It is Friday night and I am writing this from a PC Bang. I put off the trip to Chungju till tomorrow so that I could sleep at my own place tonight. Hopefully I will meet up with a couple people I know over at the martial arts festival, but if not it would be the perfect chance to make some new friends. I pretty much scream foreigner, so I have that goin' for me, which is nice. I'll be sure and post about my first trip out into one of the larger cities in Chungcheongbuk-do when I get the chance, but for now you are going to have to hear me talk about peaches.
Peaches are like a metaphor for life. They are sweet, they are fuzzy, they bruise easily, and they are EFFING EVERYWHERE IN GAMGOK!!! Seriously. Every single day I have been at work I have gotten a peach. I think I may have messed up today and accidentally left mine on my desk, but I'm sorry, I have eaten more peaches this week than I have in my entire life. They are apparently good for warding off evil, and I have to say, its probably because of the fuzziness. I mean, thats why I grew my beard of course, to ward off evil. Why else would all the biblical patriarchs have sweet beards like mine if they weren't good for warding off evil? They would have just Brauned that shit and let God deal with their disgustingly smooth faces. Whats that you say? They didnt have electric razors back then? May I suggest you go back and read your bible my friend? Start with the book of Genesis. Oh, you've read Genesis and it says nothing about electric razors? Obviously you are not reading the correct version. Whats that, you say you searched biblegateway.com and found nothing about electric razors on any version? Well thats just ridiculous. Gamgok is totally famous for peaches and it shows. The ones here are gihugenormous. They are huge, and they are juicy, and they are bought by my co-teacher by the box. I have a couple in my fridge because I can't eat them at the rate that they are given to me.
Today I had my two classes with my ridiculously cute co-teacher. Dont know how a Korean girl can be so cute. Gotta be that Kimchi. The classes went ok. They were High School level. The boys class was tougher because they didn't want to ask me any questions. I didn't have any lesson prepared because I have no idea what level they are or if they were in the middle of a book like the younger ones were. I don't think it was that they were shy, but they just didn't really have much interest in me in general. I also lost to one of them in arm wrestling, but damn was that kid strong. I can already tell that my arm is gonna be super sore tomorrow. They didn't want me to leave because they would have to learn, and didn't want to ask me anymore questions, so they asked to play "american game." That kind of put me on the spot, so I had the teacher translate to them how to play "heads up seven up" and it went over well. For those not familiar with the game, everyone in the class puts their head down and has their thums up. Seven students walk around and touch the thumbs of those with their heads down without giving clues as to who they are. When all are done and the students are back up at the front, the ones who were selected stand up and try and guess who picked them. If you guess right you switch places. A popular strategy involves looking at the shoes of the person who picked you, then guessing that person, but they wear slippers in school, so they just switched slippers to negate that strategy. They enjoyed the game, and tortured fellow classmates while playing it. I swear, the more I observe these teenagers, the more I think that teenagers are all the same no matter where you are. They are all a bunch of jackasses, and I mean that in the most endearing of ways, as I remember being quite the jackass myself.
The girls class on the other hand was a trip. They were really interested in me and asked a ton of questions. I got the whole "teacher, tell us a story about the first time you fell in love" followed by "do you still love her?" They were very curious about my beard, and about America in general. It looks like there is a movie lover who sits in the back of class who wanted to know if I had seen "American movie inception" and was quite impressed when I listed Park Chan-Woo as one of my favorite Koreans and could actually list a few of his movies. For the record, he is a friggin great director, and you should check him out if you havent. They were curious about my family and about my impressions of Korea and Koreans. They also wanted me to tell them about my brother and my friends. They said my sister in law was pretty, and were totally excited that she was pregnant. They wanted me to speak Korean to them, and when I did they said "teacher you are cute!" which made me blush, and made them say "teacher your face is red like your shirt!" All the classes I have taught this week max out at about twenty minutes of question asking, but this one went straight to the end, and when we were done, they all went "awwww." It honestly has me prety psyched, cause that was the last class I have during the week, and they will probably be my favorite. The energy of that group of girls is good, so we can turn that into some good energy for learning which will in turn help them to have a positive view of the English language and perhaps study it further. I would be so excited if some of my students eventually made a trip to America and I got to see them. Some talk about how they have relatives in America, and one even had a sister in Dallas who was 22. I tried asking what school she went to, but that conversation got lost in translation.
I met a cool cat last night, but I can not for the life of me remember his name. He was the first Korean my age that I have had a conversation with that wasn't tied to my school or the EPIK program. He asked my age in Korean and began laughing when I stated my age as "i-ship-pal" (twenty eight). Apparently the emphasis I was using made it sound like I was saying "Two. Fuck you!" and he laughed for a good five or ten minutes at my mistake. In fact, I am laughing right now just thinking about the horror my co-teachers must have had as I was saying it to the students, because I have probably said that exact phrase maybe fifteen times already this week. Not a single person corrected me though, so it can't have been that bad. He is an actor, and we tried having a conversation about acting, but that didn't get very far before our communication broke down. Super nice guy though, and I think if he is around for awhile that me and him will get along famously.
Wish me luck on my adventure tomorrow, and let me know how you all are doing on facebook and such. I love hearing from former students and old friends, because my family is so boring :) kidding... kidding... I miss them the most of all. Heres a little K-pop for you: proving that even in a highly confucian culture, you can still get away with looking like this.
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