-Kife in Korea-: January 2006

(tear)

Return to Phoenix (and other scandals)

realizing that Lunar holiday (Chinese New Years) meant that there would be no teaching either Monday or Tuesday, Tom, Lee and myself decided to hit up the slopes again.....on the way up i thought i could smell something in the process of combusting, and somewhere in my immediate vicinity.....i decided to carefully pose my question:
GH "Lee, do you smell something? maybe something is burning?"
Lee "hahaha, yeah. engine." [speedometer then climbs to 180 as i envision what it will could soon feel like to be hurtled into the side of a cliff with a snowboard lodged in my spleen]

boarding was amazing and the waiting time for lifts was virtually nonexistent

decided to meet up with a few friends on Sunday, judging that there was no work to go to.....chejin, a korean friend, brought another friend she had met in Australia, Brett, along for the debacle.....long story very very short, we ended up in a nurae bang singing songs to each other in languages we could not read or speak, ending with Brett having to get on a plane at 11am (current time was 4:30am) at which time he became violently ill the entire flight and found himself in the emergency room upon landing

Dance-a-Thon 2006 was continued on Monday, as was Operation:Moneyspend, spearheaded by General Muchos Dineros: El Spendo Immenso.....pay-day will be more beautiful this month than has ever been possible

using the 'metal sign' to celebrate a favourable, yet clearly non-metal event

Lee assaulted by hostile foreigner

super speedy racing cows

kaptain of the national soccer team

warriorz

meeting superheroes!

Back to Basics

winter intensive session has been raging for just over a month now.....it leaves only meagre free time in its wake and requires massive energy and organizational investment that offers pay at the exorbitant rate of 0 won per hour/day/life.....classes are shorter, prep is longer and there are extra classes taught each day

during class, a fun thing to do is to pretend that things are happening when in fact they are not.....similarly, it is fun to pretend that when things are actually happening, you don't see them......example:
GH: "so does everyone have their paper?"
Student X: "ohhh! teacher, me! me me!! i know what's answer!! give me test!!"
GH: "anyone? i just want to make sure that everyone has a paper, okay?"
Student X: "teacher, meeeee!" (waves hands in face)
GH: "alright, since everyone has a test, please use complete sentences and answer each question"
Student X: (leans and stretches whole body out on desk and deperately shakes hands in face) "meeeeeeeeeeee, i need it!!"
GH: "oh? okay, here it is"
Student X: "wow, i thought it was nightmare!"
[aside: you poor slave, not writing a test every second of every day i suppose would resemble a nightmare]

sometimes you can feel lost in the swirl and haze of the fast-paced, industrious lifestyle that is common here.....but then the weekend ends, you sober up and realize you have to be teaching in about 3 minutes

super-genius

teacher, i am a star. you are foreign and don't understand that you have to pay me money to see my face in public.

Earth, Wind, Fire, back to the Shire

i remember going to bed fully realizing that i was waking up in 4 hours.....it’s strange how the knowledge of future events clouds the body’s ability to function properly, like say when one knows that 4 hours sleep is better than none at all and yet the brain zips around like a hummingbird trying to cross the ocean after drinking an espresso and amphetamine cocktail

4:30am was a sadistically horrible time to wake up, but excitement gets the best of you from time to time.....by 5:20am, i was in downtown Kangnam getting picked up by Lee.....I was introduced to Lee’s friend Mi-Hwa before scooting across town to pick up Jina.....then we headed straight for the mountains under the angsty suggestive tones of old Smashing Pumpkins and Green Day albums

after stopping to purchase gloves for about $10 and pick up board rentals, we reached the park by about 8am.....the weather was flawless and the slopes were heaped with snow and well-groomed.....around 2pm, a popular Korean movie star showed up in the main chalet for an autograph and question session whereby the mighty din of excited Koreans almost drowned out the soothing tones of my cell phone that i hadn’t a hope of reaching through three layers of pockets and zippers

boarding was intense and i remembered how freeing it is to fly down a hill with naught but the wind.....once the hills turned icy and the sun began to set, we purchased some emergency supplies (food and booze) and checked into our chalet 10 minutes down the main street.....to say that the chalet was nicer than my apartment is like saying that liquid nitrogen is a bit chilly.....it was exactly the kind of ski lodge that one might remember from movies, only cleaner, smaller and more efficient.....and our ‘party of four’ raged quietly for about 5 hours until everyone passed out in makeshift furniture constructed from extra linen supplies left in the closets.....after a nice long 5 hour sleep, we packed up and somehow headed back to Seoul and work and classes and teaching and pain and such

mountain-top marvels

cultural attachees

recycling program

on the slopes

pilons-R-us

mysterious mightiness

Notice

the following image is a picture that i have thieved from one of my contemporaries.....i have in no way actually taken this picture nor do i pretend that i was there.....however, it was simply too good not to steal, and so i proudly display my plagiarised imagery here.....feel free to send thanks to Chris Clemens, PhD....his vastly superior site can be found here: www.clemensonline.com

Korean education

New Year's Eve

modestly, this festive occasion began with a visit to view the new Narnia movie, complete with Korean subtitles which help the Korean audience to laugh at the exact opposite time as someone who speaks English might.....then Japanese food ensued and the street party began.....

young Koreans approach and offer you fiery sticks of gunpowder in exchange for chan won (or approximately 1 dollar).....these entrepreneurs are successful in their street hassling, as i spent almost $20 on fireworks with about 30 minutes.....almost like a war, the air and sky was soon filled with smoke, falling ash and waves of bodies pulsing and pushing.....it was hectic yet purely unhostile fun.....about 2 hours into this melee, i realized that if you aim your fireworks not up but in fact horizontally, they produce a much more desirable and interesting effect.....i am convinced that we saved the entire populace from renegade cabs, buses, cars and police vehicles (not to mention the odd stray pedestrian) by blasting them to kingdom come with our mighty arsenal of children's explosives.....watching fiery sparks ricochet off windows and fenders served as endless fun.....then we went to a museum

the Seoul National Museum had an exhibition of Fauvism and Henri Matisse on display.....and it was open until 3am.....which struck me as highly unusual, given the possibility for unruly and inebriated street people wandering in.....we managed to coax the supervisor into letting us play the piano in the atrium, and ended up having pictures taken, subsequently appearing in the newspaper.....and the exhibit itself was decent, although i am not particularly engaged in Fauvist impressionism, save for Metis himself and several other singular works.....

back on the streets, almost everything was quiet and clean.....street workers hit the pavement at around 1am and have the entire place cleaned by about 2:00am.....efficiency here is unparalleled.....not having fallen over or asleep yet, we shuffled through several blocks and found a hof still open.....then we played darts until the subway opened, circa 5:30am and masterminded methods of sleeping on the subway but with somehow waking up at the correct stop.....a truly foolish plan