I was cruising through my iPhoto library today when I came across a photo I thought my twin sister Jessie would really like. It’s me and my friend Dan posing with life-sized Build-A-Bears. The bears were out for Children’s Day, and needless to say when I saw them roaming aimlessly, probably overheated and dehydrated, I just knew that they would be perfect for a picture for Jess, who is a huge BaB fan (ok, so I made up that acronym but I still think it’s marketable). Anyway, having a twin sister is awesome – I couldn’t imagine life any other way. Growing up there was always someone to play with – Jessie would probably say “annoy” – and no matter how mad we got at each other we were always back to being friends just a few minutes later. For instance, when I was 8 or 9 (If I’m not mistaken Jess was around the same age too, though I am one minute older) I knocked her front two teeth out with a metal baseball bat. It was an accident I swear, and after a few tears and dentist visits later, all was well. For revenge, she clumped up some cat fur off the back of our family pet and proceeded to drop it in my mouth while I was napping, almost choking me when it blocked off my breathing way. A brief aside: not many people know this, but cat fur dissolves in your mouth a little bit like cotton candy, except instead of tasting like bubblegum or cherry or something, it tastes like kitty litter and dander. Despite our many dust-ups, and there were many, we could never manage to hold a grudge for too long. Twins sisters have other bonuses too. In elementary school you get to tease the crap out of them. When you get to middle school you get to copy off their homework. When you get to high school you get to make friends with their friends. And when you make it college you get to have them shlep you around when you’ve had a few too many. Oh yeah, and Jessie totally held it down during out B’nai Mitzvah when she took all the complicated Hebrew-y prayers while I took the gimmies. There’s also a great built-in idiot filter that comes with having a twin. If someone ever asks me whether my twin sister and I are identical, I just look at them, smile, and turn the other direction. For the record we’re fraternal. So Jess, if you’re reading this, good work. Also, just a heads up but I’m probably going to need to borrow your car when I get back.
Seriously Jess, I’m not kidding about the borrowing your car thing.
Rock. Paper. Scissors. On the outside, they are three seemingly unconnected words, but to my 1st grade students they might as well translate into, “Best. Game. EVAR!” I recently found a great way to incorporate the game into my class and it may rival Hangman for simplicity, excitement, and time wasting. It works like this: I pick six or seven words from a word family that we are studying (my Mom would be so proud!) to create a simple “game board”. This week it’s body parts, so I put two columns of body part words on a piece of paper and give the kids game piece (I use magnets) to have them keep track of their progress. The kids shout the three magic words, throw out their hands, and whoever wins must identify the correct word and say it before moving their piece forward. First one to the end of their column wins. It’s a great way to get the kids up and out of their seats while at the same time practicing vocabulary. They get so excited sometimes I can tell they don’t even realize they’re learning, which is a pretty cool feeling. At the end, the student who wins the most rounds gets to go against me. Not gonna lie, but I cheat a little bit and make it so I always win (will I go to hell for that?). Actually my winning seems to motivate them even more. They think I have some sort of supernatural predictive powers, so once they do finally beat me, I’m sure it will be a pretty big deal, perhaps the way it was a big deal when I beat the final boss on the Mortal Kombat II arcade game a few years back. Here are some pics of the kids getting down on some R.P.S.
Round 1. Yo-Han vs. Chae-Yeun. Yo-Han’s fearless style reflects his unrelenting energy, which inside sources say is provided by a healthy combination of Fruit Roll-Ups, chocolate milk, and assorted sweet breads and cookies. Meanwhile Chae-Yeun prefers a more methodical and reserved approach. Here we watch as she coolly delivers her trademarked “Scissor-Slash” maneuver. Yo-Han can only look on in dismay as his normally ferocious “Paper Tiger Pounce” fails to connect. Point Chae-Yeun.
The Aftermath. Yo-Han crumples in defeat. Either that, or he’s pooped himself.
While this might look like your typical RPS celebration, Min-Gu is actually just showing Jin-Su how well his new deoderant is working.
Winner’s Bracket. Calm and cool under pressure – perhaps it was the deoderant – Min-Gu raced out to an early lead and never looked back, becoming the first ever Rock Paper Scissors Champion of last week. His celebration was short lived however, as he was quickly distracted by a shiny thing on the other side of the room.
Before becoming an ESL teacher I sold shoes – lots and lots of shoes. I sold clogs, sandals, sneakers, hemp, heels, mary janes, flats, slippers, slip-ons, boots, and everything in between. If you could put it on your feet I probably sold it. The shop I worked at was called The Woolly Mammoth, and it was perhaps the greatest work environment ever. A small, independent operation which first opened back in the 1970’s, our store was located right in the heart of Seattle’s eclectic University District. Basically the job was 85 percent hanging out and talking with coworkers, 10 percent selling shoes to middle-aged women, and 5 percent sneaking off and eating snacks in the back room. We made our own schedules more or less, chose our own music, had our favorite crazy reoccurring customers (The Bird Lady comes to mind), and we even had our own book that we wrote down funny anecdotes in, kinda like a blog before there were computers. What were those called again? Oh yeah, journals. I think I petitioned to rename the journal, “The Clog,” but I’m not sure how well that one went over.
As one might expect, after nearly 4 glorious working in the shoe game I became quite the footwear aficionado. Shoes, as I often liked to tell my customers, are your pedestal, your foundation. Shoes announce your entrance, signal your status, reflect your personality. Slip-ons? Always in a hurry. Clogs? Always on your feet. High heels? High pain threshold. Birkenstocks? Looking for the nearest hacky-sack convention. Furthermore, shoes are indicators of civility, a point illustrated by the fact that 7-11 will not serve you a shriveled up hot dog that’s been perpetually rolling around on a warming rack for the last 5 months if you are not wearing shoes. The same cannot be said for people who don’t wear belts.
Excitement! Yesterday after stumbling around on the internet looking for ESL teaching material, I landed on a rather interesting site called Visuwords. which is basically a thesaurus and dictionary that creates visual connections between the words. Anyway, I thought the site was a pretty cool way of interpreting language, so I decided to forward a tip to one of my favorite websites, Neatorama.com. This site is filled with off-beat news articles, interesting art pieces, and other random internet tidbits – the perfect way to kill a few minutes, or 6 or 7 hours. I almost completly forgot about my suggestion when today I was cruising the site and lo and behold, there’s my name on the front page. I know this is the epitome of dorkdom, but I must say I’m pretty pumped that they the good people at Neatorama took my suggestion to heart. So long story short, I am a huge nerd.
Trash collection – on the whole – is not a difficult process. You use something, you throw it away. Repeat a million bajillion times for the rest of your life. The only reason I’m writing this is that in an effort to illustrate the differences between my life at home and my life abroad, I will spare no details, regardless of how subtle or inane they may be. Also, I couldn’t think of anything better to write about today. Back to talking about garbage. Korea has a slightly different system than back home. First off, you’re only supposed to use special green garbage bags to throw away your trash in, but as you can see from the picture I snapped above, not everyone follows this rule. The bags cost about $5 for a roll of twenty or so. When it’s all filled up, walk it out to a large community dumpster, drop it in, and start the process again. Some places don’t have dumpsters, so people just plop their bags down in the middle of sidewalk, where it gets collected quite frequently. I’ve never seen any garbage trucks in my neighborhood, so I can only assume that little tiny elves swoop in under the cover of darkness and whisk the trash away to a magical landfill somewhere, or maybe they just dump it in North Korea. Since I hate refilling the little green bags and am terrified of using a contraband bag lest I be found out and deported, trash collection has become something of an art for me (also, I’m lazy – yeah – that’s probably it). I like to think of my garbage can as a clown car of sorts, a really smelly, gross clown car – maybe a 68′ Volkswagen Bus with water damage. If there is an extra cubic inch available somewhere in the depths of the bag, I will find it, and maybe throw an eggshell or something in there. Sure my apartment has acquired a not-so-faint musk these days, but whatever – no one is really coming to visit me these days. And if someone does happen to make it up the four flights of stairs to hang out, well then more power to ‘em – maybe they can take the trash out for me on their way out.
More perplexing signs from Seosan with my personal interpretations of what they might mean.
“Please do not kick back and relax against the wall.”
I first saw this logo above a hot tub in my sauna, so I assumed it meant, “Please don’t shit in the hot tub.” However, I’ve come to find out that it is actually an advertisement for a local proctologist. Regardless, shitting in the hot tub is never recommended.
This is actually the bathroom in my school. I was pretty baffled I first saw this arrangement – not just because it has men and women using the same facilities, but until I saw this I was always under the impression that women didn’t actually need to use the bathroom. The facade has come crashing down. Regardless, I always make sure to lock the outside door whenever I have to use the loo.
This one is from Seoul. Pretty sweet sign if I don say so myself. The cafe sold nothing but Pringles, Pop Tarts, grilled cheese sandwiches, microwaved dinners, toast, sugary cereal, and baked beans. Prices were reasonable but the food did taste a little funny.
I don’t know why, but ever since buying my guitar I’ve been obsessed with learning Beatles songs. I guess if I’m going to play songs by a particular band, they might as well be by the most influential band on the face of the planet (Dylan will come next). I’ve already got “Yesterday” pretty much down, and I think my next challenge will be either “Across the Universe,” or “Blackbird.” But no matter how hard I practice, I’m fairly certain I will never sound as good as this guy. His name is Eduardo Diaz, and that’s about all I know. I stumbled across his music while looking for guitar lessons on YouTube, and he basically dominates everyone else out there (side note to all aspiring guitarists: don’t pay for lessons, virtually any song you can imagine has a free lesson on YouTube). Diaz’s classical guitar renditions amplify the gorgeous melodies and beautiful song structures contained within the music of Beatles. Don’t let his laid-back and casual playing style fool you – his face might look like he’s on painkillers, but his fingers look like they’re on speed. Playing both the bass notes and the accompanying melodies with ease, Diaz’s fingers deftly maneuver around the fretboard the same way a skilled pianist’s hands can navigate a keyboard. If you like The Beatles, or even if you don’t, I’m betting dollars to donuts you’ll be impressed by these interpretations.
“Here Comes The Sun”
“Blackbird
*Extra* Here’s a link to Fiona Apple’s most excellent rendition of “Across the Universe,” which was featured on the Pleasantville Soundtrack .
Special Announcement: My school is hiring!! We’re looking for a new native English speaker to join our ranks out here in Seosan. The job isn’t posted yet on any recruiting websites so I’m doing some preliminary scouting in the hopes that I can lure someone awesome on my own. Anyway, if you are interested or know anyone who is interested, or hell, knows anyone who was born in an English-speaking and is currently unemployed (I’m looking at you recent college graduates) then by all means contact me and I can provide you with more specific info. The only other requirement necessary is a bachelor’s degree. That’s it, that’s all – why else do you think they hired me? We’re looking to bring someone on for early to mid-summer. That’s all for now. I’ll post more if any other details emerge.
UPDATE: Trying to find someone to start sometime in July for a year-long contract.
One of the hardest parts about being away from home is not being able to play the guitar. At home I used to play almost everyday, avoiding countless hours of homework and chores in the process. Playing guitar and making up simple melodies has always been one of my favorite hobbies, not to mention an incredibly effective way to relax (although others within earshot might disagree). Being the music lover and hack songwriter that I am means I’ve been jonesin’ pretty bad for a six-string, so last week I headed down to the local music shop to change all that. The store, located on the main drag in Seosan, was pretty much a glorified closet. Dark and dusty and packed to the gills with guitars and keyboards and the odd wind instrument or two, I made my way to wall of hanging guitars. I picked up a guitar off a wall hanger and the owner invited me to sit down and play. Perhaps overly excited or just a little cramped, as I turned to adjust into the seat he provided, I slammed the back of the guitar into a metal counter. I was mortified. I quickly glanced down at the wood frame to make sure I hadn’t permanently damaged the instrument, and even gave it a quick rub with my hand hoping to make any possible blemishes magically disappear. Luckily I didn’t bust the guitar, but I could safely say that the prospects of any future discounts were officially out the window. Once that near fiasco subsided I got down to business and ended up purchasing a guitar by Sejong (I’ve never heard of it either) for $250. It’s not a great guitar by any means, but it has 6 strings and a sound hole so I guess that’s all I really need. My plan is to cover it with stickers by the time I leave. Lately I’ve been tinkering around on it quite a bit learning a few new songs, and probably annoying the hell out of my neighbors in the process. My boss has already requested that I learn Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven” and practically the entire Queen catalogue. That might take a while. Maybe she’ll settle for some Radiohead covers instead.
*Extra* Here’s a song of mine I recently rediscovered while organizing my iTunes. I wrote and recorded this a couple years ago during a long summer break. It’s called “Carolina“.
