Give them back to me.

I just try not to think about the fact that he's only four years older than my students.

Mr. Grumpy Pants has apparently decided to forgive me. He hopes the weather will be shiny tomorrow. (Me too.) I think his phone is now accidentally calling me from the hospital. And Smalltown's finally got a phone again, which means he calls me anytime his girlfriend's not around and tries to convince me to let him come over with soju at 11 o'clock at night (no). I've missed his random bad joke texts and listen-to-what-banal-mystery-of-the-universe-I-was-contemplating-earlier-while-I-wait-for-the-bus-or-walk-to-the-kimbap-shop phone calls. A little.

I've got to ditch the horrible woman who's children I've been teaching for free. She makes everyone in the office cringe with how inhumanly idiotic she assumes me to be. Even after hearing me interact with her children in Korean, she considers the fact that I can read a menu in Korean to be superhuman, and told my coteacher that we couldn't order jjajangmyeon because it involves eating with chopsticks (which she sees me use everyday). Today, after I situated my food on the table and was up getting some water, I turned around to have her hand it to me and tell me that it was what I had ordered. I'm not even into humoring this anymore, and simply rolled my eyes and put my food back down where I had it. She called me six times on Monday (a holiday), starting before I even made it onto the bus home and today she asked me if her rich children can attend the class I teach on Monday nights for POOR KIDS. Tasteless. And she knows it's tasteless, too, because when I referred her to Coteacher with that question, feigning ignorance, she was too ashamed to ask her.

I don't know why she doesn't just fucking hire someone to deal with her obsession with her children's English. It's seeming pretty much like a full time job to me. And, as I've said before, everyone else might be doing it, but I'm not breaking my visa rules for a little extra cash. Plus, you couldn't really pay me enough to put up with this person anymore.

Oi vey. Liz is one grumpy little hellcat lately, eh? Well. I'm not Jesus. My patience is not infinite. Unless we're dealing with my students. Which I'm not. At all. Anymore. For months at a time.

Oh god. Give them back to me. Now. Please.

Also, this has been making the rounds. I thought I'd throw a few of them up here, because, as most K-bloggers have been commenting, it's pretty dead-on and a great way to visualize and simplify some pretty drastic and complicated cultural differences. Western is blue, Eastern is red:

At a party:


The boss:


Way of life:


Anger:


Handling a problem:


Contacts:


Opinion: