I'm a millionaire.

Last Wednesday was payday, so I now have millions of won in my name. One of the Korean teachers was able to go to the bank and get me a debit card today too. I'm a little confused about how that worked - I just assumed that in order to open a bank account and get a debit card I would have had to go to the bank at some point. But apparently, "he works with me" was enough identification for her to do everything for me, and I made a successful withdrawal a few minutes ago.

This morning was slightly hellish. I woke up at about 8:45, and the van that takes us all to school leaves at 8:30. My first class starts at 9:10. I was out of my apartment by 8:50, and began running around in the rain searching for a cab. BTW, this is the first time I have seen it rain in Korea, so... great timing. I didn't really know where the best place to catch a cab was so I just started heading towards the school. The school is about a 7 minute drive away, but it is mostly down a stretch of road where you go about 60mph, so it would have taken a long time to walk/run. So I'm running down the sidewalk, even though wherever I'm running towards is no more likely to have a cab than the place I was was currently standing. At least, for all I know it isn't. But, I was late, and I just needed to run. I didn't know of any buses that way, and I certainly wasn't going to risk guessing and getting on one.

At about 8:58 I got to the major road that heads south to my school. It would be pointless to start walking down it, because there were no more intersections, and even if I saw a cab it wouldn't stop. So I waited at this major intersection (both roads were 3-4 lanes). The first cab I saw said no, because I don't think he understood when I said "Bojeong Jayeon". I saw a few cabs heading south but they just flew through the green light without stopping.

Finally I saw one stopped about 15 cars back at the red light. Just as I ran out into the middle of the road, cutting across lanes, trying to get his attention - the light turns green. So now people are honking at the crazy white guy who is running through the middle of this major road. And just as I'm getting to the cab, an ambulance comes up behind him blaring his sirens. Now everyone is trying to get out the ambulance's way, and I am frantically waving my arms at the cab. I just dove in and told him Bojeong Jayeon. Thankfully he understood me and started driving, because he would have been totally justified in throwing me out. I must have looked like a lunatic - I'm sure I had a pretty crazy look in my eyes as I was bearing down on him. I was desperate at that point though, and I was not going to let another cab get by. The whole way there he was laughing and talking in Korean, and miming me waving my arms and yelling at him. So I'm glad he got a laugh out of it.

I got to school at 9:20 and one of the teachers was watching Madagascar 2 with my class. I think I kind of scared the kids because I was soaking wet, and also sweaty (it was ridiculously humid today, and about 50 something degrees - and I was still dressed like it was about 30), I was out of breath, hadn't showered that morning. I was just a bit of a mess. And then I got to be the one to tell them they had to stop watching the movie and learn about the letter A. So they pretty much hated me. As I was asking them what day it was and what the date was it suddenly dawned on me that it's Friday the 13th. Of course it is.


So since I haven't written at all this week I'll briefly go over last weekend. It was pretty good times. On Friday we played Sojuno (which is pretty self-explanatory) before heading to Exit. Somehow it ended up that I was drinking a double jaeger-bomb with every beer. It made sense at the time (or not?). I think that was the drunkest I've been in Korea. I know that I was on fire at pool though. It was great - I knew I was drunk, and I was surprising myself. Also I almost got in a fight (like my friend had to drag me away) with a guy about how to rack (he was trying to say that you put a solid in the 1 spot and then stripes in the 2 and 3 spots.) I think we ended up hugging and doing shots after we played though, which is the way 100% of my bar fights end.

At the end of that night a couple of my friends and I were talking to a group of Korean guys. There was nothing particularly memorable about the conversation; however, I found out some very interesting info about those Koreans later in the week. My friend had to go back to the bar because she left her credit card, and the bartender told her that the guys we were talking to were all on a Korean tv show, and were pretty famous actors. They told the bartender they had a good time and that they were going to come back again next Friday (tonight). Before I heard that I was going to take it easy tonight, and save myself to do some crazy shopping with my millions of won tomorrow, but now I think I'm going to go out and try to make some famous friends.

On Saturday I went up to Seoul to hang out with my friends Heather and Lindsey, whom I had met in Chicago. They are awesome people, and we had a ton of fun. First we went to a Mexican restaurant in Itaewon (the foreignerburg). We were entertained by some Korean mariachi's playing CCR and other classic rock hits.



Then we went to a bar called Mike's Cabin for the rest of the night. It was a good bar - very small, very quaint. It was actually like a cabin on the inside. There were even bunk beds. We brought about 15 people there and we were about half the crowd. The dj basically let us pick what songs he played all night.

All of the Seoul people were amazed that we were able to make it out in the boonies of Suji. We were trying to tell them that it is actually quite nice, but things are a lot different in Seoul. I prefer my situation in Suji though. It's cheaper, easier to meet people, you make more money, everything you need is here, but it's also easy to get to Seoul to do whatever you want up there. However I'm quite optimistic, so I'm sure I'd come up with tons of reasons why it's better to live in Seoul if I lived there. (Logic trap: did I just say that I'm happier in Suji but I'm sure I'd be happier in Seoul? Probably not, and it's best not to dwell on it Mike.)

As far as school issues, things are going pretty well. I've pretty much hit my stride with the curriculum, and it's already starting to get boring and repetitive. It's a little more fun now that I really know all of the kids and have my own certain relationship with all of them. It's nice having little inside jokes with kids, or knowing what will make each one laugh. And they never get tired of anything! So you don't have to vary your schtick.

Sadly though, it's not all fun times. In fact, a lot of the kids are complete fucking brats. Sorry, really no other way to phrase that. And I hate myself for it, but sometimes I yell at them, and they get sad. Oh well, I guess it's all part of it. Also, they are kind of gross. They're always wiping snot on me or putting their hands in their mouth and then touching my face. On an unrelated note, I've been sick for the past two weeks. I NEVER used to get sick, but this cold is just unrelenting. I've got the worst sinus headache right now. Thankfully I'm also drinking a beer, so I'm starting to feel better already. (Speaking of beer - need an idea for what to send me? How about a case of Fat Tire?)

I'm starting to experiment with new songs to play during musical chairs. Musical chairs is now played at least once in all seven of my classes. To justify this I have started placing vocab words on the chairs, and the person who sits on the word I yell out when I stop the music is out. Recently I've been playing the Duck Tales theme a lot. The kids seem to really like it, although not as much as I do. I played the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme a few times and the kids seemed pretty confused. I kind of forgot how intense that song is. In one of my classes one kid just said "wow" when it started playing. I really enjoyed that reaction.

Weirdly though, the favorite seems to be "Heart it Races" by Architecture in Helsinki (video below). I just put it on on a whim, but the kids really enjoyed it and are now requesting it (they call it the boom dadadada song). It really is quite an enjoyable video, and Architecture definitely have a childish fun-times sound, so I guess I can see it. I'm going to continue to experiment and by the end of the year I'll publish a report on what kind of the music the Korean 6-9 age demographic enjoys the most.



Also, when the kids are good, I'll let them watch a little Tom and Jerry. (Having a tv connected to a computer with youtube is the greatest teaching tool of all time). They go freakin nuts for Tom and Jerry. It's hilarious. And I feel really really dumb for admitting this, but I had a startling revelation the other day. Itchy and Scratchy are a direct parody of Tom and Jerry! How had I never put that together before? It dawned on me when I was watching it with the kids and they were laughing their ass off at Tom getting wailed on and I was thinking "Man, this is really violent. It's kind of like Itchy and Scratchy. Actually... oh."

I'm going to try to start keeping track of all of the times the kids say unintentionally funny stuff and I can't tell them why I'm laughing. Today I was having them make complete sentences with certain words, and one of the words was "crab". One of the girls said "I am catching crabs" and I laughed out loud. They were all pretty confused. I was like, "You are catching crabs right now? In class?" And she said "Yes!" Hilarious.

Tomorrow I'm going to Myong-dong to do some shopping. I've heard from a variety of sources that it's the best place to go for clothes shopping. I'm really starting to realize what a small percentage of my clothes I brought here, so I'm excited about getting some new stuff.