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.

From 한국

For the first time in nearly five months (wow, can't believe I've been here five months!) I can't think of what to write in my blog...hmmm.. Maybe another sip of my orange colored fiber drink will help me with my writers block. They sell fiber drink at just about every convenience store e.g. 7-Eleven (they have that here and Japan), Buy The Way, Family Mart, or Mini-stop (the ones listed I've found to be the most popular if not all the ones they have here). In addition to finding the much beloved laxative that I enjoy after a healthy yet conspicuously vegetable/brown rice forsaken meal, you can also buy ginseng (which I often get), and aloe juice (another good one). Btw, the aloe juice is actual juice with sugar and the like; if you get a sunburn it's probably not the best thing to pour on yourself should you happen to come to Korea and think it can be used for duel purposes. If you're hungry you can buy these triangle shaped rice things wrapped in seaweed; inside the center is kinda like a jelly donut except instead of jelly they have different 'fillings' like tuna (I'd name the other 'fillings' but I got these maybe 3 times and didn't get the tuna 'filling' so I stopped buying these pretty much after my first week here). In case you're wondering (like me) if I spelled filling correctly, I found that 'fillings' has two Ls while filing, like filing papers in an office only has one L. Weird, wild, stuff! The irony is that I'm teaching English and losing it at the same time. I've actually misspelled a word and had my co-teacher correct me one time which was slightly humiliating (before you pass judgment I've heard from other teachers that they've made similar faux pas like mine before- you'd really be shocked at what an environment like this does to your English, kid you not). Oh, I almost forgot; two more slightly odd things they sell at these convenience stores: The first being dried squid/shrimp which hardly should come as a surprise to you if you are familiar with just about any East Asian culture (they love love eating squid and shrimp!!) They even have shrimp burgers at McDonald's (along with the pride of Korea, the bulgogi burger) and potato chips that are shrimp flavored. I accidentally bought the shrimp flavored chips one night while under the influence of alcohol and immediately noticed my purchasing mistake upon my first chip. The other thing that might be a little strange to you that they sell at these convenience stores are what I call, 'meat on a stick'. They usually have these in hot dog warmer upper things located right next to the cash register sitting next to their buddies, the fried chicken. For some reason every time I see these I always think of one of my favorite movies, 'There's Something About Marry'. In the movie, Ben Stiller, asks while eating a corn dog (something to the effect of), 'how come they don't have more sticks with meat on them?' Apparently, the writers of the movie never traveled to Asia because they indeed have 'meat a stick' sold at nearly every convenience store sold in Korea. Lastly, many if not all these convenience stores serve as fast food restaurants of sort. Most convenience stores have tables either inside or outside (or both) so you can eat you're food or have a beer should the need fancy you. Aside from those things mentioned above however, the convenience stores sell pretty much everything else you'd normally find in the States.

Other seemingly trivial news: I've finally figured out the train schedule which makes life a little easier. Unfortunately, I still haven't figured out the bus system around where I live; Every time I get on the bus I still have mild anxiety attacks if I don't recognize a place or surrounding. Can't think of anything interesting to write about for now and about getting tired so that's it for now. Ciao! Thanks for reading.

Englishee

It's been a couple months since my last posting and I've probably lost maybe half of my readers, all three of them. Nonetheless, I will begin anew with my tales from the orient. What a journey this has been so far! As with about every posting in my blog- I usually don't know where to start? Anyways, if you've been reading my blog I'm sure you've gotten used to the nonsensical inanity of it all. So here it goes:

I'm nearing the end of our school's first semester and I've been in the 'Land of the Morning Calm' now for about four and a half months. A predictability of sorts has finally set in: I have become used to the mangled English that might drive an otherwise sane literate person mad; the ad nauseam English phrases that are taught in English textbooks for example, 'how are you? I'm fine thank you, and you? (most students will answer 'I'm fine thank you, and you' in almost robotic fashion when asked how they are doing- some answer, it's sunny or it's cloudy (these are some of the ahem, lower level students) have all become normal yet still irritating at times.

If I can critique the absolutely awful textbooks for a moment- the reason many people are ghastly terrible at speaking English is most likely, in large part due to the way English is taught here. The textbooks are not situational or theme oriented like movies, shopping, etc. Instead they're kind of all over the place. Instead of having people build sentences on there own; the way you should do when learning a new language, especially English which demands creativity and originality; they have these already constructed sentences in there textbooks. As a result, many people, even after learning English since Elementary school can only splutter out a few sentences if any. Another ubiquitous phrase or word found here is the word 'delicious'. I speak for my fellow English speakers when I say, never in my life have I used the word 'delicious' so much until I arrived in Korea. Often when eating with fellow teachers I am asked, 'is it delicious?' (with a quizzical expression)? and the standard response from which I have become accustomed to giving if I like a dish, 'yes, it is delicious'. Sometimes at lunchtime now I often comment about how delicious the food is- I think it makes everyone happy because that's one phrase they can actually understand and it makes them feel good about their cultural identity (which unlike America food is part of their distinct identity). On a side note: Koreans love to hear complements about their food and country. It's probably because unlike America, which is a superpower, Korea is rarely ever talked about on the international stage except for of course, their brethren to the north. Americans in general, don't care all that much what new comers think of their country or at least they don't make a point of asking every person traveling to America what they think of American food (what is American food? Trying to think of something but nothing really comes to mind because we have so many cultures and types of food). Plus Americans and perhaps other western countries have a healthy dose of self-criticism (some may argue too much) i.e. we often are quite critical of our leaders, policies, society, and culture. Maybe it's because I don't speak the language but some of the Koreans that I have encountered usually don't take cultural, societal, political, etc. criticism all that well (it could very well because it's coming from a round eye but I'm not sure).

I only find it half-comical now when I see the police cars always driving around with their police lights (on the top of their car) flashing. They're never pulling anyway over for speeding or arresting them btw, they just drive around or are sometimes stopped with their lights flashing. Why they do this? In the words of the Kid Rock song (probably taken from someone a bit more wise them him), 'Only G-d knows why'? Or the juxtaposition between Korean society and language and driving rules. The former seems to have a million rules yet when it comes to driving they only have one basic rule here, try and not to get into an accident. Other than that you can do pretty much whatever you want on the road or parking- you can park on any side of the road or even on the sidewalk, you can even park in front of other cars in your apartment building (they solve this by putting the car in neutral and when the other person blocked in wants to get out they simply just push the car out of the way). Wheww, I'm tired of writing and am going to go work out and go to the hot springs (sauna and spa with 45 other Korean nude males). A couple things that I wanted to talk about which I failed to mention: couple t-shirts, the eating of dog and why they do, and teacher's day.

Almost forgot: Today (Sunday morning) I got up and for some reason couldn't think of the spelling difference between message and massage. When you're surrounded by people that don't speak English well it drags your own ability down- case in point if you haven't noticed from my recent blog. Until next time, stay well. Be the change you want to see in the world! :)

I'm Lovin it!

I woke up feeling fatigued and ill but strangely I feel alright again. I told everyone that I was suffering from the Swine Flu which elicited a few laughs. Last night we (some of the foreign teachers that live in my apartment complex- there are six or seven 13-15 story buildings around me called Kyung Hee Hak Sung (I think Hak Sung means apartment?) ventured into what we call downtown Asan also called Onyang for some drinks. There are about 50-60 foreign teachers scattered throughout the apartment complex but I only usually see and know about 20 of them. We live in, Sinchang- a small town of about...maybe 15,000-20,000 which lives and dies when the university is in session. Sun Chun Hyang university is the definition of a commuter school. During the week, students are out and about the streets, usually stumbling around drunk at night. The weekends turn the town into a veritable ghost town- when I arrived here, I came on a Friday and thought my life was going to end because a) I didn't know there were that many foreigners living next to me and b) I wasn't told about that the student's flock in masse to their homes on weekends. My experience is that Koreans tend to drink a lot and students are no exception. Alcoholism is a wholly concept/disease? /issue/problem in the West or U.S.- Koreans work very had and play equally hard. It's actually quite hilarious even now, seeing students and old men sozzled after they get done eating. When you go out to dinner, soju (the Korean hard alcohol similar to Japanese sake which gives you incredibly bad hangovers; it's half the alcohol percentage of vodka; has a smell reminiscent of paint thinner or nail polish remover and costs next to nothing, about 1300 Won for a bottle which is about a dollar U.S.) is just as much as part of the meal as rice. Unless you're going to Itaewon (an enclave in Seoul exclusively for two types of people: 1) moronic G.I.s who tarnish America's already soiled reputation one bar fight at a time, and 2) foreigners who wish they never set foot in Korea and desperately want to cling to all the amenities of home), western style bars are not uncommon but perhaps hard to come by. Koreans usually go to restaurants to drink with a group of friends where they spend hours eating, drinking, and probably denigrating foreigners (English teachers are just as much cultural ambassadors as teachers of English; Korea after all, didn't earn the name, 'The Hermit Kingdom' for nothing; Korea only started opening up to the West very recently and this still is a completely homogeneous, insular, and, isolated society vis-a-vis the U.S. or most western countries). 

       Today (Wednesday, April 29) we have off from school because of school board elections in which they elect the head school superintendent. I for one and probably many other teachers as well have absolutely no clue why we need a day off for this but like with many things in Korea, the answer to why things are done differently here are not important. I've found that you have to accept things for what they are; the more you try to look for answers about for example, why you don't shake hands (generally you don't but sometimes close friends do and it's not totally absent incidentally) but instead you share food when you eat at traditional and even many contemporary restaurants is beyond me? Or why the intercom in my apartment- there's a guy who starts speaking in the morning sometimes? I could go on but for some reason I'm blanking on the myriad occurrences of confusing seemingly inane things that go daily here.

          Let me explain how going to a restaurant works for those of you who don't know. Let's say you go to a traditional restaurant. Here you have at least a couple of side dishes (love the side dishes!) of different types of kimchi, and maybe eggs, seaweed, squid, and other stuff that I can't think of right now. A big misnomer to the uninformed is that there is only one vegetable type of kimchi. You'll soon find out there are many many different types of kimchi e.g. my favorite, the spinach kimchi (which I have in my fridge at the moment), the most common I think, lettuce kimchi, radish kimchi, and probably dozens of other types that I don't know of. Everyone then, helps them self with whatever side dish seems appealing at the moment. Bone appetite!