Ridiculous

Yesterday, I was given a cucumber.

No special occasion, I was just leaving school yesterday and one of my coworkers came up to me, handed me a cucumber and said "for you". Which...yay? I was just thinking the other day that I needed to introduce more fruits and vegetables into my diet. And I do rather like cucumbers. But I am pretty sure this is the first time I have ever been given one as a gift.

My life here is pretty...well, ridiculous. Recently, a friend of mine asked me how life was here in Korea, to which responded "ridiculous as normal." I didn't mean this in a necessarily negative sense, though. It's more like...standard? I guess? Like someone gives me a cucumber for a gift, or I see an old ajosshi peeing on a street corner and now my brain goes "oh yes, that is the expectedly ridiculous Korea. This is perfectly normal."

*I should pause here to note that really, ALL cultures have their ridiculousness. Because humans are ridiculous creatures. You just don't necessarily notice how ridiculous your own culture is, because it seems perfectly normal to you - after all, it's what you've known your whole life.

Back to the story, though. I think this acceptance of the ridiculous is part of becoming more integrated to my surroundings. Which is a good thing! But sometimes, things just stand out.

Last week, as I was coming back to my househome from an evening jog along the river, I was walking in front of this middle aged guy, listening to my music. Now I'm not really sure what happened, but all of a sudden I felt something wet hit my leg. I briefly lost my stride, PRAYING that it was rain, or maybe even bird crap, but no. Of course it wouldn't be.

I had been spat on.

It didn't connect right away. I wasn't exactly expecting to be spit on just at that moment in time. I mean, really! Who (aside from possibly teevee star New York) would expect that?? So I didn't check my leg until I got to the streetlight to confirm my worse fears. I looked back, but the culprit, whoever he was, had gone.

I'd like to believe that it was an accident, a tragic byproduct of the excessive (and SERIOUSLY nasty) spitting culture here. But maybe not. Maybe I had done something to piss the guy off. Regardless, you'd better believe that if I had immediately recognized the loogie for what it was, I would have turned around and let holy hell loose on this guy. I REALLY wanted to have gone all VH1 reality star on this jackass...and not the juiced up testosterone gorilla alpha male kind. I'm talking about the weave-snatchin', nail-clawin', cat-fightin', brawlin' Classy Ladies they showcase on their Sophisticated Entertainment Programs. I think New York would have been proud.


Caution parents: The following video contains language not suitable for minors. Also some crazy-ass bitchez up in heah.




You $#@(*&%@^&@in' wh*re! You put your @#$(in' fingers in my face?? You spit in my $&%*#$&%*in' hair???

PS sorry for the formatting, but I am just not talented enough. Tom, if you want to help feel free.

Young Love in the English Room

Today was not shaping up to be the greatest of days. The day dawned cloudy (though that might have been the thick layer of pollution) and seriously humid for about the fourth day in a row. Another day of threatening rain, but receiving none; one of those days where the atmosphere is pregnant with expectation and everyone seems just a little thrown off. Add to that the serious loss of South Korea to Argentina and my continued struggles to transfer money back to America, and I was in a very unpleasant mood. I wasn't snapping at people, more a general lethargy combined with a scowling depression. 

The morning didn't go particularly well, either. The atmosphere in the classroom was leaden from the humidity, lack of circulation and general disappointment, and it seemed like pulling teeth to get my students to participate in anything. But trudge on we did, and I made the decision to skip my lunch and try once and for all to do something about my money transferring problems.

One of the scarier parts of that particular issue was the fact that I had been carrying around 3,000,000 won in cash with me for about a day - yesterday I had tried to transfer the money, but was handed the cash from my bank and told "We can't wire money overseas here. Try the other bank next door". So I went there, and thinking my ARC would be better than my passport (we had to have our passport to get the ARC, after all), did not bring my passport. Of course the one thing I actually needed was my passport. So stuck with nearly $2500 in cash, in my bag, I raced home assuming every passing stranger was secretly a bandit who could smell the money and terror on me and would rob me in an instant.

So no lunch. Which did not help my mood any - I am a VERY unpleasant person when I skip meals, as many people who have ever known me can attest. Instead, I tried in vain to find a cab, walking most of the way to the bank before one would stop for me. Now I know what minorities in New York City feel like. But I got there, sticky-sweaty mess that I was, and got the money wired. Which was a huge relief. I picked up a sangwich and found a cab and headed back to school for my afternoon classes.

Which actually turned out to be a pretty decent part of the day. It was as if someone had flipped a switch - the kids were energetic, probably too energetic. My second class of the afternoon proved VERY difficult to control. But my second class of the afternoon also has my favorite students - namely, Goatcheese.

Now his name isn't actually Goatcheese. It's Gum Gongmin. But I call him Goatcheese. Not to his face! But when I am talking about him to friends. He's my favorite student, and I think I am one of his favorite teachers - he's basically a small anime character come to life. Every time I see him, it's "Hi Teacher!" and some sort of attack (the other day he tried to knock me over with a bear hug). When he came into class today, though, he was SO EXCITED to tell me about the result of his math test. He'd gotten a 100! I was seriously proud of him, even though I have never talked to him about math, and probably would have ruined his perfect score if I had.

But what made this especially exciting for me was that he was clearly excited to tell ME about it. I felt like Sally Field winning her second Oscar for Places in the Heart. You like me, you really like me! That was such a cool feeling.

AND THEN. He was equally excited about his result as he was for Kang Eunyoung, who had also scored a 100. Now Goatcheese and Eunyoung (I need to come up with a better name for her. You know, better than the one her parents gave her) have spend most of the semester "fighting" with each other - but the kind of elementary school fights boys and girls have. The kind that just give them an excuse to be close to each other. So I have been teasing them for the better part of 3 months about how they are in love - and you know what? I think I'm right. For Goatcheese, at least. He just seemed so genuinely excited about Eunyoung's result that it seems hard to come to another conclusion. 

Goatcheese is the class clown. And Eunyoung is definitely one of the pretty girls. So while they play now, I just don't see them going anywhere in the future. It'll be one of those John Hughes romances, only without the nerdy girl getting the jock or the nerdy best friend getting the girl whose nose he's been under since, well, forever.

They'll go their separate ways when middle school starts, she with her friends and he with his. They'll probably meet again one day, twenty years from now, and smile at each other. But it will be like two ships passing in the night. With a flicker os something once lost, they'll remember the carefree days of elementary school. But of couse they will be just too far apart by now. Already on their separate ways, down different paths. They'll be starting on their own lives by then, and there's no going back to those days. 


So maybe that was the promise of the morning. That what we have is the burden of the past, the oppressive knowledge of better times gone bye. But I'm not sure. I think that keeping those times with us - by remembering the past - we allow ourselves a more enriched present. For them, the memory of their lives way back when - not wishing they could go back but remembering - will be what they hold on to. 

Because that is something to hold on to. 

The ajumma landlady

Anyone of us spending some time teaching here in South Korea will, at some point or another, have an experience with our landlady (and I have yet to meet someone with a landlord, just in case you were wondering why that noun is so specifically gendered). The experience, in a word, will almost certainly prove to be...dynamic. For example:

Yesterday morning, I woke up, had a piece of toast-

Sorry, you don't want to hear about that part. What happened was I went into my laundry room to grab some clean clothes when I noticed there was an alarming amount of water pooled on the "floor". So I lifted the "floor" (because it is an inlaid linoleum that isn't even glued down), and I was SUPER excited to find that there was a quarter inch of water underneath my "floor"! EXACTLY HOW I WANTED TO START MY MORNING.

Photo courtesy

So my coteacher called my landlady and she said she'd be by between 5 and 7pm yesterday evening. Apparently the ajumma landladies here are in cahoots with the cable guys in America, because 7 rolled around and...nothing. Nothing at 7:30 either, and so I decided to go for my already-put-off run for the evening. I got back, and was walking up the stairs to my building when there she was! My ajumma landlady, shining in all her tiny ajumma glory (no visor, though :( ), only two hours late.

So I let her in, and she pokes around my laundry room, and through a series of wild gesticulations, she was either yelling at me to not lift the "floor" (which I did to try to prevent mold, thank you very much!), or telling me that she could not fix it tonight. Probably it was both, as she will be coming back today to (hopefully) shopvac all the water out from there and FIXITFIXITFIXIT!!! She also told me (I think) that the hose needs to be out the window to drain condensation (sorry for never having used a lame wall unit air conditioner before!) out of my househome. So.

Anyway, it will hopefully be fixed soon, and likely with lots more crazy gestures.The upshot is, it's making me clear out all the boxes I was "storing" back there. It'll be nice to have a free and clear (and dry!) laundry area again.

World Cup Update

Alright folks just wanted to post a quick update of my experience watching the World Cup in Korea. I'll have photos from the game (and the Mika concert yay!) tomorrow probably.

So last night was South Korea's first match of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, against Greece, so the country basically stopped dead in its tracks to watch the game. And when I say stopped dead in its tracks, I mean there is not a single human being I have spoken to in this country who did not watch the match last night. And most watched with about seventy billion other Koreans, all dressed in red, cheering and going crazy during the game.

Me, I was at a concert beforehand in Olympic Park, so we decided to stay and watch the game there. As it began, the concert venue seemed oddly empty - probably because nearly every person in Seoul was at City Hall, from what I have been told. I was honestly a little disappointed...I was really hoping for one of those everyone-on-top of each other, massive crowd events, but pretty much everyone had a seat during the game.

My concerns were quickly allayed, however, when Korea scored its first goal unit (or whatever it's called). There were maybe 500-600 people there, but the roars that erupted from the crowd made it feel like ten times that. The atmosphere was electric, with cheers of "Daehan Minguk! clapclap clapclap clap" erupting every few seconds, and it was easy to fall into the game. And when the clock ran out, and Korea had won 2-0, it felt like they'd won the Super Bowl, or the World Series. But not the NBA Finals or the Stanley Cup, because who gives a crap about hockey and basketball?? Whatever.

So you can be sure that I will be wearing my red for the games against Argentina and Nigeria, who look to be the real tests for the Red Devils. But I cannot wait! Daehan Minguk!

Oh, also, I really REALLY want a vuvuzela. NEW LIFE GOAL.

PS Yes, Tom. I AM better at the internet than you. HOW DOES THAT FEEL, BIATCH!!