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!?!??!?!?!?
