another long entry. who do i think i am: anne frank?

I really didn’t expect that I would blog this frequently, and I’m sure I won’t keep this everyday stuff up for long, but today was just so full of priceless memories that I can’t not share. Plus, it gives me a good way to productively take up about an hour of my evening, which would otherwise be awkward time. And I really do find it soothing, especially because I’m also listening to music.

i don’t know your face no more
or feel the touch that i adore
i don’t know your face no more
it’s just a place i’m looking for
we might as well be strangers in another town
we might as well be living in a different world
we might as well, we might as well, we might as well
for all i know of you now


Hmm… and I was also just overwhelmed by a desire to write (creatively), which isn’t something I’ve felt in a very long time, but which was a good feeling. I’m not going to, granted… I’m going to blog, and then probably go to sleep. I think the reason I never actually sit down to write is just because there are too many distractions. I’d hoped that being in Ireland would allow me to do some writing, but I working a very stressful 40 hours a week and wanting to spend the rest of my time in bed made that quite literally impossible. But I think I could have a lot of free time here, and I could avoid too many distractions, and really throw myself wholeheartedly into one of two things—learning Korean and writing, hopefully. And maybe throw myself half-heartedly into a few other things, like jogging.

So… today. Last night was actually my worst night yet. I didn’t necessarily feel too bad. My throat is no longer sore, but I’m coughing now, and my nose was runny. But I was just so unbearably hot. The fan was on, so maybe I was running a bit of a fever, but I woke up around 2:30 and was just plain miserable, tossing and turning, for almost an hour. I finally fell back asleep at some point, and woke up around 7:00 feeling okay and rested enough, but it was pretty terrible. I’m going to try to avoid that wakefulness tonight by staying up pretty late, especially since I came home from school with a bad headache and already slept about two hours this afternoon. But I had a profoundly gross and surprising amount of goobers this morning, just in case you were curious. Like, so many I couldn’t open my eyes. Gross, huh? I like to think that these little details are the things I’ll really appreciate when I’m reading this ten years from now. Or when it’s published and sitting in a library somewhere.

Breakfast was leftover broiled beef from last night, which was pretty awesome. Eating rice three times a day is… intense. I have a friend who uses the word intense a lot, often in ways I feel are inappropriate, and I get irrationally irritable about it, but my particular usage just now may ring the same way, if you’ve never eaten rice three times a day and don’t truly understand what an experience it is. (/run-on sentence) My host mother came home from work today to show me how to take the bus to school. It’ll be… okay, I think. It’s a good thing I used the bus a bit while in Ireland (though not much), because otherwise I’d be completely clueless about public transportation, as opposed to just mostly. Man, do I miss my car. I’m still not clear whether I have to tell the bus driver to stop, or whether he will just stop anyway, but sure I’ll find out when he goes whizzing by. Whatever.

At school, I finally got my class schedule, but like an idiot I left it at school, so I’ll post it tomorrow. (I know, you’re on the edge of your seat.) I’ll be teaching 12 hours at NMS (between Monday and Friday), and on Monday and Tuesday I don’t come in until 10:30 and 11:30 respectively. Tomorrow (Wednesday), however, my co-teacher will be picking me up at 8:10, which is still better than riding the bus. I went to three classes today… the rest of the kids are also cute. I found out from man-co-teacher that he wants us to teach together, and completely out of the book, with me only doing the listening and conversation parts, and him doing the reading and grammar. That’s disappointing, since it’s boring, and not really why I’m here, but it’s only 2 out of the total 12 classes, and I guess it might be good to have that little break. And it’s true that I can’t teach grammar nearly as effectively as someone who speaks Korean. And English is super important for college tests and stuff, but those tests consist mainly of reading comprehension and translating—the ability to actually speak and understand isn’t really tested much (so far as I understand), although that’s the thing that people will find most useful in their jobs, I would imagine. But I have at least six class periods that are designated as “Conversation Classes”—one with each class at the school—and those are alllll mine! YAY! Fun will be in abundance, I assure you. (Side note: My mom just brought me a (cut-up) apple… and toilet paper. Joy of joys!)

After one class, my co-teacher informed me that the principal, VP, and chief of administration (and him and my woman-co-teacher) were going to take me out to lunch. I was pretty excited, although I was feeling a little crappy due to a Tylenol shortage. So then we get there, and my co-teacher says, “Oh… do you like octopus?”

You’re shitting me, I replied. In my head. So we’re all sitting there, and they’re speaking in rapid-fire Korean, and I’m trying not to let my head hit the table. Then my principal busts out some moonshine wine he made (ahahahaha) and I’m hoping for an asteroid to hit. First came the fish. Now, I don’t like fish. I’ve never, in my life, ordered fish, or eaten it if I wasn’t absolutely forced. It’s not that I don’t like the taste… I understand that some fish don’t actually taste fishy, and those are okay. I can’t handle being served the fish on a plate with it looking at me, bones, scales and all. Koreans are very adept with chopsticks, but I’m hopeless, so I took a few small bites and stopped. Then… octopus. It’s not actually very mind-blowing. The consistency is gross, and the part that gets you is that you can see the little sucker things on the tentacles, but it doesn’t taste bad necessarily. It was, however, unbelievably spicy. So I’m literally dying with a headache, a semi-fever, and now spicy food with not enough water. Awesome. I went to the bathroom and successfully fought back the urge to cry. That’s how I know it wasn’t a genuine cry, because those are uncontrollable. This would have been a self-pity cry, so I’m glad I succeeded in quashing it. I tried very hard to look happy, because I didn’t want to appear ungrateful, but I’m not sure how successful I was. They said… “Next time we’ll take you to a Western restaurant.” My principal is just so creepy and awkward, and he was sitting across from me. After lunch I had another… two? classes, which went fine, and then my co-teacher informed me that my principal had offered to drive me home. Wait for it, this story is just so good.

So yes, my principal is creepy and awkward, yes he speaks no English, but my other option was walking a million miles to the bus stop and then getting lost, so I opted willingly for the ride. Also, a plus, this random other twentysomething employee of the school went with us and sat up front, and he at least speaks a little English. Simple commands like: “Please, get in.” He’s not a teacher. I think we were introduced the first day, and he might be… a handyman? I’m not sure why he went with us to my house. He might be one of the principal’s sons? Or perhaps just a chaperone, to make sure the principal didn’t get frisky? So we get in, and we’re pulling out of the school, and they’re speaking more Korean, and then I catch one word… “waeguk” – foreign. As you can probably imagine, this is a word I hear a lot, which is used often around and about me. So the assistant driver digs in the glovebox and pulls out a CD which they put in, and guess what starts playing. Think… 1997, most famous movie ever, most over-played and famous song ever… Celine Dion. That’s right, it’s a CD of waeguk songs, presumably for my benefit, and the first one is Celine’s epic love ballad “My Heart Will Go On.” I nearly cried, for some reason I couldn’t and still can’t fully understand. I was moved by their efforts to make me more comfortable, and I missed my home country (Canada?), and I was really feeling like shit. (In case you were curious, the next song was Radiohead… “Creep”? Is that Radiohead?)

So they know that I live near the bus terminal, and so do I, but it turns out that none of us (me included) know exactly where I live. To be fair, I’m sure I could have found it with minimal walking, but Korean roads are super-narrow, super-busy, and stupid, and I’d never approached from that direction, I maintain. So the assistant driver is like, ‘do you know where your house is?’ (See? Perfect English.) And I’m like, “It’s okay, just let me out here and I’ll find it.” And they don’t know what I’m saying, so we keep driving away, and then I say, it’s back, and they stop and park, and they both accompany me on a trek to find my house. I apologized many times, in perfect Korean, but they didn’t seem too angry. Just amused at my lack of directional ability. In fairness, if it weren’t so disgustingly hot all the time, I’d walk around and familiarize myself with the neighborhood. I’ll do that, still, as soon as it stops being 100+ degrees everyday. I made it home, anyway.

And I’d successfully talked myself out of going to the Syuper for juice and chocolate, until… I walked into my house to find some scary old woman on the couch, and a weird man at the sink. Awesome! It was one of those amazing moments when common sense completely escapes you. I literally stopped for a moment and thought… did I go in the wrong apartment? But there’s only one apartment. Did I somehow go in the wrong building, into an apartment in the exact same position? Two, I opened the door with my housekey. So I busted out my amazing Korean and said hello, and then fled to my room. Awkward. So I fled again to the store to contemplate how to address this recent turn of events, but not before being accosted by said old woman in Korean, to which I simply continued to respond “I don’t understand. I’m sorry, I don’t understand” in Korean. I find, interestingly, that the Korean people looking after me (family and co-teachers) very often don’t know how to tell me something, so they just don’t. Like, they don’t know how to tell me when I’ll be teaching or what I need to do, or that there will be weird scary family members visiting, so they just don’t. Whatever, I’m sure I’d do the same thing. Maybe. So I went to the store, got chocolate, Pringles, and grape juice, and re-couped a little before going back into the house. I ate my food, coughed a lot, and laid in bed feeling miserable and praying for death.

Then Mom woke me up for dinner, which was, by the way, amazing. Rice, some stuff in the rice, including onion, egg, and more broiled beef. Mmm. And I bonded a little more with host mom. She’s really cute, and I can tell she really wants to communicate with me. I’m really excited to learn more Korean so I can talk more to her. I really wonder why she (they?) decided to host me. I mean, their kids don’t go to the school, so I’m not actually sure how they would have found out about it. It could be for the $400 a month… I mean, I certainly don’t eat that much, but surely the inconvenience would outweigh that ten-fold. Maybe they really just want to improve their English, and especially their kids. It’s an interesting decision, anyway. I sat at the table after I finished, and when she finally sat down she ate what was left in the two kids’ bowls. She said… “Korean mothers… eat… childrens’ food. In America, same?” I assured her that was probably a universal truth, though not in those exact words.

In case the mystery is killing you, it turns out that the scary old woman is the great grandmother (that’s why she’s so scarily old), and the old man is grandmother’s brother. They’re still here, by the way. Perhaps they’ll be living here permanently as well. But the cousin has disappeared, perhaps to go live with the aunt who may or may not be his mother. Ignorance is bliss, right? I shouldn’t complain, however, since I have a big single room and my own bathroom. Exciting surprise houseguests are just another amenity offered by Fulbright. Now if only there was a gym.

I utilized the internet upstairs for about an hour after dinner… sent some emails and chatted with Tim. It was a pleasant experience, despite the absence of air conditioning. And now, it’s only 10pm, and I’m not going to try to go to sleep until at least 11:30, so perhaps I’ll try to write something. Wow, another four page entry. What a life.

Take care. ^^

when there’s nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire
That’s an awesome song lyric, but only because it reminds me of the first sentence of my college entrance essays, in which I quoted… someone: “Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.”
And the last sentence: I will set myself on fire.

eta: A quick note about my illness. Several people have offered to take me to the doctor, but I really don’t think I need to go. I mean, I feel miserable, but I’m pretty sure it’s just a cold and crappy cough. My throat’s a little red, but that’s all. And simply, I feel miserable, but not quite miserable enough for it to be something more serious, I think. If I don’t feel better by this weekend, I’ll go. It’ll just be another hassle, and I’d rather fight it with miserable sleep and grape juice.