bad news korea

1. on saturday, the ex-president hurled himself off a mountain,
reportedly in the face off the very real danger of going to jail for a financial scandal.
the shrines have only gotten bigger. near the main square of my town are a few tents and many candles and christian churchy music and guard people in suits and incense and a giant picture of roh moo-hyun, a film with him playing guitar etc., and most impressively, lines branching all over with so many yellow pieces of paper with messages written on them flapping in the breeze. people seem to be sad about the death, but still going about their lives as normal. like my students all went to the movies etc. on the weekend. my korean coworker said he thought the conservatives who are currently in power indirectly caused the death by going after their old enemy so intensely. “i don’t know much about politics, but i do know that it can get so dirty,” he said. personally, i wonder if he wasn’t just killed! there’s a suicide note, but it coulda been forged! maybe that’s the american love of conspiracy theories sneakin in though because koreans seem to not have any doubts it was suicide.

2. the swine flu has arrived and 50 FOREIGN teachers have been quarantined in a seoul hospital for at least 14 days. a teacher from america carried the flu and may have infected all the other teachers at the orientation training. a local branch of this big chain even closed its doors over the flu. some friends of friends in a nearby town are on lockdown and can’t go anywhere except work and home. not that schools aren’t to germs as cancun is to college students during spring break. partyyyyyyy! i swear, we teachers are gonna be the first to bite it as the non-handwashing kids drink out of our bottles when we aren’t looking, cough into our faces, and stuff shrimp chips from their pockets into our mouths. and when we teachers eat dinner together, we all dig our chopsticks into the same saucy side dishes. so one teacher goes down, we all go down. not to make my readers worry, but ahhhhh!

3. i live really close to north korea. like reeeeeeeeally close. i could probably bike there in a couple of hours. and now they’re testing nuclear weapons and shooting off missiles.

WHATTTTTTTTTTTTTTT IS GOIIIINGGGGGG ONNNNNNNNNNNNN!?!??!?!?!?

claire smaaaashhhh!!!!!!!

ah, running around with specific shopping goals in korea is ridiculously frustrating.
i got these new running shoes from nike because the heel cushion thing of my old ones herniated.
so the new shoes are really comfortable and fast and i ran my fasted 5 k ever!!! (which was not the fast, but it was the shoessss!!!)
ok, so. so. i found out the shoes are shoes of the FUTURE!
they have computers in them.
and you can wear a special watch with a tiny usb drive that will record all your run stats so you can upload it onto this sweet nike+ running site.
so, i wanted to get the watch thing and ended up spending four hours on a wild freakin goose chase through seoul, which eventually ended with a guy at the big nike store telling me they don’t even sell the watch things in korea. maybe in like four months. so why did the nike store give me the nike+ pamphlet!?
so i went to three nike stores and two apple stores (they kept sending me from one to the other) all for naught. and i was sooooo psyched!
should i just give in and get an ipod? the nanos are compatible with the technology :/
i have a korean mp3 player but it’s not that awesome and i have to manually delete EVERY SONG if i want to delete music to add new stuff. i guess i don’t really need to use my computerized shoes like that, but it seemed soooo cool!

works?

taxes are cool

sometimes i’m amazed by my favorite free things.
like libraries and parks.
how are these wonders possible?
can you imagine if other things were free just because we deemed them necessary for society?
like a hats library? check out a fancy hat for two weeks?
i mean, yes, that would be disgusting, but i think you know what i mean.
after reading THE ROAD, i’ve been thinking about all that society gives me
and how without government funding, i would be in deeeeep trouble.
like i would have to take taxis to go to seoul and my job might not even exist without the public schools doing a crap job of english teaching.
and there’d be no sidewalks or water in the pipes and and and so many problems!!!
in korea, you can rent comic books, which totally blows my mind, but i guess why not?
what do you think should be a public service?
what is your favorite free thing? (don’t say love or something intangible!!!)

middle school dreams

i told my favorite (shhh, don’t tell the others!!) middle school class that they could have a party on the final day of the semester.

they said they wanted a
COOKIE PARTY.

like everyone brings in different kinds of cookies.
and we just all eat 15 cookies.

all i could think of was

and i felt a bit strange because i got the five second cookie party song stuck in my head. i think i may be the lone sarah silverman fan in korea.

wah wah

middle-aged men,

please stop fighting outside my building at 5 am.
why so much shouting?
can’t you just shove each other and pull a knife or something so someone gets freaked and fight is over?
like we do?

and a few hours ago it was a couple of ladies for about half an hour. they were saying the korean equivalent of F U!!! a lot and the one woman was shrieking a lot. i also heard sounds like patio furniture being thrown against walls.

i’m starting to come to terms with the idea that i will never ever be free from auditory disturbances in the middle of the night.

but i have to enter grades tomorrowwwww. and i already stayed at work until 1:30 am today to be HALFWAY finished, wahhhhhh. wah wah wah.

haha, again the w&m!

tom brokaw’s commencement speech:

And to the women of the class of 2009, be forewarned:
These boys sitting beside you who are about to become men will take their inner boy-and their baseball caps and their sports teams-with them and they will never completely understand you.

To the male members of this class, remember this:
These girls beside you who will become women will continue to spend what you believe is an inordinate amount of time and money on their hair and on their shoes. And guys, I promise you, you will continue to underestimate their abilities and their ambitions-and that’s just the way they want it.

i don’t know how the boys felt about being gently told they’re all into sports (at wm!?) and that they’ll always be immature and unable to really relate to women.
but for the girls part? (also aren’t you already men and women when you graduate? no?) but really tom? i want my abilities and ambitions underestimated by men?
MY BIG W+M DREAM
also: i know for a fact that i spend less time on my hair than MANY boys. and i think i spent $50 TOTAL on hair and shoes this year. i don’t think all my fellow w+m nerdlets would put hair and shoes at the top of the priorities list. granted, i will spend a lot of money on shoes when i have to buy new running shoes since mine got busted on the treadmill of doom(!!!!) today, the controls shut off and the screen darkened while i was running reeeeally fast and i had to do this intense little acrobatic maneuver to jump off at top speed full steam ahead treadmill mode. anyway, i don’t think running shoes are the kinds of shoes brokaw has in mind. he also said that we wouldn’t get an email alert when we fell in love? really? because that’s what happened to me before!

weekend end

so friday was teachers’ day and i got a lot of vitamin c.
it tastes/looks like a mixture between tang and pixie sticks.
i also got some chicklet looking chocolate in a can.
and a bracelet made of a magic jewel and grass.
it was a pretty banner day at the office.

but the rain yesterday was a pain
it was makin me insane
and feeling a kind of drain.
but now i think that will wane.

it’s nice outside. i.e. not raining RIGHT NOW.
i could go to seoul and get some cheapy beads because i’m big on the earring making lately.
there’s this HUUUUUGE craft warehouse that is full of cute korean ladies and their crafty materials booths.
there’s a bead FLOOR.
this place is the size of like four costcos put together. it is big big big.

on another note, i’m really into the song “sorry sorry” right now.
check out these korean airline employees doing their own version of the vid!
oh, those crazy office hijinks!

my korean coworker (the one who studied art and wants to be a jazz singer and a flight attendant) is taking dance classes to learn all the pop song choreography.
i really like that.
and did you hear w&m got in the guinness book for “most people simultaneously performing thriller”??? omgeeeeeee! my alma mater is soooo cool! i mean dorky, but in the BEST WAY possible. go to about 3:50 in the video to just see the dance (the rest is interviews).

also, if i haven’t already hyped this to you,

http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/2287740?view=reviews

i haven’t been updating because

i’m happy!
hehe, jkjk.

i’ve just been reading and going outside a lot lately.
ya know, it’s spring!
and the good part of living in a wasteland of grays and browns
is that there are no allergies in this dead space!

i’ve been keeping busy on weekends and doing some cool things, so i DO have things to blog about, but i forget to blog and then it’s too laaaaaate!
and i don’t really feel like a traveller or visitor or anymore, so i’m not sure what direction this blog should take! do you wanna keep hearing more about the uniquely KOREAN experience? i’m so used to WEIRD korean things now that i don’t even mentally note them. would you like more pictures? book or music reviews? more stuff about teaching? anything and everything?

what do you like reading about most?
actually, here’s a poll!!!