bluerosefairy

HOME! God, I could get all cliche-y and talk about "you don't know what you've got till it's gone" and "who says you can't go home?" but the truth is, I really, really am glad to be home. I was so happy to see my parents (who came to pick me up at the airport and my mother thought nothing of holding up an entire line of people to hug me when I got through customs). I forgot how beyond-ridiculously-comfortable my bed is (especially when one has been sleeping on mattresses that resemble plywood for a year) and seeing street signs all in English is really freaking weird. Also, no motorcycles.

So yes, it's lovely to be home. Now, to tackle unpacking.

Glorious Leader does not love Facebook, so you get all my crappy updates on here.

Currently, I am in the hostel, listening to fifteen-to-twenty drunk Aussies butcher "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" for free drinks. I already got my free beer, bitches - leading a round of "Up on the Housetop" with the girl from New Zealand in the bunk next to me. The Indian guy we met does a decent "Jingle Bells", too.

Much love, guys. Home in two days.

Ohgod ohgod ohgod.

T minus 5 hours and counting. I have my e-ticket and my visa and my passport and my photos, but the stupid web-checkin for Vietnam Airlines is not working. I really, really want to have my boarding pass because it'd maybe stop me from panicking that I'm going to miss the flight.

And I have the bus to Incheon to catch, by myself, with three things of luggage at 3:30 am in fucking Siji, which has the Worst Taxi Drivers in the World. They are insufferable bastards who refuse to drive foreigners most of the time, and bitch at you for wanting a cab from Sinmae down to the Foreigner Ghetto, which is ONLY seven blocks. I can't imagine why you wouldn't want to walk that with Emart bags or something.

And the bus info was only in Korean, so I had to have Jenny get me departure times and prices, and I am still kind of worrying that the bus is going to go right by and not pick me up, or that I'll be on the wrong side of the street.

So yes. Mild levels of panicking going on. Leaving home was not this stressful, I swear to God. Of course, leaving home didn't involve me dealing with everything from the visas to money to packing to transportation by myself.

I can haz a recrudescence!

I have hijacked her pajama pants and her ethernet, but I can haz. We hauled ass around Seoul - and managed to get ourselves from Seoul Station to Myeong-dong without running into a subway stop along the way. We had yummy Mexican food and margaritas at On the Border, and spent most of dinner talking CM, our crazy students, and what we missed/are looking forward to about home in the States. We headed to a club in Hongik (the same area, you'll recall, we holed up the last time we were in Seoul), and it was totally one of the best times I've had in a long time.

The first club we hit was crappy and crowded way beyond its capacity. The second one, though, was fabulous - good drinks (and this cute Aussie boy with dreads and a bunch of chains on bought me a jack and coke), good crowd, amazing bands. I have now seen Korean punk rock performed live, and the last band of the night was an American cover band. Sounded sort of like Green Day, and they covered CCR, Neil Young, the Kinks, Jimi Hendrix (oh my GOD, I have never heard a better cover of "Fire", and I have never sung along so loudly), and Black Sabbath. The crowd went nuts, and I spent a good two hours in a half-mosh pit half dance floor, booty-shaking like there was no tomorrow.

We were about to hop in a cab home (with an awesome sausage-type thing I bought from a street vendor) when the driver started to get totally skeezy and demand 30.000 won to go from Hongik to Kongkuk, in advance, with the meter starting at 3,000 instead of 2,200. We got out, walked a block, and then got a cab for 18.000, with the meter starting where it should start. Along the way, Em was so tired, while she was talking about a CM story she's thinking of, apparently, Reid is capable of "Morgasms". This does not even take into account the dramatic reading she performed of a certain kinkmeme story when we got back to her apartment.

Which is where we currently are. She is watching S1 Criminal Minds and cooing over baby!Hotch and Reid's slicked-back hair and grandpa sweaters while I am catching up on LJ and reciting macros at her. It is stupid o'clock, though, so I really should crash soonish.

*drags self out of the depths of the internets*

Hello, gang. Been slightly-MIA due to extreme lack of computer and various work-related stuff. Starting with the fact that absolutely no one besides my two co-teachers (Jim and Chris) and I knew I was leaving in December. I booked my post-Korea vacation last week (a week in Vietnam! I am SO PSYCHED!) and since my return flight is included in my contract, I wanted to arrange for it to be included in my last paycheck. Imagine my shock - and my director and AD's shock - when I found out that James (the hiring director, who isn't based out of Siji anymore; he's down in Bongduk at another SEI branch) never told anyone that I was only working a four-month contract.

So there was a bit of a kerfluffle, and I've been ass-deep in paperwork, writing down class procedure and contact info and move-out dates and it's kind of hitting me that oh holy god, I'm going home in less than two months. It's a bit terrifying, to be honest, because I've gotten kind of autopilot-y, working and hanging out with the KTs and Jim and Chris and PCbanging on weekends and being really lazy, and it's almost been kind of a year-long vacation. And now I have to go home, which, don't get me wrong, I'm really excited for because I miss my parents and my friends and family. But I have to get a job back home, and an apartment, and it's just going to be weird.

And yes, one of the first things I intend on doing is to eat large quantities of all the food I've been missing (chicken parm sandwiches! real pizza! Chinese food! turkey! french fries!). I'll probably gain back all the weight I've lost in a week. Oh well, totally worth it.

Also - HI to all of the new friends from various new fannish loves. I promise I'm mildly entertaining when I have actual computer access on a regular basis.

I hate my computer. I had a huge-ass entry typed up, all laid out in a coherent manner, and then my mousepad freezes up again (that's the latest fun thing my laptop has decided to do to me) and causes my computer to reboot, and I lost the entire damn thing. Let's hope I can recreate it.

( You'll go home, I'll stay here, seasons keep on marching . . . )

So yes, doing better. Further apologies for the drive-by flailage and disappearing. Four months and counting.

Oh, I just adore Korean methods of communication.

Long story short, the school I teach at was scheduled to close at the end of this week (which I didn't find out until LAST week), and today I come in to find out that no, we're not closing because the director's sister-in-law has decided to try her hand running the school. So all the panic I was going through with possible plane tickets/packing for home, and then interviewing at three different schools (NONE of which I'd have to teach kindergarden at) is all useless. We're still going to be open after vacation. I still have five months of kindergarden and grade-schoolers left.

What pisses me off isn't just the horrific lack of communication, it's the complete and utter idiocy of the people I work for. They only opened the school because Ally, the wife, wanted to. Enoch, the actual director, has no experience running a school, and to be fair, he's done a decent job. But he quite clearly does not want to be in this business, and he's only continuing because he doesn't want to disappoint his wife, or Mommy and Daddy, who are paying for all this. He was a week away from closing before, and then this woman named Anne who he and Ally are friends with stepped in. She lasted a week. Now he was ready to close again and suddenly Cleo, his SIL, is going to single-handedly run the school? With just as little experience as he's got?

God, I was just about to sign a new contract with another school to teach conversation and writing to HIGH-SCHOOLERS. No more babysitting. No more whining. No more students who quite clearly do not want to be there and yet we have to bend over backward to please their parents. No more grading recordings and book reports that they half-ass ANYWAY. No more kids who can barely speak Korean, let alone English.

I'd gotten my hopes up SO much. I was excited to teach for the first time in four months. I was doing lesson plans because I wanted to. I was putting together writing projects (blogs! one-act plays! short-story collections!). And I can't use any of those ideas for my current students, because none of them are anywhere near that level and those that are are maybe one or two students out of a class of four more who can't. I have to go back to unit assessments, weekly spelling tests, and did I mention the fucking recordings? (Most. Useless. Teaching Method. EVER.)

And I'll be by myself doing it, too. Brett's got maneuvering room. He's staying in Korea longer than a year. He has a girlfriend with a school of her own. He can afford to break his contract and walk away and say "fuck this noise, I'm going to teach for someone who knows how to run a school". I can't. Everything I've got here is tied into the school I'm at, for a year. And I know I'm dwelling on the negatives, I know I'm bitching about a situation I can do nothing about, but dammit, I wish I had more of a say in what the hell was going on with my life.

Meme snagged from evilgmbethy who is awesome.

( And if someone tries to make me/I will simply run away . . . )

This one was totally the "let's remind the audience that Ray's not a total wanker" one. Which I do appreciate.

( Not me, I never lost control . . . )

Went to Seoul on Tuesday. OMG LOVE. If I ever decide to come back to Korea after this year, I'm going to teach in Seoul. It's almost exactly like New York - to the point where I mastered the subway system after five minutes and some translation from Jenna.

To put it in geeky English major terms -

Daegu : Philadelphia :: Seoul : NYC.

Updated my wordpress blog (the List of Things I'm Learning in Korea), if anyone is at all interested in checking it out.

You can find it here.

Ugh. Sleeeeeep. Also, NyQuil, as have caught the Korean Death Flu. Again.

How goes it, gang?

We’ve just started our winter break schedule - all the kids are off from their regular schools for an entire month and need to be kept occupied, so we’ve got morning classes in addition to our usual afternoon classes. So I’ve been really ridiculously tired, crashing into bed every night when I get home from work. I haven’t been killed by the kindergardeners yet, which is probably a good sign. When they’re engaged in what we’re doing and not wrestling each other all over the classroom or screaming their heads off, I like them quite a bit. But when James and Fred are engaged in a kickfight, Emily and Nicole are coloring on the table, Kelly and Elly and Alice are chattering about what I think might be a television show, and Mark and Donna are the only ones paying attention, it’s insane.

Then I have some additional one-on-one classes, with my older students. Princess Flora is my 10 am girl, and I’m getting pretty good results when I dispense with the board-writing and recitation and let her braid my hair and play with my bracelets during the lesson. She read an entire two pages with only one mistake (on the word “university”, which would stump most English-speaking students, let alone a Korean second-grader) yesterday, so I’m hoping to continue that this week. My 11 am gang are Susie (fourth grader, and pretty smart when she stops being so shy and opens her mouth), Steven (who it is like pulling teeth to get him to even respond, let alone speak and comprehend), and Crystal (who is one of my very favorites and is reading Harry Potter in Korean to me after lessons). I also get Daisy (one of my very-awesome sixth-graders) at 7 pm one day a week for listening comp, which is awesome because it’s music-based, and I let her listen to examples of the music styles the book discusses.

I’m also exploring the city more - been to Beomeo (the nearest subway stop, which is like, six blocks from my house) and up near Suseong Lake. Still haven’t found the Thai place, but I’ve found three more Italian places and a really, really good Japanese place. And to Steve’s everlasting shock when I IMed him about it, I ate an entire roll of sushi and liked it. \o/

The laptop gods hate me. The power cord on my laptop - without which it has no power, because the battery cannot get charged - is broken. The wires needed to power it are visibly disconnected within the cord itself, and while I could easily order the lower section of the cord from Toshiba, the problem is in the upper cord.

So, just as I have phone and internet - I have no laptop. That means no music, television, movies, or way to write that doesn't involve pencil and paper. On Christmas. I am in a PC Park down the street from my apartment to post this, and I think I may have just told the counter girl to "say hello to the noodle shop" instead of "thank you".

This is in addition to the shitty pasta I attempted to make for dinner last night. I think I'll have to give up on this cooking-in-Korea thing for a little bit and live off Pizza Hut like the typical Westerner.

I give up. *headdesks*

Greetings from South Korea, guys! I'm sorry it's taken this long to update, but I haven't had access to the internet (or, you know, in-toh-net) for more than an hour at a time since I got here.

But I did it! I made it here, in one piece, with all my luggage!

( Brett, how do you say this? Brett, how do I turn on my stove? Brett, why don't I have a shower? Brett, how do I dry my clothes? )

More later, gang, but Merry Solkwanukkahfestimas!

OH MY GOD YOU GUYS. I am doing this. I am leaving tomorrow morning for South Korea, where I will be motherfucking teaching. For a year. This has just hit me yesterday, while I was packing my three suitcases full of STUFF.

So, to focus myself on non-freakouty things, I made a mix (because, you know, I'm ME) suitable for traveling to foreign countries by yourself a week before Christmas.

( OH MY GOD: A Mix for Running Away to South Korea )

Apparently, I am leaving next Saturday, the 13th, for this whole South Korea thing. Anyone in the Philadelphia area is more than welcome to chill with me anytime between now and then. Stuff involving me not spending any money is REALLY appreciated, as I am both broke and need to save what little I have for Korea.

Hey gang!

So, this Korea thing? Totally happening, and happening at an alarming rate. I've got my passport, my documents needed for my E2 visa, and a job offer. There are specifics, but suffice it to say, I am being compensated fairly well for packing up to go live in Korea for a year and teach English at a private school (a really NICE private school - I've seen banks that look less clean and bright and modern than this school does). The apartment looks fantastic, and since it's smack in the middle of the city, I'll have some motivation to walk everywhere and get out.

I really can't thank recrudescence enough, for being beyond-supportive and answering all my questions about everything from how to deal with recaltrant kids to where Costco is and if I can buy decent Indian food in Daegu. *hugs her* I can't wait to do a weekend with her in either Daegu or Busan, where we will very likely end up just getting curry and holing up with Firefly and/or House.

I will be flying out fairly soon - after Thanksgiving, possibly the first or second week in December - so I've been frantically trying to get together everything I'll need and can take with me. Mom's shipping a ton of stuff over so I can have it when I get there, but I'm still having to buy new teaching clothes and household stuff. I'll need to buy more when I actually get there. I'm a little disappointed to be leaving before Christmas - I think it's hurting my parents more than me, really - but hopefully I can see everyone before I leave.

And speaking of Christmas, because I've seen it on everyone's journal and I'm a big giant sheep, I'm posting my holiday wishlist:

( Dear Buddha, please bring me a pony and a plastic bottle rocket and a . . . )

In Yuletide-related news, I know what I'm writing - I only match with my recipient in one fandom - but I'll be more comfortable in my assignment as soon as I rewatch the source canon. And um, if my recipient would post their "Dear Santa" letter. AUGH.