안녕.

Throwing things around the apartment, vaguely in the direction of a bag. I don't have anything left to say for now. Rory can say it for me. Still can't believe this man is Irish.

Quiet.

So basically, my third anniversary in Korea just passed, and I didn't really acknowledge it. I'm sure more than a few people have noticed that this blog has been pretty quiet lately, especially compared to what it used to be.

It's never a good idea to say, or even begin to think, that one has a good handle on a foreign culture. That's a lesson that I learned early on. But it's safe to say that, for the moment, I am kind of nestled in. There aren't too many things in my daily life that challenge or surprise me, anymore than there might be in life in any other place.

I've also kind of just gotten over the internet as a whole, for the moment. There's developing as a foreigner and a teacher, and then there is developing as a blogger. Both things are going through a moment of pause and rest, for the time being.

Which might be good.

As I've mentioned before, on Saturday I'll be flying home for the first time in over a year for two weeks with my family. Nothing jolts things into perspective or jogs a new phase of how I think about the time I spend here in Korea more than that. At the moment, my life is just..... nice. I meet my friends. I meet my boyfriend. I meet my coworkers. I work. I teach. I play with my students. I occasionally meet a new person who makes my life here even a little brighter.

What I'm trying to say is, after three years, it is actually starting to feel a bit like home. And no doubt there will be some collisions of realities such as have not been encountered before once I am back in my other home, facing the fact that there are, for the second time in my life, two of them. And what that may mean for the future.

This is fucking boring. Basically, I kind of hope to just get back to where this blog started for a while. Just a daily account of what the fuck I'm up to and what it's making me think about. For the moment, and especially after the nonsense that went on last week, I'm just enjoying the quiet. The quiet inbox. The quiet internet. My own fucking quiet, even, for fuck's sake.

But I'm sure it won't stay quiet for long.

One of those days.

My semester so far has been unduly simple. Compared to last semester, I've got it made. Wriggled my way out of after school classes by blaming my home leave, which would have put me eight classes behind everyone else, so I have plenty of time (and energy) after work to study Korean. I'm teaching the firsties, who, although confusing to me at times in the way their little brains function, are actually a lot easier to control than the third graders, given that (in most cases) I have pure brawn on my side. Aka, I'm bigger than they are. Which is not necessary, but does help. There's something about being able to tower over someone when you stare them down, rather than having to.... well, literally stare them up, as I do with most of my third graders.

Random.

I have one thing and one thing only, really, to say about Steve Jobs' passing. And that is that I hope the coworker who shall remain nameless (although I think we all know who it was) who insinuated that his stepping down had more to do with Koreans suing Apple than with his illness feels suitably guilty now. Although I know for a fact that she does not. She was just proud to show me that she had learned the word "pancreatic" this morning.

In other news, next week is Busan's birthday so I've been a busy little bitch today. I may go into details about what with after he's seen it all himself, because he has a tendency to snoop around this place. And I don't need my fucking blog ruining the surprise.

So, birthday 'hings tomorrow night, Saturday morning Korean studying in a cafe with friends, and then..... well. Two more weeks with the chil'en until I'm on my home leave for another year. That's only just set in because I booked my flight last night. Over a year, it's been. The longest ever. Let's hope that's not a trend.

I also have something I've been meaning to get around to talking about regarding the students, but that will have to wait, because now I'm for bed. I dealt with Korean, technology and cooking all in the same day. I'm done.

돼지

If I could install some kind of automatic electric shock system in all of the classrooms and have it zap the students any time they used one word, it would be "pig", in any form, Korean or English. It is by far the most overused and undercreative insult I hear 500+ times on a daily basis, and I hate it. I hate it so much that I don't even give the students a reason why they need to not say it. We don't even talk about it. It's gone beyond that point. They know it's not nice. They know it's tacky. And I just say, "No." And that's the end of that discussion. Just no.

Today I got to first class a little early and was just kind of trundling around the classroom making small talk. A student called me over to show me the stuffed.... toy? He had. He slowly maneuvered it into position and then dramatically enacted the thing eating his arm. Then, he looked up at me with expectant eyes.

First graders are different.

".... Did he eat your arm?"

"네!"

"But he's so cute! Why does he eat people?"

This, apparently, was the right response, because the kid fell over in a fit of giggles. Little kids confuse the fuck out of me, but I think I'm starting to get the hang of it. Fucking little weirdos.

Just at that moment, another student happened to be literally dancing past us in the aisle. The situation caught his attention and he paused mid-shuffle and tilted his head to the side, observing and thinking very hard about something.

Then, he slowly moved his eyes up: "샘!"

"Yes sir?"

"돼지고기! 맛있어요!"

God help me if I didn't snigger. But I don't feel too bad. The 돼지 고기 was falling out of his seat laughing, as well.

Non work post: Jinju and Geojae Do.

So how about an entry that's not about work, for once? This weekend was pretty immense -- a couples' trip (double) down to Jinju for the lantern festival, and then another day trip to Geojae Do before we returned. Although we had a car, which undoubtedly made the running around a lot more pleasant, the unquestionable mantra for the weekend was definitely, Korea: too many people, not enough things.

We ended up heading out a lot later than we meant to, which is what happens when you get too many grumpy coffee addicts in one car at 8 o'clock in the morning. Obviously, we hit horrendous traffic. Because when do you ever not hit horrendous traffic in this country? During the journey, the couple up front played 20 questions in English, while I gave it my best shot with Busan in the back in Korean. I wasn't doing too badly until Busan started asking questions like, "Does this person get angry easily?" and "Does this person say a lot of swear words?", which confused me.... because.... really? Thinking I must be somehow misunderstanding, I told him to repeat it in English. No. I wasn't missing anything. He's just terrible at that game.

We made it in by the afternoon and took a short jaunt around the palace, before deciding we'd better find a place to sleep before we were left with the car as the only option. Had a whale of a time navigating the tiny streets as one of the boyfriends hopped in and out to ask about room availability. Eventually, we found something set a way's back from the main street, and no sooner had I set literally only one foot inside the door, than the ajumma decided to get her panties in a wad: "러시아?" That was it. It didn't even merit a full sentence. I hadn't even taken my sunglasses off, for fuck sake, and the other Korean male/foreign female couple were still stuck out in the car park. Busan nervously chuckled and replied that I was American. ".... 친구?" the ajumma shot back.

It was the middle of the day during one of the city's most popular festivals, and we were carrying luggage. Once there was no getting out of the idea that we might be actual legitimate couples, she still managed to come up with something, which I missed because I had already scoffed, scooped up my bag and started to head up the stairs. Once Busan got up to the room behind me, he informed me that she had asked if the men were going to be studying abroad. At which point he said he just decided to ignore her.

He fussed about it for a bit, as I washed my face in the bathroom and the fixed my make up. "If I were you, I'd feel really bad right now...." he ventured, trying to see how I was taking it.

"No news there, buddy. She's just a tacky person. Better to just ignore it."

We headed out to walk across the river and see the massive, elaborate floating lanterns close up. It was gorgeous. And strange. And fucking crowded. As dark began to fall, my friend and I watched as Busan and her boyfriend played a few of their country's traditional games, surrounded by children, and then we all wrote our wishes for the coming year on scraps of silk and glued them to the metal frames of lanterns in the shape of our zodiac animals. We crossed the bridge over the river and had the audacity to try to find something to eat, which became increasingly frustrating as we realized every restaurant in the town had covered over their usual menus with special cloth renditions, marking the prices at about 30,000 won a plate for ordinary meat like 되지갈비. Eventually, we spotted a platform of old folks crowded around a glowing meat truck, surrounded by quickly emptying bottles of soju and magkeolli. Bingo. If you ever need to know where you should be in Korea, just follow the old folks. They know what's up. All of the most gorgeous barbecued pork we could eat and two bottles of Busan magkeolli for under 7,000 won per person. Lush.

After dinner, we crossed the street to walk through the bamboo forest, which had been lit up with lanterns for the occasion. Took a quick slide down the side of the mountain to find the endless tunnels of a kind of red lantern I've never seen before. Inside the tunnel, Busan somehow managed to make a small child burst into tears simply by looking at her. Kids really don't like him. I thought the way my students suddenly hide behind me when they happen upon us in the neighborhood was just due to their shyness, but apparently even strange children find him terrifying for no apparent reason. Afterwards, fireworks, as the floating lanterns out on the Namgang were finally lit. Exhausted and a little rattled from the staring, we made our way across the makeshift floating bridge to the palace grounds on the other side. Got a nice look at 의암, the rock where 논개 allegedly locked her arms General Keyamura Rokusuke, flinging them both to their deaths in the river below, and then made our way sleepily back to the motel.

The next morning we set out to find proper coffee, which involved -- believe it or not -- the use of four smart phones and one navi system. Once we made it to the coffee shop, Busan, who had been hoping for a Korean breakfast, got a little sulky. So I took him around the corner to a mart where he happily wolfed down two triangle kimbaps and a massive bowl of ramyeon. His mood immediately improved.

We set out for Geojae do, where our only real plan was to ride the cable cars. About seventeen million years later, we finally made it to the cable cars, only to find that it would be another three to four hour wait to actually ride them. We decided we'd rather not join the tremendous impromptu Trot party that had sprung up over to the side (although Busan was drawn in a little, with his 농부 soul), and headed for the Prisoners of War Museum instead. Which was. Odd.

There is something a little difficult to understand, sometimes, about the way Korea sometimes handles the violent and conflicted parts of its history. The children's amusement park at the DMZ springs to mind, for example, and the POW museum also made myself and my Western friend a little uneasy, in that there was an entire "photo zone" set up, where visitors were invited to help the prisoners make their dinner and join them for their meals. A little odd to our sensibilities, is all. But over all, it was an interesting visit.

After that, we headed to the beach where we sat and drank some coffee and set off a few fireworks, before heading back to town to grab dinner and set out on the long journey back. In the dark, on the highway, we took turns playing songs and singing along, finding that the two very odd overlaps in everyone's musical niches are Britpop and American hip hop from around the same era. We made it back home just after one, and I think just about everyone has spent the extra day off work recuperating.

A good time of the sort I haven't had often enough, due mostly to sheer fear of crowds and lines and hassle. But when you've got good company, almost anything becomes more bearable.