One for the Month of May
I’m sitting here in my room with some time and an inability to do much else, so I figured I’d update this old thing. I just had a pretty bad reaction to pizza (yeah, pizza…) that must have had nuts or nut oil or something on it, so I went to the emergency room where they gave me some needles and a prescription. My face is still pretty swollen and I’m hive-y everywhere, but not half as bad as before and I can at least breathe now.
I’ve meant to post on here a few times over the past few weeks but just never got around to it because what I had to say each time didn’t seem important enough to bother with… But maybe if I combine all of the small thoughts I can remember to make one big blog (of unimportant thoughts), just maybe it’ll work.
Firstly, sorry about never updating this. When I do post on here from now on I think it’ll be mostly just things on my mind, not so much travel diary style updates about where I am and whatnot because I realize now that that’s like looking at other people’s vacation photos (and like some comedian said, “If I’m not in them and no one’s having sex, I’m not interested”).
So I’ll just say, I’ve been having a really good time here, been going different places, doing different things (even some same things)… My room now features a double bed that I found outside an apartment nearby (I checked that it was clean first), so that’s been good. And I found a nice cheap gym a couple km’s from here, which is actually kinda nice because it’s forced me to start running, which I used to hate but now like.
The job is alright. I know I signed up for dealing with kids that don’t speak English all day long, but I obviously didn’t really understand what that meant at the time. I’m just exhausted all day until I get home. I feel like I did back in the factory during my uni summers; some days going pretty well and others where I wonder how the shit I could possibly do another 9 months. But I think I’m gonna hang in there and finish my contract (time flies here anyways), because I like living here and there’s none of that without the job. I just have to think of some way to make work more bearable/enjoyable during those days I want to throw chairs against the window.
So, one of the thoughts I had a couple weeks ago… I was watching Planet Earth, seeing all these different life forms doing all these things, all aimed at surviving (living as long as possible) and reproducing. All of their (and our) natural inclinations and reflexes are aimed at this. But what for? There’s gotta be more to life than just surviving. Most animals/insects spend all of their time just surviving (spending pretty much every waking minute looking for and eating food), but we don’t have to… We’ve gotten really good at surviving, with our technology, laws, medicine, etc, so we don’t have to live like crabs on the ocean floor. We have a unique opportunity (one that we’ve come to take for granted) to actually do things in our lives. I can’t say what it is that everyone should do, whatever they feel is best I guess. I definitely think that whatever we do we should take advantage of and enjoy our consciousness, explore that shit. It’s our consciousness that makes us special in the first place… Anyways, I’m just saying that we can’t just survive and be satisfied with that, not giving any thought to whatever it is we fill our lives with. What we fill our lives with is the important part. The actual surviving part (eating and shit) is the bare minimum and it’s all for nothing if we don’t do anything cool with the opportunity it creates. Just another obvious realization by me, for you.
I can’t think of any of those other things that weren’t important enough to write about. I guess they weren’t important enough to remember, either. Actually, I did jot down one or two when they happened, but looking at them now I see they’re just the incoherent ramblings of a madman.
Anyways, this post hasn’t turned into what I meant for it to turn into at all, but I’m more interested in eating and sleeping now than changing it. The antihistamines are winning. I’m going to Seoul this weekend. I miss food from back home. I gotta figure out what I’m doing for summer break. Smartphones are dope. See ya
Post with 1 note
April 8, 2012
To those of you who actually read this, sorry that I’ve been slacking so hard.. I’ll be better. I just haven’t been that inspired to write lately, but that’s not to say I haven’t been having a really good time.
I feel pretty settled and content here in Gwangju. I’ve got a bit of a routine going, my apartment has everything it needs and I’ve got a handle on the transit system and getting around (or maybe I should say my phone’s got a handle on all that, and I’ve got a handle on my phone). Having a phone is so good, I had almost forgotten. We got our alien registration cards last Friday so I went out the next day and after trying a few different stores I finally found one with a guy that speaks a bit of English. After a couple hours of talking, writing, drawing and hand-signalling we came to an agreement and I signed some papers that hopefully said what he said they said. It’s actually pretty strange, they gave me an activated $600 phone and all they have is my name.. No credit card, no address, no bank information.. Pretty trusting of them.
The teaching thing is going alright.. I realize now what I’ve known all along, that I’m really not built for it, but it’s cool sometimes. Hopefully I’ll gain some patience through practice or something (if that’s how it works). I’ve talked to a few other people that seem to have it easier with their jobs, but I think you get used to pretty much anything after a while.. From whatever that new baseline is that you settle into you have your good and bad days, so it’s all the same really. As far as jobs go it’s ok. Monday-Friday actually goes by pretty fast, which is nice, but unfortunately the same is true of the weekends.
Now, in true uninspired writing style, I’m just going to say a bunch of things that have happened since the last time I posted:
-Weekend before last Emil and Job and I found a group to play ball with, so we did that. Job and I got lost on the way but this really nice Korean family picked us up in their minivan and drove us to where we were trying to get to. It was cool to play indoors and with some guys that actually know what they’re doing (it was all foreigners except for one guy). We’ll keep doing that.
-A few of us went up a mountain called Mudeung two weeks ago. It was nice to have a bit of an adventure after a month of not leaving the city. It was ice cold and really windy up top but the view of the city was pretty sweet.
-We accidentally ordered 2 plates of what turned out to be chicken feet earlier this week. It was really bad, the texture was exactly how you’d think the texture of a chicken’s foot/ankle would be. I had to spit it out in the washroom.
-There’s a farmers market kind of deal a short bus ride away from here so I’ve started getting vegetables there.. Way cheaper than the grocery store and a cooler experience.
-Funny cab times, every time
-I’ve been having some odd interactions with the elderly here.. Twice now I’ve had old women on the bus give me disgusted looks for no apparent reason. Then last week I was outside using the pull up bar in the park and this guy came and stood inches away from me and just watched. Then after listening to my ipod and laughing for a bit he was on his way. And then just yesterday I was sitting on a bench with my foot on my knee and this old guy walking by reached down and touched my ankle, laughed, then kept going.
-The kids at school went nuts over my haircut. I didn’t expect such a strong reaction. A lot of pointing and laughing at my face, screaming, running away, thumbs-down… Buzz cuts are definitely not a common thing here.
I think that’s it. Happy Easter, yall!
another one
It’s been a bit since I posted on here so I’ll have to catch up a bit.. On Saturday night this past weekend a few of us went out to a soju hof (a bar that’s like a restaurant full of divided rooms) near my apartment. The one guy, Joe, was having trouble breathing so he went outside for some air and I went with to see if he was ok. He wasn’t, he was coughing literally non-stop and water wouldn’t help so we tried to walk to a hospital nearby but found out that they were closed when we got inside (it was just dark everywhere and the one woman behind the glass door on the third floor looked terrified and just told us to leave with her hand signals). We caught a cab to another hospital, got inside and found out that it was closed, too. We didn’t know what the shit was going on and he was having a really hard time breathing now and starting to panic (understandably), so I gave him my epi pen and we went back out onto the street to find another cab and hospital. Luckily this time the cabby took us to one that was open, and the timing couldn’t get much better as he stopped coughing and just collapsed on the ground as soon as we got out of the cab about 10 feet away from the entrance. I got him inside and the doctor and nurses did their thing. What was supposed to be a low-key night ended up being one of the most exciting so far!
That was last weekend. This past week went by really fast, as did this Paddy’s Day weekend. We went to this bar and I swear every foreigner in the city was there, packed into this pretty small place. It was a really good time though. Work has been pretty alright. Stressful, but working with kids can also be pretty cool sometimes (when they’re cute and listen to you). We’re in the full swing of making lesson plans every week and making study guides and tests and whatnot, so it feels like this is what it’s going to be like for the rest of the year. I can’t believe it’s been a month already.. This year’s gonna fly. This makes me want to make some goals or plans of some sort, because I know if I don’t the year will just go by and before I know it’ll be time to go back home.
I had an epiphany in the shower the other day. I was thinking about my shampoo, and how it’s hard to know how much to use each time to make it last the year (because they’re in pretty big bottles, so it’s hard to gage on a daily basis). The only way to successfully make those bottles last for a exactly a year is to do some planning and calculating at the beginning of the year.. Maybe make a system where you divide all your shampoo into 52 smaller bottles, where your ration is more manageable on a daily basis (use 1/7th of the bottle each time if you’re into washing your hair every day). No, I’m not actually this concerned about my shampoo.. I’ll just buy more when I need to like a normal person. The point is that if you want to accomplish something big or long-term, you have to go in with a plan at the beginning that breaks everything down into manageable pieces/steps. Figure out what you need to do in the short term to get to where you want to be in the long term. Reading this now makes me realize that this is total common sense (of course that’s how you do it, stupid), but I guess it never really occurred to me in this way before. I needed the shampoo analogy. Now I just need a goal of some sort and I’ll be set.
My apartment is feeling a bit more like a place I live in, I think mostly because I finally got a table and chair on Saturday. Also, I taped my wardrobe drawers together enough that I can put clothes in them, so I’m not living out of my suitcases anymore. I went and saw Aaron’s place yesterday. The asshole has a living room with a couch, a kitchen, a bathroom and a bedroom with a double bed in it. Whatever.
I’m looking forward to starting to do more with my weekends (starting next weekend). They are precious commodities now and I don’t want to spend them doing nothing but going downtown and recovering from going downtown. That shit gets expensive, too. It should start to get warmer soon so I want to start seeing some things and going to some places. Plus get more into playing ball and stuff. I want to figure out the bus system here so I can go more places without paying for cabs. A lot of people live far from me and there’s nothing cheap or cool to do in my part of the city.. And I need a haircut soon so I want to go to this $4 place Emil tells me about by his place. Anyways, I have to write some stuff for some kids now. Later gators
workin, man
It’s a pretty crazy thing, teaching Korean children… I have a really small class (3 kids) of 7 year olds for the first half of the day, then 2 classes of 8/9-year olds in the afternoon. They’re all actually 1-2 years younger than those ages, though, because in Korea you are 1 year old at birth, then you gain a year every New Year… Like most things here, I don’t know why they choose to do it this way, but it seems to work for them.
The kids are kids…Full of energy, irrational and love to play, but they’re pretty exhausting. One of my kids doesn’t speak a word of English… He just stares at me blankly when I say anything to him, occasionally nodding or repeating exactly what I say. And in the afternoon I have a couple of slightly older kids that are a bit more advanced, but most can’t focus on any one thing for more than a few seconds. I’ve been pretty stressed, but I think it will get better as time goes on. It’s just pretty chaotic in this first week. I think a big part of it is that when we were training we got to see all the classes at the end of the year, so the kids understood most of what you would say to them (whereas now they are at the very beginning of the year, and for a lot of them this is their first time at school).
I think that you can get used to just about anything, and most people are more adaptable than they give themselves credit for… The difference between the guy who hangs in there (the guy who views things optimistically and persists despite doubts) and the guy who gives up (the guy who focuses on the negatives and says, “this is too much, fuck this.”) is one of inches, and yet the end results are miles apart… The former is really the only kind of person that does anything significant, whereas the latter never really grows or accomplishes much of anything.
I’m just thinking about this right now because I feel like I could pretty easily adopt the perspective that teaching little kids is just a stupid idea for me (being an impatient, introverted guy that doesn’t like to act silly or fake enthusiasm), or, without changing my actual situation whatsoever, I could shift my attitude so that I focus on the positives of my job/situation (I get to enjoy the adoration of a bunch of little kids that I’ll get to teach and mould in my image over the next 12 months), push myself to be a bit more energetic and enthusiastic than I really am and remind myself that all teachers get stressed. Ultimately, the difference between these two perspectives is the difference between being a teacher and not being a teacher (or being anything vs. not)
I think that a lot of us see our experiences as invalid simply because the actual act of doing something doesn’t feel like we thought it would feel when we saw others do those things when we were younger… For example, I don’t feel like a real kindergarten teacher (ie; like how I saw my kindergarten teacher when I was 4), but I bet my kids look at me the same way I looked at my teacher when I was their age. I think about this whenever I see people my age with kids… My gut reaction says, “What the shit are you doing, you’re not a real adult or an actual parent,” but really, yeah they are… They are the same age, and in all likelihood are at the same maturity level as our parents 25 years ago who probably had friends questioning their qualifications just like I do now. It’s hard to wrap your head around, but that’s just how it goes… To be cliché and lame, life happens while we’re getting ready for life to happen.
Man… I’m deep..
Anyways, things are going pretty well overall. I’ve figured out my water heater and my washing machine, I can buy most groceries without any problems and I have a semi-complete home gym setup (it turns out that gyms are really expensive in this part of town). Emil and Aaron are way the shit far away now, and so is downtown, but I’m sure things will work out fine. For now it’s just getting used to the job, waiting for warmer weather and keepin it real mostly. I hope you’re doing the same
So this is my place here. It’s pretty compact, but nice and new. There’s the main room (living room/bedroom), the kitchen/laundry room, and the bathroom (yeah, the whole room is the shower). I’m just waiting for a table and chairs, hanging out on the floor on a blanket a lot till they come
the first week
I meant to update this more frequently but it’s been a pretty crazy week. I ended up getting my apartment after 2 nights in the love hotel. They sent 5 of us to an area of the city called Suwan where we’ll teach at a new school they’re opening. We’re kind of far from downtown and everyone else now, but it’s a decent area and really nice new apartments with new everything. And we’re still cabbing back into the city every day for training with everyone else until the end of next week. I’ll take a couple pics of my place and post them sometime soon.
Yesterday (Sat) one of the schools had their kindergarten grad ceremony, so we all got dressed up and went to that. It was 4 hours of non-stop kid performances in a concert hall. They were all cute and entertaining, but I think that 1 hour would have probably done the trick. Our bosses, a husband and wife, took all of us teachers out for barbeque dinner and drinks when it was over and it was a really good time. After dinner and a lot of beer and soju (the 20% liquor here that tastes like air) we went to a few other bars downtown. Korean girls are super shy, and most of them seemed scared of us, but a few talked to us.
They love drinking here in Korea. It’s encouraged for everyone to get completely bombed when they go out. Bars are open late, too. I went back home around 2 or 3am because I was sick and exhausted, but apparently leaving the bar at 7 or 9am is no big thing here. It seems really strange that drinking is so huge here because they’re a very conservative people, the Koreans, but I guess that’s probably why they love drinking so much.
Not speaking the language here can be pretty frustrating. Cabs are tricky, not only because of the language barrier but because they don’t have addresses here. You just have to say a landmark nearby or point to where you want to go. It’s wild. Labels are tricky, too. Twice now I’ve accidentally bought and reluctantly drank cream instead of milk, and I just got 2 giant bags of fabric softener (instead of detergent) for a washing machine that I don’t know how to operate. I don’t know how my thermostat/water heat controller works, but I’m experimenting. It’s a lot of trial and error.
But yeah, besides a few communication issues and being sick it’s been really good! We’ve got a solid team of foreigners that hang out, lots of relatively cheap food and drink everywhere, and what looks to be a cool job once we actually start teaching. For the most part the Koreans have been pretty helpful and understanding about the fact that I’m an ignorant foreigner that doesn’t speak the language or do anything properly. I’ve been working on the handing and receiving things with both hands, though, and I try to not wave my open hand at people and cabs (it’s sort of like a ‘fuck you’ apparently). Bedtime
jetlaggin
I’ve been told by a few people that I should blog while I’m in Korea, and it’s something that I’ve thought about trying for a while now, so here she is. I don’t intend to make it purely about Korea life but that topic will probably dominate the posts, at least for now while I’m not thinking about much else.
We (my polish friend Emil and I) arrived in Gwangju Saturday night after about 24 hours of flying and busing. I had only slept about 2 hours the night before we flew out so I was expecting to be able to sleep at some point on the plane or at the airport, but no dice. There are about 8 other teachers here and we’re all staying in what’s known as a ‘love hotel’, complete with red lights and complimentary condoms. It’s actually pretty nice, though, and seems clean.
We all went out for food and wandered the city a bit yesterday (our first day). We had to take off our shoes and sit on the floor in front of tiny tables at the first place we went to, but the second place had chairs. I prefer chairs. There doesn’t seem to be any selection or consultation process when getting food, they just bring you a bunch of tiny mystery dishes meant to be shared between everyone once you sit down. I was nervous about eating here with my nut allergy, since I can’t communicate with the servers, but it hasn’t been an issue so far. Apparently Emil’s shellfish allergy is going to be a problem, though. I expect to have to use my epi pen on him sometime in the near future. But yeah, you can get a nice meal here for $4-5 CAD, and there’s no tax or tipping (awesome).
The main thing I noticed when we were out yesterday was that I don’t speak or read Korean, so in general I don’t have a clue what’s going on. But it’s nice to be with a bunch of other people that are in the same boat. Actually, one guy rolled down his window and said me, “Hello. You are a very handsome guy.” Then drove off. I’m sure it’s just something they do here, nothing sexual.
Anyways, I’m liking Gwangju so far. This part of the city might not be anywhere near where I’ll end up, though, since there’s 3 different schools run by this company and we could end up at any of them. It’ll be nice to get set up in an apartment and unpack/settle in. But for now, the love hotel will do. My other friend Aaron should be getting here sometime today or tomorrow I think, so that’ll be good. It’s 5:20am and I’ve been up since 2. Work is in 4 hours. Time to get breakfast or go back to bed.
yellow line: what our flight path would have been if I was flying the plane
red line: our actual flight path