As long as I could remember I've never struggled to make or find new friends. Ascending each class all the way from grade school to university, I've always found myself hanging out with the 'popular crowd', or at least, the self-confident sport playing, half-hazard experimental type. Popularity and self-assurance seem to be a ubiquitous pair in the manner of insecurity and meekness. Despite having more attributes of the latter, I've continually 'fit in' or have been accepted- whatever that means. In Korea however, I have few people that are worthy of calling friends. My dearth of friends stems not from opportunity- ironically I live in a small 'rural' (by Korean standards not ours) community called, Shinchang, that is the epicenter where virtually all of the English teachers in the region live. Collectively, there are probably 50-60 'foreigners' living throughout my apartment complex which consists of nine high rise apartment buildings. A friend and I derisively call the people that live around here the 'Star Trek convention' for all the eccentric oddballs that happened to congregate in this part of the Korean peninsula. Being a newly minted twenty-five year old I'm actually quite young vis-a-vi most of the other foreigners. If I had to place a median age for the people living here it'd probably be around thirty-five. If only you had a chance to meet some of the neurotic characters that live around here. A psychologist would have a field day diagnosing all the sundry neuroses. Most of the people that I've met in our town and Korea come to here to teach English because of some sort of problem or insecurity back at home. They sort of fled or escaped in way. Only the honest ones will actually admit this. Naturally everyone says they're here because they love to travel or they came here to pay off their college loans- you can save at least a grand a month if you don't travel and live penuriously (I don't btw). Truth be told though, that's only the official convenient reason why people come. Many come here because they were the ones that were never included back at home; euphemistically you could say they're the loners or the introverts; I would label them, the dorks, tools, douchebags, etc. Whatever the case may have been these people graduate college totally devoid of meaning or direction and decide to come to Korea. Was I a part of this group you may ask? I don't think so, at least, not in terms of being a social outcast or Holden Caulfield type (Catcher in the Rue main character). Another group which I flippantly confess I'm apart, of came to Korea because they have a thing for Asian women and depressingly, probably came up on the short end of the stick when it came to getting laid. Like a couple others I thought surrounding myself with a race I find quite sexually appealing would be a fine idea. So far, I haven't been disappointed. When someone asks me why I came here, provided its within the realm of propriety to tell them the truth, I tell them the truth rather blatantly. 'Came here for the beautiful women'. When I say this people usually chuckle nervously and gently try to move the conversation elsewhere out of fear that I'm a perverse sexual deviant or are simply disinterested in talking about my erotic escapades. Next you have another type of person who came to Korea for some really dramatic reason e.g. rape, latent homosexuality, acute delusional psychosis and loss of reality itself. The vast majority of women here I'm sorry to say, are here because they nearly have to pay for sex back at home. Yea, they're generally not your cheerleader, sorority dunce types. A friend of mine told me a Korean thought all foreign women are overweight. A completely understandable observation made by this Korean seeing that a plurality of them here indeed are.

The people living in my town are as eclectic as they are bizarre. I'll try and describe some of them if I can. We have this one middle-aged Australian guy who even my good friend whose Australian says, he's Australian as they come. On the wagon, he has a pretty thick accent but when he gets drunk and rest assured, he often does, becomes completely incomprehensible. On top of this he speaks to everyone like he's speaking to his best mate back in the bush which is to say he uses Australian colloquialisms that only crocodile Dundee would understand. If you're lucky he'll tell stories of him sodomizing transvestites in Thailand. One night after the bars I had the unfortunate task of escorting him home and he tried coming on to me; needless to stay that left me stupefied beyond belief for the next week or so. The next day I told my friend about what transpired that night and learned that apparently he has tried successfully or not to come on to nearly every male or female in our town. As one might imagine this only happens when he's inebriated. Next we have a upper-twenties Kiwi (New Zealander for all you yanks that don't know) who came to Korea in order to teach English and pursue her 'rock-star' aspirations. That's right, rock-star like Bonjovi (incidentally a favorite of hers). Literally, within an hour of meeting her she invariably drags her wanting to become a rock-star somewhere into the conversation. I emphasize 'rock-star' because for some reason that's what she wants to become; not a musician or singer song writer but a sex, drugs, and rock n roll crazed rock-star. Now granted I'm not a psychologist, hell, I haven't even taken a psych class in college but she definitely has 'delusional psychosis' tattooed across her forehead. She's in a band made up of other foreigners (teachers). One night I felt like wasting my time so I went to see her band perform. She's the lead singer of course, and as fate would have it she's the definition of sub-par mediocrity. Forgot to mention her looks. When you're eight beers down she's mildly attractive if you're totally desperate. I'm not, thankfully. My friends and I try and avoid long conversations with her just so we don't have to incessantly hear about her wanting to become a rock-star. My friend was spot on when he said, that she's one of those people that have watched the movie, 'The Secret' way too many times. A fitting analogy would be those people that believe anything at all costs- reason or reality be damned; I suppose you could call them fundamentalists. It'd be like if you're jogging on the 405 at 3:30 in the morning and you believe you're not going to get hit by a car because you will yourself not to do so. Last time I spoke to her we were discussing our future plans. After asking what her plans were she replied, 'I'm gong to teach in Korea if I don't get signed by a major record label to do a European tour' (mind you we're in the middle of nowhere in Korea).

Today was a pretty typical Tuesday. I went through my usual routine; the alarm clock on my cell phone woke me up at 7:20 am. Unless I've go to bed at a really late time or drink (which I rarely do anymore, especially on weekdays), getting up at that time is not such a huge pain. In fact, getting up early in the morning here has been more of a welcome delight than a chore. I suppose that means I enjoy what I'm doing here? Trying to get me up at that time during my formative years i.e. college years and I would've most likely turned off my alarm with only the faintest of regrets over not having attended a class for the umpteenth straight day. To this day I still wonder what caused my lack of motivation during my last couple years in college. Was it my major? Surely, studying 2,000 Greek literature isn't always going to be the most entertaining of subjects. It wasn't always like that though. Initially I found the world of Homer, Virgil, and Ovid to be.. mysterious, and a sign of ones erudition. I still love Greek tragedies- Lately, I'm starting to find more comfort in tragic endings in the novels that I read then happy ones. Is that morose? Wonder what that says about my psyche? Anyway, as college went on, somewhere down the line I just floundered along in my studies. To say I regret this is only half true because the other part of me says, 'amor fati, learn from the past, self-reproach is a waste time'. Then again, maybe it had nothing to do with my major at all. Perhaps it was the poisoning of my body seemingly every other night for no good or even border line intelligent reason. Youthful folly is a lovely apologist euphemism for being complete dumb ass. I'm sure you've heard the saying 'hindsight is always 20/20'. Well maybe that's the case, but I happen to think hindsight is more like 20/10 with things as trivial and meaningless of the things I've done. If I haven't told you already, I'm in the process of applying to a couple graduate schools out here in Korea. Of course, I had to write a personal statement which I did. I sent my personal statement to one of my professors so that he could write a more thorough letter of recommendation for me. Being the gracious person that he is, he wrote me a letter of rec. and edited my personal statement without my request. Naturally, one of the things I avoided in my essay was explaining (I'd say rationalizing) my mediocrity during the last couple years. The professor whom wrote my letter of rec. openly pointed out why I had not written about my 'failure to apply myself'. To my dismay however, I cannot think of any intelligent equivocation or specious defense of why my GPA went from a 3.46 to a 3.0 during the latter three years of college. I want to re-rewrite my personal statement with an eloquent speech, 'don't mind my last couple years of college- I only pissed away a fairly strong GPA and landed in a puddle of academic malaise. I really do want to re-rewrite it this way but I don't have the vaguest notion of how to do so?..

After reading over this entry I've noticed that my aim starting out was to tell you about my 'typical Tuesday' yet I ending up rambling on about my woes as a student. I'm sure if you've been following my blog you aren't the least bit surprised I interpolated another one of my half-baked observations. My intention throughout my blog thus far will be to find out whether or not I can eventually write myself out of my facetious digressions and ostensibly pointless musings.

Absalom Absalom

I am completely stupefied on what to write in this blog anymore. Out of genuine concern for my life or perhaps just as a conversation 'filler', friends from home often ask, 'Zeke', 'tell me stories about Korea'. This question utterly plagues me to a where I have no discernible clue how I should answer. I've been in Korea long enough to where I'm used to babies staring at me; I've become used to sitting in the teachers office while other teacher's carry on conversations that I will never understand; I've become used the irrational xenophobia and unceasing hospitality. I've become used to it all. I'd venture to say that six months or so is the point in which novelty turns into the blase. I'm thinking that human beings can adapt or get worn down by anything. Whether a person lives in an exotic wonderland or dwells in the belly of a coal mine, a person, eventually, will get used to it and treat it as home. In the movie, The Shawshank Redemption, the character Red, played by Morgan Freeman, notably describes the process known as institutionalism whereby the characters in the film, 'come to love the walls that surround them'. Granted, my comparisons of prison and life here in Korea are a bit outlandish even extraneous but my point is that most of my life has now morphed into a strange duplicitous relationship of frustration and resignation. Many if not all foreigners that have been here a while are disdainfully irked about certain aspects of Korean society and culture that don't easily conform to their own 'rational' based societies; A favorite pastime of teachers here is the denigration of how 'odd' certain things are here. Some teachers usually talk about teaching here as if it were a tour of duty. For instance, 'wait until you're here three years and then talk to me about such and such pet peeve. It pisses me off when I hear teachers grumbling like they've attained some high and mighty status because they voluntarily choose to stay here.

Lately, school life has become a fairly predictable affair; most days are still filled with the regular joy accompanied with the cult like celebrity status I still exude. Other parts of the day I find myself in class just as bored and confused as to why I'm here as the students are.

I don't pretend to know a thing worth knowing

It’s been about six months (or is it seven, I cannot be sure?) on the small Korean peninsula now. I’m writing this blog on Word right now because my Internet for the first time does not work. One of the immediate things that come to mind while reflecting on my travels and time here is one of most neglected virtues in Western culture, patience. I’m not going to start lamenting the degradation of our society but I’m just going to say that it would’ve be nice if the teachers throughout my life stressed the forgotten value of having patience when things don’t go your way. Frustratingly, my Internet does not work for no apparent reason but through all my trials and tribulations here I’ve developed a sense of ‘let it be’ to borrow lyrics from the terrifically profound Beatles song. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not arguing for a form of carefree passivity like ‘The Dude’ from ‘The Big Lebowski’. In my twenty-four years I’ve finally figured out that to overcome obstacles be they, not having hot water in your apartment, not being able to withdraw money from the ATM, having cockroaches and other insects in your apartment, etc, one needs to recognize that they will not be solved all at once but IN TIME. I probably sound nauseatingly dry and obtuse when I make such a pedestrian insight yet I’m not sure many people truly understand even the most basic maxims in life. Perhaps I don’t understand things like this either? At least I’m aware of the only undeniable truth in life pointed out by Socrates; that the only thing I truly know is that I know nothing and everybody walks around thinking they know so much. I think knowledge has to start from this point and then move forward if you are to go anywhere.

I vividly remember arriving to where I’m currently living six months ago. One of the most frustrating things I can recall was that I did not even know where exactly I was on the map. If I got lost and took a bus to the wrong city or something I really could not tell anyone where I was living. Fortunately or not that never happened and as time went on I deciphered the bus routes, train schedules, and the myriad cultural rubix’s cubes. Perhaps a fitting and rather trite metaphor for my time here and perhaps life in general would be putting together a puzzle (I wonder if they have puzzles here incidentally?). In the beginning all I had were the pieces; maybe a couple by sheer luck happened to be right beside one another but the vast majority of them were scattered every which way on the table. The puzzle (life) I suppose cannot be seen at times. Maybe all you have is one section done and all you can put together are a couple pieces at a time. Being in Korea however, has taught me that it’s okay not to always see the big picture. In time, if you keep plugging away, the picture will slowly emerge and one day you will have forgotten all about how far you’ve come, and there, out of nowhere, there will be this beautiful mosaic. Change happens when no ones watching.