Summer's Here, and the Time Is Right

아, 덥다! Summer in this part of Korea is merciless, as far as the weather is concerned. I've been running the A/C 24/7 at home and can't wait to see the electric bill at the end of the month. The good news is we're doing summer camps at school, so I only have to be at school for half a day (or less) and we get to do more fun, one-on-one stuff with the limited number of students I'm working with. I haven't had the chance to do any traveling yet, except for a continuing education conference for the teachers at my school, and in the interest of not biting the hand that feeds me I'm not sure how much I should say specifically about that. I guess I'll say this: 1) Generally speaking it's good not to get blind drunk at workplace events, but honestly it's just not as fun. (I chose not to maximize my fun on this trip. Wouldn't have been prudent.) 2) In the United States, it's young people who tend to be the most irresponsible on trips, because they don't fear the consequences and don't feel a need to fear for their reputations. In Korea, for mostly the same reasons, it's the oldest, most important people who act that way. Clearly I have ventured to the other side of the looking glass here.

Speaking of that, the Olympics are going right now and the coverage is a bit disorienting over here. Judging from television you would think that the only events that are happening are the ones that Koreans are winning gold medals in, and those tend to be the almost exact opposite events from the ones that get attention in the US - namely, things like badminton, fencing, archery, judo, etc.. I'm not sure if they even bother covering the events that Koreans are good at but don't win. My parents were telling me that they saw an extremely close match between the US and Korean women's volleyball teams, which the US ended up winning, but I don't remember hearing anything about it here, even though volleyball is a fairly popular sport here. I guess one nice side effect is that they're showing a lot of women's athletic competitions. (Korean women kick ass if you give them half a chance.) One of my South African friends here keeps telling he how much she hates how Koreans seem to insist on acting like Korea is the best place in the world an no other country could be better, even though many of them haven't ever been to any other countries. "Doesn't every country act like that?" I say, quite American-ly. 'Not South Africa," she replies. Then again I haven't really been paying a lot of attention to the Olympic coverage. I'm all for celebrating the achievements of great athletes - in moderation - but something about all the nationalist pomp-and-circumstance surrounding the Olympics doesn't sit well with me, especially in those events that come down to a couple hundredths of a second or a slight stumble on a landing from some hapless teenager. I mean really, aren't we all winners under modern globalized liberal capitalism? (Heh. Hah hah. Oh, ha ha heh ha hah.)

Oh, by the way, the industry here may be pushing that new Wonder Girls song, but this is definitely Korea's official summer jam:



I decided not to continue Korean classes at the YMCA this summer out of general frustration with my lack of progress and the realization that there's no way that I'm going to be anywhere near fluent - or even conversant, really - by the time I leave here. Instead I bought an acoustic guitar, which I'll probably sell when I leave. Now, instead of being frustrated with my lack of eloquence and ability with Korean, I can get pissed off at my inchoate guitar-playing. I've only broken one string so far in a fit of frustration, but give it time. (By the way, never buy off-brand Korean guitar strings, they sound like shit. Stick with the D'Addarios, trust me.) I'm still doing the Korean lessons with the volunteer group I ran into, though, but primarily because I like the people there. It'll be a hard choice in fall when I decide whether to double-down and try one of the more intensive classes at the YMCA in order to try to get the most out of my time here, or to acknowledge reality and just completely give up. Honestly I'm just not motivated to learn Korean, and as a wise man (or maybe just my dad, but to be fair he's a pretty craft fellow) once said, there's no point throwing good money after bad. So now that I can say, "My Korean isn't very good," (Hangukeoreul jal meothaeyo), "I'm sorry but I didn't understand you," (Mianhajiman, mollasseoyo) and "Korean is too difficult," (Hangukeoneun nomu aryeoweoyo), I don't see a lot of practical reasons to continue my studies. (I tried out the last of those three phrases above on some Korean co-workers and they didn't seem too pleased. I think their precise words were, "You should study more." How Korean.) But pretty much all the Koreans friends I have here speak English to some degree (by necessity, given my Korean language abilities, perhaps) and I don't get a lot of chances to chat in Korean or listen to conversations that I understand so I don't have a lot of opportunities to absorb more of the language. Most of the time when people try to speak to me in Korean it still sounds like gobbledygook.  (Which in Korean would be spelled 가불디국 - Google Translate has no translation but suggests "the fire, the United States" as a possible translation of that phrase as a typo.)

Speaking of guitars, trying to learn how to play correctly after years of mashing out barre chords on and off is fun, but I'm not discovering a lot of natural ability. Part of the problem is probably that the book of guitar exercises I bought at the same time as the guitar seems to be designed mostly for electric guitar, so on a cheap steel-string acoustic certain things in the book are impossible (full-step bends - not gonna happen), some things are near impossible (playing past the 15th fret) and just about everything other than strumming chords and alternate picking is more difficult. Also I think I messed up the action by screwing around with alternate tunings. Can anyone show me how to adjust a truss rod? My hope is that I'll undergo a Harrison Bergeron-like transformation once I get my hands on an electric guitar again. My lack of skill still hasn't stopped me from internet window-shopping for more expensive new gear in my spare time, of course, which is the danger inherent in almost any hobby. I mean, both of the electrics I own right now, which are in storage in the US, are hollow or semi-hollow, so I would be completely justified in buying a new solid body to add to my collection. Or maybe something a little more straight-forward. Or maybe a Tele knockoff to aid in my quest to learn how to play side blues. (I'd consider a real Tele, like maybe a '72 Deluxe reissue, but generally I hate Fender's round necks. Why do Fender and Gibson players insist on being stuck in a time warp? Get with the nineties, people!) And as long as I'm guitar shopping, I might as well price some other stuff. Maybe a smaller amp for practice. Or a better version of my current amp, which I of course never use. Or a much bigger amp. Heck, while I'm at it, why don't I price some new effects pedals! How about that pedal that makes you sound like Kevin Shields? That would be fun! I mean I should probably learn how to play first, but did that ever stop anybody?!?

It's hard to escape the sense that my time here is winding down. Things fall apart and I'm lax to replace them. I had to toss out the sandal I had at school with a broken strap (and for some reason whoever designed the new ones decided to place some bumpy, sock-destroying torture device in the instep... why and how was that a good idea?!?) but I'm still wearing slacks that are at least two sizes too big, with a comically long belt that makes me look like some soju-preserved farmer that I pass on the street here, just because I'm too lazy and cheap to try to find pants here that fit better. I'm hoping things like the salt, sugar and giant-sized bottle of shampoo I bought when I got here last another eight months so I don't have to buy more and leave the remainder behind. Like I said, no use throwing good money after bad. It's hard not to be concerned, though, that when I leave I'll be moving on to something different instead of moving on to something better. I just realized that I gave the same title to one of my final posts from LA and one of my most recent posts from here... ironic, no? Funny how life can be cyclical, especially when your head is stuck in the same round rut.

The idea of returning home to LA is currently scaring the shit out of me, though. I don't think the economy there is all that much better, and I'm pretty sure working and living in the United States will never be what it once was. I'm reluctant to talk about this - mostly because I don't want to prematurely panic my friends and family back home (so brace yourselves, guys) - but the idea of staying somewhere in Asia as an English teacher keeps looking more and more attractive to me. It's a really exciting region and it would be nice to have more time to explore and travel here. I seem to be pretty good at this job, and working with these young, starry-eyed students is much more fulfilling than those jobs where you can't escape the feeling that you're a cog in a perpetual bullshit manufacturing machine. Supposedly with three years of teaching under my belt I could possibly get a university English-teaching position somewhere, while back home my resume will mostly get me a lot of funny looks and head-scratches. No use throwing good money after bad, right? It'd feel fairly tragic to come home to the States with a small nest egg and end up losing it all to being unemployed in LA again.

On the other hand, I really do miss my friends and family back home, and I'm not sure if I would be fulfilling my greatest potential as an EFL teacher. I think part of my problem is that I'm currently planning to come home to US to pursue something that was a backup plan all along, and it honestly doesn't seem like a much more attractive plan than the one I'm involved in right now. I've thought about trying to take some steps to get back into entertainment somehow - I'm still threatening to possibly use my desk time at school to work on a screenplay, and all the WTF Podcast I've been listening to here has me thinking that it would be fun to attempt to break into stand-up or sketch comedy, though you would think it would have the exact opposite effect. I never wanted to pursue something like that because I always thought it was a sucker bet, but at this point I kind of feel like I've blown the rent money and I have nothing to lose by putting my last sawbuck on a long shot. Then again, I've always been the type to see something on TV (movie making, rock stardom, baseball, skateboarding, lucha libre, what have you) and want to do it despite a ludicrous dearth of natural ability and opportunity. It's a particularly destructive type of addiction, I think. Huge unrealistic aspirations can inspire you to work harder to better yourself and reach your full potential, but they're equally likely to leave you with huge, unrealistic obligations and no way to fulfill them if you're not careful. Essentially, the problem with dreams is that they're dreams. Good money, bad money, good dreams, bad dreams...

Anyway, it's a difficult choice. Maybe it'll be easier once I get to chapter 13 of "What Color Is Your Parachute?" and do that leaf or flower diagram they keep alluding to like it's the Second Coming. (I've been reading less since I'm not taking the train to Daegu for YMCA Korean lessons these days. Also, Attn: Richard Bolles - you should not have put your face on the cover of the 2013 edition, dude. Know your limitations.) Maybe not. Maybe it's not easy for anyone.

Well I think that's pretty much the extent of my brain dump for this indiscriminately demarcated time period. I've got two more weeks of camp coming and then I'm taking my long-awaited vacation in Japan. I bought new shorts and socks for it and everything! (Yeah, yeah, Japan is evil, sleeping with the enemy, I know, whatever.) In the meantime I'll be continuing to make horrible, sad noises on a hapless, cheap, Chinese-made acoustic guitar and trying not to become destructively or belligerently disinterested in constructive activities.

Since I'm not likely to be here next year, I'm also hoping to pen (type?) some summary blog posts to consolidate my observations and opinions about some topics such as (and remind me to post updated links here when I actually write about these things): my top five favorite and least favorite things about Korea; advice for aspiring EPIK teachers; an open letter to EPIK and the Korean government (pending some more consideration of the appropriateness of such a thing) about what they're doing right and what they could do better; and some other vital topics like a survival guide to cooking for EPIK teachers (it's not as easy to figure out as you would think).

I was going to add something to smooth my transition into the YouTube clip that illustrates the inspiration for the title of this installment, to keep with recent tradition, but I think I'll just let it stand on its own. (I posted the same clip to my Facebook page on the day that the Supreme Court came down with their health care ruling. I wasn't anticipating that they would actually uphold the status quo when I came up with the idea, but I suppose the result is the same either way. War all the time. So how about that Presidential... nah, I don't even want to go there, it'll just make me depressed.)

In the immortal words of Chris Farley... STREET FIGHTING MAN! G-7!

Like Swimming

So I have this friend who spent some time in the Peace Corps in Georgia back in the day. Friend of friends, really. Anyway, she ended up being evacuated from Georgia when the Russians invaded that one time, which pretty much ended her Peace Corps career. When she got back to the States, we, of course, all wanted her first-hand account of what really went down between Georgia and Russia, since the exact nature of the conflict was always difficult to make out from the US media accounts. By her account, the conflict in Georgia was pretty much one unending but occasionally punctuated skirmish - every spring and summer some dudes from Georgia and some dudes from whatever other part of Georgia would get together for some good old-fashioned nationalist or sectarian violence, and every winter they would decide it was too darn cold for war and go back to their business indoors. Then suddenly in 2008 the Russians jumped in and everyone was like, "Hey, what the fuck, we were trying to have an endless small-scale war here and you're big enough to actually tip the balance of power one way or the other." (Caveat: this may be a highly inaccurate recounting of her explanation, not to mention grossly inaccurate regarding the actual conflict in Georgia.) Anyway, after a rough day at work involving a particularly inattentive class (and guess which co-teacher should have been in that class with me...) I couldn't help but think of that Georgia story and consider what a crime against nature it is to attempt a year-round school system. Human beings really aren't supposed to get anything constructive done between May and the end of July. Even adults get distracted the moment it gets warm, so I don't see how I'm supposed to be expected to teach anything to a pack of hormonal high schoolers who really just want to go outside and play soccer and kill shit and burn things and try to figure out what their genitals are for. So in short, I feel a bit like some Russian soldier trying to declare a state of South Ossetia in the middle of Georgia and saying to myself, "What the fuck am I even doing here?"

Final year senioritis continues unabated. (I'm referring to my own senioritis, of course, not that of my students - Korean high school students in their final year of school can't afford to develop a lax attitude until the day after the national exam in November.) If I play my cards right and don't get dealt any more curve balls by the school (and by the way, fuck you, cards and baseball are in the same metaphorical ballpark so I can mix them at will) I might be able to complete any substantial lesson planning I have left to do for the rest of the year by the end of this semester. The semester doesn't end until almost the end of  July, although, due to the bizarre scheduling polygon that is the Korean school year, I won't have any more substantial instruction to perform after about two more weeks of classes. If I can get all my planning for the year done before summer, I'm not sure what I'll do with all the extra time at school. Maybe I'll finally buy "What Color Is Your Parachute?" and figure out what I want to do with my post-Korea life. Or maybe I'll write a screenplay or formulate a stand-up comedy career instead. Either way, it's hard to come in and care these days. The students are in a state of perpetual not-caring, the Korean teachers are mostly concerned about getting the students through final exams and vacation time is tantalizingly close. Unfortunately there's some sort of week of inter-school summer camps that hasn't been scheduled yet, so I don't actually know when I'll get my vacation. But those are the breaks here in the Metaphorical Republic of South Ossetia-Korea. Can I get some black bread and vodka up in this piece?

I have to say, even though it's hard to stay focused on the job these days, my social life has improved. I feel like I might actually be learning something - albeit slowly - in my weekly Korean class at the YMCA. It's gotten to the point where people have started mistakenly referring to me as "the guy who knows Korean" in situations where someone might need to understand some basic Korean, which makes me wonder about all those times that I was counting on friends to be "the guy/gal who knows Korean" and equated their basic knowledge of Korean to with some sort of expertise. The people I've met through the Mannam service organization I mentioned in my last post have turned out to be extremely nice and friendly as well. The other foreign teachers in Cheongdo have also been a lot more interested this year as compared to last year in getting together now and again (or maybe I'm just doing a better job of joining them for activities, I don't know). Of course that means I'm not looking forward to the time when a bunch of them leave at the end of August. Living here as an expat, the constant churn of friends and associates coming and going really wears on you emotionally. People are always leaving just as you're getting to really know them. It's funny, sometimes I'll walk past someone I met on an EPIK trip or in orientation and nonchalantly friended on Facebook and I suddenly get this feeling like they're my oldest friend in the world, and then I have to stop and reconsider before I run up to them and yell, "Hi!" because there's a very strong possibility that they don't even remember who I am. And meanwhile, most of the best friends I have here are people I only met very recently. Plus, what am I really going to do about these new teachers I'm going to meet in August and only have six months in which to get to know them? Seems like a waste of energy to even learn their names...

One surprise among the list of teachers departing in August is the middle school teacher at my school. She was originally supposed to stay at our school until February but some time back around the beginning of the school year she began experiencing this unexplained pain in her knee. She visited some doctors here but none of them could figure out what was wrong with her. Around that time she went back to South Africa for a family wedding and found the time to visit a doctor there while she was at it. The doctors there did some blood work and immediately diagnosed her with some sort of virus that causes arthritis-like symptoms, and wrote her a prescription to treat it. The South African doctors apparently told her that they thought something in her environment - food, possibly - had caused the virus and it would be better for her to not come back to Korea at all, but she strongly felt that the least she could do was complete the semester. She's had a difficult time getting her prescription filled here, though, and I think the whole incident has colored her view of the Korean health care system. It's difficult sometimes as a foreigner to judge how effective the Korean health care system is. It's definitely much cheaper and easier here to see a doctor than in the US, although I continually hear stories about Westerners getting stuck with unpaid medical bills from major procedures that somehow weren't covered under the Korean national insurance plan. The only times I've had to go to the doctor here were to treat a cold, in which case I got handed a prescription for a bunch of pills to be taken three times a day and sent out the door without a single test run, and for that ridiculous HIV/drug test we have to get every year because the Koreans don't trust us. Koreans, of course, insist that they have the best health care system in the world, the same way that they insist that everything they have is the best in the world, and the same way that conservatives in America insist that we have the best health care system in the world even though no one can afford to use it. Numbers would disagree with both of those assertions, but then again those numbers clearly don't explain how South Africa trumped Korea with this particular diagnosis. Regardless, even though we all agree that it's the best thing for her to finish her contract early and leave at the end of the summer for the sake of her continuing health, we're also disappointed to see her go, especially under such unusual circumstances.

So let's get back to the fun stuff. Like many teachers here, I recently decided to fill some of my free time by taking up a hobby, but instead of some sort of traditional Korean thing like taekwondo or belly dancing I opted for scuba diving. I found a really good outfit in Busan - Sea World Dive Center - to take me through the PADI Open Water certification, and I just finished it with two days of diving at Taejongdae in Busan last weekend. The whole process was a little intimidating at first - everything went really quickly; the same weekend we were getting into water with gear for the first time we were also doing tricky stuff like learning to breathe underwater without a mask. Eventually I learned to trust myself in the water and take confidence that as long as I had air in my tank and the regulator in my mouth I wasn't going to drown, and I really enjoyed the experience. Even silly little things like seaweed look really cool when you're seeing them underwater in their natural environment for the first time. Of course now I have an expensive new hobby that I want to indulge in while having the same income stream that I've always had, which is supposed to be primarily dedicated to paying off the debts I racked up in the States. If I forgo too many expensive purchases I think I can hopefully stay in touch with my new diving contacts and squeeze in a couple weekend dives before I head off to dive in Thailand this winter, though. Besides, at times here you need to be willing to dedicate some funds to traveling and being social or you'll drive yourself nuts. It's a tricky balancing act, to be sure...

So what else is new? I've pretty much settled on a trip to Osaka, Kyoto and Nara for my summer vacation - there's a very affordable ferry to Osaka from Busan and the other two cities are close enough by rail that it should be easy to explore all three. I had played with the idea of seeing more of Japan during the trip, but that was before I really managed to wrap my head around the concept of just how big Japan is and how expensive it is to travel to a city six hours away there. There's some other places in addition to Japan that I'd like to visit before I leave Korea but I'm not sure if I'll have the money, and definitely won't know for sure before I finish the Osaka trip. The good news is that I seem to be on top of the bills that brought me here. When I pay my bills this month, I should be paying off the second of the four credit cards with balances that I brought with me, and I should have half of the overall credit card debt paid off. It's not quite the point I wanted to be at when I started making plans to pay off my bills - I wanted to me closer to three-quarters of the way paid off by now, originally - but it's good enough that I should have the ability to deep-six those bills with the savings, bonuses and pension refund I'll return to the States with, and no matter what the remaining debt will be a lot more manageable. I also seem to be losing more weight - people have been commenting on it and I've started using a new notch on my belt, which typically leaves me with a ludicrously long overhang of belt on the other side of the buckle that's hard to prevent from swinging around comically. None of my pants fit anymore but I'm too lazy and cheap to try to buy more here so I'm dealing with the lumpiness and belt overhang the best I can and hoping they don't fall apart before I get back to the States. I keep staring at silly things I want to buy online, especially guitars. I have two guitars I never play at home so buying another one here would be pure madness but I really want to try my hand at learning to play a little better while I'm here and I have the time. Maybe I can rent one and start taking lessons. If I stop paying for Korean lessons. Or give up on the scuba diving. Or something. I suppose I shouldn't give up on food since I'm already losing weight...

I can't think of anything else too interesting right now and I just rented "God Bless America" so I should probably get going. After all, tomorrow's the beginning of another big week of doing a job it's hard to care about, teaching students who don't understand me and don't give a shit what I say anyway, and waiting for it to all end temporarily for the summer.

On to the song, which this week is definitely about swimming and not sex and/or drugs. Meanwhile I'm gonna go buy a bunch of little pizza things from Paris Baguette so that my pants start to fit again.