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korea update

well here it is, the private school (koreans call them 'hagwons') who i thought i'd parted ways with.. well the director and i had a little chat, and let me tell you: it pays to know korean in korea. mainly, you can talk business without there being a giant wall of 'i don't know what you're trying to say and how to express myself so that you will understand. and i'm also afraid to offend you or your culture but i have to stand up for myself.. but i don't know how to do that when we can't communicate etc. etc. etc.' between the two of you. basically it's cycles of this until the employee just decides it's too exhausting to keep bringing up issues that the hagwon director just really doesn't care about (a lot of times they do understand, but they play a little stupid to get you to just go away). what's that? problems at work? contract issues? we're holding your diploma hostage? working you overtime without compensation? welcome to korea bitch.

in the past week mine has bumped my pay up by baby increments until i finally said listen.. listen lady. ''i just do not have time for this (i do. i absolutely do.. i'm really not going anywhere), and if you tell me right now that you can't honor my contract, i just cannot stay here.'' she said ok we can do that, and i said ok now let's talk about this apartment situation (i live in a shoebox) and she said 'don't push it' and i said 'deal'.

so, we shook hands and then she moved in for a hug, but we were already shaking hands and i saw it was too late to save the situation from getting awkward. the only option was to bring her in and give her a quick man pat on the back and get out of there. i gave her two good pats, and she understood and did the same.

somewhere between number 5 and 6: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/hugs

then we tried to open the door at the same time for each other and it opened inward so after 10 seconds of shifting left and right and apologizing and hating my life i pulled it open and walked out to freedom.

looks like things are back on track OR.. or.. you could say the way things should have been 7 months ago. that this is how and where korea should have started. but hey what an adventure it's been right? i'll never forget the poch

it's Spring, that means cruising round Ptown, windows down Pixies blaring. this year will be different. this year i will drink soju and cruise down gangnam ave on a stolen scooter. god bless seoul

Pixies - Head On

yeah it's happening

alright..

it's blog time. it's mother f'ing blog time.

month 7 in the motherland, and is it safe to say things have really just gone to shit? is that safe to say? well ya know one minute you're kickin back in your teacher's chair, hour three of your daily four hr break, watching the Bears game on the English room projector while going to town on the tootsie rolls you bought for your kids, sitting pretty half a mile south of n. korea (in a pretty sweet place called Pocheon).

basically things are going just as planned.. exactly where you wanna be at this point in life.

that is unless you've planned ahead for things, like planning to not be in this exact situation. ever. but can you plan for that, really.. sometimes you just wake up and you're in north korea. am i right? life is weird like that. or you might say that it actually takes a delicate balance of poor planning and a lot of retard to engineer this kind of fate. but you know what, 4 Full hour long breaks. so i mean who really comes out on top?

i didn't come out on top, and by the time February rolled around (6 months in), i did the honorable thing and ran away. it was time to say goodbye to tanks on the daily commute, grandmas selling kim chi and underwear on my otherwise clean streets - if there's one thing i regret about leaving the Poch it's that i never cleaned up those streets. underwear peddlers. i don't want that. i don't like where it's coming from. i don't even wanna look at it in passing. i don't even wanna know that street underwear transactions are a thing.

And bowl haircuts (on the girls, on every girl in town. bowls all over the place. i was so turned on all the time everywhere. unreal). if there's one thing i learned about Pocheon girls it's that they know what you want.. and it's the bowl. yeah you're gonna get that bowl and you're GONNA LIKE IT YOU DOG. big bowls, little bowls, orange bowls, fat bowls (jk no one's fat in korea. FK's are a rarity).

Seoul

i left the Poch for greener pastures and made a triumphant return to my birthplace. my school was heartbroken, and on top of that over the past couple of months i had managed to become somewhat of a ROCK star in the Poch. yeah they knew i was the shit because i wasn't 'from' there. i was so f'ing awesome in those days.. hard to believe i left it all behind.

well... it's not that hard. the thing i forgot to mention about Pocheon is that it's actually a total SHITHOLE without a single redeemable quality about it that no one should ever go anywhere near.. there's no reason for it; it is unjustifiable. it's amazing i spent more than 20 minutes in the Poch and anyone out there who happens upon this and is considering signing up for the EPIK program and they tell you you've been placed in Pocheon DON'T.. you fucking do it. walk away forget about it. that's the best advice i can give anyone.

anyway i escaped n. korea and got to Seoul a month ago, and have been working for a private English academy in Gangnam. Gangnam's a good place, and my friends/family are also located out here which is good for everyone. So how did it all go wrong so quickly? Long story short my employer just went ahead and took a giant S on the contract i signed, and decided there would be no way for them to uphold their end of the bargain. yup, they just took that contract of mine and just sharted all over it. i tried to call their bluff and told them you either fix this thing or i walk. talk about badass. yeah i felt real good calling all the shots and having them scared out of their wits. as i waited like a total BA for them to cave and begin offering me billions and billions of won to stay it became increasingly clear that they were not bluffing, and that i would soon be unemployed.

at this point i can pull a george costanza and head back to Poch, pretend i hadn't disappeared from the school for a month and just go right back to work. i think if i worked diligently enough, and deflected all questions regarding what the fuck i was doing there and why i was still in korea, i could really work my way back into their hearts. it probably didn't help that on the way out of the Poch i stuck my head out the car window and verbally cursed everything and everyone i'd met there forever. what an awkward homecoming that would be.

so things are really shaking up which is awesome. being potentially unemployed just sounds like a great adventure, and i think i'm ready. i've probably prepared my whole life for this right? english majors? right? Fuck.

that's it. that's the blog. idk how it works, maybe everyone in korea has a blog and we all friend each other? sounds pretty gay... let's make it happen. friend of mine told me you do a blog to keep record of the good times you have in korea... my only hope is people will forgive me for this.

So sorry