Mr. Awesomecool's Fantastic Voyage

Insanity day 3

2011-04-05T19:10:00.000-07:00

I completed the Cardio power and resistance portion of Insanity today. It was about 45 minutes of pure torture. I should have guessed after the warm up part of the workout caused me to drench my shirt in sweat.

About two hours after finishing, I was still breathing hard.

I have 57 days left.

My god...

Insanity day 2

2011-04-04T17:18:00.000-07:00

Day two, where I actually did one of the workouts went, well.... not so well. It was a pretty hard workout, and I had to keep doing the routines over and over because my fucking copy of the video skipped and tripped all over the damn place. I dont know if I did more or less than I was suppose to, I did some of the exercises too long, some not long enough, and I have no Idea how long my actual workout lasted.

All and all, I did sweat my balls off, so we will chalk it up to a win. I am getting new copies right now, so hopefully I can do an actual full routine tomorrow.

Insanity!!!

2011-04-03T14:32:00.000-07:00

Today I started Insanity.

There was a fitness test, which I failed.

My score

Switch Kick 106
Pile Squat 38
Power knee 57
Power jump 35
Globe jump 11
Suicide jump 12
Push up jacks 18
Low plank oblique 52

There were two douches in the fit test video, who beat me in almost every exercise. Especially the Asian chick, who pretty much dominated the whole thing. I will however, destroy them both next time.

New Job

2010-12-15T16:50:00.000-08:00

I started my new job yesterday. Lets just say, it was interesting. The day started out with me getting totally lost on my way to work, I google mapped it the night before, but unfortunately it has been renamed and a new school has been built since google maps last updated. I showed up half an hour late, but all my boss had to say was "Well, at least you are here."

I should have taken that as a sign.

I spent the day just shadowing other teachers as they had the students, ages ranging from 8-19 do "work" of putting matching colors and shapes in separate containers. It seemed easy enough, so they left me alone with a barely functioning autistic/retarded kid who likes to wear shoes about 6 sizes too big and run wildly around the classroom, randomly knocking shit over. Well we sat down, and a co-teacher gave me gummy candies to entice him to do his "work". Unfortunately, his work turned out to be to very frustrating to him, so he immediately proceeded to claw the shit out of my arm.

The rest of the morning was uneventful. Unless you count when the jolly retard with the cart full of toy janitorial equipment was trying to tell me about his favorite toys.

"this is my mumble custom-toy owiol"

"What?"

"I said, this my mumble cust-my owwl" He tried again, getting really frustrated.

"uhhhhhh.....OK" Said I.

"Your custom toy?" Supplied another teacher.

"this is my mumble stom-um told"

"Well that is great!" I said, hoping to end this train wreck of a conversation.

"this is my mumble ustom-oy told" Not wanting to leave until his point was made clear.

"Your custodial?" Someone guessed.

"Yeah, that's what said!" He said, aghast at our stupidity.

"Well say "Janitorial" next time!" Said the other teacher.

After lunch we went to the afternoon kids. That is when the two most terrifying kids in the whole school show up. Of all the kids, 8-19 the two most terrifying are a pair of Autistic kids, 8 and 9 years old, both under 4 feet tall, and rail thin.

I thought to my self "This is the worst you got?"and then I tried to get one to pick up a toy he threw. All hell broke lose as he tried to devour my hand, and my arm was once again clawed to shit. I had a pretty tough time, and another teacher ran in and we restrained the kid, and got him back to his seat, saying the hell with the toy he threw. Then the other kid melted down, and the 3'5", 60+ lbs kid took fully four teachers to restrain the snapping, clawing, twisting ball of animal like fury.

All in all, not a terrible first day of work.

Jobs

2010-12-08T12:31:00.000-08:00

Everyone knows that the job situation in the USA is fucking terrible. The moment we got back here, the wife was like "Lets apply to jobs like crazy."

And I was like "Awww, do I have to?"

And she was like "Yes! I am not going to piss away all our savings!"

So we both applied for jobs. She especially wanted us to apply to those in Edumacation so as we can gets our teaching degrees and go back overseas to teach English real good. She also was determined to stay down in Goat town, as opposed to rainy-town.

Two months later, I get called for an interview. Then I get a second call on Monday. Apparently I now have a job in the public schools as a teacher's aid. It comes with full benefits for the whole family. I get winter vacation, spring break, and summers off. And guess who is pissed.

"You shouldn't have taken that job!" She tells me. "I want to move back to rainy-town!" She growls. "You should quit!" Even though I have not had my first day yet.

I tell her, that it was her idea in the first place, and that it was everything that she wanted. So she tells me "You should not listen to me!"

What?

Pie

2010-11-27T13:09:00.001-08:00

My wife is not know for her amazing cooking skills. In fact she is actually known for her complete lack of cooking skills. Yet every year around Thanksgiving time, it is time for her to bake a pumpkin pie.

I believe she grows insanely jealous from every year from all the praise and adoration that I receive for my massive cooking skillz and cock. So she ventures into the unfamiliar territory of the kitchen to ruin approximation 16 ounces of pumpkin, sugar, coconut milk, egg re-placer and pumpkin pie spice.

In the previous years we have experienced, burned pies, sugarless pies, pies with roughly 10 millimeters thick and the infamous "pie with no crust". This is my wife's usually process for cooking pumpkin pie:

Step one: Forget to cook the pumpkin.
Step two: Randomly substitute ingredients.
Step three: Burn the pie.
Step four: Serve burned pie-like abomination, then wonder why no one wants a piece.

This year however, my wife took the radical step of actually finding a recipe for pie. She went shopping and bought the actual ingredients. She still forgot to cook the pumpkin, but lucky she married me, so I cooked the pumpkin and scooped into a bowl for her.

She then measured the ingredients and put them into a blender. After arguing with me and others about random ingredient swapping (she relented, and finally decided that based on history, it wasn't such a good idea) she blended the ingredients and then wandered off.

So I made a crust for her. And poured the pie mix into the crusts. I however made her cook them herself. However, after putting them in the oven, she promptly forgot all about them. Luckily her Uncle's convection oven uses a timer, and it shut off by itself before it burned the pie to a crisp.

The pie this year did not turn out so bad, especially when covered with copious amounts of my famous vegan whipped topping.

The thrill of the hunt

2010-11-08T10:33:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I took lil' Fantaboulous out to her grandparents house. Her Grandparents live between Eugene and the coast, on fifteen acres of land right on the side of a busy highway. The reason I brought her out was the mighty Oregon Chantrelle.

The Chantrelle is quite common on Grandpa Awesomecool's land and easy to identify. It is also really fun to find, its like an Easter Egg hunt for adults. Even mini-Fantaboulous likes to go looking for the tasty shroom, even though if a mushroom is in the same room as her dinner, she wont touch it.

We hiked up into the great wooded mountains where the feisty orange fungus lurked and began to hunt. The Grandparents had marked out some areas of the mountain on a previous expedition of where the had found "loads of Chantrelles, more than we could pick." We found the taped area and began to look around, after about fifteen minutes, I had found two mushrooms.

"They are right over this ridge." They kept saying. We kept hiking and hiking, and nary a mushroom was to be found. The grandparents kept making excuses and saying "They were here last time..."

I finally found a small patch poking out of some loose pine needles and began to gather, I called lil' Fantaboulous over so she could participate, but before she could get there Grandpa Awesomcool pounced on them like a fat kid on a cupcake, and grabs everyone in sight.

I broke away from my parents with lil' Fantabulous to see if we could find some without my mushroom hungry parents grabbing them all. I found another patch of mushrooms and let my 13 year old began picking them in earnest.

Then my parents little mutt of a dog, runs over to us. The thing looks like a doberman crossed with a pitbull, but is the size of a tea cup poodle. The thing acts like a five year old who has been freebaseing pixie sticks. It begins to jump all over us, trying to lick our faces, while manically and precisely stomping on every single chantrelle in the immediate area. So I grab the little bitch(because that is what she is) and toss her into the bushes. She bolts back out and plays "steamroller" on the few remaining mushrooms.

A little while later I find another patch of shrooms and give lil' Fantabulous a third chance to gather. However, she began moving around like a butterfly with ADD, picking up every mushroom that was distinctly not Chantrelles.

"Dad! Come over here! Look at this one! Have you seen one like this before?"

I walk over and look. "Yeah, I have seen those ones, pick the Chantrelles honey."

"Dad!Come over here! Did you see this one before? It looks like a boob!"

I walk back over. "Yeah, that's great Honey, I have never seen those before. Lets just pick the chantrelles though. OK?"

"Dad! Dad! Dad! Come over here, quick!"

"Why? Did you find another weird looking mushroom? Because I am only interested in Edible mushrooms. Don't call me over unless you find some chantrelles."

"No, Dad, come over here! Its important, come here!"

So I march back through the wet brush. "What is it?"

"Look at this bug!"

I sent lil' Fantabulous to go pick mushrooms with her grandmother, and went off with Grandpa Awesomecool. I tried to stay at least 50 feet from my dad, to prevent him from poaching all the shrooms I would find. We kept finding small patches, while wandering farther and farther from Grandama and lil' Fantabulous. After about 30 minutes Grandpa gets a call on his cell phone saying that they had found "A huge patch of mushrooms" and that we "Should come back right away!" to pick them. So my dad says that we should wander back the way we came.

I kept telling him "they are going to be finished by the time we get there!" But dad insists on heading back, and so we go. After stopping for a few small patches that Dad missed on the way, we finally hike all the way back to where we started.

"We finished picking them all, there actually weren't that many after all." Says Grandma Awesomecool.

"I found a pretty rock!" Says lil' Fantabulous.

Then the rain came down in typical Oregon fashion, in sheets and sideways.

"Well...That's enough of that, lets get the fuck out of here." Says I, and we do.

Not feeling it

2010-11-07T12:37:00.000-08:00

Since I have been back in the US, I don't really have anything to say anymore. Not that there is not a lot of things to talk about, like overwhelming numbers of fat people, people with dogs, fat people with dogs, trucks, fat people in trucks, fat people with dogs in trucks, etc.

America has become really, really boring to me. Actually, more annoying than boring. After hearing what people have to say in this country, and watching TV that I can understand for the first time in a year, I actually miss not understanding what people are saying.

I was at the local grange with my daughter, picking up hay and goat food for "Crazy old one tit" When I heard a couple of fat American women talking about their dogs.

"The thing about Callie here is she has a really unique personality"

"Wow, really?"

"You know how some dogs get excited when they see people or other dogs?"

"Oh, tell me about it. My dogs get really excited when they see people or other dogs."

"Well, her is the thing about my Callie. She gets really, really excited when she sees people or other dogs!"

"NO, WAY!"

I cant actually remember what they said, but I was just struck by how stupid their fucking conversation about their stupid dogs was. Its a fucking dog, everyone in america has one, and they might seem like they are unique and interesting to you, but at the end of the day, it eats, it shits, it barks. It is still just a fucking dog.

Then my daughter went on an overnight camping trip. On the trip the teachers made all the students try some salad. One of the students gagged, because she had never had salad before. She spit it out and said. "This is not real food."

OMFG. This is why our kids are fat. Well not my kids. My kids eat salad. Your kids are fat.

No love for chocolate

2010-09-27T16:53:00.000-07:00

I had been wondering what had happened to Black Mike, AKA Black Child, AKA Chocolate love thunder, since leaving Kimchi land. Apparently he is living in Taiwan now and up to his old tricks again of pissing off every single Asian and fat Caucasian female that crosses his path.

While in Korea, Blackchild had the attitude of 'Fuck you. I am a Black American, I don't put up with this type of bullshit back home and I ain't got to put up with your bullshit here.'

This, of course upset Koreans terribly. 'I Kolean, I have ta put up with da burrshit, why you tink you no have ta put up with da burrshit too?'

Much to the dismay of his employers as well as the Korean country men and women who resided in his little slice of rice paddy that he called home, they ended up with a confrontational black man (slightly more scary than the average black man). He got in fights with locals over their racist bullshit (which is part of their heritage, and was culturally insensitive of him!) shamed his employers when trying unsuccessfully to screw him over at every turn (as is customary), and pretty much took a giant shit on the Korean Kulture of treating foreigners like the shit they get treated like by other Koreans.

Eventually Mike just put an end to the fighting and left a land strewn with empty Soju bottles, to return to one strewn with empty crack vials. And then he dropped from the blogging scene, only reappear in Taiwan. Where he is being forced out of his current residence for the crime of being Black (and therefore scary) and not attracted to fat white bitches (whaaatt? Are you sure you are black??).

Apparently because some great white whale moved in next door to Blackchild, and as a result she has developed Ahab syndrome and is afraid of getting a great big, black harpoon shoved down her blowhole. So the building owner (who is his boss) is kicking him out, to prevent the impending blubber harvest. She is also not getting him a new place, or helping him with rent, when she had provided him the current residence at a discount.

What would I do in this situation? Well first of all, I would not be black, which believe me, other than being unable to dance and sucking at sports helps immeasurably (you should give it a try sometime). Was I still white and in this situation, I would go 'Oh, that is rather unfortunate, I guess I will find alternate accommodations, thank you very much for kicking me out and have a nice day. Oh, by the way, can I give you any money for your troubles?'

Which is not what Mike did at all (How un-white of you!). He said 'Fuck you, I am a Black American, I don't put up this type of with bullshit back home and I ain't got to put up with your bullshit here.'

To which their reply was 'I Taiwanese, I have ta put up with da burrshit, why you tink you no have ta put up with da burrshit too?'

Same shit, different country, Mike?

PS. to Chocolate love thunder:

I am very disapointed that you don't have a link to my blog on your blog :(

Running down the clock

2010-09-26T17:44:00.000-07:00

Well we have four days of teaching left before we blow this Popsicle stand. Sadly just as my bromance with husker was starting to heat up...sigh.

The wife and I have been packing for the last couple weeks, (about 1 item per day) and have yet to finish. We are trying to use up all the food in our kitchen, today I gave the building guardian some dubious tok (korean rice cake) that had been sitting in our refrigerator for at least two weeks.

His face lit up with joy when he received the small gift, which was in fact, a half hearted attempt on his life. You ask why was I trying to kill our guardian with spoiled, processed rice products? I good sir, ask you, why not?

It both brings joy and sadness to leave this land. We have had a comfortable life, easy jobs, and almost zero responsibilities. We are trading that for a shitty job market, high rent,no health insurance, low pay, and if we even find jobs, actually having to work (the horror!). I am happy that I will be able to buy clothes that fit once again (shoes especially, seriously what is with the pixie sized feet?) as since arriving here I have lost over 20 lbs. and will be leaving almost my entire wardrobe. It will also be nice to be able to go to grocery stores that don't have just 5 aisles a soy and fish sauce aisle, a red paste aisle, a ramyan aisle(not to be confused with ramen, which of course is completely different), a noodle aisle, a tea and coffee aisle and a snack aisle. Some variety will be nice.

Working here has been the easiest job in my entire life, the pay was not high, but it was more than enough to support five people and other than paying for an extensive summer vacation we saved most of my wife's paycheck. I have not made a lesson plan since April, and that was the same one I made in November that I just kept turning in. Sometimes I almost feel guilty for taking the money because this job is so easy, them I remember all the bullshit I have to put up with and the guilt fades.

My wife has to the surprise of everyone who knows her lasted her entire contract (I may be jinxing it, she could decide to take off tomorrow). The longest she had lasted at any job in her past was six months.

We really don't know what we are going to do when we go back, look for work, go back to school, live in 150 miles apart since both of our kids want to live and go to school in different towns? Should we move to Texas or Arizona, should we stay in Oregon? Get our masters degrees in ESL or teaching? Get different degrees? I just don't know.

It can be pretty shitty when you are in your mid thirties and still not know what you want to do with your life.

Husky husker who husks

2010-09-24T16:14:00.000-07:00

Last week I called out a Husker as having a crush on Mrs. Awesomecool AKA Superfantabulous. His response to the allegation was a big guilty silence. I thought as much. Never trust a husker around your women folks, or farm animals for that matter.

Someone accused my wife of being a control freak, even though are daughter is 3,000 miles away and being watched by her 20 year old Aunt. The little ms. thang found herself at a party where the parents left a group of 12 year old boys and girls totally unsupervised. She had wanted to spend the night at the party, where our response was a resounding "NO" heard clear across the Pacific ocean.

Later we learned that before Mini-fantabulous was taken home by her Aunt, she had wandered the night with unsupervised with the 12 year old boys and girls, and the police were called on their little group for harassing elderly women. The next time we contacted her, she had found herself once again without supervision at a different friend's house alone with a pack of hormonally charged 16 year old boys, where she wanted to stay and watch the premier of GLEE. To which any sane parent would of course say 'NO!'.

One of my wife's readers had a problem with our saying no to this:

"wow. talk about a control freak. Kids will be kids, boys will be boys and girls will be girls. The more your try to control it, the more they will rebel in the future. You think you have problems now? Wait until they're big enough to go tell you to fuck off.

I may not be the most perfect dad, but my kids realize that and as a result, are pretty open and honest about stuff. They need to make mistakes to learn from them and if you keep trying to shelter them from that, they'll make bigger and more mistakes."

1st of all, my daughter has been telling me to 'fuck off' since she was 5. Secondly how can you be a control freak when you are in a completely different country from the one you are suppose to be controlling? At best she is a remote control freak. Thirdly fuck you. Fourthly you would have to be a complete idiot to think that leaving a cute 12 year old girl (with boobs) alone with a pack of sex crazed 16 year old boys is acceptable in any way. Fifthly I am not a perfect dad either, but when I have the sense to not put my twelve year old in situations where she can get raped or impregnated that is NOT being overprotective. That is being a good parent with some fucking common sense.

The whole point of parenting is to protect your children until they are old enough and mature enough to protect themselves from danger, but mostly from themselves. Its not to let them run wild on the streets with an attitude of 'that'll learn them'. Maybe mr. anonymous (if that is his real name) does not have any daughters, or just does not remember what it was like being a 16 year old or has shown up on to catch a predator, I don't know his story but I do know kids who were left to make their own mistakes. Those kids made serious mistakes, they ended up pregnant at 14, in jail, on drugs, fathering children at 15 or dead. I am speaking about kids I grew up with. The ones with overprotective parents left my little po-dunk town and went to college, had careers and had much better lives than those who were left to run wild.

Mr. Anonymous

My parents at least tried to keep a leash on me, tried to keep me from hurting myself, I may have resented it at the time, but I appreciate it now.

Finishing the work week

2010-09-20T00:03:00.000-07:00

Today is Monday, the first and last day of my work week. It seems silly to come to school for just one day, but then again, it is Korea.

About half the students showed up for class, the rest having migrated to whatever hometown either their grandparents or firstborn sons of their families are living in for the Chuesok holiday.

The wife did not have to come to school today, since her school realized how kick-ass it would be to have a whole fucking week off instead of having everyone come to school for just Monday. I guess I should not complain too much, I am getting a six day weekend, and I have heard of other schools that are making people work Monday and Friday. I feel sorry for those guys, but hey, 3 days off in the middle of the week is still better than nothing.

It was a good thing I showed up a little early today, because in typical Korean fashion they randomly decided to start my classes at 8:30 instead of 10:00 without saying a fucking word to me. I did not even realize it until I got to my classroom and found it full of students, to whom I asked "What the fuck are you doing here?"

When I travel with my wife, I usually don't make it to school until a little after 8:35 since we usually like to make out at the bus stop by our schools. Its kinda hot.

All my classes today were full of knuckle draggers, and at one point my co-teacher told me to "give up" because "they have no idea." I was trying to get them to read and practice some simple dialogues about "going to the library this weekend" but it was way over their heads. What is really terrible is that these are the 2nd grade students, and the worst of the first grade students can read and speak Englishee in circles around these kids.

One of the second graders today, thought the word M-O-R-E spelled make. And kept saying "would you like some make steak?" You would think since all these kids started Englishee in Kindergarten that they would be able to read four letter words.

Either the first graders have gotten smarter since my wife started at the Elementary school, or
they have been getting progressively worse at Englishee since I started teaching here.

Probably the latter.

My pants

2010-09-16T16:50:00.000-07:00

I own a magical pair of pants. I swear its true. How do I know they are magical? Its quite simple really. Every day when I go to work, I say hello to my co-teachers, get my cup of tea, and fill my water bottle. Every day people say hi, or ignore me and I wander off the solace of my office at the ass end of the school to be ignored and left alone. Which is fine by me.

Unless I wear my magic pants.

I bought my magic pants from a goodwill a few months ago. When I tried them on, they fit but were a little too tight. I bought them anyways, figuring that either they would stretch out after wearing them, or I would eventually lose a pound or two and they would fit. They were only 5,000 won anyway, so I really did not care that much.

The first day I wore them to school, every single female at my school asked me about my diet.

"Oh, Awesomecool, you face so thin."

"Oh, Awesomecool, you no fat. Can I see your sex-pek?"

"I soo jearous, what diet?"

I told them that I was not really on a diet as much as just doing regular exercise and eating less more often. I showed them all the bodyrock.tv website and said "Just do what she does 4-5 times a week for 12-20 minutes a day."

They did not "rike dat" because "her muscer too big".

To which I replied "There is no way in hell that any of you will ever get muscles like her doing these exercise. It takes a genetic disposition to muscle growth and serious dedication to look like that." But my comments fell on deaf ears.

The rest of the week I wore some more loose fitting jeans, and other slacks and received absolutely no comments, so I figured they were over wanting to see my "sex-pek". The following week I wore my "magic" jeans again, and low and behold....

"Oh, Awesomecool, you face so thin."

"Oh, Awesomecool, you no fat. Can I see your sex-pek?"

"I soo jearous, what diet?"

I explained once again my workout and diet regiment, which once again they did not like. Then the following week I wore the pants again, and they gave me the same compliments and asked the same questions.

After buying the pants around 3 months ago, I wore them yesterday, and this is what they said:

"Oh, Awesomecool, you face so thin."

"Oh, Awesomecool, you no fat. Can I see your sex-pek?"

"I soo jearous, what diet?"

I tell you they must be magic to cause monthly, even weekly memory loss to an entire office of women. Either that or Koreans only have short term memories or just like to look at my ass in tight jeans.

By the way, they are too loose now, and I need a belt to hold them up.

Husking in Korea

2010-09-15T17:02:00.000-07:00

Apparently someone has been husking in Korea, I am not sure what that means, but I think it is an euphemism randomly tearing the clothes off of innocent subway patrons, as if one was shucking an ear of corn, only more rapishly.

You have all been warned. The Urban dictionary also has a definition for husking, but I like mine better.

This guy seems to have a raging boner for my wife, and has written about her several times in his blog, which has inflated my wife's already inflated ego. He has also mentioned me, but not as lovingly, or even bromancianly. My feeling (singular, as I have only one feeling and that is blind rage) has been hurt.

What has two thumbs and wants to bang your wife? This guy.

So I have given a Husker in Korea a space in my sidebar. Nebraska sucks!

Mid terms

2010-09-14T17:31:00.000-07:00

Mid terms are coming up the first week of October. The head of the Englishee dept. wants me to finish chapters 7-9 for the upcoming tests. This would not be that big of a deal except we started classes the last week of August, and have had field trips, listening tests and the Chuseok holiday in that time.

The first week of Classes I sat out almost every class. Normally we have two months to get this much done, allowing at least two weeks per chapter. I have only had my Tuesday and Wednesday classes twice this whole time and will only have them once more before the exam. It normally takes at least two classes for the high level students to finish a chapter, but I only have 3 classes for three chapters. What really sucks a donkey dick is that Tuesday and Wednesday are the low level students.

And I mean low level. Basically kids with a full on retard for Englishee. I am talking about writing letters backwards, kids that cannot count to ten, or say the Alphabet and answer questions like:

"What is your favorite color?"

With "Ball!"

Our school gets special funding because of these kids. Hell, our high level students can barely read. Our low level students literally have the lowest test scores in the whole entire province. If I can get them to utter a single word in English, it is cause for celebration. If they can answer a question using two words or more, they are immediately escorted from class and moved up into the mid level classes.

After the mid terms we will have almost three entire months to finish the next three chapters before the end of the year finals. I asked if we could push the tests back a week or two, but the answer was no.

Well whatever, its not like actually teaching the classes would have any affect on their test scores anyway. Most of them will probably get their name wrong on the test.

You better not blog about this!

2010-09-12T17:01:00.000-07:00

"You better not blog about this!" is a threat I receive daily from Mrs. Superfantabulous. It is OK if she blogs about my manorexia, or bouts with soju but should I mention the batshit crazy stuff she does, it somehow violates her privacy.

That is why I wont blog about how since our children went back to the USA she has become a Howard Hues like shut in, never leaving the house except to go to work.

I will not blog about how she slapped me in the face while on a crowded bus, because I happened to be singing the song 99 problems to myself.

I also will not mention how when waiting for a bus, she decided to head butt me, and then said to me accusingly "Why did you do that?" or how this morning, she decided to take a shower, disrobed then spontaneously started doing stretches in front of our wide open windows, much to the delight of any Korean who happened to be wandering by at the time.

For respect for my wife and her privacy I will not be blogging about any of these things now or in the immediate future, because I am a good husband.

Wanted

2010-09-09T18:11:00.001-07:00

Last night my Superfantabulous and I watched Wanted.

It was a pretty entertaining movie, not to be taken seriously of course with dramatic way, way over the top action scenes with reminded me of the much under appreciated "Last action hero" staring the Governator.

During the first car chase scene Angelina Jolie is driving a red sports car that magically makes cop cars exploded when rammed, but mysteriously cannot outrun a dog food delivery truck. It probably is one of the best car chase scenes I have seen cars flying over other cars, bullets flying, explosions and all of it too insane to be taking serious at all. During that scene this is miss Superfluousness:

"Gasp!"
"Oh, my god!" Hand covers mouth.
"WOW!"
Sharp intake of breath from the danger.
"Gasp!" again
'Whoa."
"Did you see that?" I am sitting next to her, watching the same movie. So yes, I did.
"WooooW" (extended wow.)
"Gasp!" number three.
"Ohmygod!" (Oh my god in one word)

What should be noted is that Mrs. Superfantabulous is no fan of the action genera, and in fact hates car chase scenes with a passion. So for her to enjoy something so immensely and to be on the edge of her seat with excitement means that this was no ordinary car chase scene, and the movie was a step above the other mindless shit rolling out of Hollywood.

It was still mindless shit of course, just slightly better mindless shit. I enjoyed it.

Adultry

2010-09-08T16:57:00.000-07:00

I am an Adulterer. I have cheated on my wife many, many times.

There are many types of Adultery. There is heterosexual adultery, homosexual adultery, adultery with prostitutes or ex-sex. Any of these types of Adultery would be preferable to my wife than the type I do.

DVD Adultery.

One of the reasons we have been married for over 13 years is we have similar tastes. We both have dry sarcastic senses of humor, matching political and religious views so when one of us finds a TV show or movie they like, the other usually likes it too. And when you like something, and are in a committed relationship you its always best to enjoy something you both like together.

Everyone knows that its more fun to watch a movie or TV show with someone else, but what if the other person does not have the time to watch the movie or TV show? What if you really want to know what is going to happen in the next episode? What if work and family get in the way of you finding out what happens to Bill and Sookie? What if you have been waiting what seems like forever to see "Kick Ass?"

The temptation is overwhelming. I have the files downloaded on my computer, I have hours and hours of free time at work, and there is only so many things you can do on facebook to while away the time. It gets hard to resist.

I try to distract my hunger with shows that only I like, we both like the Daily show, so I cant watch that, but only I like Colbert which is almost as good. But that only satisfies me for so long (since the bastard goes on vacation like every other month). So then I watch some other show she doesn't like (We have "safe" shows. I like "Rescue me" but the wife doesn't, she watched all the episodes of "Dead like me", "Six feet under" and "Grey's anatomy" which I just never got into) but then I finish watching all the current episodes.

Finally I succumb. I scratch that itch, and it feels sooooooooo goooooood. Then as the credits roll, the guilt washes over. I have committed a cardinal sin (in married life) , I have cheated on my spouse.

Sure I can "Fake it" and watch it again with her, but its never as good as the first time. You already have heard the Jokes, you know the plot twists, the surprises, the scary moments, you know who survives and who dies. And you feel horrible for knowing, but mostly you feel bored for watching it again. And guilty. And maybe a little hungry. So you go to the kitchen to get a snack. Right during the suspenseful part. And that's the tell. That is where you fucked up.

Accusations fly

"You already watched this!"

"No I didn't!"

"Oh my god! You are a terrible liar! You did! You did watch it!"

"I'm so sorry, I just couldn't take it any longer...I have ...needs"

"I cant beleive you would do this to me...to us...Have you been watching anything else?"

"No, it was just this one time, I swear."

"Your lying!"

"OK, OK, I watched a few episodes of "Vampire diaries" but I swear i did not enjoy it" another lie, sadly I enjoy all vampire based teenage dramas. Really. I don't know what is wrong with me.

Of course we fight, and it comes out in the fight that she has been watching "Weeds" at work. So then we both make up and swear never to never do it again.

But it is only a matter of time. New episodes of "Dexter" are starting.

English Lessons

2010-09-07T17:27:00.000-07:00

As I have already stated countless times, I don't really do lesson plans. The school I work for has mandated materials that are all covered in CD-ROM. It has lessons in grammar, reading, speaking and listening with audio and video tracks all performed by Native English Speakers.

Even though there seems to be a high production value in the materials, they are of course are rife with spelling and grammar mistakes, and the odd Englishee such as "I have never written or gotten a letter since last year."

All the dialogue is terribly boring, performed by ugly actors with droning monotone voices. There is absolutely no effort being made to capture the interest of the students who pretty much zone out when I play the videos. It takes a herculean effort just to pay attention.

In the chapter we are doing right now I noticed some writing on one of the actors T-Shirts. This is what it said:

It was worn by one of the Native English Speakers. I guess someone has a sense of humor.

Separation Anxiety

2010-09-05T20:25:00.000-07:00

Since our children have left my wife has been beside herself. We knew it would be difficult once they left, but I had no idea how hard the woman would take it. She has begun a slow but steady decent into complete madness.

The first few days were mostly displays of crying and moping, resulting from finding objects left behind by the children and the oppressing quiet of an empty home. Some of it was from her too.

This weekend the constant mating calls of the cicadas drove her to screaming madly for silence out the windows, sending children, women and even a few grown men running for fear of the gigantic, female, long head with a big voice.

This weekend she refused to leave the house except to venture out to buy food, and only because she cannot bare to be alone.

She is having trouble going to sleep at night, and last night she demanded that I "pet her" until she fell asleep and wanted me to "purr" as I pet her. I of course refused, as the pet-ee should be the one who purrs, not the pet-er.

Petting her and me purring? That's just crazy.

2010-08-30T22:01:00.000-07:00

One of my students made this awesome video. He is a really good dancer.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Second week at work

2010-08-30T16:40:00.000-07:00

On my way to work this morning my wife told me "Have a nice day at work, Sucker!"

Why am at work, unlike my shiftless wife? She decided to use one of her 14 or so unused sick days to stay home with the offsprung on their final day in Kimchiland. They are flying back to the good old US of A-holes to get their edumcations at our fine pubic schools where I am also got my edumacation.

People think that Korean public schools are really great, and they are for teaching math and science, but not much else. In America, most students know that their are 50 states in the USA, they may only be able to name around three of them including their home state (New York, and California being the other two) less if they live in either New York or California. Some might be able to name Hawaii and Alaska because they are both located south of California in the middle of the ocean near the Mexican boarder, yet for some reason only one is tropical, where the other suffers from a sub arctic climate...odd.

And people on the news always complain that 99% of Americans cannot find Afghanistan or Iraq on a map of the middle east, but most of my students did not even know where Australia is, and it is a fucking continent (Oceania assholes, go ahead and google that bitch. And yeah I know its New Zealand, Indonesia and a bunch of islands too, but Australia is the main land mass, you nit picking sons of bitches.).

I know that math and science are very important, but I think learning about the world around you, peoples and cultures are also pretty damn important too.

When my students did not know where Canada and the US were, I figured that they must spend their entire geography and social studies classes focusing on Korea and its people and history, which most Koreans think is pretty fucking important.

So I asked my students how many provinces were in Korea, which I knew there were 9 (I swear I did at the time, but may or may not have just looked it up on Wikipedia) but my students had no idea. The students and my co-teacher also had no idea what the population of Korea was 49,773,145 (they thought it was way more), and when I showed them on the board their population, compared to the US 310,118,000 (also may or may not be recently googled) after slowly counting all the zeros out loud (I mean what is that? Why cant they look at 1,000 and say "one thousand"? or 1,000,000 and say "a million" what is with the complete lack of number recognition?), they gasped in amazement that there were so few Koreans compared to Americans. I did not want to even tell them how many Chinese or Indians there are, for one thing it would have taken the rest of the class for them to count all the zeros.

I thought that they might have a little more knowledge about where they live than American students, but not really. So I have no idea what these kids are learning for 10 hours a day at public school and 8 hours after school, but it sure aint about the world they live in.

Or how to count by tens.

Hellie Pol-tor

2010-08-29T17:12:00.000-07:00

If you teach English in Korea, you are asked about what you like on a daily basis.

"Teacher, you like Kimchi?" For example. If you have not been asked this one million times then you are not teaching in Korea. The other standbys are if you like "rice", depending on your sex Korean "women or men", Korean food (which for some reason is a separate category from rice and kimchi), and various K-pop bands and Korean celebrities that are virtually unknown to anyone not born on the peninsula.

However there was one thing I kept getting asked that I had no Idea what it meant.

"Teacher do you like Hellie Pol-tor?" I would be asked randomly

"What?"

"Hellie Pol-tor?"

"What the hell is that?" I had no idea what the fuck they were asking me, and one student in particular would ask me it about my opinion of "Hellie Pol-tor" once every two weeks. The student who asked was actually one of my better students, and spoke English fairly well, but would get very frustrated when I asked him to explain what the fuck a "Hellie Pol-tor" was.

I eventually figured out that it was a movie, but did not know if it was Korean or mainstream. Then one day I was browsing movies at the local library when all of a sudden it hit me. "Hellie Poltor" was known in America as "Harry Potter", one of the most popular book and movie franchises of the recent decade.

I cant believe it took me like 6 months to figure that out.

First day of classes

2010-08-25T19:04:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I returned to work, but since I had not created a schedule for the classes I would teach, I taught no classes.

Today is my first day of actual teaching I have scheduled 3 classes. My first class was scheduled for 10 am, so when students started arriving at 9:00 am, I told them too get the fuck out. They left. Were they suppose to be there? Who knows. I don't really care either. It might have been that they very well were suppose to come to class, since in Korea they will change your schedule at the last minute and not say a fucking word to you about it.

Last semester I was sitting in my private office, watching a movie when I heard noises coming from my classroom. I investigated and found a class full of Students sitting quietly, waiting for class to start. My co-teacher had an appointment or something and had asked the VP to come to the class in her place, however she had not bothered to let me know about the schedule change, and the VP had not bothered to show up.

So after turning on all the video equipment, and letting the monitors warm up, I taught about 25 minutes of class before the students went on their merry little way. Did I care? Hell no, I get paid the same no matter what. Show up or don't, come early, come late, all I have to do is turn on a DVD and say repeat after me for 45 minutes 20 times a week. I really cant complain.

So it is now a quarter after 11:00 and my first class has yet to show up. Was it re-scheduled? Who knows. Will i teach my next two classes today? Your guess is as good as mine. Does it matter? Not really. Welcome to Korea muther fuckers.

Oh Korea

2010-08-24T17:12:00.000-07:00

We just got back from an epic journey through China and Borneo, and the journey really made me appreciate some things about Korea.

1. (relatively) Clean water. In china and Borneo it is not safe to drink the water without boiling it first, and of course they serve ice in all the drinks, along with a hefty dose of the Asian version of Montezuma's revenge.

2. Public Transportation. Although the bus drivers in Korea are certifiably insane, the extensive network of bus and subway service (throughout the area around Seoul anyway) is convenient and reliable. And you dont feel like you need either a tetanus shot or shower after riding on the bus, for the most part.

3. Sunburns. Koreans are more phobic of direct sunshine than your average non-sparkly vampire...

gay

But they actually don't have that much to fear since the sun is usually being blocked out by the thick haze of pollution or near constant rain or overcastyness (not a word). Meanwhile the entire Awesomecool family was nearly burnt to a non sparkly crisp on the sunny beaches of Malaysia.

4.Paid Vacation. At all my jobs in America, when I took a vacation, it meant I was not getting paid until I went back to work. The whole time I was relaxing on a beach, or visiting pandas, or checking out temples, I was getting paid the same as if I was at school, watching movies, taking a nap or writing my blog. Not at all like in America, where you get paid for when you are actually doing your job, and expected to clock out for your 15 minute break.

So there are some good things about living over here, but sometimes you have to take a step back to really appreciate what you have.

End of Camp

2010-07-29T18:18:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the last day of Summer camp. At most schools the NETs will have fun activities for the kids to do, games to play, movies to watch, arts and crafts and other bullshit to waste time with the illusion of teaching. Not at my school.

The Principal and Vice Principal here at asshole middle school think that the best way for students to spend their summer vacation is rote memorization of pointless dialogues. They think students "Need rearn diaroges for implove Englishee."

Last winter I spent two weeks planning fun activities and games that focused on improving the students conversation and listing abilities. Those were scrapped the week before camps began and replaced with 3 hours a day of dialogue practice and memorization. Never mind that none of them can speak or write in more than a three word sentence, and 90% of the time those sentences either begin with "Teacher" or "I'm". So I am not sure how memorization of the dialogue for making a hotel reservation is going to help them if they lack the ability to understand what the hell they are memorizing.

When the head of the Englishee dept asked me for plans for summer camp, I saw it coming. So I created simple pointless dialogues for the kids to "memorize" for the benefit of the Principal and Vice Principal, since if either of them showed up, it would only be for the first 15 minutes of class anyway. Then we would do fun activites for the next two hours. But then the VP decided that my dialogues were too short, and demanded twice as much as I prepared.

They wanted me to cut the fun activities and spend the whole three hours with memorization, practice, and drilling of the dialogues, which are simple but completely useless for the students to memorize. Even though I tried to dumb them down as much as possible they still had trouble with them.

Here is one of my dialogues:

Mike: What do you want to do tomorrow?
Sumin: I don’t know. How about a movie?
Mike: Yeah, that sounds like it will be fun.
Sumin: What do you want to do before the movie?
Mike: We could go out to eat.
Sumin: Yeah we should go get some hamburgers.
Mike: Ok, then let’s do that.
Sumin: Yeah lets!

I asked the students questions about it.

Me: Are Sumin and Mike going to eat before or after they watch the movie?
Student1: Hamburger?
Me: no.
Student2: Mike?
Me: Are Sumin and Mike....Going to eat.... Before or After... They watch the movie?
Student3: Hamburger?
Me: no. When are they going to eat? Are they going to eat BEFORE the movie, or are they going to eat AFTER the movie?
Student4: Hamburger?
Me: If the answer was not Hamburger the first two times...
Student 5: Mike?

The dialogues were pointless and boring and the VP loved it. But I did not want to spend 3 hours a day on it, so for all my classes I had the students read it out loud one time then move on to the next one. That way we would still have time to do fun activities that they might actually learn something from.

I asked my the head of the English dept. how the hell this was suppose to help the students with their English when they did not understand the dialogues at all. She told me "Students not understand diarogue, just repeat it untir dey understand." I guess that is why when you tell a Korean that you do not speak Korean they keep talking to you in Korean, they all think if you repeat something enough times the other person will just magically figure it out. I can guarrentee you however, if I have no fucking clue what you said the first time, i will have no fucking clue the next three times you say it, so save your breath.

Two down and one to go

2010-07-25T23:57:00.001-07:00

I finished my second group of first grade camp today, and now I have just three days left until complete deskwarming. Not that I am not deskwarming now, its just that I am currently only deskwarming 4 hours a day, instead of eight. That is including lunch of course.

We were recently chatting with a friend of ours who is working at a hagwon in our area, and we were comparing our jobs.

Our friend makes 2.3 million won without a TEFL compared to our 2.2 million with, which initially makes her job seem like the better deal. Until you find out that she has 29 hours of actual classroom teaching compared to our 22(I actually only teach 20). That is not counting the overtime that I get for teaching after school classes of course.

She also only gets 5 days of vacation time during her entire contract compared to our 5 weeks, not including several weeks of deskwarming during winter break, spring break, summer break and the random days of no class, for no apparent reason. She pretty much teaches the entire time.

One advantage she gets though, is when she finishes her last class of the day, she is free to go home. She does not have to be a white head in office just for the sake of appearance. I know most of us in the public schools would kill to not have to spend an 8 hour day on facebook. Although my crops do need watering.

She also gets less sick days, and has to actually do lesson plans, which neither of us do at all anymore. My wife in elementary never had to do lesson plans, but I use to do lesson plans, which is to say that I made one lesson plan when I first started and made slight modifications to it weekly. Then I got tired of that and began turning the same thing in week after week, but by April even that was too much work. So it has been three months since i turned in a single lesson plan.

She replaced someone who worked this job for one and half years before realizing they were getting screwed and left the country. I am surprised that she took the job in the first place. People complain about jobs drying up here with increased competition due to a shitty American economy, but you can do a hell of a lot better than that. A friend of mine is looking for a job closer to Seoul right now and has recently turned down 3 or 4 jobs with public schools that are far better than what she has.

She is incredibly unhappy with her job. She is so unhappy that she is actually pulling a midnight run later on this week. So if anyone is looking for a ahitty job, with shitty hours, I know a place that is hiring!

Building the glorious republic of Korea

2010-07-22T20:33:00.000-07:00

There has been a construction site next to my school building something enormous, but until recently they were still digging the ground. Now they have three giant tower cranes, a foundation poured, and several double decker Cargo containers that you see all over Korea that have been converted into housing or offices.

Along with the new tower cranes and offices they have installed a massive sound system that blares music all day long. Thankfully its not K-pop, but since its still Korean music, its not much better.

What they play sounds like propaganda music, praising a glorious leader, and industrious nation that is rivaled by none. I myself have begun saluting all my co-teachers of the superior race and doing that ridiculous hop-march thing down the hallways.

Team names

2010-07-21T22:06:00.000-07:00

I just started on my second group for summer camp, and I let the kids pick out team names for each of their groups. My only rule was that they had to be in English. After about 20 minutes of deliberation, I got the following names:

1. Team Mitty - I asked what the hell a Mitty was, and they said "Mitty Mouse!"
2. Team Hospital - I guess they do go there every time they get a runny nose or whatever.
3. Team Dream - 50% of Korean stores and products are named either "Dream" or "Story" something.
4. Team S - completely unimaginative. I docked points from their team.
5. Team Devil - They are the worst students of course.
6. Team Wonder Woman - Better than Wonder girls I guess.
7. Team Dong man- They drew a steaming pile of poop next to the name, so I think they meant dung, but to me dong is funnier.
8. Team Gay Bar - My personal favorite, I have no idea why this group of boys decided on this name, but they are a little more "touchier" in class than usual...

Potty time

2010-07-07T23:47:00.000-07:00

As a general rule, I use the teacher's restroom exclusively at my school. However sometimes I have to take a piss and I don't want to take a half mile hike to the one clean restroom in the school, so I hop down the steps and brave the one halfway decent men's restroom.

By halfway decent I mean only a little bit of shit smeared across the walls, and just a few puddles of urine around the toilet and doorway. Not painted brown speckled with bits of paper chewed gum and the floor covered with a lake of urine like the others.

I don't know how it is at other schools, but the kids at my school are fucking animals. They even groom each other in the classroom picking through each others hair, looking for ticks like the monkeys on animal planet or something.

They run screaming through the halls, wrestling and smashing shit. They litter like its going out of style, they pretty much tear anything and everything off the walls that is not securely bolted down. They break absolutely everything they touch, and they touch absolutely everything.

When they are not destroying things, they are constantly fighting with each other, wrestling, slapping, punching, kicking and pinching. If they are not busy beating each other, they are grooming or...beating each other.

They have all learned my classroom motto:

"No touching!"

Not even the nice kind.

Languagee barrier

2010-07-06T18:43:00.000-07:00

My wife and I went to a tiny hardware store in our town to buy some duct tape. Of course the people in the store did not speak English, but since I did not see any of the silver miracle tool lying about I asked "Tape?" Keeping things simple seems to help communication.

She had no idea what I was talking about. My wife who has been diligently studying Korean, busted out her much greater lexicon of the local language. "Tape-oo?"

The woman in the store resorted to the typical Korean method of trying to talk to us in Korean until we some how become magically fluent in their stupid language. Then I noticed behind the counter a roll of green duct tape, to which I pointed to immediately cutting short whatever epic poem or rant on the stupidity of foreigners she was spouting.

Ah! she said, "Tape-uh"

Of course. Tape-uh. Obviously the Korean word for tape is completely indistinguishable from the English word tape. How could she possibly know what the fuck we were talking about when we said Tape-oo? That is completely phonically different from Tape-uh. How could we possibly expect her to make the gigantic leap from tape or tape-oo to tape-uh. Ridiculous!

This was not the first time something like that happened either. One time when we first got here, we were trying to find the bus that went to "Home plus". So I asked the driver "Home plus?" to which I received a blank stare. Know I knew he should know what home plus was. There is a gigantic fucking sign over the building and it is clearly visible from the subway. There is no way a bus driver would not know about it. I said it slower. I enunciated. Still nothing but confusion. Then another passenger, one somewhat familiar with the English language chimed in.

"Home prus-oo"

"Ahh! Home prus-oo Nehye!" It turns out he did indeed know Home Prus-oo, but never heard of anything like Home plus. Even though there is no "oo" at the end of the "Plus" on the sign.

Really. Really Korea? How could a race of people be unable to make such a simple leap from tape to tape-uh? From home plus to home prus-oo? If a Korean came to the USA and asked me "Bus-uh?" or "Bus-oo?" or "Bus-ee?" sure two blocks take a right. I would be able to make the connection. "Warmart-oo?" sure, its over there. Is it a lack of imagination, or just a game of annoy the foreigner? Or what?

Give me fucking break, you boners.

Fat fool

2010-07-02T22:22:00.000-07:00

I had a class recently where the assignment was to ask your partners what their height, weight, shoe size, and hair length was. To demonstrate for the class, I posted my stats:

Height:180 cm
Weight:84 kg.
Shoe size:300
hair length:0

Now I expected the 0 hair length to give the class a chuckle, and the 180cm non-loser height to get general approval from the class, I did not expect the reaction from my weight. When I got to Korea I was a svelte 91.6 kg according to my health exam. I had another exam in April and the result was 84 kg. Recently and I am now down to 81kg. or 178lbs for Americans. I have had students and teachers telling me that I was "too thin" and that "We like the fat Mr.Awesomecool better".

Students and teachers alike are constantly about my diet and how much weight I have lost. Especially when I put on my new "Skinny" jeans since my other pants are now officially "Clown Clothes" as they are about 6 inches too big at the waist.

However after I posted my weight, the class laughed at my huge weight. I asked what was so funny, and one girl said that her father was 180 cm too (I doubt it), but her dad only weighed 68 kg. I told her that he must be a stick.

Since then some female students have started writing my weight and height stats on the blackboard when I am not paying attention or out of the class room with the message "Mr. Awesomecool is fat" under it. I can not believe how much their attitude towards me has changed since I posted that number. Its not as if I suddenly put the 10 kg. I lost back on, but now that they have a number, in their eyes I am a titanic lard ass. I am starting to get a six pack for fucks sake!

Before:

February 2010

February 2010
After:

June 2010

June 2010

They want me sooo bad.

2010-06-28T23:21:00.000-07:00

My school keeps asking me if I am going to renew my contract or not. They have been going to a lot of open classes lately, and have probably seen some of the mutants that the other schools hired as NETS.

I have ran into quite a few lately, and though most schools have been lucky enough to hire white males and females, they have definitely been scraping the bottom of the genetic cracker barrel for the ones they got.

I bumped into one waiting for the bus the other day, and the man looked old enough to be my grandfather. While I had more fingers on one hand than he had teeth in his mouth, I am fairly certain It was not mister wonderful (he did not look dazzling in a suit). The mans putrefied gob was absolutely hypnotic, it was like a train wreck of white mucous and decaying bacteria, that I could not stop staring at. I know that all Koreans think that us whiteskins are beautiful, with our long heads, and huge noses and kimchi+ sized dicks, I just could not imagine his classes telling him how handsome he was day after day, like I get with enthusiastic thumbs up and the Occasional "WOW" even though they have seen my ugly face every school day for the last nine months.

In the town where we live (not teach) there are two plus sized gals waddling around, both with faces that look like they fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down. If my co-teachers have been to any of these schools lately, they might have figured out that even though I am no prize pig myself, they got pretty dang lucky.

I guess I should thank all the uglies out there, contributing to my job security. And to all the NETS hotter than me (not too many in this area) you are welcome.

Why dont koreans feed thier kids?

2010-06-14T18:00:00.001-07:00

Maybe it is just my school, but all my students are always hungry. They constantly beg, whine and cry for food and candy, whether I have it or not. Every time they see me with food, if they can not say

"Teacher I hungry, please give!"

They open their mouths as wide as possible and motion emphatically for me to feed them like baby birds harassing a mother bird.

The clownish begging is one things, but some of my kids are so hungry that I have witnessed them eating the leavings of other students off the floor of my classroom. Its really embarrassing to see my students degrade themselves like that.

Slacking off

2010-06-07T18:16:00.000-07:00

I just have not felt like blogging lately, I seem to have lost my mojo for it. I made a couple half hearted attempts to write some stuff, but it just came across as mean and boring, so I delted it.

Mostly I have just been bored these days, other than the usual drama from kids, things have just been slowly moving along. Maybe its because the wife and I are counting down our contracts, we have been really looking forward to moving back to Spain, but with the Euro taking a nosedive and Spain heading into the same economic tailspin that Greece had, we are re-thinking that decision a little bit.

Mostly though I have been looking forward to summer vacation. It has been a long stretch since winter vacation, and I could use a couple weeks off. Three to be exact. Since I finally got my Industrial area pay raise and extra week of vacation, that makes for a sweet summer break. We have our sights set right now on China and Borneo, but are open to other ideas. We originally wanted to go to Japan, but when we started shopping around for hotels and stuff, the crazy expensive prices over there soured us on the idea.

Its one thing to be on your own, and travel around Asia, but believe me, it is quite another to try to get accommodations and tickets for a party of five. Just think of how much your last trip anywhere cost and multiply it by five, then tell me how cheap it is to go to the Philippines or Vietnam, its not so cheap now is it?

It is starting to get real tempting to renew our contracts here, with all the problems in Europe right now, and the fact that not only do we get our completion bonuses if we renew, we also get an extra two weeks of paid vacation (seven total) and free round trip tickets (or the cash equivalent) home and an extra 100,000 won a month. That is a pretty sweet deal.

But is it worth it????

Summer vacation

2010-05-27T16:57:00.000-07:00

I finally have some good news. After months and months of asking for the same bonus pay and vacation time that my wife gets, and being repetidly being told yes and then a few days later no again, I finally got it. I am getting three weeks of vacation for summer, instead of two weeks and one week of so important desk warming. My co-teacher is ecstatic too, because that means she does not have to come to school and babysit me for that extra week.

I also got back pay for eight months deposited into my account, with that and my after school classes that I am once again the top bread winner for my household and as such I collected my ball sack back from my wife yesterday. I also get to be on top from now on, which is good for me because my back door will have a chance to heal.

Now comes the difficult part, figuring out where I am going to spend three glorious weeks this summer. Right now we have our eyes set on China and Borneo, but it all depends on our actual vacation times matching up, which did not happen last winter and we were unable to go anywhere.

The future

2010-05-17T21:04:00.000-07:00

My wife and I got accepted to go teach English in Spain, which is far different from teaching Englishee in Korea. For one thing, far, far less money. Together we will be making a little more than one of our paychecks here. There is also no free apartment, so not only are we making half the cash, we have to pay rent too. But those are the only negatives, besides the impending meltdown of the Spanish Government turning the country into a apocalyptic hellscape straight out of mad max. Or at least according to Mr.Wonderful.

I agree, that Spain, is just steps away from being like Greece, but we wont be going for a while, so we are taking the wait and see approach. We are waiting to see if it is destroyed by an economic meltdown or covered in volcanic ash first.

Earthquake!

2010-05-12T18:04:00.000-07:00

Today man schools are having fire and earthquake drills. The siren has been going off at my school for a good ten minutes and the only students outside are a PE class that was already out on the soccer field.

It does not really matter anyway, the fucking school will probably come down like a deck of cards if there ever was a reasonably strong earthquake. In the area I work in they have been building like crazy, or more accurately crazily building. Back in America when we built buildings, we had certain standards for safety that are not even close to following here.

For a large building to survive an Earthquake you need a good foundation, with several feet of hard compacted gravel for it to sit on, and large footings to keep the damn thing from tipping over in an earthquake. They just build these things straight on top of mud. There is no compacting, there is no ground prep, they just pour the concrete right on top of the bare earth. The footings are tiny, and would not be acceptable for a 2 story house in the states. Anyone who has ever played in mud knows that when you start to vibrate, or shake it, it liquefies. That is not a good thing to build straight on top of.

You also need strong, straight support columns, to hold up the floors above you, and large deep pilings to keep the building from shaking off the foundation. But then again that costs money. These things are going to snap like twigs if this building ever shakes and the six floors above me are going to come straight down on top of me. Standing in a doorway, or under my desk wont stop several hundred tons of concrete from crushing the life out of me. Consider this a 3X3X3 foot (roughly one meter) cube of concrete weighs around 4,800lbs or around 2400kg for the rest of the world. I can guarantee that unless you are on the top floor of your building, there is more than that above your head.

Not only that, my school is already showing stress cracks in all the hallways, and sloping in the classrooms. They fill in the cracks with caulk every once in a while, but they keep growing. I know that if my school ever gets hit with a big earthquake this thing is just going to crumble.

Another term

2010-05-09T16:58:00.000-07:00

We are starting a new term at my school, and starting it out right.

At my school we have mandatory material to be covered in every class, and it is dictated to us by means of a CD rom. There are certain units and certain chapters that must be covered by a certain time. At the beginning of the year the materials were ordered late, and we had to wing it until they arrived. Two weeks ago, knowing that we are about to start a new unit, I asked about it.

"Can I get the CD Rom for the new unit?" I asked the head teacher.

Blank stare.

"I don't have a CD ROM for units 4-7." I clarified.

"No one does." Was the reply. Then the head teacher began furiously digging through the stacks of paper on her desk. She had not ordered them yet.

I checked in again at the end of the week.

"The book store say they will deliver it this week."

"Oh good"

"But I don't believe them."

She was right not to believe them. They still have not delivered. I guess I am winging it again.

In other news, after our midterms, and my co-teacher asked me to look over some of the written answers.

"There is a dog and two trees in park A" Was marked as incorrect. I told the head teacher that this was in fact correct.

She said "No, it should say There are a dog and two trees in park A."

I said "No, that sounds fucked up." This is the way all their books and teaching materials say to do it. I believe that it is technically correct, but un-natural. Of course you would probably say "There are two trees and a dog in Park A" Which sounds more natural, but you could say it the other way as well. But the head teacher and all the co-teachers think that saying "There is a dog and two trees in Park A" Is incorrect. Then they wanted me to prove it was correct by showing them the grammar rules for it.

The only rule I could find was for neither or nor, where it states "The noun closest to the verb determines the verb" But they say that is only for neither or nor and does not apply to this situation, with fucking park A. I think it holds true in any situation, but I have no idea what that is called or how to prove it. So I am just going to forget about it. If they want proof, they can look it up themselves.

Breakfast in bed

2010-05-04T18:55:00.000-07:00

Today my wife did something nice for me. In the thirteen years we have been married today was the first time she ever brought me breakfast in bed. I was very appreciative, yet very tired, I said "thank you", and because I was still tired and not feeling well (I just have been sick since friday) I set it down next to the bed and rolled over, planning on eating it later. After a while I decided to get up and have my breakfast my wife had thoughtfully brought for me.

Only the breakfast was gone. She had of course eaten it.

Thanks dear.

Adventure!

2010-04-29T18:27:00.000-07:00

Yesterday the wife and I had to go for our checkup. The head of the Englishee dept. took us to the hospital, after which she wanted to take us out to lunch. That would seem like a nice gesture to a normal person. However, my wife is not a "normal" person.

Not only is she is on a raw food diet right now, she is also a devout, militant, fundamentalist Vegan. She is the type of person who would strap c-4 to her chest and suicide bomb a McDonalds. The very thought of eating in a restaurant where the "juice of dog", or chicken is prepared sends her into a blind rage.

She wanted absolutely no part of eating any lunch besides the pureed raw turnip, garlic and yeast that she packed for her lunch, and smelled roughly like the bottom of a garbage can. So we made excuse, after excuse as to why we could not possibly go to lunch. The head of the English department did not want to go back to work and fought desperately to go out to eat.

"Its only 10am, and there will be nothing open."

"I tink, dat maybe your wife want go shopping until runchee?"

Unfortunately for her, not only is my wife nearly six feet tall, and therefore too large for either female or male Korean clothing, she also lacks the bargain hunting and fashion loving gene predominately found in females and gay men. Somehow, I posses the gene, I know its weird!

She suggested several more options for avoiding going back to work, but my wife was unrelenting. Eventually she out-koreaned my boss with her stubbornness and inability to take no for an answer born out her diet based fanaticism and was driven back to her school.

I however, do not posses my wife's unrelenting will, and also did not want to go back to work, so after she was driven back my boss suggested lunch one more time. I said OK, and figured if they did not have anything I would eat later.

The restaurant she took me to was a traditional place that served the "Juice of dog" and chicken in one building, and traditional tofu and noodle dishes in another. It also had incredible landscaping.

The served me a boiling hot bowl of one piece of tofu roughly the size of a babies head, and of course rice and side dishes. They were worried that it would be too spicey for me, but it only had a mild tang to it. It was pretty good, and the vegetable sides were good, but the kimchi smelled like low tide so I had no part of it.

Afterward it was time to go back, but my boss really did not want to, so she suggested going for a short walk. We ended up wandering around what looked like an abandoned shack, with giant woolly guard dogs on chains. It turned out to be a Buddhist temple that normally served tea, but was closed. My boss convinced them to let us in and look around and we checked out the shrine.

Then she convinced them to make us some tea while we sat on a heated mat watching Korean soap operas. When we finally left, it was about 1:30pm.

"Oh, it soo late!" My boss said in surprise. She had told the Vice Principal that we would be back by noon. So we rushed back to school, but when we got there, it was a ghost town. All the teachers had gone to lunch so no one even noticed we got back an hour and a half late.

After they all got back we went to the gym and played volleyball and basketball for about two hours. It was like the special Olympics in there. Not only was I not use to Korean rules volleyball (like a mixture of soccer and volleyball)I am old and mildly retarded at sports, luckily all the other teachers were too.

I miss variety

2010-04-26T19:26:00.000-07:00

That is the one thing I really miss about America. There are a million stores selling a million brands of a million products. You could buy almost any type of fruit or vegetable year round, shop for clothing of any size and brand, or buy things online for incredibly cheap prices.

In Korea, not so much. Every town has the same cell phone stores, book stores, clock stores(they are really into clocks here)and bakeries and they are all selling the exact same products. You might find a little more variety at your e-mart or homepluses, but the bulk of what they sell is exactly the same as what everyone else is selling.

There are foreign markets in Seoul that sell some a lot of products that you cant get anywhere else, put the prices are high and the selection is limited.

There are places that sell foreign sized clothes, but the last pair of jeans I looked at were $150.00 and looked pretty shoddy. And forget about a good pair of running shoes. Unless you want a stylish pair of rocking elevator shoes.

Oh well, I least I can afford to buy shit over here. Back in the good old US all my money went to rent, food and heat.

New obsession

2010-04-24T16:51:00.000-07:00

I was on facebook the other day when I saw this, my new obsession.

They are perhaps the cutest thing ever.

Lately my wife has been thinking about getting a dog here in Korea. She is getting to that stage in her life where her biological clock is more like a ticking time bomb. She wants a baby to love and cuddle and make little cooing noises at. She has been getting baby fever bad since her cousin dropped her third kid, and gets all starry-eyed every time she sees a cute little baby. When she sees an ugly little baby (we have all seen them, even if we don't want to admit it), she just gets angry at the parents for bringing something into this world which offends her eyes.

She cannot have a child (one of us is fixed), and mentally she does not want one plus, we already have two, and believe me, that is more than enough. But biologically she feels compelled to create one, or at least have a reasonable substitute.

So she decided to save a dog from becoming soup. She has been looking into adopting abandoned dogs, which have been rescued by animal rescue korea. She wants to do this even though she is allergic to almost anything with hair. Not to mention her number one most hated thing in the world is dog poop.

Whenever we go for walks and she sees anything that might resemble dog poop ( a melted candy bar or the like) she not only gives it a wide berth, but shouts out warnings to me and the kids to avoid the feared poop-like stain at all cost. If I venture to closely to a fecal stain on the ground, I do so under threat of physical violence.

I don't really want a dog, and all the hassle that comes with not only feeding, walking, picking up poop and not to mention the hassle of shipping it to wherever we are going to, when we leave Korea.

The kids really want a pet right now, and the wife wants a pet right now and I would like to have a pet, but just not yet. And when we do get a pet, I want a micro pig. I want to breed micro pigs and have dozens of little piglets running around looking so fucking cute. Look at theses things, how could you not want one!

OMG! So fucking cute!

Assault

2010-04-20T00:06:00.000-07:00

Everyone who reads my wife and my blog knows that my wife hates on Korea, and I am a little more tolerant of people without long heads.

Yesterday I wrote a big, long, whining post about how living in Korea is a constant assault on all five senses, but I did not post it. Everything I was going to say has been said before. If not by my wife or I, then by one of the other dozen living in Korea Blogs. So I deleted it.

I wrote about our bus ride to work, passing fields and streams choked with trash. People speaking in their hacking goblinish language. The foul smells from the bus passengers, and countryside. The terrible K pop blaring over the bus's loud speaker. The pollution, boring shoddy architecture, limited food options (anyone ever hear of spices besides red pepper and fish sauce?), pointless nationalism etc. etc. etc.

But what is the point? It has all been said before.

I spent the better part of yesterday morning writing it, instead of doing lesson plans, working on my after school class or really doing anything that resembles work. Then I just said fuck it. I am not putting out another whiny, complaining blog.

I have an easy job, I am saving lots of money, and I cant complain about that. Sure I put up with everyday BS and live in a disgusting country, but so what? Its only temporary, someday I wont be here. I will leave Korea for one of the dozens of other countries that are worth living in, and exploring.

I don't care about Korea anymore. I am here to save money and that's it. Everything else is inconsequential.

Teaching Englishee in Korea! Phiting!

2010-04-13T17:19:00.000-07:00

My school is ponying up 80,000 won for me to take a "Teaching Englishee in Korea" class. I will take the classes through the method of "Internet based lecture though" .

It will be taught by a guy who was "English teacher for global company such as Korean Air, Doosan Infracore, COTI and etc."

I will be learning lessons such as:

"Comparing, Korea VS. foreign country" I expect to learn that Korea, of course is best and sparkling.

"Understanding Korean School" I have to admit, I do not understand Korean school, be it one school or many school...

And last but not least "What is 'TEACHER' in Korea" yes, what is TEACHER? Does the Korean hive mindset mean there is but one singular teacher? Are we all one great entity working together? This must be the philosophy aspect of the course.

I have to hand it to the guy though, horrendous spelling and grammar mistakes aside, he is conning my school out of 80 bucks, which at least shows some balls.

Does anyone else have to take theses bullshit classes?

Going to the doctor

2010-04-11T19:09:00.000-07:00

If a Korean so much as skins their knee, they go to the doctor. If they have a runny nose, quick to the doctor. They expect you to do the same as well.

"You da seek."

"Yeah, I am a little under the weather."

"What did da doctor say?"

"I did not go to the doctor."

Stunned silence...

In America, we know that there is not much a doctor can do for you, if you have the flu, or a cold, or bruised your knee on a coffee table. Except of course bury you in soul crushing debt for the rest of your life.

I have been sick for almost a week now. I have, as my wife puts it "Man Flu" which means that I am sick, and not paying as much attention to her, therefore I am being annoying on purpose. I have not been to a doctor yet, because A: there is no cure for a cold or flu. B: Korean doctors are about as capable as a blind one armed juggler. and #3: Its not AIDS, cancer, or a broken arm, which are things that doctors (probably not korean doctors) can actually help you with.

The head of the Englishee dept. is intensely concerned. She is insisting on taking me to a doctor tomorrow. I will probably be pretty much better tomorrow so I told her sure, just to get her off my back. Plus I might get to skip a class or two, which will make the whole thing worth it.

Hopefully now she will stop asking me if I have diarrhea every 15 minutes.

Man Flu

2010-04-08T17:00:00.000-07:00

I am back at work today, after spending two days at home with the man-flu. The wife was getting pretty annoyed about me staying home focusing on getting better, because it gave me less focus on her.

I still feel pretty sick, and sitting in my giant un-heated office with huge, drafty aluminum framed windows I am not getting any better. I could go to the heated teacher's office, but then I would have to talk to my co-teachers, and they would want to give me "juice of dog soup with kimchi" to help me get better, so thats out.

Its not that there is not a heating system in my office, its just that they refuse to turn it on. I thought my skipping out on two days of work this week might change that, but obviously I was wrong.

One of the reasons I came back to work today, instead of spending another day killing deathclaws and giant molerats, is that yesterday I received an e-mail that I might be getting an extra week of vacation time and a raise.

If you don't remember, my wife got a pay raise with a couple months back pay, and an extra week of vacation because she is working in an industrial area, about 3 blocks from my school. When I asked my school if I could get some of that they said "no, fuck you."

So I asked the district coordinator and she said "No, fuck you, and fuck your wife. I am going to report you to the administration, and make her return that back pay."

My wife, however did not have to pay it back, and she still has her extra vacation, and now it looks like I do too. So hopefully I will be getting some back pay, which on top of my 8 hours a week of overtime, will make a nice fat paycheck.

Sick day

2010-04-06T17:34:00.000-07:00

After six months of being exposed to no hand washing, open mouth coughing, disease spreading, Korean children who at least 30% of whom are "seek" at any given time, my immune system finally gave up. I guess I have not been eating enough kimchi...

Now it is my turn to say "I seek teacher! Need to sreep in crass." Except I aint going to class, I am using one of my 14 sick days to stay at home and get paid.

Back in the good ole US of A, if I was too sick to drag my sorry ass into work, that was 8 hours of money that I would not earn. As a carpenter, I made over $20.00 an hour, so a sick day meant at least $160.00 would be missing out of the next pay check, more if we were working overtime that day. And if I was so sick, that I needed to go to a doctor? That would have to come out of the next pay check.

There are a lot of things that suck of Korea, but at least I can take a day off every once in a while and not have to worry about how I am going to pay the bills.

That time of the month.

2010-04-04T19:04:00.001-07:00

I would like to dispute some lies written about me.

"I forbade him from killing Yau Guai in Fallout 3. I'm well known for my devotion to god, the gays, hopeless little douchey dinner dogs and pixilated endangered species! Why should he be allowed to run around the imaginary 50's themed nuclear wreckage killing poor giant beasts and eating their flesh when all they're trying to do is get by in a cruel, cruel, radioactive world? "

First of all, I don't go around murdering fake endangered species and devouring their flesh. I don't eat any flesh, be it real or pixilated. I am a vegan in real life and in fake life. That is why I, unlike my wife, took the time to make sure that when I leveled up, my charisma was high enough for me to obtain the animal friendship perk. Although I admit to whacking a couple of giant mole rats, only for quest purposes, I however felt no joy from it.

"I decide now is the perfect time for us to 'spend time together'. I follow him, crawl over him, and flop down beside him. He seems slightly unhappy with me. I can tell cause he's glaring at me.
"What are you glaring at me for?"
"That hurt!"
"Really?"
"Yeah! You just dug your bony fucking knees into my back! You have the whole bed to crawl around on, why do you have to pick the one part I'm on!"
That seemed pretty funny to me. I laughed and he stormed off."

OK, this actually happened. But I am sure that had anyone else had 135lbs of boniness hop onto their back that they would greet the situation with anything but enthusiasm, unless they are into that whole S&M thing, which I will not judge you for, no matter how perverted and disgusting of a human being you may be.

"This is by far the likeliest culprit: Mr. AwesomeEstrogen is on his man-rag. Like man-flu, man-rag is a serious life-threatening affliction with debilitating symptoms you women can't even begin to comprehend! Luckily, it only happens once or twice a month and all will be back to normal in 3-5 days."

If I was on my "Man Rag" I would be the one following her around, alternating between unrelenting nagging, physically abuse, and constant attention seeking. It may be that someone else is about to receive a visit from aunt flow, and I am simply the victim of a conspiracy being framed for having a mangina.

I say if the tampon does not fit, you must acquit!

New co-teachers

2010-03-31T16:48:00.000-07:00

My wife is lucky. She has been going through a slew of bizarre new co-teachers. I did not get any sensi-purse wielding crybabies, or giggling man-children. I did not get female versions of "Mr. Toad" or anything. All I got were three new co-teachers this year, two men and a woman. They all seem perfectly stable, and are all dreadfully normal and/or boring.

The female is a temporary teacher with the personality of a soggy loaf of bread. She sits in the back of the classroom and stares off into space until I call on her to translate something. And when I do, she looks shocked and confused, and may or may not spit out an accurate translation of what I say. We might share one or two words in between classes, about what subjects need to be covered, but mostly we just ignore each other.

The male teachers both speak excellent Englishee, one of them lived in Indiana for several years, has two or three doctorates, and taught at a University in Indiana. He is waiting for a job at one of the better Universities in the area and only took this job to make ends meet until then.

The other male has not lived abroad, but speaks really well, especially for someone who has lived in the sticks of Korea all his life. He has been teaching there for 13 years and came to our school because he wanted to teach in a bigger city, where the quality of the students would be higher. He is very disappointed, since my school is in an industrial area, and the students are poor we have one of the lowest ranking schools in the city.

My head teacher is even more disappointed in the bunch than I am. Not because of a lack of ability, but rather a surplus. She wanted the new Englishee teachers to work for her, and do her bidding, but since the dudes are incredibly over-qualified to teach they have both been made heads of other departments. So once again poor Mrs. Lee has only the temporary teacher to act as her slave, and temporary teachers don't have to show up until their first class starts and leave when the last one ends. She gets her at the most 6 hrs a day, so I am the only one left to do her dirty work. Unfortunately I just play dumb until she does whatever it is she wants me to do, until she does it herself.

Some people get all the luck.

Bad students

2010-03-29T17:23:00.000-07:00

During one of my third grade classes my co-teacher called on a pair of students to read a simple dialogue, in Englishee. The students stared at my co-teacher, then at their books. They looked at me and looked at their books. They looked at my co-teacher, and then looked at their books. My co-teacher told them to read the dialogue in Korean. The students stared at my co-teacher, then at their books. They looked at me and looked at their books. They looked at my co-teacher, and then looked at their books.

I told them what to say. My co-teacher told them what to say. The students around them, tried to help them, but still they looked totally confused, and stayed mute. I told them to sit down and practice, I would call on them again later. I was annoyed, the class seemed to prefer talking in Korean to practicing the dialogue, I was use to this by now, but for some reason decided to make an example out of this pair. I called on the other students to do the dialogue, and no matter how terribly they did it, I gave them candy.

We practiced another dialogue; I told the students that they would perform it. I told them exactly what to say. I gave them 5 minutes to work on it in pairs. I then called on them to read the dialogue.

The students stared at my co-teacher, then at their books. They looked at me and looked at their books. They looked at my co-teacher, and then looked at their books. My co-teacher told them to read the dialogue in Korean. The students stared at my co-teacher, then at their books. They looked at me and looked at their books. They looked at my co-teacher, and then looked at their books.

This time I was angly. “You are in Englishee Class!” I yelled. “When I tell you to practice a dialogue in English, you better practice the fucking dialogue!” I told the students to sit down and practice the dialogue, I that I would call on them each time until they got it right. They sat down, faces red with embarrassment.

I called on more students and gave them candy. I wrote the next dialogue on a white board, I yelled at the entire class to practice the dialogue. I called on the same pair of students, and they did the blank stare routine again. “How the hell are you not getting this?” I yelled. “I wrote it down, I told you exactly what to say! Its only two sentences!” I warned them that I would call on them every fucking class until they finally figured out how to practice the dialogue. I had my co-teacher translate into less angry Korean, so there would be no misunderstanding. Then I dismissed the class.

After the class both my co-teacher and I stood there shaking our heads. “What the hell is their problem?” I asked him. “Could I have made myself any clearer about practicing the fucking dialogue?”

“Oh don’t brame self.” He told me. “Out of the entire plovence they score da rowest. Our schoor getting special funding for da student. Da plincipar say don’t feel bad if dey no rean anything, dey retarded.”

“Why the hell did you wait until now to tell me that?” Because now I feel like a real asshole.

In the loop

2010-03-25T21:44:00.000-07:00

The day started out shitty, with the bus being late. I was 20 minutes late to work, but no one noticed. When I get to school, I first go to my office, in my classroom, which is on the ass end of the school. I am like a ninja in the shadows, slinking through unlit hallways silent as a ghost. Since no one sees me come in, and the VP and head teacher are busy in the morning, they don't actually know when I arrive. Sometimes they ask, if I go to the office to get some tea, and I just tell them "Oh I was in the classroom setting up for my next class."

Then I had my first couple of classes, which were normal, except that since we are having a test next tuesday (they told me yesterday) we needed to finish up the second chapter in our textbooks, with a section taking two weeks to complete, with only four days to do it for 8 classes, 4 of which I teach between now and the test.

The week previous I was ready to start on the second chapter, but the head teacher, and my co-teachers decided we needed another week to finish up the first chapter. They decided (last Friday, that I should teach the writing section that we had originally decided I should not teach). I rolled with it, and created lesson plans for it. They were going fine until Thursday.

On Thursday, they suddenly realized with the test only 4 days away, on the first two chapters, it might be prudent to start on the second chapter. So the last few classes, instead of taking lead, I have been taking a side seat. I was originally told that all they needed was the first five minutes of class, of course having no concept of time (otherwise they would have realized that covering two chapters in four weeks, might mean that you should cover every two weeks?) 30 minutes later I am left with maybe 15 minutes for me to breeze through my lesson plan which originally takes two 45 minute classes to complete.

Oddly, the last 2 classes I was scheduled to have (and I checked the schedule for changes) have not shown up. This usually means that they are combining classes, jamming over 50 kids into the tiny classrooms and gang-teaching the hell out of them. I am usually invited to participate in these teach-orgies as I am responsible for teaching certain chapters, and keeping track of individual class progress. However, I have not received a formal invitation, and have no Idea where on the six floors of the school the classes are being held, so I am not inclined to actually go out and find them.

What this means for me and my lesson plans....well, you never fucking know.

Too busy

2010-03-24T17:00:00.000-07:00

I am a busy boy. I have not had much time these days to write, so suck it up. The geniuses at my school decided that I will give out stickers to all the kids who memorize a couple lines of Englishee every week.

“ Does Rabbit have long tail?”

“No, it has a short tail.”

“Do you know what Animal has a long nose?”

“Hmmm. I see, an Elephant has a long nose.”

That is this weeks phrase memorization disaster. I corrected the one in my classroom, but there are another 20 located throughout the school. I don't have the time or inclination to fix them all.

They will collect the stickers for prize of cash money. So now every break in between classes and during lunch I am inundated by a dozen by miniature sticker collectors.

After classes are over at 3:00, I use to have an hour and a half of free time. Now I have after school classes until 5:30. It will be nice to get the extra money, except that my co-teacher said I would not get it until the end of the term, which totally sucks.

I tried planning lessons, and give the students activities to do, but they showed zero interest in them so now I am writing while they watch “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “The Simpsons”. So in between breaking up fistfights, and confiscating cell phones I have a little time to write some shit.

2010-03-07T22:45:00.001-08:00

This is brilliant.

This is fucked up.

Dinner

2010-03-05T05:22:00.000-08:00

I have nothing to really write about tonight, so I will talk about dinner.

As you all know, my wife cant cook. The woman could ruin a bowl of cold cereal. Seriously, she has.

I decided to make a dinner of beans and rice, and spicy mushrooms and onions.

Here is what it looked like when it was finished.

It was quite tasty. After dinner I made popcorn and we watched "Pirates of the Caribbean". I just recently figured out how to play a movie on my notebook, and output it to our huge flat screen TV the school provided. It sure as shit beats having all five of us huddle around a laptop, trying to watch anything.

We spent eight hours last week downloading the movie from the interweb, but when we played it, it was in Russian, with thai subtitles. Luckily I noticed that they had an Englishee copy at the foreign library. It is located in the foreign quarter by the subway station. They have a small selection of englishee language books and DVDs.

Bread

2010-02-28T22:55:00.001-08:00

Koreans are good at making many things. They excel at making cheap electronics that break easily, rude ignorant people, soju ( a disgusting beverage made from old sweet potatoes, rice and hatred), kimchi, and... well, really that's about it. One thing they definitely cannot make is bread.

I have tried several types of bread made in Korea, the first disappointment was garlic bread. Add garlic and oil to bread. Simple and delicious. Korean logic dictates that if something tastes good, it will always taste better with copious amounts of sugar added to it. The sugary garlic frosting taste from that foul loaf still haunts my dreams.

We also purchased a loaf of "Whole grain" bread we found its sweet taste and almost non-existent texture to be similar to wonder bread. When used to make a sandwich it melted into a soggy mess that stuck to my teeth and gums. I might as well have made a sandwich out of cake batter.

The problem is, they add milk to all their breads (we learned this later). Milk is not a bread ingredient. Forget that I am vegan, and that I don't consume dairy anyway. The only ingredients you need are flour, yeast, water, and salt if you want to be fancy.

As a carb addict, and since I cannot buy a decent loaf of whole wheat bread in this heathen country, I am forced to make my own bread. All I do is add one tablespoon of yeast to 3 cups of water, mix in roughly 6 cups of flour and let it sit overnight, that will make about 2 loaves of bread. The next day, or day after I kneed half the dough for about five minutes, and then bake it for about 30-40 minutes at as high as your oven will go.

This is what a real loaf of bread looks like.

There you go, whole wheat crusty goodness that fills your belly, and does not melt into mush when you make a sandwich.

Super sized me

2010-02-27T16:37:00.000-08:00

Apparently I am grossly obese. I have always thought that I needed to drop 10 lbs or so, but I think that all and all I look pretty normal. However, one day one of my wife's coworkers saw me waiting for the bus. She told my wife about it the next day.

"I saw husband. He vely fat!"

Maybe by Korean standards, I am vely fat. Although there actually quite a few chubby bastards running around here, since I am tall (er than them), and wider than them, and American, I am automatically fat. I also have either been working out, or working a physically demanding job for most of my life, and dont have noodle arms and legs like the dudes here, running around in their skin tight girl pants. I would say I probably outweigh 90%of the natives by a good 50lbs or so, of course I am also at least 4-6 inches taller than most of them too.

I don't really think I am that fat. My wife says I think I am skinnier than I actually am, that I am vely fat, and its like I have reverse anorexia or something.

This is most likely not a good idea, knowing the people of the interwebs, but her I am in all my glory.

Too much white....

I am fat? Only by korean standards, by american standards? What do you think?

My wife has wanted me to set goals for losing weight (bikini season is right around the corner!), but I am not all that passionate about it. So she is now trying to bribe me. If I lose an inch off my waist, I get to purchase an expansion on one of my games from xbox live. Or if I lose 1 1/2" I get to buy a new game. So if I wanted an expansion and game, I would need to lose 2 inches total.

For all the VG nerds out there, I am eying the expansions for fallout 3 and fable 2 and maybe mass effect (1 is available for download on Xbox live)

I decided to measure my waist to see where I am at right now. We searched our whole rice patty of a town, and could not find one fucking measuring tape. I had to use a belt, marker, and 12 inch ruler to figure it out. Right now my waist, at the belly button is 37inches, which is actually a lot bigger than I thought it was.

Maybe I do have reverse anorexia...?

Lesson Planning

2010-02-25T18:35:00.000-08:00

Since this is my first year teaching in Korea, I really have no idea how things work here. No one has said anything about lesson plans, classes, or what the fuck I am suppose to be doing every day. So I have spent the past month on facebook, talking shit about my co-teachers on this blog, and masturbating.

Recently I heard a nasty rumor that classes are actually suppose to start next Tuesday, Monday being a national holiday. I asked the head of the Englishee dept about it. She confirmed the Rumor.

"Well do you want lesson plans from me then?" Last year she wanted lesson plans from me, lesson plans which would be filed and ignored. They did not notice that for the last 2 months of the term I was either not turning in lesson plans, or turning the same ones in, over and over again.

"Yes"

"OK, What sections do you want me to teach?" We have a book and a CD ROM for our classes that are pretty much our classroom bible. We teach from the book and the CD and absolutely nothing else. I really don't know what we need the lesson plan for, since we just go through the book word, for word in the proper order.

"I dont know, I have to tark to odder teacher." We have three non-native, new Englishee teachers this year.

"OK, where are they?"

"They not come in today."

"But classes start on Tuesday."

"Yes"

"And you want lesson plans today?"

"Yes"

"Do you see the problem here?"

Being the head Englishee teacher she made an executive decision and told me the sections she wanted me to plan for.

Another slight problem is that I do not know how many classes there are, when they are, and how often they are. all I know is there are 3 grades, so I decide just to make one plan for each grade. I worked on them for an hour or so, then turned them in.

"Oh, these no good."

"Why?" She never had a problem with my plans before, and I pretty much copied in pasted them to make the new ones.

"We not use these books this year. Distlict have us use arr new book." That seemed like it might have been a good little piece of information to share with me.

"OK..." I was a little annoyed that I had used up almost an hour of facebook time for nothing. This job is so fucking hard! "Can I have the new book then?"

"We don't have yet."

"But classes start on Tuesday."

"Yes."

"And you want lesson plans today."

"Yes."

"But we don't have the books to plan the lessons."

"Yes."

"Do you see the problem here?"

Luckily there was one copy of the new books in the office, which I now claim as my own. So I spent another 15 minutes or so, adjusting the lesson plans for the new books. I am not going to bother showing them to her this time, I have facebooking to do.

Staying home

2010-02-23T15:18:00.000-08:00

I don't have to go to work today. The head English teacher told me to stay home and not go to work because she is have 3 dressers sent over to my house. She is moving to a new apartment and does not need them, so she is giving them to me. I have to pay shipping costs (60,000 won) which is far less than buying new ones.

They should be arriving this morning between 10-11 am. If I was still in America and had to go to an appointment, I would be expected to go to work after it is done. After the dressers get here, I will still have a good 4+ hours left in the day. That is one of best and most ridiculous things about Korea. Just skipping out on a whole day's work, just because you are having furniture delivered.

Its not like I am really doing anything at work anyway. I don't think my classes start until March, but who knows, they don't tell me shit. My classes could start tomorrow for all I know.

Bringing home the benjamins

2010-02-18T18:15:00.000-08:00

So as you all know, my wife is making an extra 100,000 won a month more than me now. She is getting the money because her school (about a 10 minute walk from mine) is zoned industrial by the administration, and according to her school, she is entitled to more cash and vacation time for it.

I asked the English head teacher to look into it and she called the administration office, and the administration office, and they told her "No fucking way you are paying that fucking foreigner a penny more!" more or less. So now my wife is the bigger breadwinner for the family, and of course this is only feeding the fire of her already enormous fucking ego.

A while back, the head of the English dept. told me that there would be a possibility of a couple extra class hours for the new school year, and wanted to know if I would be interested. I said sure, thinking the extra pay for one or two classes a week would be nice. With that extra money, I might be able to at least tie with my wife for the title of breadwinner, if not barely surpass her.

Today she told me that there would be 8 extra classes a week. She also said that she would negotiate for me to get paid an extra 5,000 won an hour, so it would match what other teachers get. Right now I finish work at 4:30, but since my normal classes are over at 3pm, with the extra 2 hours I will be finishing at 5pm. So now I am looking at earning up to an extra 200,000 won a week and leaving work just 45 minutes later than I normally do.

I told my wife the great news, and how do you think she reacted?

She was of course, mad. I could tell her I won the lottery and she would probably be angry about it. She is upset because she thinks her dinner will be postponed 4 nights a week (she cant cook, seriously the woman could burn a bowl of cold cereal). She does not care that with extra money, we will not need to stay in Korea (which she now hates with a passion) as long. She does not care that I will only get home 20-30 minutes after she does.

Why?

Its because I will be making more money than her, again. She does not like that one little bit. She would rather work here another whole year, enduring all the annoyances and cold weather than leave after one contract. Not if that means me making more money than her, and more importantly if her dinner is a little later than she is use to.

Mirror mirror

2010-02-17T20:44:00.000-08:00

Today while washing my hands in the bathroom (vely un-Korean) I happened to glance into the mirror. I don't look at myself in the mirror very often, not that I am ugly or anything, in fact quite the opposite really. It has often been said that I look like Brad Pitt's fatter, balder, uglier no-biological brother.

While admiring myself I noticed that I had not shaved in several days. When I shave, I do my whole head, not because going bald, but because I prefer the Mr. Clean look. When I grow my beard... well actually I cant.

My dream....

For some reason, the one Native American gene passed down from my great grandparents was the one to not grow much facial hair. I briefly considered trying to grow one, since I have not tried in a few years, maybe it will fill out better this time. But who am I kidding? The few times I have tried to grow a Grizzly Adams, my wife teased me because she can literally grow a thicker mustache than me. Most 13 year old boys have thicker facial hair than me, hell even Koreans can grow a better beard.

You might be asking why I would even want to grow a beard, well I am originally from the North. I know that I have written before, that I hated it there, and its nothing but rednecks. Well the truth is I did not leave the North by choice. I actually loved it there, I never wanted to leave, I was banished... for not having a beard.

Its true, they ran me out of that little town, pitchforks and flaming torches in hand. They wanted to cleanse the land of the monstrous un-bearded freak. I cannot return to reclaim my throne until a beard can be grown. Or so says the prophesy. So I ran to the lower 48 to train and improve my beard growing skills. Well, that did not work out too well.

What little I grow is a mix of thick black hairs and translucent blond hairs that make my beard look impossibly thin. I grow just enough facial scruff to make it my neck itchy, and give my wife rug burns between her legs. Often. Except when she is on the rag. I don't do hotwings.

You dont want to see me get angly!

2010-02-16T18:50:00.000-08:00

Since the end of my vacation I have overlooked one exam and helped move some furniture. Today the head of the Englishee dept. asked me to move some poster boards and boxes of art supplies to the other three Englishee only classrooms. She wanted me to arrange the garish yellow plastic boxes "Beautifurry" in the new classroom cabinets.

Then she sent 3 students to help me move all the shit to the classrooms, so I could arrange them "Beautifurry".I had every intent to arrange them "Beautifurry". All I had to do was separate the boxes and poster-boards so the students could carry them up to the individual floors. So I did not have to even lift anything. Once the boxes were in the classrooms, I would shove them "Beautifurry" into the cabinets.

Unfortunately all the classrooms were locked, so I had to return to the office to retrieve the key.

"All the classrooms are locked, I cant arrange the boxes."

"Did you arrange the boxes beutifurry?" Asked miss lee, completely misunderstanding what I just said.

"No, all the classrooms are locked." I said slower.

"Can you enter the crasslooms?" maybe she thought that I could somehow enter the locked classrooms by alternate means, perhaps through an open window on the fifth floor?

"No, they are all locked." I said again, confused by how this could still be misunderstood.

"Oh, do you need the key?" Sound reasoning by Mrs. Lee.

"Yes, all the classrooms are locked." I tried to really drive the point home that time, by speaking even slower and exaggerating the enunciation.

"Do you have the key for your crassloom?"

"Yes." I felt stupid, I did not even try to use my classroom key on the lock. Boy oh boy how dumb could I get, but I thought it might be a good idea to pose the following question. Just in case. "Does my key work on the locks?"

"No, you need diffelent key."

"?????"

Mrs. Lee then retrieved the key from the VP and gave it to me. As I turned to head up to the classrooms to "Allainge beutifurry" I felt her tiny hand grasp the sleeve of my jacket.

"I wollied" she said.

Worried that I would not arranging beautifully I assumed.

"I wollied that you angly."

"About what?" I asked utterly confused.

"Englishee teachers, sometime do odd jobs. We move fulnitule and odd job. I wolly that you dont rike." She said, concerned that all this strenuous labor was getting to me.

"I dont care" I replied. All I had to do was put some boxes in cabinets, it would take at the most maybe 15 minutes, then I would be sitting in front of my computer again, messing around on the internets.

"You dont care?" she asked confused. She must have thought that if I was pushed too hard that I might just up and quit. You just pushed me too hard Mrs. Lee! I could not take all the hard work!

"Really its fine. I dont mind."

Seemingly satisfied, she let me go on my merry way. I returned about 15 minutes later and returned the key to her. About an hour or so later Mrs. Lee came over and sheepishly asked me to help her out once again. She asked me to perform the daunting task of adding test results from two forms together onto another form. There were ten whole columns to add together, she wanted to know if I could perform such a herculean task!

I steadied my nerves and firmed my resolve. Then set my mind to completing the task. Less than 5 minutes later I placed the completed form on Mrs. Lee's desk, and asked her if she needed anything else, to which she replied "no".

Boy I don't if I can last much longer at such a difficult job!

Happy birthday Korea!

2010-02-15T16:06:00.000-08:00

I got back into work today after a long weekend. Sunday was the lunar new year, which is a big important holiday in Korea. Everyone goes home, gives food to their ancestors, eats soup with rice cake and get a year older. Happy birthday Korea!

We spent the weekend inside, watching the Olympics and movies. We watched "2012" which is a movie about the end of the world. Personally I like disaster and apocalypse movies, which this film seemed to combine, only they did it in a way that totally sucked ass.

It was truly an awful film, and I was glad when the 2 and 1/2 hour piece of shit was over. I did appreciate that the majority of the human race was destroyed in the movie, but it was just so ridiculous that I could not enjoy the film. Its not like I really want people to die, but I would like to see a decline in the human population. Unfortunately we have a bunch of Catholics, Muslims, and Mormons all trying to out breed each other in a desperate bid for control of the worlds faith.

I once read about a program that India started, where they were giving young men stereos or other prizes in exchange for getting a free vasectomy. I thought that it was a brilliant idea. They had to stop it though, because the parents started complaining, they did not want to be denied grandchildren, illegitimate or otherwise. Having a giant family that you cannot feed or support is very important to the people of India.

I think all countries should do that though. Give an ipod or iphone to every male who gets a free vasectomy. Vasectomies are reversible, and less invasive than tubal ligation. Then when a young man is ready to start a family, and financially secure enough to have the process reversed, then he can get with the baby making. There would be a lot less single teen mothers, neglected children and a lower burden on the welfare system in countries if they did that.

It would not be without controversy of course. Religious groups would have a problem with it, even though it would drastically cut the number of abortions. Minorities would complain that they would be targeted in the US, because we are trying to stop them from breeding. Of course teenager, being young and stupid would have massive amounts of unprotected sex because of the lack of sexual education in the US and STDs rates would probably increase. There is also an increased risk of prostate cancer associated with vasectomies (as I found out after I had one). Would the dangers of a massive sterilization program outweigh the consequences of unwanted wanted pregnancy and irresponsible reproduction? I think so.

Even though I am guilty of increasing the world's population by two, and love my kids more than anything in the world, I would have preferred to have started my family after I graduated college. Because of my irresponsible sexual behavior I have been on and off of food stamps, and a drain on the public heath plan for 12 years. During my periods of unemployment or even underemployment, the cost of a vasectomy was less than my monthly allowance of food stamps. The state could have saved probably at least $5,000 a year if I had a vasectomy at the age of 19.

Schaweeet!

2010-02-10T19:03:00.001-08:00

Mrs. Awesomecool blogged yesterday about getting a fat pay raise and some extra vacation days. Turns out her school is in an Industrial/Factory area, and even though the contract says only rural areas (not positive, I will have to look it up) get extra cash money and +5 vacation days, she is getting it. My school is two or three city blocks away, it takes less than 10 minutes for me to walk to it. Yet I am not getting extra cash or vacation! What gives?

Is my school mysteriously not in a factory area? Do we have cleaner air, fresher water, and better living conditions over hear? WTF?

In a jealous rage I asked the head Englishee teacher if I could have some more money and vacation days too. She called the administration office. Their answer was a big, fat maybe. We too are considered to be in a factory area, but they have to call the administration office to see if I can get the extra cash. They did not say anything about the vacation days, but if my pay bump is approved, I get back pay all the way from October when I started. That means and extra ₩500,000 won on my next check, pending approval. Between the wife and I (also entitled to back pay) an extra grand for February seems pretty fucking nice.

Fingers crossed on it, extra vacation days or not it would be nice to have some extra dough.

Back to work

2010-02-07T17:21:00.000-08:00

My two week vacation has unfortunately ended. The days went by far too fast, I miss doing nothing at home, now that I am once again doing nothing at work.

The new school year does not start until march, but we still have a couple weeks of class left. I have no Idea what I am suppose to be doing, since we have finished our workbooks and the 3rd year students are graduating. They have once again shut the heat off in my classroom so I can no longer watch movies and TV shows, being under the watchful eye of the Vice Principal once more.

Before my vacation they asked me to write some proposals on improving English, which i did not do. I do not really believe they are serious about improving English, or willing to do anything I suggest. The head of the English dept. asked me about it today, and I told her that I should stop doing lessons from the book, and just do conversations and activities with the students. Of course I already knew that would be unacceptable. I just said that, so she would not ask for any proposals in writing to give to the Principal and Vice Principal, on the off chance that they listened to me, it would mean more work for her and the other co-teachers.

Unfortunately she just asked me for my "prepared materials" it turns out that she has to present them to the Principal and Vice Principal, in say...five minutes. She had all fucking morning to tell me this, but at 5 to 11:00am she told me to give her my proposals. I am not surprised, I kind of expected this. Well I typed some shit out real fast, I proposed no more textbook teaching for me during classes, and bullshit after school classes where I would not have to do anything. Less work + more money = improved Englishee.

Over the break they installed motion sensitive "dialogue boxes" in the hallways of the school. Whenever you walk by one of these machines they start shouting phrases in English at you. How having random englishee phrases shouted at the students will improve English is beyond my comprehension, I am sure they will be vandalized, disabled or ignored by students after a couple of weeks.

Well that's all I have for now, time to watch movies while they have their big stupid meeting in some other classroom.

I guess I owe somebody a blowjob

2010-02-04T18:39:00.000-08:00

I just checked my blog, 11 followers! Suck it wife! Or actually, according the new rules, i guess I have to suck your dick. Oh well, swallowing your load is worth watching you swallow your pride! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!

VICTORY!!!!!!

Thanks to Jesus I now have to perform Fellatio on my wife. Yeah I said fellatio, cause thems the rules.

Fellatio.

Victory dance

2010-02-04T15:21:00.000-08:00

Now that my wife has more followers than me, she is doing her ridiculous victory dance. I have yet to receive my "getting less followers blow job" as of yet. However this morning I was treated to several vicious punches to the groin and a brutal dry humping in celebration of my wife's "Epic win".

Last night she also claimed she was entitled to "take a dump" on my chest. I know she has wanted to do this since we have gotten married, but I just don't want to go down that road. There are some doors in life, when once opened can never be closed again.

I have to go back to work next Monday, and I am looking forward to it as much as getting a dump on my chest. Even though this job is pointlessly easy, not working is soo much better.

My classes dont start until feb 9th, and then a week or two later we have spring break, then school starts again for real. I guess I will probably be desk warming for the next week, but they might also want my proposal for improving english at the school, of which I have written all of three words. If they do ask for it when I get back, I will just google "Improving English", and copy and paste the first thing i find.

Losing

2010-02-04T01:29:00.000-08:00

My wife came home today, did a short victory dance, called me a loser, then head butted me. Actually it was more of an awkward head rub as she miscalculated the distance between us and kind of massaged my massive biceps ( I decided to exaggerate to compensate for the circumstances) with her enormous head. Her head is enormous because of the massive ego contained inside.

Her ego has only been exaggerated, because today she has one more follower than me. Not like that is any measure of success or anything. Between the two of us there are less than 20 of you regularly reading our blogs.

So now she struts, she gloats, she is recording herself doing victory dances. She is the happiest she has been in a long time. And now all I want to do is destroy that happiness. That is what being married is all about.

That and giving each other head, especially if you are the one who gains the upper hand. The winner should always felicitate the loser.

Seriously.

My wife is pissed!

2010-02-03T05:15:00.000-08:00

My wife is soooo fucking angry right now. Why you may ask? Well there are a number of reasons really. First of all, her sister just returned from the USA. Its not that she is mad at her sister, or does not like her. She likes her sister as much as her tiny black heart will let her like anyone. Hey I am probably her most favorite person in the world, and she barely tolerates me.

She is mad because her sister returned with a suitcase full of food from the USA. My wife only eats organic food. We gave my sister in law a list of items to buy, and told her where to buy them for the best price. My wife's aunt decided she would do all the shopping herself. She would not let my sister in law come with her, because she had a "weird energy" about it. That was because my sister in law, knows my wife. She knew my wife would flip out if any of it was not organic.

My sister in law came back with a tub of peanut butter. My wife has been dreaming about this peanut butter for months. A tiny container of organic peanut butter cost about $12-$14 here. Back in the US we can get it for under $3 a container. I told them where to get it. It is a place they shop at often.

The tub of peanut butter is not organic. My wife is threatening to throw it out. My sister in law returned with coconut milk. That is also not organic. She returned with nothing organic. She dragged about 100lbs of food across the world, because we asked for it, and now we have to throw it away,because my wife will not eat non-organic food.

Wife is mad for another reason. I bought her a brand new camera. She could not be more livid. It is a $700 camera that I bought for $400 brand new, this years model. Still, she is completely irate about it. How could I have been so insensitive.

Bah

2010-02-02T03:58:00.000-08:00

I can't think of anything to write about today. I have just been staying home, which has been great, but only have the rest of this week until I have to go back to work. Tomorrow I have to go to the doctor (to see my x-ray results) and to the dentist (my kid's new filling fell out almost immediately) then to Incheon to pick up my sister in Law who is returning from the states.

That is going to eat up the whole fucking day, not much of a vacation is it?

Maybe I will have more to say tomorrow, but I doubt it. Not going to work may be relaxing, but it does shit for blogging.

Self destructive

2010-02-01T03:26:00.000-08:00

On friday I ran up an escalator and hurt myself. While still recovering from that fiasco, I decided to work out today. While warming up, so I don't hurt myself, I hurt myself.

Something in my back snapped like a rubber band pulled too tight. My back muscles have been spasming ever since. I have spent the day in pain, and I am sure that by tomorrow morning I will be too stiff to get out of bed.

I have had problems with my back, on and off since 1997 when my first injury occurred, and I was too young and dumb to claim worker's comp. I was working in a grocery store back home, when I was stacking cases of soda, I felt something slip in my back, and haven't been the same since. Of course it was years later, after the business I was working for had folded that I realized the extent of the damage I had done to my spine.

Since then I have gone years without problems, only to over-excerpt myself or just sneeze and throw my back out.

The simple fact is, I am just getting too old for this shit...

The Zoo

2010-01-30T15:56:00.000-08:00

I took my family to the Seoul grand park zoo on friday. To go pretty much anywhere we have to take at least one bus and the subway. It took about an hour and a half to get there.

When we got to the station, we really did not know which way to go to get to the zoo. Luckily there were about a million kids getting off the subway, so we just followed them.

On our way out of the station I took the escalator, and my wife took the stairs. She started running up the stairs (because she wanted to beat me to the top). I started running up the escalator (so I could beat her to the top). I ate shit on the escalator. She won.

As I was running, my toe caught on one of the treads and I fell face first. My knee, hand, and shin all slammed down onto the jagged edges of the escalator. When I got off, after telling my children to never run on an escalator, I surveyed the damage. My hand was bruised, my shin bloody and bruised, and my knee was bruised and beginning to swell up. I had a huge fucking knot on it by the end of the day.

Before we got to the entrance, like on any street, in any town in Korea there were people selling food, stuffed animals, socks, stockings, and little trinkets. There were only about 6 vendors, 3 of them in a row selling the same overcooked corn, flavorless rice logs, disgusting smelling silk worms, and tiny snails. Several of the little kids who had witnessed my face-plant on the escalator ran up excitedly to order cups of worms and snails.

You got to hand it to Korean vendors, they know their market.

Another weird thing about the zoo was they had a "Family mart" every 50 feet or so. Heaven forbid that a Korean might have to have to go more than 30 minutes without a snack, or drink. For a nation of skinny fuckers they sure have to have a lot of food. It seemed like there were more restaurants and family marts than animal exhibits.

Entrance to the zoo, a ride on the freezing cold tram, and a ride on the "elephant train" cost 24,000 won for all four of us, it costs more if you want to see the dolphin show, but my wife and kids snuck in while I bought a single ticket for 2,000 won. We walked around the zoo until it closed, and we still did not see everything.

Other than eating shit on the escalator, and freezing my balls off, it was a pretty good day.

Bad news everyone.

2010-01-29T20:59:00.000-08:00

Today my wife informed me that she would not be providing me with anymore material for my blog.

"Oh" I said. "How are you going to stop?"

"I am going to act perfectly normal from now on."

Of course that by itself, is not entirely normal.

She made this statement while playing GTA4 (where all she does is kill people for money and have sex with her girlfriend). She loves to get into shoving matches with pedestrians, so they fight her, then she runs away. The whole time they are chasing her, she is screaming at the TV until she finds a cop who arrests them. She will spend hours doing this.

But even though she keeps yelling at me, to see if I am currently blogging about her, she will not be providing anymore tidbits of wackiness, or bizarre behavior for this blog.

Of course she also spent the better part of this morning walking around stark naked. Then she did yoga stretches naked, in front of our children. So there is that...

More popular

2010-01-28T15:41:00.000-08:00

My wife and I both have blogs. She has been blogging for almost two years, while I have been for 9 months or so. Until we moved to Korea she had been getting way more hits than me, and has had more followers.

Yesterday she yelled "Why does anyone like you?" while reading my blog. She has become greatly jealous, since my blog is more popular than hers.

We are, by no means, even remotely popular, I have 8 followers and paltry 31 hits (average) a day. I have KRD to thank to a massive spike in trafic yesterday (42 referrals, up from 1 on average). The link from his site being added, not for anything I had written, but for a scary spider video I stole off YouTube.

So thanks KRD, for giving my wife another reason to hate me.

Period

2010-01-27T22:48:00.000-08:00

This morning I was minding my own business, checking out things on the interwebs, when my wife said to me:

"I started my period." period.

"OK." what did she want? Sympathy? Attention? Applause? Or was there something she was trying to tell me?

"Where you late?" If she was pregnant that would be rather unfortunate, especially since I have had a vasectomy. Either my tubes grew back together, or some anonymous sperm donor would need to be dispatched Dexter style, along with an unfaithful bitch wife.

"No, I am just telling you so you don't try anything."She told me rather Icily. So I guess I don't need to buy some duct tape, plastic bags and a bone saw anytime soon.

"Oh"

I am a morning person, and I sometimes try to get it on in the morning, but usually while we are both still in bed. We had been up for a while, and I was not trying any of my signature moves. Like the sly spooning with a tit grab, or the suggestive dry hump, or the "how about a blow job?" (very smooth when properly executed).

My wife is a night owl, and her signature move when she wants sex is the "go down on me." command, or suggestive dry hump, however executed anally, power top style.

So it just kind of struck me as odd. Of course she is having her period, so that sort of thing should be expected.

Tired, so very tired

2010-01-27T04:19:00.000-08:00

I had a big day today. First I walked to the ATM to get money so we could go to the doctor, dentist, dinner and get groceries. Then I made Kimchi.
Then I did my daily punishment with the blond dominatrix known as Zuzana.

Here is the link if you are interested.

I am at home on vacation right now, so I actually have to do more work than when I am "working". I have to feed, take care of, punish and wrangle two little kids now. I also have to clean, work out, shop and on top of all that go take them to the doctor and dentist.

First we had to brave the public transportation system, and travel about 40 minutes to get to the general area of the hospital. I say general area, because we really had no Idea where the fucking thing was, but that's how we roll. Maps, address, and planning is for pussies.

Amazingly we found the hospital right off the bat. My wife and I saw a physician for various aches and pains, she got her knee x-rayed. It cost 140,000 won (roughly $140) we thought it would be cheaper though. I got about a dozen x-rays for my knees, lower back, shoulders, knees again, shoulders again, and lower back again. It cost 70,000 won. I paid half as much to have 4xs more x rays. ?????

Then we went to the dentist. The kids each had two cavities. Back home it was costing us $160 a cavity without insurance. Each filling cost $100. Again, from what we have heard we thought it would cost less.

With the cleanings our bill came out at 560,000 won. Between the doctor and dentist we dropped almost 800,000 won. I think we have getting fucked by health care professionals. Still x-rays alone back in the US are usuall $140 a pop or so, the ones I got today would have been well over a grand by themselves, since the x-ray technician (who did not go behind a lead wall when he took the x-rays, by the way) took at least four shots for each body region.

Then we went to dinner. That only cost 28,000 for all four of us, and it was good. It was a floor sitting place, which I fucking hate, but luckily we were next to a wall, which I could lean against. My legs still fell asleep there, and when we were done, I ambled out like a drunken sailor, but the food was great, so that is all that really maters.

It was another of the Loving hut locations, each one is completely different. In the good ole USA if something is a chain, each place is virtually identical. We have been to three different places here, and the only thing they have in common is they all have wide screen TVs blaring vegan propaganda non-stop. Which we like, it makes us feel superior to the lesser meat eater. Forgive them supreme master, they know not what they do...

Now we are back home, and I am ready to just go to sleep. But my wife wants to watch a show, and she will probably try to rape me again at some point. Such is life.

Lazy dayz

2010-01-25T17:42:00.001-08:00

I am on my two week vacation. Since my wife is desk warming, and we are trying to save money, I am staying at home with the kids. We really wanted to go to Thailand, and every time we step outside, we still want to go. That's why I am trying to step outside as little as possible.

We are saving my wife's entire paycheck each month, and hopefully by the end of the year we will have at least 32,000,000 won saved up with refunded deposits, bonuses and the last month's pay. Why 32 million? As long as the value of the Won to the NZ dollar stay the same, that is how much we need to get visas to go to school in New Zealand.

My wife and I decided that we should get teaching certificates. Then we can get paid more to teach Englishee here in Korea, or get paid but-loads more to do it in Hong Kong or Dubai. That way we can save even more cash, and either follow our dream of opening a restaurant, or just save up enough to retire.

We decided on New Zealand, because everyone seems to like it, its costs about the same as Graduate school in the US, I get a $12,000 dollar scholarship to go to school anywhere (one of the benefits of being one 16th Alaska native). I wanted to got to Australia, but unlike NZ, you have to pay $8000 a year for each kid to go to public school. Plus they have these:

My wife saw this video, and decided that New Zealand was the place for us.

Dammit google!

2010-01-20T18:46:00.000-08:00

Like many teachers, I use the internets in my classroom. When students, or co-teachers do not know a vocabulary word, and I cannot explain it with exaggerated gestures or in smaller words, I google it. Unfortunately you never know what you are going to get when you use a google search.

For example. No one knew what pale yellow was. They understood yellow, but you throw pale in front of the word, and it is utter confusion! Pale? How can it be teacher? Well I throw it into a google search and bam! Pictures of pale yellow.
No problem, pictures of flowers and bed sheets and swatches. It was fine. Then I did Aqua. A word they have never heard before.

"What is Aqua, Teacher?"

"Let me show you!"

"Ohhhhh!"

I guess aqua is the color of hot wet sex, with razors!

Then I did a section on going to a bakery. Bread, its harmless, completely unsexy, it should be fine. Right?

"Class do you know what a loaf is?"

"No!"

"Here, I will show you."

Nice google, real classy.

OK class, how about the post office? There cant be anything bad at the post office...Can there?

"Teacher, what stamp?"

"Let me google that for you!"

"You see, this lovely young lady has a stamp..."

Teacher I cold!

2010-01-20T16:05:00.000-08:00

Quit fucking touching my god damn buttons! Every time its cold in the fucking classroom the kids leave the door wide fucking open, open all the damn windows, or touch the fucking buttons on the AC/heater.

When they touch the buttons, they try to turn the heat up to 30 degrees celcius, but either turn on the cold air, or turn off the heat so cold air is just blowing around in the classroom.

Next time, I am just going to tuff it out and let them suffer for the whole fucking hour.

"sodomized by my wife"

2010-01-17T21:19:00.000-08:00

I have google analytics. "sodomized by my wife" was recently used to find my blog. Nice.

Last night my wife and I were getting ready for bed, and of course our kids were fighting us. Our youngest pulled out an argument that took us both by surprise.

"I dont want to go to bed because the other night when I went to the bathroom, you were making love really loud and it freaked me out!"

"Uh...well go to bed anyway."

That is a great thing about being a parent, the power of being able to mentally and emotionally scar someone for their entire life. It gives you a good feeling inside.

My wife is now a MOD on Asmith's message board. She is intimidated by how mean some people are being. She has trouble standing up to people she does not know. She has no problem being a total bitch to friends and family, but she wants strangers to like her, so she is usually really nice to them. She lets them give her candy, and will take rides in their windowless vans and everything.

That's all I got for right now, ROK on everyone.

New Start Sunday!

2010-01-14T15:41:00.000-08:00

My wife, my brood, and myself are going to the New Start Restaurant in Seoul Sunday. It is a vegetarian buffet, we have been there before, and it is pretty dang good. IT costs about 12,000 won per person. There is a Seoul veggie club meeting from 12pm-2pm, and that is why we are going.

Directions: From Seoulleung station (line 2 & Bundang line), take exit 2, walk straight a block to the light. Turn left on Seonneung-ro dong 53 gil (선릉로 동53길). It’s about half a block down on the right side. The building is recessed from the street; you’ll see the “New Start Restaurant 2F” sign. It’s on the second floor.New Start's phone: 02/565-4324 or 011-294-4324.

If any of my fan want to come meet us, well don't count on it. We are notorious for changing our minds at the last minute. Usually because my wife hates to go anywhere if its less than 60 degrees Fahrenheit outside. And my kids hate to go anywhere, if they have to walk more than 50 feet or so.

It has been historically difficult to go anywhere with three very moody, unhappy campers, and like Asmith's wife, mine likes to have me at home so she can keep her beady eyes on me so even though weather and walking don't bother me, I seldom go anywhere without them.

To sum up, we are going to the New Start Restaurant on Sunday. Or not. It depends on the temperature, the moods of my children, weather the moon is waxing or waning, the tides, the time of the month, which planets are in line or just a roll of the dice.

So we will see you there. Or not.

ROK on.

Playing hooky

2010-01-11T18:25:00.000-08:00

Monday night the wife and I started to feel ill, and Tuesday morning i still felt nauseous and had a headache as did my wife. I decided to use one of my 14 sick days and stay home, she chose to go into work, because her co-teacher was going to be gone, and she was the only person who could lead her camp (how responsible of her!).

I called my co-teacher and told her I was not coming in, and pulled the blanket back over my head. I got up a while later, and had tea while playing GTA4.

So I spent the day with the kids, forcing them to help me learn Spanish (so we can go back to Europe to teach next year), but mostly played GTA4 on my xbox.

Today I am back in the classroom, I have a throbbing headache (I bet you thought I was gonna say hard on, you pervs!). I am playing Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs on the Big screen TV, and writing my blog. Soon I will have to start teaching them the pointless conversations they made me write for these "camps".

On Monday the VP complained that my conversations were too advanced for some of the students. I told her that if they were any more simple that they would not be practical. Remember these were her Ideas and topics.

She wanted to know if the kids would be able to use the conversations in real situations. I said yes, but not for 5-10 years in the future, when they would no longer remember them. Then I started rambling about how we need to teach them conversations more applicable to their lives, because little Sujin was not going to be checking into a hotel anytime soon, at least not in English, and if she was checking into a hotel around here it would only be for a couple hours and not days.

These kids do not need to learn how to make plane reservations, or check into a hospital, they will be living at home until they are 30, their parents will take care of everything for them. If they ever leave the country at all, it wont be until after they graduate college, or have a family of their own.

The whole thing is pretty much pointless, but it only lasts 3 hours and then I get to watch Entourage for the rest of the afternoon. So today I will be pointlessly teaching Hojun how to open a checking account in America, and I will do it with a smile on my face.

Dave is the king of douchebagistan, and all the mods are his loyal douchebagistany subjects.

Two down, three to go.

2010-01-10T19:04:00.000-08:00

I just finished the second camp session. I have 3 more groups to go over the next two weeks. Then I go on vacation. Unfortunately, my wife has already had her vacation, so I will just be home with the kids while she is at work.

We originally wanted to go to Thailand on our winter break, like so many other teachers have done. These freezing cold temps, snow and ice are not things my wife particularly enjoys or remotely tolerates.

When we first got to Korea it was sunny and warm, and she loved it. She said every day "This is so much better than back home, maybe we should stay for two years, instead of one!" I smiled and nodded, knowing what was around the corner. She also knew, but my wife lives in the present, her thoughts and opinions changing day to day, moment to moment. To my wife, right now she sees the cold, snow and ice as how Korea will be for the rest of our contracts. In her mind she says "I am miserable now, therefore I will be miserable for the rest of the year."

I tend to take the long view. I don't judge things on how they are at the present moment, I judge by how they have been in the past, and may be in the future. I know that spring is around the corner. In two short months the temperatures will rise, the trees will grow leaves and my wife will not be as miserable.

The cold does not bother me as much as my wife. I was born and raised in the north, since I have lived in the lower 48 for the last 14 years and become "Sissyfied" by the mild winters, I enjoy snow, and like having it again. I do not enjoy freezing my balls off, but I realize it is only temporary.

I do not know however, how i will react to the suffocating humidity that summer will bring. I have never lived in such conditions, where I am from I have experienced over 40 days straight of pure rain in the summer, but with temps rarely rising above 60-70 degrees the humidity did not matter. On the north west coast, if it rained more than 3 to 5 times in the summer, it was considered "wet" with the temps hovering around 80-90 degrees. We would experience a few days of high humidity, but generally it was cooler after a rain.

So right now, with my wife absolutely hating Korea, and my nervously awaiting the upcoming summer, we are hedging our bets. We have applied to teach Englishee in Spain next year. Lovely Spain, where last year in Andalusia it snowed for the first time in 50 years, where it rarely rains and maybe two or 3 months out of the year temps drop below 70 degrees. I don't speak a lick of Spanish, but my wife is pretty good, and my kids ( who have been in Spanish immersion schools in the US, and lived in Spain) speak it well enough to attend public school.

Where is everyone?

2010-01-09T16:13:00.000-08:00

I guess because of winter break no one in Korea is blogging regularly anymore. I have grown used to Asmith posting every day up to three or four times a day. Since he got into a big fight with his wife, he hasn't regularly blogged about his daily shit while reading the Korean Herald. I am truly worried about the guy!

KRD is only posting every other day or so, Mike went on Vacation, Mildly Amusing has not lived up to his name since he bought his PS3, the only person who seems to still be posting somewhat regularly is Danielle, the pervy little minx she is. I really don't understand why she has yellow fever, she must get turned on by the odor of soju, onions, and fish or like the idea of being the indentured servant of a 30 year old man-child and his mother. Kinky.

I am just as guilty though. I did not blog yesterday, or last weekend. My wife has is the only one who has posted something every day last week.

My wife complained to me this morning about the terrible blogging situation, and I told her that there is a lack of non-personal drama due to everyone being on vacation or at winter camps. It seems like with the cold weather, and no classes everyone seems to have gone it a sort of blogging hibernation.

My wife being the kind soul she is, came up with this solution. She kicked me in the face.

"Now go blog about it!" she ordered.

And I did.

ROK on.

Everyone at the ESL cafe has severe genital warts.

contagious venereal diseases

Side note:
Then while writing this, someone just let out the most disgusting smelling fart ( apart from my own) that I have smelled in a long time. I can practically taste it, I feel nauseous, really, I have to leave this room. That's all I have for now.

Winter camp, round two

2010-01-06T15:34:00.000-08:00

I am doing 3 weeks of camp divided up among the five1st grader classes (7th grade equivalent). I have each group for 3 days of fun filled...being talked at. I just finished the first group so today we are starting the 1-2 group.

It has been so boring at school, with the camps being over at noon. It would not be so bad, except after my camp is over, they automatically shut off the heat in my classroom. In my classroom I can watch TV shows or movies or porn. OK maybe not porn, but I am all alone, with a large screen TV and I can do pretty much whatever I want.

With no heat in the classroom, I am forced to pack up my shit, and go to the Teachers office, where they feel sorry for me being bored, so they try to think of things for me to do all day. They don't seem to understand that I prefer being bored to actually doing shit.

It has been decided by the principal that he wants to focus on improving the Englishee of the students at our school. I have been given 4 assignments to write proposals for improving said Englishee.

1. Ways to improve Englishee in general. The ideas of the head teacher and principal include a read board to be ignored by students at the entrance of the building. Posting signs in Englishee by the stairwells, to be ignored by students. Making me write proposals to be ignored by the head teacher and principal that might actually improve Englishee.

2. Develop a method of testing the students Englishee speaking ability. They want me to judge how well each student speaks Englishee and grade them accordingly. That should encourage the students who have a harder time speaking, by telling them what a shitty job they are doing. That should give them the confidence they need to keep trying!

3. Newsletter. At the beginning of the year they told me they wanted a newsletter in Englishee. They told me to choose the students from an Englishee conversation class that we would have in the mornings. They chose the students for that class. The students showed up one time. Yeah that is not happening..

4. Dialogue awards. I will be giving students stickers when they practice talking with me, at the end of the year the students with the most stickers get a prize. That is actually not a half bad idea, except I know I am going to be forgetting to hand out the stickers, and I am pretty sure some of the kids might cheat by buying identical stickers.

Well I have 3 weeks to think about this, meaning I will actually write these proposals the day before they demand to see them. Good ideas need to marinate.

This morning

2010-01-05T19:14:00.000-08:00

My wife and I have a daily ritual. We both wake up at about 7:15, turn on the tea kettle, have some fruit and tea and watch the news until it is time to go to work. The only reason I watch the news is to see how shitty the weather will be for the next three days.

We only have 6 channels on our TV; they are the free channels because we are too cheap to pay for a good TV package where they might have some shows in English. So we sit through the Korean news shows, where somebody did something bad, and they are in a police station with their jackets pulled over their heads in shame. Someone snuck a video camera into some seminar or presentation where everyone's face needs to be blurred and their voices distorted. And something about Korean food, usually with a westerner trying it, or the locals making exaggerated face for how fucking good the kimchi is.

I just want the weather, because I have no idea what the fuck is going on with the rest of it. I can understand a graphic of a rain cloud or snowstorm to beat shit though. Even though the metric system and measuring temperatures in Celsius is not from my native land, I know when it’s going to be need a jacket weather, and freezing my fucking nuts off cold.

While watching the tiny cute weather girl talk gibberish about the 3 day forecast today, my wife went into a sneezing fit. She sneezed so hard something flew out of her mouth onto her sleeve.

Then my wife said "Ewww Gross.” Which I wholeheartedly agreed with. Then she ate it. I am not fucking kidding, this happened. She sneezed something up, a bit of food or mucous, pronounced it as gross then fucking ate it. Really.

I called WTF on it.

She said "What? It was probably just some pear."

I said "You sneezed out something onto your sleeve, said "ewww, gross" then ate it. I am so blogging about this."

And I did.

Winter Camps of doom

2010-01-04T19:48:00.000-08:00

This is a hoodie one of the kids in my camp was wearing today. I love how it combines an icon for pornographic imagery with drug abuse. You could get kicked out of school for wearing this in America.

I wonder if, after church, his parents went shopping and saw this and were like "How cute! Da bunny eat da funny callot, he have browtie too, ha ha ha hirarirus! and Hojin he rook so cute in it."

Last night I was watching a travel show, and the host had a beenie that he wore all the time with a big fucking pot leaf on it. The Korean censorship board had no clue that this guy was promoting drug use on national TV.

I would love to point it some of the fucked up things the kids are wearing out to my co-teachers, but I don't want to get the kids in trouble, and they probably would not think it was nearly as funny as I do.

Yesterday it was a girl wearing a t-shirt that said "Retirement it help" It was not as funny as the blunt smoking playboy bunny, but it did make me wonder why a 13 year old was planning on retiring, and why it would help?

And so it begins...again.

2010-01-04T15:53:00.001-08:00

Time for another day of camp. Yesterday we did at a restaurant, at a bank, and at the airport. On today's menu we have at a store, on vacation and cooking! Exciting stuff. There is nothing kids like more than pointless memorization of boring ass conversations!

ROK on!

Dave and the ESL cafe MODs are douche bags. I dont have time for anything more creative right now. Sorry if I let anyone down.

2009-12-30T19:43:00.000-08:00

This is a picture one of my students drew of me during a class, instead of paying attention. I cant blame her though, that class is borrring!

I have to follow a text book and CD rom, both rife with mistakes and awkward Englishee phrases. It is boring and totally irrelevant to my students lives.

My students don't care if Yeppie messed up Sujin's garden. They would rather eat Yeppie than apologize to Sujin in Englishee. In fact they would just like to eat Yeppie even if Yeppie did not mess up the Garden.

Today was the last day of class for my Kids, except they all have to come to Englishee conversation class for the next two weeks. They also have to take two tests on the entire textbook over Winter vacation. They are pissed, and I think its hilarious. I feel sorry for them, I do, but it was soo funny to see the looks on their faces as my Co-teachers announced the annihilation of their winter Vacations.

Today we had our end of the year ceremony and there was Tok and radishes in brine in the teachers lounge. My Vp game me a heaping plate of Tok covered in some sort of bean dust, and a nice tall cup of radish and brine water. I politely accepted the offering, even though eating tok is like eating rubber covered with chalk. They all started jabbing their chopsticks and dipping their cups in the big bowl radish pickles. They slurped and smacked their lips loudly, enjoying the salty, backwashy goodness. Gee I wonder how swine flue got spread around so much in this country?

Later I dumped out my cup in the sink, while the tok sat like lead in my belly.I probably will be constipated for the next month. Thanks everyone!

Just when I get totally fed up...

2009-12-28T17:58:00.000-08:00

I find out I am only teaching one class today. Normally on Tuesdays, like Monday and Friday I have 3 classes (heavy workload). My morning class was canceled, and my co-teacher says that the last class of the day is canceled as well. So that leaves one class right after lunch.

We are teaching the reading section of our textbooks for that one class today, and I don't do the reading part, so I am just riding shotgun in the class. All I am going to do is maybe read a few sections, ask a couple of questions, and stand there with a bored look on my face as my co-teacher translates everything into Korean.

Its a rough life. I have to put up with a lot of bull shit at this job, but it is the easiest fucking gig I have ever had.

My co-teacher even has it rougher. The poor lady is a temporary teacher, so she shows up 5 minutes before her first class starts (yesterday about 10 am, today around 9:30) and leaves when the last class is over (yesterday about 3pm, today the same probably). She still gets her hour lunch, so that makes such a long day more tolerable, but still such harsh conditions!

Its funny how the adminstration throws a shit fit if we leave early or don't come to school when there are no classes, but the a native Korean teacher can come and go as they please. Although she is plenty pissed that she has to come to two weeks of my conversation classes, she probably had a vacation planned! LOL!

Christmas presents

2009-12-28T15:41:00.000-08:00

When my sister in law returned to the states, my wife and I bought about $100.00 worth of fancy korean rice cakes, cookies and fermented bean paste thingies from the Hyundai department store. They were all in fancy packaging with Englishee descriptions of the contents. One description said that "the taste is quite tedious", and I wish I read that before I bought the darn things.

All my wife's family and my parents and younger brother were at her aunt's house for Chirstmas, so we thought they would love to try something new, fancy and exciting. Well my sister in law brought them out, and apparently only two people tried them, (two of my wife's cousins) and they said "they taste weird". No shit they taste weird, they are made out of fucking rice, like every god damn thing in this country.

My parents and brother showed up late, so my sister in law held back a box to give to them. They tried the candies and liked them. They also thought they were weird tasting, but good. For 100,000 won they better god damn taste good!

One of the best parts of traveling to other countries is trying the local foods. And if you are not the one traveling, to have strange delicacies sent to you is the next best thing. To not even taste something that was sent over 3000 miles, just for you is unforgivable in my book.

I cannot even find images of the stuff we sent over, and I really wanted to post some, they were so cool looking. They looked like eggs, and kiwis with flowers and fancy designs.

And people say koreans are afraid to try new things.

Its goddam candy, how bad could it taste? Its not like the shit is filled with kimchi and dog testicles. Well maybe a couple of them are, but still that would be something you never could forget, even if you wanted to.

Dave eats pieces of shit like you for breakfast, and you are what you eat. The mods at ESL cafe get off two girls one cup style.

Worst Christmas Vacation EVAR!

2009-12-27T18:46:00.000-08:00

My Vice principle must hate children. Winter camps were canceled, but because of the administration and their new attendance policy over Vacation for ESL teachers, the VP instated the mandatory Englishee conversation classes.

Today we had a new announcement. Not only do the Kids have to come to school and practice Englishee for 3 hours a day for 3 weeks of their vacation, they will also have to take a test on what they learned. Twice.

That's right they have two tests that they will be graded on over the "Winter Break". How are classes and two tests a break? I really could not tell you.

Although it really sucks for the kids, I could not help but laugh at their disbelief and crying over the news. I could not imagine having to do this shit over my Christmas break! Oh wait, I have to teach the classes. I probably have to come up with the test as well. I will probably also become the most hated person in the school, since I will be associated with the pain and misery of these classes.

Well I guess it sucks to me as well.

Dave is a cunt.

My vice principle

2009-12-27T15:36:00.000-08:00

When I first started work, my Vice Principle had me sit down with her and enjoy a snack of tea and tok. She then started to tell me what to expect of the Korean children at our school in broken English. She told me to not be offended by the children because they like to touch each other, and will probably want to get their filthy swine flue ridden hands all over me. That really did not turn out to be true. The only time one of the kids have touched me is when one little girl poked me in the belly. I guess she wanted to see if I giggled like the Pillsbury dough boy.

She then told me to be very careful about touching the kids. I really did not think that was a problem. I have no desire to touch these kids at all.

"You be vely calfur about the touchee."

"Oh I dont think that will be a problem." I have no desire to touch children, I dont even hug the ones I got at home. I just wave at them from across the room, that's good parenting.

"In the news, I saw a teacher get fired. He touch a gilr on hip."

"Wow, he only touched her on the hip?" That seemed pretty harsh to get fired for just an accidental hip touching.

"Yes it vely big scandal, he get filed onry fol touchee on hip."

"That is terrible, I will be very careful about that." I said, now scared out of my mind about even brushing up against a child.

"Yes, he chase her, he ran aftel her vedy faah and he touch her hip."

So the dude actually ran down a terrified 13 year old, so he could rub his jinro soaked hands on the poor child's hips. Ok, maybe the dude should be fired.

I was more than a little insulted that my VP, who had known me all of 3 days, thought there was a chance that I might be running down her students and touching their hips. I know I might be a filthy foreigner, but it falls within the realm of common sense not to molest my students. You don't shit where you eat.

Of course other schools are fair game.

Dave is a filthy hip touching foreigner, and all the mods at the ESL cafe have a hip touching fetish as well.

East coast

2009-12-26T20:02:00.000-08:00

My wife and I were in bed this morning, I was reading, and she was fucking around on the internets. While she was fucking around we got a skype call. It was her brother in law from the East coast.

For those of you who don't know what skype is or how it works, you probably are not reading this blog anyway. You are probably hiding in a cave somewhere living "off the grid" and plotting against the government, while reading the Anarchist's cookbook.

My wife's brother in law, is actually a half brother in law, because my Mother in Law was a wicked terrible slut and had like 6 kids with 4 or 5 different guys, and is on her 7th marriage. No shit.

She also use to raise foster children that no one else wanted. Why did no one else want them? Because they were insane or retarded. They were drug babies and children who were molested or their parents were murdered in front of them like dexter. Most of them had either attempted to murder another child, or molested one. And you wonder why my wife is so fucking weird.

Anyway he called from Boston, where they live. He just finished school, he is a Physical therapist now. Well not yet, first he has to take a test that costs a grand. On top of owing over $110,000 plus interest. He will make about $58,000 a year once he gets his license. Her sister is going into a similar field and will owe about and make about the same. When all is said and done the pair will owe around 300K and make around 100K a year.

With the cost of living on the East coast and their loans and taxes the poor kids will be barely making ends meet. I feel sorry for them. They had to work so hard, and pay so much money, just to make a semi decent wage in the US.

It really sucks too start out your married life owing enough money to buy two houses in California or a couple city blocks in Detroit.

Random

2009-12-23T23:24:00.000-08:00

Kay I was just sitting here reading Danielle's Blog when one of students comes up to me.
"teacher"
"What?"
Then she jabs her little kimchi finger on my face, and then shows me that it is covered with goo. WTF? She then runs off and I think she rubbed it on a couple other faces. I ask some of the milling students what the fuck was that? Hoping desperatly that it was not a body fluid, but rather some sort of skin conditioner or something.

They tell me its cream, and it sounds like they are saying "Shoe cream"? I point at my foot, "Shoe cream?" I ask.

"No, no" they discuss it amongst them selves and try "Cake cream?"
"Frosting?" I ask, and they nod yes. I just got a money shot of frosting across my cheek? WTF? I swear I will never understand these kids. At least I get to go home now, for 3 whole days. YAY!

Merry X-mas everyone. Except dave and the esl cafe mods. Fuck you guys. I hope you all get beat downs for christmas.

My wife is a secret lesbian

2009-12-23T21:43:00.000-08:00

Last night I was all warm and cozy, all tucked into bed. My wife decided to crawled over me to get to her side, as she straddled me, she began to viciously dry hump me in the ass. Now this might come as a surprise to you, but not to me. She always does this. Every fucking time.

Night after night I get pretend sodomized by my wife. Every chance she gets, she vigorously, and often painfully grinds against my ass, hip or junk. Why does she do this? It's quite simply because she is a semi-closeted lesbian. I say semi because of this. She often tells me of a fem crush she has, she loves watching the L word, she is an Ellen fan, and a liberal. Do I need any more proof?

All I ask for is if she does finally get up the gumption to go ahead and have a lesbian love affair, that I get a taste too. Would it be too much to ask? To get thrown into the mix, I mean after all there is only so much that licking and fisting can accomplish before you need a hairy sweaty man to come in and finish up. At least let me be a towel boy or something. If that is not cool maybe let me video tape it, but at the very least get to watch. It would be only fair.

Dave is a cunt, the ESL cafe is for retarded glen beck fans (redundant?). All the mods at the ESL cafe can only orgasm from watching household animals fuck. Seriously, they need to watch kitty porn to jerk off. Its sick man. Do you really want to be judged by these people? They pop a boner every time sparky humps a leg. Its fucked up.

Riddle me this?

2009-12-23T16:06:00.000-08:00

My head Englishee Teacher wanted me to prepare an "Englishee Kiz" for the Pop song contest on Monday. I needed to "come up with" 20 riddles and "humorous" and "challenging" questions to ask the students for "prize of Snack".

"Fine" I said, "no problem", apparently forgetting what country I lived in and who I worked for. Like every time my head teacher wants me to do anything, she prints out a million copies of past examples she prepared. When she says "come up with" she means use these ones she prepared. When she says "humorous" she means not funny at all. When she says "challenging" she means make it so fucking easy that a retarded person with no English language ability should have no problem answering the question.

But being the stupid foreigner I am, I spent hours yesterday, in fact more time than I had ever spent on anything I have done here preparing for this quiz, inbetween updating my facebook of course. I probably spent two whole hours looking for funny riddles and dumbing them down for the kids.

I turned my first draft in. She did not even read them and told me they were too challenging. How do I know she did not read them, because I asked her which ones were too challenging, then she actually read them. And decided half of them were OK. She wanted me to switch out the too difficult ones with these, and I use the term loosely "riddles".

These are not edited.
1. Monkey like this fruit, it is long and yellow. Can you guess the answer?

How about this brain buster?

2. This Alphabet comes before D.
3. I am yellow. Mouse like me a lot. I am made from milk. Sometimes I smell bad. People like to eat me inside a hamburger or sandwich.

Here are the riddles that were too difficult.

1. A farmer carries a sack of grain to the barn, and his son carries two sacks. The farmer is carrying more weight than his son, why?
2. A young thief was caught and sentenced to death. The king let him choose how he would die. What would be the best way?
3. If a plane crashes on the border of North and South Korea, in which country should they bury the survivors?

Here is one that my Head teacher still cannot figure out.

A farmer had 17 sheep, and all but 9 died. How many are left?

A couple of those are pretty hard, but there are more than a few kids in my classes who excel at English, and I believe they could figure them out. But whatever in Kim chi Land you do as the Kim chi tells you.

Dave is a bastard. The ESL cafe is where good ideas go to die. All the mods are little kim chi dicks.

I had a dream

2009-12-22T15:40:00.000-08:00

Since I have been in Kimchi land I have had the weirdest dreams. Last night I dreamed that evil hippos operating a backhoe were trying to burn down my house. I stopped them by stealing one of their babies. Why were they trying to burn down my house? Because I had discovered that in 1977 the Government had tried to use a stimulus package like they are today, only they used it to pay artists and writers to create a catalog of free art works and novels for the populace. Some how it was covered up, but I found one of the old catalogs.

I do not have class again today, I have 4 classes tomorrow though. It is going to be a tough day though, we are going to combine all the classes tomorrow. I have to teach them Jingle bell rock, Hey Jude, and Dancing queen. That is a lot of material to get through. I cant believe how hard this job has gotten. I don't know if I can do it much longer, but I don't get vacation until the end of January. Man I am already exhausted from this intense schedule.

I have been baking bread lately, each loaf has been better than the last. The one I made last night was perfection. It was a nice light crusty loaf, chewy and tasty. It was not at all like the shitty bread you get in this country. It all tastes like wonder bread and is sickeningly sweet. I am glad to be a master baker again.

Dave is a piece of shit, the ESL cafe is for child molesters and Glen Beck fans, I wouldn't piss on any of the mods if they were on fire.

Sexy time

2009-12-21T15:36:00.000-08:00

Yesterday after the ordeal with the test kwestions, I went home early! First I got invited to lunch.

"Would you rike to have runch with us?"

"Oh I dont know, what is lunch?"

"It is lice soup and Kim-chi."

"Oh that sounds good."

"With the juice of chicken, and dog."

"You know what, I am not really hungry."

I hear that Korean men eat the dog soup to Increase their Libidos and cure hangovers. I guess they are somehow related. But I need no help with my Libido my friend. I went home yesterday, and the kids were at Piano, my sister in Law was back in the states, and my wife was alone, in the bedroom. I was in the mood for some afternoon delight.

"Hi honey"

"What are you doing here?" (she is speaking to me again)

"I got out early, lets fuck."

"No."

"Why not"

"The kids are at piano, so I am writing my final." My wife, unlike me has no TESOL certification, and therefore gets 100,000 won less than me each month. In her contract it says once she gets a TESOL or TEFL 100 hour certification, she gets that bump in pay.

"All I am asking for is 5 minutes of your time."

"Quit trying to distract me, I have procrastinated enough, and I need to finish this!"

Dejected and neglected, I went to the living room and masturbated. I should have expected it though, I have been married for almost 13 years now. We already had sex this month, twice. Remember how angry she was at me for my Soju bender, well the night Asmith blogged about us we made sweet sweet love. I am not giving Asmith credit for it though, it was just a coincidence. That man doesn't need his ego to get any bigger than it already is.

It took me about a year to learn how to make that woman Cum during intercourse, but 13 years later, she had about 8 orgasms that night. The trick is getting the first one, I would compare the woman to a diesel engine on a cold winters day. It wont turn over until you get it nice and heated up, that oil needs to be nice and hot so that all the parts are lubricated and turning, and once you get that first ignition things run nice and smooth.

Then we had sex the following morning. She had 10 orgasms in the morning, which is surprising because she is not a morning person.

So I probably wont get another crack at it until Christmas, but you never know, I might have to wait till new years, if she reads this entry.

The ESL cafe is for queers, and chronic masturbaters. Dave and all the mods put the bag in Douchebag.

Pop song contest

2009-12-17T18:36:00.000-08:00

What the fuck is up with this job. It is literally the easiest job I have ever had in my life. For example my job today is to look up english pop songs to show the class. I have all day to find 3 songs, one old pop song (Michael Jackson's smooth criminal), a Christmas song ( jingle bell rock), and a new pop song (I am still trying to choose one). Thats my job. Thats all I have to do. No classes yesterday, today, Monday or Tuesday.

At the most some days I will work four hours, usually its just 3 hours. Working for the school, I get paid less than at a some schools, but for only working 3 to 4 hours a day, with a month of paid vacation, sick days and such, who cares. I can deal with what 1 to 2 hundred dollars less a month for the lack of stress, and easiness of the work.

Looking up pop songs, are you fucking kidding me? I get paid for this?