(no subject)
So my life has been relatively amusing the last couple of days. On Saturday, I went to Seoul because I was in desperate need of native-English speaking company and non-Korean food. I spent most of the day shopping, and I bought a bunch of stuff: some new clothes, a couple of books, new headphones, and some CDs. I even found some Jelly Bellys at an import store.
Then I met up with some guy that I had met on a forum for Korean teachers. We had been talking for a while now, since before he was even in Korea. He and I went to a Mexican restaurant, and then thought we would hit a bar or club. He had, in the past, confessed to me that while he had only dated girls before, he was sort of interested in men, so I thought it would be good fun to go to a gay bar. I'm not tremendously familiar with Seoul, so after a little exploring, we located "Homo Hill," and ended up in a super camp gay club called "Why not?" located across from the straight-forwardly named "Queen." We met an awesome Korean guy there who introduced us around on the scene. He wasn't into my friend: he told me that he only liked older guys, and he thinks that Dick Cheney and Anthony Hopkins are really hot.
Anyway, while my friend (somewhat desperately) tried hitting on every other guy in the bar, I just did my thing and circulated around the club. Apparently, gay guys are universally flamboyant and campy, yet unbelievably welcoming and friendly. Being the only foreign girl at the bar, I was a hit and was frequently right in the middle of a gay man sandwich on the dance floor. At one point, as I was dirty dancing with a ridiculously gay guy in white leather pants, I noticed that my friend was no longer in the club. I assumed he either finally found a man or went home. Either way, I was capable of taking care of myself and continued to get my groove on. Shortly after, he reappeared, came up to me and kissed me on the cheek and said, "Thank you for making me come here!!" He then proceeded to tell me that he had uh...gotten intimate with some guy in an alley. Always one to be supportive, I gave him the thumbs up and kept on keeping on.
After a while, we decided to head out, and since the subways were closed, I agreed to share a motel room with him. In Korea, you can snag a room in a love motel (popular with hookers, people randomly hooking up, and cheap travelers) for about 25 dollars. So we got a cheap room, not more than a closet with a bed and a bathroom. We just wanted to catch a few hours of sleep before the subway started running again, and I had to catch a bus back home. When he got into the room, he asked me if I wanted to cuddle. Uh...creepy. Maybe if he was full-throttle gay, but I was not about to trust this newly-minted gay man. I politely declined. Then he asked if we could make out, as if I would agree to that but not to cuddling. He then proceeded to moan about the fact that he thought that he and I were going to hook up that night, which I found odd being that he had just done the nasty with a random gay dude in the alley. Again, I told him to fuck off, in the nicest way possible. So as I was trying to get some shut-eye, he started to tell me all of the hot deets about him and his fella. He can be gay as a picnic basket for all I care, but seriously, I was trying to sleep. Finally, he shut up. In the morning, he asked again if we could cuddle. And make out. And if he could see my boobs. I have the sneaking suspicion that I will not be meeting up with him again next time I go to Seoul. Oh, and I would like to point out that I was at no point seriously concerned about my safety, as he was a mere wisp of a man and too much of a chicken to initiate anything on his own.
Work was also funny today.
First, I was doing really simple riddles about jobs with one of my elementary classes. Things like "I help sick people. Who am I?" (A doctor!) After providing a few examples, I asked my students to come up with their own. One of my boys said, "I have a very dangerous job." The other students guessed things like construction worker, zookeeper, but they were wrong. "I also work with things that explode. Who am I?" he went on. The kids were stumped. A scientist, maybe? Someone in the army? Finally, we gave up, and I asked him what the answer was. "A TERRORIST!" he exclaimed.
In a later class I have this one kid, Anthony, who always leans back on his chair, and I'm always warning him that one of these days he's going to fall over backwards and crack open his head (that's such a mom thing to say). Today he wouldn't stop doing it, so I decided to give him a checkmark. (I have a three checkmark policy...three strikes and you're out type thing.) So I wrote his name and a checkmark in red marker on the white board. I forgot that in Korea there is a superstition that if you write someone's name in red, they will die. One of my students, Andy, was sort of upset by the fact that I wrote Anthony's name in red, and reminded me of the superstition. Anthony told me it was no big deal, he didn't care. A few minutes later, I had my back to the class for a moment, when I heard a tremendous CRASH!!! Anthony had fallen backwards quite spectacularly, taking his chair, bag, and half of the desk with him. Andy turned to me and said, "SEE? YOU ALMOST KILLED HIM!" (He was perfectly fine, by the way.)
In yet another class, we were going over introducing oneself. These are elementary aged kids, but with a very very low level of English, and they didn't know their English names very well yet. So we're going around the room, and I'm helping them spell their names, pronounce it, and then introduce themselves. One kid, Lucas, kept calling himself "Locket," and he just decided to roll with it. I kept forgetting another student's name (Henry), and so I called him "Harry Potter" once, because he does look a bit like a Korean Harry Potter. He loved it. So now I have a class with students named Harry Potter and Locket.
And in my last class of the day, I decided that I was going to introduce them to American urban legends/ghost stories. Bloody Mary, the ghostly hitchhiker, the killer with the hook for the hand, and all of that. We wanted to set the mood, but if we turned off the lights, it was too dark to read anything, so we all huddled around the computer monitor and used that for light. Sort of a modern day campfire, I guess. At first I started off tame, because I didn't want to scare them terribly or anything, but they were complaining that the stories weren't scary enough. So I moved on to bigger, badder ghost stories, and looked a couple up online, and they were freaked out as all hell. I can only imagine what we looked like, huddled in the dark around a computer talking about ghosts. Sometimes I am amazed by what I can get away with at work.
Then I met up with some guy that I had met on a forum for Korean teachers. We had been talking for a while now, since before he was even in Korea. He and I went to a Mexican restaurant, and then thought we would hit a bar or club. He had, in the past, confessed to me that while he had only dated girls before, he was sort of interested in men, so I thought it would be good fun to go to a gay bar. I'm not tremendously familiar with Seoul, so after a little exploring, we located "Homo Hill," and ended up in a super camp gay club called "Why not?" located across from the straight-forwardly named "Queen." We met an awesome Korean guy there who introduced us around on the scene. He wasn't into my friend: he told me that he only liked older guys, and he thinks that Dick Cheney and Anthony Hopkins are really hot.
Anyway, while my friend (somewhat desperately) tried hitting on every other guy in the bar, I just did my thing and circulated around the club. Apparently, gay guys are universally flamboyant and campy, yet unbelievably welcoming and friendly. Being the only foreign girl at the bar, I was a hit and was frequently right in the middle of a gay man sandwich on the dance floor. At one point, as I was dirty dancing with a ridiculously gay guy in white leather pants, I noticed that my friend was no longer in the club. I assumed he either finally found a man or went home. Either way, I was capable of taking care of myself and continued to get my groove on. Shortly after, he reappeared, came up to me and kissed me on the cheek and said, "Thank you for making me come here!!" He then proceeded to tell me that he had uh...gotten intimate with some guy in an alley. Always one to be supportive, I gave him the thumbs up and kept on keeping on.
After a while, we decided to head out, and since the subways were closed, I agreed to share a motel room with him. In Korea, you can snag a room in a love motel (popular with hookers, people randomly hooking up, and cheap travelers) for about 25 dollars. So we got a cheap room, not more than a closet with a bed and a bathroom. We just wanted to catch a few hours of sleep before the subway started running again, and I had to catch a bus back home. When he got into the room, he asked me if I wanted to cuddle. Uh...creepy. Maybe if he was full-throttle gay, but I was not about to trust this newly-minted gay man. I politely declined. Then he asked if we could make out, as if I would agree to that but not to cuddling. He then proceeded to moan about the fact that he thought that he and I were going to hook up that night, which I found odd being that he had just done the nasty with a random gay dude in the alley. Again, I told him to fuck off, in the nicest way possible. So as I was trying to get some shut-eye, he started to tell me all of the hot deets about him and his fella. He can be gay as a picnic basket for all I care, but seriously, I was trying to sleep. Finally, he shut up. In the morning, he asked again if we could cuddle. And make out. And if he could see my boobs. I have the sneaking suspicion that I will not be meeting up with him again next time I go to Seoul. Oh, and I would like to point out that I was at no point seriously concerned about my safety, as he was a mere wisp of a man and too much of a chicken to initiate anything on his own.
Work was also funny today.
First, I was doing really simple riddles about jobs with one of my elementary classes. Things like "I help sick people. Who am I?" (A doctor!) After providing a few examples, I asked my students to come up with their own. One of my boys said, "I have a very dangerous job." The other students guessed things like construction worker, zookeeper, but they were wrong. "I also work with things that explode. Who am I?" he went on. The kids were stumped. A scientist, maybe? Someone in the army? Finally, we gave up, and I asked him what the answer was. "A TERRORIST!" he exclaimed.
In a later class I have this one kid, Anthony, who always leans back on his chair, and I'm always warning him that one of these days he's going to fall over backwards and crack open his head (that's such a mom thing to say). Today he wouldn't stop doing it, so I decided to give him a checkmark. (I have a three checkmark policy...three strikes and you're out type thing.) So I wrote his name and a checkmark in red marker on the white board. I forgot that in Korea there is a superstition that if you write someone's name in red, they will die. One of my students, Andy, was sort of upset by the fact that I wrote Anthony's name in red, and reminded me of the superstition. Anthony told me it was no big deal, he didn't care. A few minutes later, I had my back to the class for a moment, when I heard a tremendous CRASH!!! Anthony had fallen backwards quite spectacularly, taking his chair, bag, and half of the desk with him. Andy turned to me and said, "SEE? YOU ALMOST KILLED HIM!" (He was perfectly fine, by the way.)
In yet another class, we were going over introducing oneself. These are elementary aged kids, but with a very very low level of English, and they didn't know their English names very well yet. So we're going around the room, and I'm helping them spell their names, pronounce it, and then introduce themselves. One kid, Lucas, kept calling himself "Locket," and he just decided to roll with it. I kept forgetting another student's name (Henry), and so I called him "Harry Potter" once, because he does look a bit like a Korean Harry Potter. He loved it. So now I have a class with students named Harry Potter and Locket.
And in my last class of the day, I decided that I was going to introduce them to American urban legends/ghost stories. Bloody Mary, the ghostly hitchhiker, the killer with the hook for the hand, and all of that. We wanted to set the mood, but if we turned off the lights, it was too dark to read anything, so we all huddled around the computer monitor and used that for light. Sort of a modern day campfire, I guess. At first I started off tame, because I didn't want to scare them terribly or anything, but they were complaining that the stories weren't scary enough. So I moved on to bigger, badder ghost stories, and looked a couple up online, and they were freaked out as all hell. I can only imagine what we looked like, huddled in the dark around a computer talking about ghosts. Sometimes I am amazed by what I can get away with at work.