Someone needs to explain to me the logic behind the airplane seatbelt. Why the hell do we need them? How often is a plane stopping suddenly midair? Has any pilot ever had to screech to a halt because some asshole student pilot from the Santa Monica DMV pilot school cut him off over Bakersfield en route to San Francisco? Will a flimsy seatbelt lying impotently in your lap do much for you when your plane is plummeting to the earth at 500 mph? And unless you’re a baby or anorexic, how often is a little turbulence going to turn you into a projectile? 

I’m guessing it’s because every plane we use today was made 50 years ago, and it comforts the industry to think that even though the “No Smoking” sign has become obsolete, they can still put that retarded seatbelt light to use. All they really need to do is replace these two signs with, one, a sign of people doing cartwheels in the aisles, and two, a sign of people staying in their goddamn seats. Because that’s really all they want people to do when they flip the seatbelt light. It’s like adult swim at the pool, only in this case, the passengers are the children who have to get out, and the flight attendants are the ones who get to enjoy the great open frontier that is the 17 inch aisle, without the inconvenience of the heavyset man in line by the restroom waiting to shit out the cruel mixture of beef stew and peanuts before he can sit back down in his middle seat to sweat all over the businessman on his right and the single mother on his left, and recline back on the 6'5" D-League NBA player who can already barely fit in the seat behind him.

Ah… the joy that is air travel.

Also, is it really necessary to confiscate the plastic water bottle of a 5'3" Asian girl travelling with her high school cheer squad before she goes through security? I feel like so many beverages have gone to waste as a result of this retarded rule. If someone can show that they’re willing to ingest something, I can fairly confidently say that it’s not a weapon of mass destruction. (But it could be a weapon of - wait for it - ASS destruction, am i right?)

Thank you.

F*ck yeah.

I haven’t written in almost a month. Shame on me. I so desperately want to be a good writer, but I have no patience to put in the effort sometimes. Most of the time. I know I’m not composing poetic works of literature, or cranking out insightful, provocative scholarly essays, but I’d like to think that any form of writing will help me improve. And maybe one day I’ll have a revelation, and become the new voice of the decade of this generation. Or whatever. Kanye’s reign ended in 2010 as far as I’m concerned. And if I wanted to be, I could be a motherfuckin’ lyrical wordsmith motherfuckin’ genius too.

Avengers was great. Iron Man is back, after a shitty sequel. The Hulk is a f*cking badass motherfucker. Jesus. I want Tony’s hulk shirt. I AM SO PUMPED.

Crap like this makes me proud to be an American. Screw it. I’m tired of being indoctrinated to be a self-loathing American. There are just as many morons in the rest of the world as there are in the States. Reddit can be so goddamned self-righteous sometimes.

I think leaving the country definitely taught me to appreciate it more. It’s like leaving a good friend behind. Every now and then, you might see a picture that reminds you of him, or hear a song that reminds you of her, or eat his favorite food, or read her favorite book. Subtle things that might pinch you with a jolt of nostalgia. Or tickle you with a giggle of nostalgia. I dunno. Choose your own metaphor.

Now expand that idea to the scope of an entire society. Walking down a street in Seoul, America smacks you in the face on every corner. A Starbucks here, a McDonald’s there. LMFAO playing in every scattered cell phone store. A Coffee Bean and a Krispy Kreme right around the corner next to Subway. Everything that is wrong with fat, greedy, corporate America. But you love it. If you can’t admit that, you have no soul.

Everything that sucks about America, you just embrace even harder. On the subway I was listening to 2pac rap about our hate-filled society, and during that moment he felt like a brother to me, for no other reason than the fact that we spoke the same language. And both represented the west coast. Damn straight I rep the west side. Cuz you and I know its the best side.

But yeah. Just knowing that I was probably one of the only people on that entire train that could understand the music I was listening to, it made me feel this special bond with Tupac. Like even if a few of the Koreans could speak English, I think you pretty much have to be fluent to understand and appreciate the nuances of the slang of the language. So I felt pretty cool. 

As much as I love to learn and learn about other languages, until recently I never realized how lucky I am to speak English. I have no idea if this is true or not, but it seems that knowing English gives you access to so many of the world’s resources – a privilege that many other languages may not offer. So maybe part of it is that I’m proud to speak English. Also because apparently in Korea, that makes you a bit of a celebrity.

But I’ve also noticed that I become a bit more nationalistic when people try to bash on the US. Of course there are many points I can’t argue with, but I can’t help getting a little defensive sometimes. Especially when that criticism comes from other Westerners, namely Canadians or the British. As an American it can be difficult not to feel a little condescending toward our neighbors to the north, considering many of us view Canada as the friendly-but-lame version of the United States. And our respect toward our English comrades doesn’t extend much further than the acknowledgement of the sexual appeal of their accents. And I suppose the awesomeness of Top Gear. It’s fun to think that the British invented the language, but Americans perfected it. Ha.

In the end, the US has got the best women, and the best food. And in life, what more do you really need?

I’ll write a less disgusting post next time.

I suppose I should update this thing just for the sake of being able to look back several months from now and think, “Oh yeah, that happened.” This post should probably be private.

So what have I done? Nothing as significant as I hoped to have accomplished by now, almost 2 months into my stay in Korea.

I finished rereading Animal Farm. You always get so much more out of a book the second time around, even if the process feels a little redundant. It’s too bad that I was so retarded throughout high school.

Is it not a little naive to believe that communism would be awesome if human beings were not selfish by nature? It’s so much more complex than that. You could say that about any ideology or economic theory. “It would bring about utopia, if –”. It’s like me saying, “I’d be an amazing basketball player… if my 360 fade-away jumpshot went in 90% of the time. Or if I had a 50” vertical and could jump over any defender.“ Yeah, no shit.

My point is, some people say dumb shit just for the sake of saying dumb shit. Other people just say dumb shit.  I can only tolerate the former. Don’t look at me with incredulity when I question your simplistic view of the world. 

I wonder if being judgmental is genetic. I’m starting to think that people who claim they are good at "figuring people out” are full of crap. I used to be one of those people. I still am, but I used to be, too. (Hedberg, anyone?) Anyway, I’m pretty sure that phrase is just a euphemism for “I’m a judgmental douchebag with a vastly superior intellect that allows me to break your entire personality down into a few bullet points." 

Some people, man. 

I need to stop writing when I’m in a bad mood.

So I saw the Hunger Games, and it was all right. I love movies that give you a lot to talk about afterward. Some of it was ridiculous, but when one of your favorite movies is Fast Five, you can’t really talk shit.

We went to "Folk Night” near Seohyeon as well. Bunch of hipsters playing guitar and banjo and whatnot. It made me a little nostalgic. I miss performing so much. I really enjoyed watching everyone. Seth temporarily inspired me to learn banjo. Then some other dude busted out his flamenco guitar, so I decided I’d learn that instead. 

Turning 22 made me feel so old. 21 felt like the last age to look forward to. After that, each birthday is just kinda like, “Sweet, I’m still alive.” But in Korea, 22 feels so young, relative to all my coworkers. I feel like life has just begun! I can accomplish anything!

Haha. Just kidding. But I still have the occasional episode of hypomania.

Anyway, I’m almost done with Monte Cristo. Incredibly entertaining read. And I’ve started reading Shakespeare, too. Can’t wait to finish the little book collection I’ve brought here.

Friday night was a lot of fun. We had football practice, then hit up a bar and a club in Suwon, with the obligatory dealing with drunk people being a pain in the ass and returning home as the sun began to rise.

Saturday was Hongdae. I had Shabu-Shabu(?) for the first time. It was kind of underwhelming. But I got my kebab later, so Saturday night can be declared a success.

We had our first flag football game on Sunday. We got murdered. And I had to play QB, which makes losing only more discouraging. Sigh. At least practices are fun.

I finally have two new little aquatic friends keeping my company in my apartment! Let’s see if they outlast Christine’s…

I hate the fact that I get tired before 1am now. Life passes by too quickly when you’re at work for 8 hours a day. 

Every time I think to myself how bored I am, I remind myself: there is no such thing as a bored person; there are only boring people. And I know I’m not boring. Because I just used four different types of punctuation in one sentence. Bitch.

Tonight was Folk Night in Seohyeon. I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected. I really wanna learn banjo. Or flamenco guitar. But mostly banjo. So I can be cool like Seth. And Steve Martin.

I remember learning in my Arabic class that in many Arab countries, instead of going out to bars, people tend to spend their nights at cafes, drinking coffee and smoking hookah and playing backgammon. That sounds so much more appealing to me.

That reminds me. Tonight we were talking about the proper pronunciation about Iraq. It’s ironic that so many people shit all over Americans who say  "eye-raq" instead of “ee-raq” or “i-raq” with a short “i." In the Arabic spelling of Iraq (العراق or al-Iraq), the letter that corresponds with the "i” is “ع”, which has no English letter equivalent. However, when it is marked with a kasra (the usually excluded short vowel diacritic for “i”), the pronunciation is very close to “eye.” Go listen to it on Google Translate or Wikipedia and feel your world get flipped upside down.

But it really doesn’t matter that much, obviously. It’s not as ignorant as pronouncing the l’s in quesadilla or the j in fajita. It’s really not ignorant at all. It’s just ironic and amusing that the pronunciation that is generally thought to denote ignorance is actually closer to the legitimate pronunciation than the “proper” English pronunciation is.  So yeah. I guess I’m kind of a snob.

Different languages are interesting. Different cultures are, too. Considering how small the Earth is with respect to the rest of the universe, there’s really no excuse for not educating ourselves in all of them to some degree. And now that the internet has taken over the developed world, there’s no excuse to not become somewhat literate in some programming languages. Unless you’re over 60 or something. It’s amazing - I remember reading somewhere - that something like 10% of all the human beings who have ever lived, are alive today. Yeah. Ten percent of all the human beings who have EVER lived, in the history of mankind, are alive today. Seven billion people now. Goddamn. It’s time to start looking to outer space at the rate we are multiplying. No excuse to not have some knowledge of the cosmos at this point. Is there anything I’m missing? 

I read Emerson’s essay on History, and I’m trying to memorize certain passages. Just for myself. To justify my BA in History. That still blows my mind. I have a degree in History. What the hell. That is so not me. But so me at the same time. Full of contradictions. So interesting, right?

Anyway. I really want to get a dartboard for my room. And some fish. And some pictures. Or posters. Whatever. There needs to be more color up in here if I’m going to be spending the next 11 months in this place. 

Time flies. And I am burning through cash way too fast. Fack.

Kebabs in Seoul seriously make up for the lack of good Mexican food around here. Seriously.

Today we had our first field trip. We went to see a play, but I forget what it was called. All I remember is that it was about a boy (or girl?) who was lazy and took his (her?) mother for granted, and ended up getting turned into a cow. Having been transformed into a cow by means of a magical mask, the boy naturally befriended a chicken and a horse (rabbit?). There was a really dramatic scene where the shadow of the hand of the farmer viciously reached out to behead the chicken, but it was so over the top that I had to choke back laughter. So I kinda felt like an asshole when one of my kids grabbed me and whimpered that it was too scary. 

Afterward we got to take pictures with the cast (of three women). They got a kick out of how tall I am, and one was trying to jump to be eye-level with me. I wasn’t sure how to react. “Ha ha. Yeah. I am tall.” Cool. All right.

I’m starting to read Harry Potter in Korean. It’s gonna take forever, but I’m nerdy enough to enjoy it.

“HELPUU MEEE”

“Teacher today is play gym today?”

“Stella and Me, same same.”

“Teacher can I go to bathroom pulease, very urgent!”

Machiavelli should be required reading for teachers of young children. I’ve finally managed to scare my kindergarteners into whining less, so the cuteness to annoyingness ratio has been steadily increasing over the past week. Let’s hope this continues.

Anyway, I gotta admit, I have been pretty impressed with some of the stuff my kids say. One of the 8-year-olds can multiply two 2-digit numbers in his head almost as fast as I can. And when we were talking about what some useful inventions for the future might be, the 3rd graders came up with a few interesting things. One girl said, “Shoes that clean the floor as you walk.” Another girl said, “Trash cans that convert trash into energy.” And the boys, of course, came up with all types of robots and lasers which, when combined, can accomplish practically anything imaginable, from doing your homework to destroying the world. I’m sure the boys had some other good ideas too, but I can’t remember at the moment…

Caught the 6am bus back to Suji after last night. Got to watch the sun rise in Seoul. Can’t wait til the weather warms up.

Korea is still pretty sick. But now I am too. Ugh.

That is definitely one of the downsides of working at a school where you’re constantly surrounded by germ-infested little kids. A cold will spread like wildfire.

So for the past 5 days or so Derek has been visiting, getting accustomed to the weather and time difference before heading off for orientation for the public schools. On his first night here we hit up Green Galbi and enjoyed some legit 갈비 and managed to kill two bottles of beer and a bottle of soju, which embarrassingly got us pretty drunk. Followed that up with some McD’s ice cream and fries. Mmmm.

Most of his visit consisted of exploring Suji and eating out. And exploring Seoul and getting lost. That was so goddamn frustrating. Anyway, we managed to get our fair share of 갈비살, 닭갈비, 삼겹살, 떡볶이, and of course, Pizza School. ₩5,000 for a whole pizza. Freaking awesome. Also, a Big Mac Meal over here is like ₩3,900 which is roughly $3.50. Mind = blown.

Speaking of which, I got my health check results back yesterday. Joanne told me I tested positive for cocaine and I turned bright red. She’s such a riot. But I did find out that my blood pressure is fine and my cholesterol levels are good (which is awesome), and I’ve actually lost weight since I’ve been here (which is not so awesome). Must be all the walking I’ve been doing?

Saturday night was pretty awesome. Stayed out in Hongdae still about 4am. Had three kebabs. Why is food so good. At the first club we went to Christine’s friendliness got me into the VIP area with a bunch of (predominantly black) GIs celebrating one of the guys’ birthday. The room was shamelessly filled with Hennessy, watermelon, and fried chicken. The guys were super friendly. But they did mention that I needed to eat more and work out. 

In the next bar we briefly hit up, we were fed cake by a few Korean girls also celebrating a birthday. Gotta appreciate the Asian hospitality. At the last place we went, a bottle of Jack Daniels was left on the table at our disposal. So ironically, booze was by far my smallest expense for the night, after food (mainly kebabs) and transportation. Seoul is definitely the place to be after 10pm.

Anyway, if I’m going to make it through the week, I’m gonna need to melt a whole package of Mentho-Lyptus Halls and coat my entire throat with the resulting syrup. Yum.

Off to Family Mart.

Hongdae:

After tomorrow, I’ll have survived my 2nd week teaching! Sweet.

There’s a lot that can be said about teaching. It may be too soon for me to make any assumptions or sweeping generalizations, but I’m going to do it anyway.

Teaching young kids is a goddamn pain in the ass. They have no sense of reasoning. They have the attention span of a fruit fly. I swear to God, their mothers must spike their Corn Flakes with Red Bull or cocaine or something. They have to pee constantly, and it’s always “very urgent.” They cry over the dumbest shit, and laugh at even dumber shit. It takes them 15 minutes to copy down 10 words. When their assignment is to copy words, they still ask for help. They refuse to share things that they aren’t even using. They’re so territorial over their crayons and erasers they might as well urinate all over them. They start frothing at the mouth if either of these items are even slightly displaced from within the reach of their greedy, snot-covered hands.

And I still wake up sometimes in a cold sweat at 5 in the morning, hearing their piercing whines in my head…

Anyway, if you don’t believe in evolution, go conceive a child and raise it (yeah, that’s right. “It.”) to the age of 7 (give or take a year). You can watch the whole process in your living room. I can guarantee you, your ugly little pug puppy that you bought to be ironic will outshine that child in both charm and wit throughout that entire period. And of course I can speak with the utmost authority on this issue, having raised many children myself.

On the other hand, these kids are only 5 or 6. When they manage to sit quietly and focus, or play together in peace, the calm that ensues is deafeningly beautiful. And even the ones that drive me insane can be so goddamn adorable sometimes.

Also, the workload that has been dumped on these children is ridiculous. The fact that the only class in which I struggle to get through all the material is Kindergarten makes no sense to me. Of the two and a half hours I spend with them every morning, they get only 15 minutes of playtime. That blows my mind. I think that everyday, Kindergarteners should at least have storytelling and maybe 40 minutes to an hour of playtime. Not 50 pages of workbooks to power through on a weekly basis. Jesus.

1st grade is all right, in terms of what they’re expected to cover. On a side note, I heard that it’s relatively common for Korean parents to beat their kids if they misbehave or do poorly in school, so many teachers will sign off on unfinished homework or sugarcoat weekly reports as a precaution. No teacher wants to know that a 1st grader got his ass beat because he screwed up at school. But I can honestly say, with complete sincerity, that if I could indirectly induce the beatings of two boys in my first grade, I would not feel an ounce of remorse.

On the plus side, I love teaching the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th graders. The syllabus is much more flexible, and the subject matter is easier to discuss. I dare say it even has the potential to be interesting at times. Gasp. It helps that these kids have developed beyond the psyche of the “id” and are able to maintain a degree of order and a sense of reason. So, instead of encountering little animals in the classroom, my only battles tend to be against ADHD, boredom, and shyness. Luckily, I have some first-hand familiarity with all three (the latter two in particular), so I can proudly say that I have been able to effectively get the shy kids to participate more, and the bored kids to stay somewhat entertained. Booyah.

So it’s nice ending the days with classes I usually enjoy. Plus, for me at least, the last period tends to be pretty chill, since the kids are pretty pooped out and the workload is a bit lighter.

Speaking of poop: trivia night at the Traveler’s bar in Bundang. Round 2 Category 2. Just wow.

Can’t wait to get my first paycheck and feel all mature and independent and shizz.

Suwon and Gangnam this weekend! Maybe explore more of Seoul? I wish my camera wasn’t such a piece of crap. Gonna have to mooch photos off someone else. So who’s got a nice camera and an adventurous spirit?!

PS I can’t get over how awesome this is. STEP UP YOUR GAME, AMERICA.

The infamous 메가맥 (Mega Mac)

“Farewell, goodness, humanity, gratitude… Farewell all those feelings that nourish and illuminate the heart! I have taken the place of Providence to reward the good; now let the avenging God make way for me to punish the wrongdoer!”

So it took 300 pages to cover 14 years of being thrown in prison, escaping, recovering the treasure on the island of Monte Cristo, and saving the lives (in a sense) of two of his former loyal friends; and now there are a thousand pages left for him to exact his revenge? God, this book is awesome.

Being without internet for the past few days, I’ve had a lot more time to read. Normally, my attention shifts among two or three books, but lately I’ve been engrossed with Dumas, and unable to read anything else (or sleep, for that matter). I can’t remember the last time I’ve been so addicted to a book. It was probably the 4th book in the Harry Potter series, and I suppose at the time I had not been so jaded by reading. My ability to sit quietly and read a story continuously without shifting my attention elsewhere after a chapter or two has steadily declined with my discoveries of facebook, reddit, and stumbledupon, as well as various TV shows. (F*ck you, 24)

The nice thing about a good book is that you rarely feel you’re wasting your time with it. That’s not something I can say about most other forms of media. Anyway, though at this point I’m only about a quarter of the way through the story, I can confidently recommend The Count of Monte Cristo to anyone.

Anyway, back to Korea. So when I walked into class wearing glasses today, my students called me “ugly teacher” and told me to take them off. Sigh. No respect. If you ever want the honest truth from anyone, ask a 6 year old. They also had to draw me today, and I since I hadn’t shaven in a couple days I still had some stubble. So they had a blast spotting my cheeks with black dots, which eventually spread to cover my whole face. It’s great to be appreciated.

Some kid also discovered the joke, “I’m hungry,” “Hi Hungry! I’m Chris!”

This joke is apparently the best thing since sliced bread.

Speaking of bread, Korean roll cake is AMAZING:

Oh god. Starting to write again. What a pain. Gonna keep it simple. Fragments. Yes.

OK. So I’ve been in Korea for about a week now, and it’s been relatively uneventful, given how much people hyped up the idea of teaching abroad. But part of me expected it to be a little more low-key, and I honestly prefer it this way.

Now in the typical blog fashion I shall recount the events of the previous week:

Most of last week was spent having “orientation,” which was kind of a joke since it was the last week of the semester. At least now I can confidently consider myself an expert in “Angry Bird” coloring activities, sticker bribery, and ice cream parties. This constituted the majority of the first 3 days of orientation.

Thursday, March 1st, was a national holiday celebrating Korean independence (suck it, Japan) but the other new teachers and I still had to come in for work from 10am to 7pm. By a small stroke of luck, we found out that we needed to move out of our motels by noon, so we got to waste an hour or so moving our crap into our new apartments. The rest of that day consisted of more productive individual “orientations” for each class we’d be teaching, where our supervisors pretty much shoved as much information down our throats as humanly possible within staggered periods of 20 minutes. A proper welcome to education in Asia. We also had the privilege of giving a demo lesson to our supervisors. Few joys in life exceed that which comes from trying to teach two middle-aged Korean women pretending to be 7 year olds. 

Orientation aside, it’s been a great experience so far. The kids are mostly adorable and mostly incredibly smart. All the other foreign teachers super chill and as diverse as white people can get. It turns out Canadians actually do say “eh?” And not ironically. It also turns out that over here, having an American accent is sexier than a British one. So if you’re struggling in the States, it might be time to cruise on over to Korea.

We had our first staff part last week as well, and holy shit legit Korean BBQ in Korea has pretty much ruined Korean BBQ in LA for me. Anyway, we had our fair share of soju and Cass and it turned out to be a pretty great night. It also managed to help the jet-lagged among us develop a more reasonable sleep schedule (though part of me really misses the ability to feel wide awake at 6 in the morning).

On Saturday, a few of us went to Seoul for the afternoon and ended up staying until the last bus left around midnight. That city is fricken awesome. It’s about 45 mins from here, but I wish we lived a little closer. Anyway, more on that in a later post. I’ll also upload some photos for those who can’t be bothered to read.

CHEERS, BITCHES