festival" for the students. Part of that was having a group for each class perform a skit for the entire grade. I never heard so many "shits" and "fucks" come out of students mouths before. They know these are bad words but they're sailors, so shouldn't they talk like them? Some of the skits were pretty funny though.

Other students had to give "speeches". There are 8 classes and each class had one student give a "speech". It was more of a memorizing lines things than a speech, but oh well. The problem was the the teacher in charge of this only chose 3 articles/poems to choose from. So the students had to sit through 3 versions of Sermon on the Mount, 3 of The Giving Tree, and 2 of some article out of Chicken Soup for the Soul.

I bought a new computer last week. I've gone mac. When my co-teacher saw it she asked why I got a woman's computer. The little webcam caused quite a stir though and everyone soon decided that next computer would also be a mac. I think Mr. Jobs needs to send me some sort of commission.