Happy Birthday Shaun!

It's my friend, and co-worker, Shaun's birthday today - he is now a respectable 27 years old. This, in technical terms, means that he has reached his late twenties, a fact which he is justifiably sensitive about. Me, being a 22 year old tyke with little or no respect, can enrage him simply by telling him where I was in 1995 (he was graduating from high school and I was just beginning.)

We celebrated his birthday in typically eccentric style - we went to the Cuban bar last night and Annabelle and I bought him an icecream cake out of Baskin and Robbins. Another co-worker bought him a toy gun that shot darts, most of which hit unsuspecting Koreans or ended up in the pool. We sang a raucous Happy Birthday and the whole bar applauded him. This was all for a man who abhors attention and spent most of his illustrious career as a journalist staying well below the radar. Well, ha! If anyone can draw unwanted attention to a poor bloke, it's three tipsy girls with fake guns and Mike of the booming Canadian voice.

Speaking of Mike - we just had a rather special weekend. We both went to a cool hotel (The Seoul Millenium Hilton) function which was screening the Aussie Rules Grand Final between my team, the West Coast Eagles and the accursed easteners, the Sydney Swans. The Swans won in an exceptionally exciting, if scrappy match, 58 - 54. The free bar was only just about enough of a consolation. There was also a great barbeque with real Aussie meat. I allowed myself to embolden my spirit with these bitter tokens. Then Mike, in a rather impulsive fit, decided that we should stay in the Hilton for a night. We stayed in a gorgeous room with two huge windows that gave us an insane view of Seoul and its city lights. We ate an incredible breakfast. We sat in a jacuzzi until a man (presumably German) came over wearing tight leopard print Speedos that were already clingy before they got wet. I am currently repressing. It was fun to pretend to be classy, although taking photos of each other next to the naked bronze statues may have given us away.

I also got a new pair of glasses for - rather unbelievably - 45ooo won. This is a the equivalent of just less than 30 pounds and about maybe 35 euro. For brand new glasses. Finally, being a semi-blind Korean national pays off.

This weekend coming is the last long one before I finish my contract. I am planning to go to Seoraksan National Park and hike myself silly. I have approximately two months left in Korea. As Mike would say, boo-ya! I will be home to pester you all soon.

Woman With Poodle Hair

It's no joke - I just spotted her on the street outside our school. She had it some horrific orangey-brown colour and half of it was backcombed puffily onto the crown of her head, and the other half jutted out to conceal her skull at the back (as well as the skulls of anyone that would have been unfortunate enough to stand near her - it was huge!). Add to this hair that has been frizzed into near oblivion and you have the worst hairstyle since the permed mullet.

The weekend that just passed was Chuseok, Korea's interpretation of Thanksgiving. To celebrate having one day off, a group of us went to Korea's premier water park, Caribbean Bay, where we frolicked on water slides, had unfortunate bikini-not-withstanding-the-water-pressure incidents and sat on a makeshift beach, drinking beer and pretending that we were somewhere much more exotic. It was great craic. We also discovered a great new club, Club FF, where for two hours straight, they played all the music that Shaun, Mike, Annabelle and I requested - and I mean everything. Including Pulp. It was all going so well until so dire indie band, comprised of English teachers who probably considered it a side project (I would have called it an unnecessarily gathering of untalented ugmos - UGUU for short) that had a hard time keeping in time with their overwrought drummer.

Jenny, a bonkers friend of Shaun's, kept us all entertained with her stories of excess throughout the weekend. She hails from the US, used to party in L.A with the likes of Jamie Foxx and has no - and I mean no - inhibitions about sharing information. I won't share too many details but I now know the word for 'yes' in Japanese, and no, it wasn't used in a executive business meeting as a means of assent.

What is it like to be back at university? I want to hear about all your unbearable stories, such as 'I slept in for three days straight whilst a strange woman supplied me with beer' type stories. Although I do permit those that involve puking, limb breakages and people that you've met that you really never wanted to. I am bitter, like the lemon.

Unlikely Candidates for Being Fought Over

Do you ever watch movies where an exceptionally ugly bloke has not one but two lovely women tearing at each others vital organs for the chance to dingle his dangle? Well such an unlikely event has occured in real life, although the bloke isn't quite exceptionally ugly and I unfortunately have no information on the girls. I won't name the fortunate chap but I will instead list the following facts -

1) He owns a bathrobe
2) He is evil (self confessed, of course)
3) He's from Fermanagh
4) He likes Star Wars
5) He is a nerd
6) No, he's really a nerd.

So, I hear you say, it's only right that they should be queuing up! Ladies, clear a space! I am much enthused by this recent news of said chap's endeavours because before he was something of a self-imposed eunuch with an adversion to touching (that included handholding and hugs) so this is progress if nothing else.

I may be a Tae-kwon do blue belt on Thursday - we're being skipped a gup because we're too good apparently - except we all know that it is to boost our flagging morale, a symptom of our class change and of everything getting - well - harder. We could actually make a claim of being fit now - our hearts no longer beat irregularly and there is a suspiciously hard substance beneath our skin. I have heard people refer to it as muscle. By the time I come home, I should be a brown belt which is, if I remember correctly, the same belt that (*nerd alert!*) Sarah Michelle Gellar (i.e Buffy) had. I am sure that should the occasion of kicking powdery vampire butt should arise, I will be more than ready for it.

Mike and I visited Seodaemun Prison, an imprisonment ground that was occupied by the Japanese for the 36 years that they ruled Korea. It was not a fun experience, let me tell you - they have wax work recreations of torture scenes in a basement, elaborately splashed with blood and replete with real screams. And children go there on education trips. It's basically just another anti-Japanese haven, where common words against said Asian neighbours include 'brutality', 'raping' and 'barbarity'. A balanced account, I'm sure you'll agree.

On an upnote, there were Korean 'celebrities' posing against the ivy-covered walls of the compound where nationalist compatriots were brutally executed. It's delightful to see that Koreans will make the most of their blood-ridden history for glamour.

Accidental Swear-words

One of the many pleasurable things about teaching is the one hundred percent accidental mistakes that children have the habit of making. I was teaching one class about food, and they were creating their own menus. One student, Holly, drew a picture of a cola can, with the word 'cock' printed neatly beside it. Others tend to write 'crap' instead of 'crab' and sometimes, 'shit' instead of 'ship'. A lot of it has to do with the marginal(!) differences between English pronunciation and Korean - the Korean phonetic equivalent of P, for example, is the same as their B sound. R and L are similar (it's always entertaining to make them say 'lemon'). Still, nothing makes me snigger more than an inappropriate word, especially if it has been arrived at by thoroughly innocent means. And no, I don't think I will be maturing any time soon.

My new i-Pod arrived today. Yay!

I went to Osan with the Munro Monster - or is that Crazy Cara, at the weekend where we partied with GIs. She's on her way back to the Emerald Isle in about eight days time, which she is pretty thrilled about. We got mauled by weird men from Ohio, I defeated some poor chap at pool, which he tried to sabotage on the last shot by getting his mate to knock into me as I was cueing for the black ball - pah! I was also taught how to two-step in a country bar where, when we walked in, about one hundred loyal American citizens were singing their national anthem and staring misty-eyed at a huge screen with the insipid Faith Hill belting her lungs out. We just sort of stood there, arms hanging limply by our sides, afraid to turn our backs to go to the bar.

There are only two kinds of men here in Korea - foreign teachers and male GIs. Korean men are petrified of Western women - or what their mothers would make of them, at the very least. So your choice is instantly limited. Male teachers are often escaping their own rather inadequate social lives back home (there are exceptions but you'd be surprised at how many pale, chubby male Canadians amble into the Incheon Airport arrivals lounge) but through a terrible streak of fate, such Leviathans of blokes can almost instantly pull some lithe, immaculate Korean woman, albeit with uncorrected stigmatisms. GIs work similarly, but they are probably less fussy, and often rely on the services of 'juicys' to keep them carnally satisfied. I'm not complaining - I found an absolute gem of a bloke - but this is a shout-out of female solidarity to any woman in Korea who thinks that such poor specimens are found wanting. She would be correct.

New (and rather undeserved) i-Pod!

Yay!

For those of you who didn't know - which is perhaps all of you because I didn't mention to anyone, out of a deep rooted sense of denial, my beloved i-Pod went bust a couple of months ago. It was due to a corrupted file, or something along those shady lines (God knows I wouldn't like to comment on technology - I nearly wept over a failed e-mail attachment just an evening ago!) It was briefly repaired when I dropped it but this respite was at best short lived and soon it was making whirring noises and looking pitifully up at me as I willed it to play my favourite Chas and Dave CD.

But, aha! I went to Techno-Mart, this behemoth of a technology store, nine stories high, and in a dingy office on the fifth floor, I was told that I would receive a new i-Pod in the mail in a couple of days time. I did a small jig of delight and instantly vowed to soup it up with lots of posh protective accessories, as opposed to take it for granted and chuck it casually about the place, as I have been known to do.

Tonight is a staff do, welcoming Matt, an ex-teacher who left a month after I arrived, back into the fold and saying goodbye to Mike, who is currently giving all his teaching resources away, including a traffic light mural with each lamp bearing a happy face. As previously recorded in other blogs about staff nights out, much bek sae-ju is consumed and veiled insults fly thick and - well, thick - across the galbi burners. A car crash is what my co-worker Shaun calls it. I probably won't have the mental capacity to notice any kinds of details like that.