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Koreans love to chat with their genitals exposed. I have no explanation for this. The male teachers at the school generally ignore my existence, they don’t sit with me, they don’t say hello in the hallways, they don’t invite me to the man dinners. I’m not complaining, they don’t speak English and I don’t speak Korean so it makes sense we pretend the other doesn’t exist. However, there is an exception to this rule. They all talk to me when I’m peeing. I don’t know what it is about having your genitals exposed in the same room that makes them so awkwardly talkative, but that might explain the large number of saunas (jimjabangs) here.
This picture pretty well sums up how they seem to feel as the clothes come off.
If you ever think you are a good parent and think the overconfidence is becoming a problem go ahead and try and cross the Canadian border with an undocumented baby. You’ll have about 30 don cha know tardy tards in red hats tell you what a terrible parent you are. Speaking of border patrol, I can’t imagine what I’d be like if I was actually bringing in something illegal, I fall apart
when I
don’t have any contraband. I started confessing things from my past that I’m not proud of. “I punched Shawn Stangle in the boys’ bathroom in 6th grade, stopped being friends with Rob for no good reason, and pooped my pants at church in 4th grade.” Quite embarrassing. It’s true that Canada and the US have a shared culture and for the most part I find it easier to tell if someone is from Boston than Toronto. Maria’s friend Holly probably had the most pronounced accent, “don’ cha know you hose heads are aboot three Eskimo naps late?”
I always thought of jetlag as something you invented to sleep in on vacation and felt as I do about food poisoning, that if you didn’t believe in it, it can’t affect you. H, E, double haaaaawky sticks was I wrong. Jet leg beat me like I was a C student in Korea. I didn’t shake it the whole trip. We didn’t get to sleep before 6am until our 4th day or so and yet we were up by 9 every day. It was horrible. Consequently Maria got terribly ill and we got to spend a night in the ghetto Toronto
715 Michigan crew
with one tiny Canadian/Uruguayan addition. IR and receive instruction on how to properly take a stool sample. To give you an idea of why this happened, we landed in Vancouver six hours
before we took off. Time travel, check. I got to participate in my first girls’ sleepover which was probably my favorite part of the Toronto leg of our trip. It was distinctly lacking in the lingerie clad pillow fights I had imagined but I was well entertained all the same.
After sneaking across the border into the land of milk and honey we arrived at the Buffalo Hyatt. Buffalo is like a dead baby, it’s cold and makes you sad in your heart. The cold coupled with the gray skies and the eyesore abandoned buildings make living seem less worthwhile. Unless you’re visiting Shane and Natalie in their haunted house, Tom’s parents who are a blast, or the amazing grocery store Wegmans, stay away. That being said it was great to see everyone again. The bride and her twin were stunningly nice people, the kind of nice that make you feel like you could become about 900 times nicer than you are. There is a renowned restaurant in Buffalo, Duff’s Famous Wings. We
later noted that it doesn’t say Duff’s “delicious” wings. I am not sure what they are famous for, maybe famously fast at giving you diarrhea. I had occasion to pop in on the world’s largest obesity exhibition, Walmart, and did not find it disappointing either in everyday low prices or quantity of the morbidly obese. On the flight back we once again got bumped up to 1st class as they thought: A. Maria and I were going on our honeymoon or B. they picked the two most attractive people in the waiting area. I shouldn’t be allowed to be bumped up because I immediately start talking trash on the economy class folks and their poverty stink smelling up the plane. But that doesn’t make me an elitist. I have an economy class friend. I even voted for an economy class president last election.
Spring was slow to arrive but has seemingly made it with temperatures hovering around 65 degrees most days. I failed to blog about a million things this winter, to sum up: We went skiing for New Years, I still dominate. We went ice skating, I’m still awesome. We went bowling, I still suck. We went to the
Jealous
Just a normal weekend for Blair and Julia, drinking beers with Will Ferrell. zoo, I still don’t run faster than an escaped tiger but
do run faster than small children and the elderly making it okay. We went to opening day of the Korean baseball league, I still get in trouble with security. I started doing a TEFL program for kicks, and am applying in every nation in the world that might have me. Lots of people have been messaging me to see if I’m okay after the earthquake or nuclear meltdown, and to be fair it took me about a year of being here to figure out that I’m in Korea not Japan. I have been playing Tune in Tokyo whenever I can if that counts. One thing I like about Korea is that there’s really not a commonly used way to say “you’re welcome”. People just say yes. I like this b/c I discovered long ago that I tend to say “yes” when people tell me ‘thank you”. I always kind of thought of it as a lazy man’s thank you, or a way of acknowledging that they said thank you, and that I earned it. Korea agrees with me.One thing that I find entertaining, although I’m not sure I’ll miss
Ski Trip
We of course rented the most Dumb and Dumber outrageous ski suits we could find. it too much is hearing “JOEL EEE-DAA!” which translates to “IT’S JOEL!” Never before, and probably never again will just seeing me walk down the hall be greeted with such joyous surprise and fanfare. It certainly beats being an American high school teacher where you are generally regarded with either suspicion or outright disdain.
Something I found a little strange before my arrival: L and R are
liquid consonants and commonly and comically switched when people of certain linguistic backgrounds learn English, leading to the ‘flied lice’ jokes.* The 2nd most common last name in Korea is Lee. It seemed strange to me that some people couldn’t pronounce their own Romanized last name. But turns out you pronounce the last name as only a long E sound. So Korea’s President would be pronounced E Myung Bak. The last name Rhee, or Li, or Ri is actually the same name, just Romanized differently. The most common name Kim is actually pronounced more Gim, and the 3rd most common, Park has no ‘r’ sound. I met a Korean named Pedro on the subway the other day. He asked (in English) where I was from, and immediately on hearing I was American began
Now give me downtrodden.
Part of a photo shoot with Maria's niece. Saddest faces we could manage. talking to me in Spanish. We do have a lot of Hispanics in the US I guess.
Movie: I’ve been watching tons of documentaries on the subway recently, the best ones were probably The Art of the Steal which shows how sketchy our government is and The Fog of War gave an interesting perspective of history through the eyes of Robert MacNamara. Oh, and I rewatched The Black Hole that bit of awesomeness from my youth. It’s still awesome.
Books Twelve and Thirteen of the Wheel of Time: The best books since the first three. I guess dying will motivate a man to actually advance the action with each chapter. Worth picking the series back up. Chelsea Handler’s Are You There Vodka is hilarious.
Wikigem of the Month: Paul Winchell who voiced Tigger (from Winnie the Poo)
Gargamel (Smurfs) and the three lick owl from the
tootsie pop commercial invented the artificial heart (with the help of Dr. Henry Heimlich of the famed maneuver).
Spring Music: Try
Buriedfed - Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson, The Gambler - Fun. or
Wait so Long – Trampled by Turtles .
Born on the treadmill at Bally Total Fitness; 20%!i(MISSING)ncline,
~T
Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to
climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid. ~ Einstein
"You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body." ~ C.S. Lewis
“So much has been given to me, I have not time to ponder over that which has been denied.”
~ Helen Keller
"People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.
If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway.
If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway.
The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway.
For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway."
~ Mother Teresa
*In Korean and Japanese they are the same sound.
** The little black olive, cream cheese, carrot penguins used to illustrate how my coteacher interaction changes depending on location and nudity were made for me (as part of a 7 course meal) by
Chunky Cheeked Baby
Checking to see if she has her father's ears. Maria for White Day, or whatever the Korean holiday is where the girl does nice things for the boy, as opposed to Valentine's Day where the boy does nice things for the girl. I may have mixed those up. W.
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elizabeth morantz
non-member comment
LOL-ing
Very amusing blog. Loved the quotes. Keep it coming.