"Something to talk about" being my ghastly sunburn, left over from this past weekend at the Mud Festival. I was only out in the sun for about 2 1/2 hours, and I was walking around with clothes on (i.e. not swimming or sitting around in my bathing suit) for half that time! Anyways, it's reminiscent of the great French Riviera Sun Poisoning of Easter 2006, and indeed possibly the Roasting which occurred at Madagorda Island in 1996. I don't usually get burned on my knuckles -_- Thank goodness I didn't buy one of those ridiculous reflective mats for sunbathing, right now my skin does not appreciate me.
Anyways, at school today all my students gawked and laughed at me. Even the teachers laughed at me. One couldn't stop laughing, so I had to hold a piece of paper in front of my face when I talked to her. Still, it's not as bad as one of my coworker's. When he got sunburned last week, his eyes were swollen shut.
I would post a pic of my new soon-to-be tanlines, but my mom reads this blog, and she hates it when I burn, and she'll be angry with me :-( (sorry mommy!)
Meanwhile, the Mud Festival was quite fun! It takes a little bit of daring to be able to cover yourself with mud and let other people wipe it on you and give you big muddy hugs. Once your clothing is filthy and you can't get any dirtier, it's really fun :-) Our bus ride there was ridiculously long, because a bunch of people on the bus were drinking, and needed to use the john a lot, so we had to stop every hour. Also, they smoked, so they needed their nicotine fixes as well. But it turns out that Korean truck stops are like 100x better than American truck stops. They aren't seedy at all; on the contrary, they're popular stops for buses and they have fresh food and ice cream and nice places to sit and admire the middle-of-nowhere scenery. I can't believe how much I love Korean food.
Our "hotel" was scary; the only thing that would've made it scarier would be varmints. We had to sleep on the floor, the air conditioning was touch-and-go, there was a plague of mosquitos the size of birds, and a shortage of blankets. And no shower. Go to a mud festival, and come back to a hotel lacking showers. I just dare you to. The "shower" was a spigot in the bathroom that tricked ice-cold water. To wash oneself, one had to fill a bucket with this icy water and pour it on oneself. One was not pleased (or completely clean) when one was done.
I spent the night squished between two other people, and at least 4 people in the room snored. But the couple who owned the place were extremely friendly and helpful, so we couldn't exactly get mad at them for the setup. They barbecued for us, and that was tasty as well. The advantage to foreigners here is that pretty much none of us are the prissy types. How can we be? We have to completely change lifestyles to live here, and a lot of us are the nomadic backpackers one sees in Europe/Asia/Australia....
Sunday was relaxing for the most part, in that we got to just putz around the beach/mud area for a couple of hours. I ate a double-fried corn dog, which was a special experience with no negative after-effects besides getting ketchup on my towel. The water temperature was perfect, the beach was beautiful, and there were lots of foreigners there to talk to. I even had the hopefully once-in-a-lifetime chance to shower in a community shower. I paid $2 to stand in with a bunch of stark-naked old Korean women and spray myself (again) with freezing cold water. But it felt so good to FINALLY get the rest of the crusty sand and mud off me that I didn't care.
The ride home was boring and gross because they were playing Arrested Development, and it was making me motion sick. It also took ages to get home, even if we only stopped once, because the bus driver was driving uber-slow.
Tomorrow we have a random vacation, which is nice, if not a bit inconveniently-placed. Why the Korean holidays come in the middle of the week, I just don't know.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Chapter 40: "The Littlest Snaggletooth: A Heartwarming Tale of Korean Dentistry"
And now I present to you the story of the Littlest Snaggletooth:
Once upon a time there was an English teacher who lived in a faraway land. Her students were very cute, but there was one little boy in particular to whom she was especially endeared. He gazed up at her with big brown eyes (well, as big as they can be when one is Asian. Hey, what can you do?) and a face lit with childlike joy and hope that she would grace him with her fair smile (silence, peanut gallery). He was the smartest, tried the hardest, answered the most questions in class, and he lived for the days when the teacher would allow him to play his favorite game. This game was quite popular, and involved the little boy holding a stick figure hostage on a rope and demanding that his classmates guess the English word that he was thinking of, letter by letter. The teacher was often stumped when her students played this game, but this was because her students were bad spellers.
All and all, the boy was charming, sweet and adorable. The teacher grew to favor him above all of the other children in the class. This was not difficult for her, considering that the other children yelled and ran about and traded Pokemon cards and caused her to grow gray hair prematurely.
But there was a dark shadow cast over the little boy's sweet appearance, one which made it difficult for the teacher to even look him in the face. For indeed, the child was horribly snaggletoothed. He had a smile full of little baby teeth, which were one by one freeing themselves as time passed. To his great misfortune, one of his baby front teeth had not yet parted ways with him, and was looking to be in a most miserable state. It was of a dark gray color, decayed, and was turned in such a manner as God had never intended a tooth to be turned. To gaze upon this small child as he spoke was to gaze upon one with a booger in their nose or a bit of foliage trapped under the gum, or perhaps one with a crossed or lazy eye.
The teacher was not sure why this boy's tooth was still hanging around after so many months, but it would've been rude to ask, so she let it be and pretended (badly) not to notice.
Then one day when the teacher came to class, the little boy smiled at her as usual, and the tooth was gone! The gap that replaced it was the most beautiful absence of tooth that the teacher had ever seen, and she did rejoice for days afterward. And all was well once again in that faraway land, and the Littlest Snaggletooth was snaggletoothed no more.
The End.
Once upon a time there was an English teacher who lived in a faraway land. Her students were very cute, but there was one little boy in particular to whom she was especially endeared. He gazed up at her with big brown eyes (well, as big as they can be when one is Asian. Hey, what can you do?) and a face lit with childlike joy and hope that she would grace him with her fair smile (silence, peanut gallery). He was the smartest, tried the hardest, answered the most questions in class, and he lived for the days when the teacher would allow him to play his favorite game. This game was quite popular, and involved the little boy holding a stick figure hostage on a rope and demanding that his classmates guess the English word that he was thinking of, letter by letter. The teacher was often stumped when her students played this game, but this was because her students were bad spellers.
All and all, the boy was charming, sweet and adorable. The teacher grew to favor him above all of the other children in the class. This was not difficult for her, considering that the other children yelled and ran about and traded Pokemon cards and caused her to grow gray hair prematurely.
But there was a dark shadow cast over the little boy's sweet appearance, one which made it difficult for the teacher to even look him in the face. For indeed, the child was horribly snaggletoothed. He had a smile full of little baby teeth, which were one by one freeing themselves as time passed. To his great misfortune, one of his baby front teeth had not yet parted ways with him, and was looking to be in a most miserable state. It was of a dark gray color, decayed, and was turned in such a manner as God had never intended a tooth to be turned. To gaze upon this small child as he spoke was to gaze upon one with a booger in their nose or a bit of foliage trapped under the gum, or perhaps one with a crossed or lazy eye.
The teacher was not sure why this boy's tooth was still hanging around after so many months, but it would've been rude to ask, so she let it be and pretended (badly) not to notice.
Then one day when the teacher came to class, the little boy smiled at her as usual, and the tooth was gone! The gap that replaced it was the most beautiful absence of tooth that the teacher had ever seen, and she did rejoice for days afterward. And all was well once again in that faraway land, and the Littlest Snaggletooth was snaggletoothed no more.
The End.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Chapter 39: "What, you've never seen a white person before?"
The title of this entry is just because for some reason the constant staring has been getting to me this past week. It really hasn't much up until now. I mean, I stare at other white people, it's understandable that the locals will stare at me. But just recently I've been thinking, "Okay, the novelty has worn off, stop staring, I'm just white. Don't you watch MTV?"
This mild irritation was made even more intense this evening, when a small group of us foreigners were openly stared at by three 20-something Korean guys while eating dinner. Like, serious staring. One of the guys actually turned his chair towards us and scooted forward to openly spectate. We tried not to notice, but it's hard to miss the faces turned at you, even in your peripheral vision. I accidentally made eye-contact with the most brazen of them, and it was the scariest thing. It's like making eye contact with someone you know at the grocery store who you want to avoid.
Speaking of scary things, I had to take evasive maneuvers again on Sunday night when I accidentally made eye contact with a guy who looked to be Pakistani on the subway, and I thought he might be following me. For those who didn't read the whole entry way back in March or whenever it was, I had another Pakistani guy follow me for like 2 hours, trying to engage me in conversation and confessing is affection for me. Again, I'm not being racist, but my coworkers have had the same experience with the Pakistani guys here, and the conclusion is that while they don't appear to be dangerous, they looooove foreign girls, and can't take a hint.
It's been a while since I've updated, and that's partly because my computer's hard drive bit the dust, and I had to wait for it to be replaced. So...yeah. That's that.
Um, I went to Busan again. It was pretty fun on the Saturday that we went, but on Sunday we totally got typhooned.
This weekend we're going to the mud festival, which is exactly what it sounds like. Look forward to pictures.
The next weekend or something I think we're going rafting, and the two girls (my coworkers) who I'm going with are planning on going bungee jumping. I won't be a part of that, except to stand above or below and film their demise.
Finally, I've been watching a lot of Korean music videos on late-night MTV, and I've noticed a trend with the slower, more ballad-like ones. There is a couple, but one or both of them shall die in a gruesome or tragic manner. I'm inserting one of my personal favorites here for your viewing pleasure:
I don't speak Korean, and I'm not an expert on the production of this video or the artist, but from what I can gather, it's the heartwrenching tale of a girl who is possibly slightly mentally retarded, and her narcoleptic boyfriend. Watch as the poor couple struggles to cope with the boy's debilitating disorder, and how his disease ultimately results in his girlfriend's untimely death.
This mild irritation was made even more intense this evening, when a small group of us foreigners were openly stared at by three 20-something Korean guys while eating dinner. Like, serious staring. One of the guys actually turned his chair towards us and scooted forward to openly spectate. We tried not to notice, but it's hard to miss the faces turned at you, even in your peripheral vision. I accidentally made eye-contact with the most brazen of them, and it was the scariest thing. It's like making eye contact with someone you know at the grocery store who you want to avoid.
Speaking of scary things, I had to take evasive maneuvers again on Sunday night when I accidentally made eye contact with a guy who looked to be Pakistani on the subway, and I thought he might be following me. For those who didn't read the whole entry way back in March or whenever it was, I had another Pakistani guy follow me for like 2 hours, trying to engage me in conversation and confessing is affection for me. Again, I'm not being racist, but my coworkers have had the same experience with the Pakistani guys here, and the conclusion is that while they don't appear to be dangerous, they looooove foreign girls, and can't take a hint.
It's been a while since I've updated, and that's partly because my computer's hard drive bit the dust, and I had to wait for it to be replaced. So...yeah. That's that.
Um, I went to Busan again. It was pretty fun on the Saturday that we went, but on Sunday we totally got typhooned.
This weekend we're going to the mud festival, which is exactly what it sounds like. Look forward to pictures.
The next weekend or something I think we're going rafting, and the two girls (my coworkers) who I'm going with are planning on going bungee jumping. I won't be a part of that, except to stand above or below and film their demise.
Finally, I've been watching a lot of Korean music videos on late-night MTV, and I've noticed a trend with the slower, more ballad-like ones. There is a couple, but one or both of them shall die in a gruesome or tragic manner. I'm inserting one of my personal favorites here for your viewing pleasure:
I don't speak Korean, and I'm not an expert on the production of this video or the artist, but from what I can gather, it's the heartwrenching tale of a girl who is possibly slightly mentally retarded, and her narcoleptic boyfriend. Watch as the poor couple struggles to cope with the boy's debilitating disorder, and how his disease ultimately results in his girlfriend's untimely death.
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