Even Animals Speak Different Languages

Because of my job and my experiences here I find that I learn new things everyday. Some of them are small and seemingly insignificant, like learning a new swear word in Korean. Others are more important and character building like learning acceptance, patience and how to cook entire meals with nothing more than a two burner gas range. Without a doubt the most important thing I have learned since I have been here however, is that even animals speak different languages.
I first learned this fact after blatantly making an ass of myself in front of an entire class of five year olds. It was my first day of solo teaching and I was thrown into the classroom with nothing more than a whiteboard marker, an eraser and a couple of crayons. Being the animated, adaptable super teacher that I delude myself into thinking that I am, I set to work drawing pictures of various animals. I had the students repeat the name of the animal and then asked them what sound each animal made. Since they didn't understand me I decided that I would go first and have them follow suit. "This is a cow. C-c cow. A cow goes moo." Here I did my best to imitate the exact sound of a cow so that it was as realistic as possible so that the kids wouldn't be confused. All of this was to no avail of course since I looked back on a bunch of blinking faces and a few on the verge of tears.
Anyway, a little confused myself, I took my queries to my smartest class of seven year olds. I asked them what sounds various animals make and the responses I got were very surprising. They wrote down the phonetic spelling of the sounds animals make in Korean. Here are my findings.
A frog in English goes ribbit, in Korean it goes kegule kegule. A cat makes a meow in English but a neaung in Korean. A bird generally goes cheep cheep in English but jit jit in Korean and as odd as it is to me, a dog doesn't go woof woof as it does in English but mong mong in Korean.
Who knew that the invented terms we made for the sounds that animals make don't cross international borders? Weird. What sounds to animals make in other languages?

Wonderland's New Poster Child

Am I just being melodramatic or do I have real cause for concern on this one?

A few months ago the frog-eyed Colleen handed me what appeared to be a disposable placemat. On one side was a giant display of the school's logo along with a sample of a student's writing. On the other side, low and behold, was a snapshot of yours truly. I didn't think much of it until tonight when I went out to a local bar. The owner, Mr. Chang, told me in his best English that he saw my picture on a, *insert finger symobols here, rectangle in the newspaper. I discerned from this communique that the placemats are being sold to newspapers as advertisement. This would be a logical explanation for the stacks upon stacks of the things that were delivered to the school sometime last week. Now I do not have a mathematical mind and I am by no means even remotely good at estimation, but I'm gonna say that there were approximately 500 flyers in a stack and probably 20-30 stacks in all. You do the math, because I certainly can't.
In case you haven't gathered from any of my previous posts or from personal contact with me, I do NOT like my place of employment. I hate the people for whom I work. I hate the school, I hate everything it DOESN'T stand for and everything it settles for, hell I even hate the colors. Given this, it is probably pretty safe to assume that the very last thing I would be down for would be acting as a poster child for such a business. The picture was taken on "picture day" and I was under the assumption that all photographs would be used for publishment in the yearbook and for the student's personal collection. I was never told that they would be used for advertisement purposes.
The school is a private institution and the pictures were taken on the school's property so I'm assuming that by signing the contract I am submitting myself to such possibilities. My query is whether or not it is totally beyond the realm of reason to have, at the very least, been told that my picture was going to be used for public advertisement purposes.
I know that the presence of native English speakers at a school is a huge draw and is a good excuse to jack up the tuition. Had I known that my picture would have been used for advertising I certainly would have done my best to...well, to sabotage the pictures. I would have forwent showers, put a pillow under my shirt, blacked out a couple of teeth and ensured that I had a tattoo of a purple triangle encircled by a rainbow visible to the camera lense prior to flashing a smile.

Your thoughts please....

Hey! Here's a First...

I'm in a RIDICULOUSLY good mood! It's the kind of good mood where you end up talking so quickly and so much that your mouth gets all spitty and you start to drool. It's the kind of good mood where you laugh too hard at things that are only mildly funny. It's the kind of good mood where you are excited about everything. It's the kind of good mood where you find yourself being civil to your arch nemesis, in this case my boss Colleen.

I've been in a relatively good mood all day but this afternoon was the best. The bliss that comes from it simply being Friday was numbing in itself. In addition to this I finished the book that I was reading. It was the second book of the Artemis Fowl series. The book, and the series as a whole are godawful, but I read it anyway because my resources are limited and because the satisfaction that comes from finishing a book is so uplifting that it makes even bad books worth it. The best part of my whole day came however, when I checked my email between classes late this afternoon. I received an email from my very good friend Ray. Ray has been spending the last six months in Australia working and having a blast, and we've been musing for some time about how fun it would be if he came to visit. I rarely get my hopes up anymore over these kinds of conversations since every single one of my friends at one time or another has promised to come visit me. The best part about Ray's email is that he's already purchased his ticket and he's going to be here on May 12th.

Not only is this so exciting because I'm confident that no matter how much I have to work we are going to have a blast, but in a desperate and pathetic way it gives me hope. This visit is the next mile marker I have to reach and it seems totally attainable. The first six months were easy to guage because everything was a countdown. Two months until Halloween, two months until Christmas, five days until I go to China, one and half months until my six month mark and after that it was another six months until the end of my contract. This shining little nugget of gold in a world of boring concrete is, in the most cliched sense, the light at the end of the tunnel.

I know that the time between now and then will fly by and after that I will be riding the express train to freedom baby!!!

Current mood: uplifted, joyful, happy, excited and ready to party!

Questions of Curiosity and Gabbing to be Googled

I am conducting a scientific experiment. If you would please take a few moments to help me with some of the procedures of my experiment it would really help me to achieve a more scientifically accurate conclusion.

Title
Sensations of a Belly Button and the Validity of a Rumor

Introduction
I have heard a rumor that one's bellybutton is much more sensitive than the average scar. The rumor says that if you poke yourself in the bellybutton the sensation can be felt in other areas of your body. I cannot disclose the rumor in its entirety for fear that it will manipulate the results, therefore I can not tell you where one is allegedly supposed to feel this sensation.

Immediately upon hearing this rumor I conducted the experiment on myself knowing beforehand where I was expected to feel it. I shared the rumor, including the perceived sensations, with a colleague who had never heard of it before. Because both my colleague and I were aware of the location where we were suppose to feel sensations prior to conducting the experiment, our results might be influenced by psychological factors and are therefore ineligible for this experiment.

Hypothesis
It is hypothesized that any sensations felt in the suspected location of the body will be reserved to women. It is also presumed that psychology plays a major role and that those people having heard the whole rumor before conducting the experiment on themselves will be more likely to feel a sensation. If psychology proves to be a less important factor it can be assumed that knowing the entire rumor prior to doing the experiment will allow the subject to be more aware of sensations that they might be having which would be otherwise ignored.

Methods
I believe that psychosis plays a major role in this study and therefore I will include a control group of a given number of specimen who will not be told the rumor before being asked to poke themselves in the bellybutton. In addition to this it is unsure if the rumor applies to a particular sex so male and female studies will be conducted separately.

The Control- Two groups, the first one, (control group A), being a selection of 10-15 people, both men and women ranging in age from 18-60. Control group A will be asked beforehand to poke themselves in the bellybutton and report any perceived sensations felt anywhere else in the body. The second, (control group B), being a group of similar size and diversity will be asked beforehand to poke themselves in the bellybutton and report any perceived sensations in a particular part of their anatomy, (the particular part being that which completes the rumor but is being left undisclosed in this publication so as to encourage further scientific discovery).

The Samples- Four groups, the first, (Femlow), a group of 10-15 women. The women varying in age from 18-60 but having categorized themselves as having low exposure to popular rumors, pointless trivia and banal toilet talk. The second, (Femhigh), a group of similar deomographic makeup but having categorized themselves as having a high exposure to popular rumors, pointless trivia and banal toilet talk. The third, (Malelow), a group of 10-15 men, ranging in age from 18-60 and categorizing themselves as having low exposure to the aforementioned stimulants. The last group, (Malehigh), a group of 10-15 men, ranging in age from 18-60 and having categorized themselves as having high exposure to the stimulants.

Procedures
Should you wish to be a part of this experiment then you should do the following. Stand up, place your finger in your bellybutton and apply an ever incresing amount of force. The total amount of force should be considerable and in fact the more you can comfortably stand the better. I have found that adding the influence of a fingernail whenever possible improves the results. Please be vary aware of your entire body, especially any perceived sensations or twinges in any area other than your bellybutton. Upon completion of this step, kindly record your observations in the 'comments' section of the blog including your age, sex and whether you would characterize yourself as having high or low exposure to popular rumors, pointless trivia and banal toilet talk.


Results
To be determined. Post your comments so that I can tally results. I will later disclose the rest of the rumor upon satisfactory completion of the experiment.

In a Mood to be Moody

If I were a wishing type of person I would wish for the rain to come. I would wish for the skies to open up and unload their fury right outside of my windows.

You know that unfortunate character in cartoons that has a rain cloud follow him around all day to illustrate his misfortune? I want to be that character.

I would like to wake up in the morning to an almost deafening pounding of rain on the roof below my window. I want that rain to follow me onto the bus. I want it to trail me to my work. I want people to stop and look at me and my rain cloud and offer me an umbrella, as if that could actually shelter me from such a downpour. I want that rain to drench me to the core and drip off the ends of my stringy hair.

I want it to rain so hard and so constantly that there's no way that the following day couldn't seem a little brighter in comparison.

Happy Valentine's Day......

This coming from the spinster kindergarten teacher who is seriously considering getting a cat just to fulfill the stereotype.

Bonus- I got three pieces of candy and a chocolate bar from my students.

Drawback- The other foreigners and I had a meeting with our wench of a boss to discuss some changes and issues of importance. She informed us that due to the upcoming expansion of the school three of the four foreign teachers will have to spend 20 minutes of their 45 minute lunch break acting as lunch room monitors. The school is too cheap to actually hire someone for this job and too cheap to compensate us for the extra time.

Yayyyyyyyy

The Hideousness of Report Cards

I woke up early this morning so that I could crank out some of the monthly report cards, that were due like two weeks ago, before class. I have about thirty left and I pretty much want to shoot myself in the knee cap.

I remember my mom always complaining when she had to do report cards. She would stay up late to finish them and inevitably something would happen and she would end up losing half of them due to some unfortunate keystroke at the computer. Report card deadlines were always a tumultuous time in my house. I imagine that even the slightest amount of backtalk or lip directed towards her while she was in such a fragile state would have sparked such an onslaught of rage that we would all have to spend the following days in hiding, waiting out the ensuing fallout. All of this and all she ever had to do was quarterly report cards.

I have to write report cards for my morning students every other week but those aren't really that bad. Right now I am dredging through a huge stack of afternoon report cards which are to be completed every month. I have about fifty afternoon students that all need their own personal little write up. Anyway, I'm having some trouble writing the reports this month. I think I've developed writer's block towards dreaming up new bullshit to tell these parents that is any different from anything that I've told them for the last six months. I'm including a sample report card in this entry in the hopes of getting some positive feedback and perhaps some suggestions as to how I can clarify my comments and what not.

If learning English were a peat bog, your son Eric would be drowning and choking on the sliminess that is naturally growing mosses. Considering the last report card you got was a little over three weeks ago I can honestly say that Eric has made virtually no progress. In fact I recall telling you in last month's report card that Eric would continue to struggle with English and hit a brick wall of learning if he continued to be unable to learn the alphabet. Of course you wouldn't remember this because I'm sure your promptly discarded the last six report cards you received from me because I know for a fact that you don't speak English. However, despite Eric's innate stupidity he is thankfully blessed with a shining personnality. Oh wait, sorry, I must be confused. Eric is the one whose unceasing stupidity has caused the other student's to start sighing and groaning in annoyance when it comes time for Eric to answer a question. Listen, some people can learn languages and some can't. Do us all a favor and remove your son from the school. Enroll him in sports or get him to do more active things since he's like the only fat Korean in the whole damn country.
P.S. Tomorrow is valentine's day and I expect teacher's gifts.

Terry has really brought a new level of insanity to my most difficult class to manage, not even to mention actually teach. Considering he is only five years old, (in Korean years) I am not at all surprised by his energy or his lack of understanding or concern for the finer points of the irregular past tense verb conjugations. I am however quite surprised when he decides to test the bounds of the volume and pitch of his voice. I am also very surprised when he opts to spit on my knee during a beautiful rendition of "make new friends". The image of your son's toothless grin that is so big it forces his eyes completely shut haunts my dreams. Thanks for choosing Wonderland instead of daycare.

So, what do you think? I already have them typed up I just need to copy and paste them onto the report cards. Keep me posted cause I really should turn these in soon.

Timestamp

I will try to look at how far I have come rather than how far I have left to go...

Today, February 6th, is my six monthiversary here in Korea. How do I feel about that? I keep trying to silence my real feelings, those of loneliness, boredom, unhappiness and despair at the still seemingly endless journey ahead of me, but I'm obviously not doing a very good job. When I first got here I knew that six months would be such a huge milestone and it seemed so far away yet so attainable at the time. Now that I have finally reached it I only feel regret that it isn't nine months or even thirteen months where I would find myself already rid of this place.
I have good Korea days and bad Korea days and this is most definately a bad Korea day. I try to remind myself of the reasons I came here. What were they again? Oh yeah, adventure, money, experience, self-discovery. Yep, uh huh, ok, got it...can I go now?
My six monthiversary came and went with very little pomp or flare. I can of course always remember this as the day that I finally watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith, but those of you who have also seen it will know that it isn't really something worth remembering. Instead I will mark this day with the following addition to my growing list of drawbacks and bonuses of life in Korea. I will not, however be including a bonus for today because quite simply I can't think of one right now.

Drawback-vomit and other nasal and intestinal discharge underfoot

If you are a frequent reader of blogs relating to foreign perspectives of life in Korea, then this will probably seem an overexploited topic to you. I do however feel as though it is a cause for major cultural disagreement between Koreans and well...me. I also believe that there are few other accounts of this information that offer quite the statistics as mine, so without further ado...
Today on my walk from Wonderland to the bus after a long day of work I counted six piles of puke. I will say it once more, six piles of human vomit. You might ask if I find my place of employment in the near vicinity of a large college campus or if perhaps this past weekend was some major local or national festival of some sorts that would warrant, (although in the minds of this writer certainly not justify,) such an abundance of puke. The answer is 'no'. I encountered and dodged six piles of puke in the no more than three minutes walk from work to the bus on a Monday evening, and this is by no means unusual. The seemingly high number of six is even conservative in my mind because I was counting only the piles that contained obvious remnants of rice and kimchi and left out the questionable stains on the sidewalk with high volumes of spittle.
I was surprised and then shocked to discover just how much Korean people drank when I first got here. I assumed the stereotype that most Asians drank very little if at all, applied to Koreans as well. I was snapped into reality within my first weekend here just taking a stroll around my hotel where I saw a plethora of neon illuminated signs advertising "beer city", "beer, soju, cocktail" and "hof" in addition to such deadly alcoholic creations as the "soju kettle" and the "soju tent". While it seems to me that all Koreans, regardless of age or sex, drink quite regularly. I have frequently seen a couple of women out at a bar sharing a small bottle of whiskey or each enjoying a bottle of soju to themselves, but the most common site is that of the drunken and belligerant "adjoshi". This is a Korean word which refers to middle-aged business men of the kind found wearing loosely fitting suits and slowly swaggering down the streets with seemingly no purpose. They are the ones who blatantly gawk and stare at you and who hit on the secretaries who work at your school. Here I am describing my boss, the owner of my school, C.J., the CJ'er as we like to call him. Anyway it is mostly these men responsible for doing most of the drinking and hence most of the puking at ALL and I literally mean ALL hours of the day and ALL days of the week. They are the ones whom you dread sitting next to on the subway because they wreak of soju and garlic, and their glassy bloodshot eyes and beat red faces are like warning signs for a potential onslaught of an intestinal potpourri.
Anyway the point of this entry is to pose the question, why is it acceptable for these men, or anyone for that matter, to continuously throw up in public places with no attempt made by them or the local authorities/municipality to clean it up? I will have to pass those six piles of puke everyday for the rest of the week. I will count them everyday and will monitor their slow dissipation and wonder who was unfortunate enough to help in the process by treading through it. Public drunkeness is not only illegal in most countries but it is also highly frowned upon. I mean, when was the last time you saw a grown man lose his lunch, dinner, snack and part of his stomach lining because he couldn't handle his liquor, and felt anything but disgust or pity towards him? Public displays of alcoholic ineptitude are reserved for the 18 year old college freshmen with a mini-skirt and a pony-tail, not grown adults with a briefcase and a hyundai.

In order to let the majority of the rest of the population slide by without so much as a scathing word in their direction would be highly unjust. So, while the puking might be bad I rarely actually witness it. I do however, witness and am thoroughly disgusted by on a daily basis, the hacking, snorting and spitting of what are the biggest and most disgusting loogies around. The sound of someone attempting to dislodge some sort of nasal blockage is rude and vulgar in and of itself even if the person is planning on swallowing it*. It is off the charts disgusting when they spit it out, especially if they make no effort to find a grassy spot, garbage can or bush to spit it on. In an attempt to put the gravity of this matter into perspective I will share with you an experience not of mine but of my friend Jennifer's. She jumped aboard a bus to work one day and promptly took a seat at the back of the bus, whereupon she sat and began to get comfortable for the journey to school. While she was readjusting her feet she happened to look down and saw splattered and squiggling right there between her sneakers a big green loogie. The bus was crowded so she couldn't change her seat so she had to consciously place her feet elsewhere so as to circumvent the disgustingly slimy blob of human DNA. It is appaling in my mind that someone would EVER spit anything on a public bus let alone a full on green loogie.
Like the piles of puke that I counted I have twice attempted to count the loogies on the five minute walk from my house to Jennifer's. I have failed both times because the task became too tedious or I lost count. Please don't think that I in am going out of my way to seek out and count these things cause that is not at all the case. Both the vomit and the loogies are totally unavoidable and if I didn't keep my eyes constantly towards the ground I would absolutely step in one or many, and I like my shoes way too much for that. The loogie epidemic in Korea can be likened with similar experiences of mine in Belgium. Although etiquette and current practices may have changed since I lived there but when I did it was absolutely imperative that one always walk with their eyes downcast so as to avoid stepping in "dog bombs". There was dog shit literally all over the sidewalk and no matter how careful you were it was almost inevitable to avoid treading through it.
Just like pet owners need to curb their dogs, Koreans need to curb themselves, or better yet refrain from spitting and puking outside entirely.

*the writer gagged just typing this