Friday, March 24, 2006

Fri, 24 Mar

Well, weeks are passin' like days now as its busy busy every night. 'Can't stop addicted to the shindig!’ Checked out a professional Korean basketball game, was decent, might as well have been the Grizzlies...maybe more excitement at this game, possible due to the screaming Korean school girls. So they are handing out these noise makers like at most sports events these days....what a debauchery....kids running from everywhere and like climbing over each other to get at them. Guys grabbing like 15 to take take to their friends...other people trying to grab and take them away ,at least 3 kids in tears, people falling over others as well as their seats. Gotta fight to get what u want here even though there were many just laying around 5 minutes after the smoke cleared. More of a spectacle than the game was. As per the game, the korean teams are allowed to have two foreigners per team....so the game consists of the koreans passin' the pall around the perimeter and then dishing it down low to the big black guy who is covered by the other big black guy on the other team, a head fake, a jump hook and its like every team has a their very own Shaq.

On the way home I walk up a bit of his little hill to find a place to relieve myself (course you bring your own big bottles of beer into the sports games with you), see this funny lookin bone on the ground by my foot, give it a little kick over......right...its a pig/goats/something’s skull just off the side of the road (like the type u see in the movies around the Nevada dessert), just a little kick to remind me where I am again.

Lets see...week before that went up to Hongdei (big Uni. bar area) to see some live jazz with one of my korean friends and one of her girlfriends. had some great food, some good Brazilian influenced jazz, a la Sergio Mendez. Decent cept for the girl singing who ruined it a bit...the most uninspired version of blackbird i have ever heard, but of well, at least she didn’t introduce it as a song from the I am Sam soundtrack...wait, yes she did that too. Worth a head shaking for sure. Friend had to go home, but being a solid hour subway from my and her place we decided to make the night worthwhile, checked out another little bar, managed to be called a 'cracker' for the first time other than by myself, although I found it just hilarious, not offensive at all. Decide to call it a night, bout 1sh, but no subway open then, no problem. A little Asian invention called the Jil-Jil-Bong (aka bath house). Had a nice shower, sauna, hot tub to clear the mind for beers and up to the meeting room where we just chatted for a good while and passed out on the heated marble floor with wood blocks for a pillow. NOt too sore the next day either, and actually felt great all day while teaching.

Thats about all, should be a good night tonight, friend Ariel who taught with me is coming up from the south and we are gonna have another night a partying in Seoul. Work...whats that....kindys (kindergardeners) are driving me a bit crazy as without my control i get uptight and sometimes upset, co-workers are the bomb, director is a crazy korean lady running around like a chicken with her head cut off all the time (even though ive never seen her do anything but mingle with the parents and on the phone). Life is good, only gettin better. Missing the Chinese friendliness when I'm out sometimes, but it won't be long, it wont be long . (Ahh beatles...how i miss my ipod). Anyways, hope everyone is well,Peace, love and cheese

Colin

Sunday, March 05, 2006

Sun, 05 Mar 2006

Well, its been not a week since I left my old city, and not missing it one bit. Got a mountain here to climb and there’s much more happening here. So...first night here head to a nearby city (im about a 2'50$ cab to a city in either direction) and I knew it was a better places for me. Many many a pitcher, few foreigners, Koreans liking their drinks and dancing. So...new school seems very Asian, Not organized at all, a director who is not whatsoever a business women. Its gonna be interesting, but I bet I will have a good reason to leave within a few months. Me, new Korean teacher, and new Korean manager are all in a daze as its the first week of the new semester,,,hoping to get a coupe of more foreigners to cut our schedules back.

Back into the real working world, 10 in the morn (still nice and late) till about 6 or 7. Kids seem good and I think Ill enjoy it. As per a good story. Went out with my co-teacher Joe who has been here for 1.5 years and is engaged to a Korean women. He’s been to a couple of diff. school so he knows the deal and has a bunch of good friends. So, we went to Appujong (the high class area of town) for one of his friends engagement party for buffalo wings (i knew the girl had to be cool if she was allowing her guy to go to a buffalo wing place for dinns). Anyways, 15,000 won, aka 15bucks US, and all you can eat wings!!! Scrumptious, had a good 50, as well the 15 of us probably polished off a solid keg of beer. Joe went home early (he getting old) as well as some of the others who were feeling the beer more. So me and another (although sketchy cdn. guy) went out with the newly engaged fiancée and her 3 friends.

Piled into a mini car that one drove, luckily i was thebiggest and got shotty. Maybe not good though, freaking scary, the usual asian women driver being very unconfident and going in outta lanes randomly and not choosing an exit till the end. Pretty much the most scared I’ve been in a car since Harbin. Anyways, went to a club called M2. Was pretty good...pricey, but a good techno bar. You may think, good techno bar? But yah I started enjoying them in Harbin and there is just too much hop hop here. Too much hip hop? Yah, I did say that, but as in Canada where we have wiggers, here it is kiggers (name I made up). You go to teh club and hear American beats an chorus (sometimes) with Korean verses they just sing over. All wear full on g'd up Celtics outfits or some kinda gangsta shit. Got their choreographed dances they learned from the music vids. They see the real North Americans come in and, boom, WTF, your not wearing your hat sideways (with original sticker on the brim) and walkin with a limp! So...ive gotten sick of that scene pretty quick.. Feels alot like Chiggity Biggity with people thinking they are gods gift. Anyways, the bar was decent as Iwent there with some girls. Course 2 of them were married with kids and the other would have taken even more beer to get to that point.

Quite an odd scene though, they all stand facing the the Dj (forward) and dance like that. The odd couple will have one person turned around and dancing with each other. But yah, for the life of me you ant get the girls to dance with you. Seconded by a random guy who comes up an says WTF. Course he looks 100% korean to me so i et taken back..hes acutally an american so he doesn’t get the front facing and shy girls either. So, you cant get them to turn arond and actually dance with you, so what i saw most koreans doing was just dancing right behind the girls and imagining they are dancing with them. I saw it work a couple of times (both koreans, any we-guks 'foreigners' tryin it got a dirty look) but saw it mostly end the same, girl moving away. But it seemed like the norm., I felt like a creep even though i wasn’t tryin to do it. Everyone isjust facing front, and you are dancing and there is a girl right in front of you gettin down too...im like WTF, I feel like a creep.

Anyways, the girl driving just happened to live 2 minutes from my house so i got a ride home at 3 in tha morn. I was tempted to ask her in, but since she said the animations in the car were for her daughter I thought it wise not too..she might say yes!!! So, slept all day today, got my shopping done (my lord shopping in a big dept. store in Korea on a sunday) . Twas freakin outta control, you thought the driving was disorganized...you can only imagine!!!
Hope all is well,
Colin