Gangneung-si, Gangwon-do, South Korea

This morning, we're taking the kindergartens to Gyeongpo Beach. I'm looking forward to it, apparently the cherry blossoms will be really nice. I just noticed them the other day, seriously, it's like they popped up over night.

Last weekend was great. I went to Sokcho....it was invasion of the Gangneungers! We met Glynn at his apatu and headed out. The Tara Burn was amazing...but don't call it the "alien bar" beacuse the cab driver won't have any idea! It's an oddly shaped mass, my student's would say it looked like "dong." I was impressed, almost every bare space is bolted with these aluminum panels and there's cool lamps and circular windows. I was one of those people hiking Seoraksan the next day, so I switched to water early....I managed to hide it my beer bottle, so I could hang with all the "cool" people and not feel stupid...
The bar was filled with foreigners...the most I've seen in one place outside of Itaewon...it was fun!

Soutthida has some great photos on her site www.lao-ocean.com...mine won't be up until later next week. I'm going to Seoul this weekend and will be doing the tourist thing, so expect lots of pictures...

Here's a sidenote: I was teaching my kids about mammals and how they usually have fur or hair. One of my students, Will, who is 7, said Charles (the teacher who I replaced) was definitely a mammal. "Charles fur many...arms...back...legs...all over... many fur!! Charles teacher is mammals."

I guess Charles was hairy...

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Gangneung-si, Gangwon-do, South Korea

Later this afternoon, I'll be heading off north towards Sokcho. I've been wanting to do some hiking around Seoraksan National Park ever since I first arrived, but never really got around to it. This weekend I'm determined...

Apparently, there's a big foreigner get together at some bar in Sokcho that a few of us will be going to. I just hope I don't overdo it and then have a shitty time hiking tomorrow...in the immortal words of The Gandharvas "...moderation is the key..."

Last night, I contemplated going out to the Warehouse...I had my shoes on, ready to leave, but decided on one last smoke with a little TV for company, of course you don't want to show up too early. Surfing, I found some movie called The Secretary on CatchOn. This girl really reminded me of a girl I had a crush on in high school...TR, so I started watching. It was fucking weird! She was back in her home town at her sister's wedding. Her dad was drunk and she ran up to her old room in the house and took out a small box under her bed. It was filled with cuticle scissors, drill bits, razor blades, needles and Iodine. So she was a masochist who cuts herself. Her mom had to keep all the knives in the house under lock and key.

Later, she gets a job as a secretary for this strange lawyer played by James Spader. To make a long story short, her constant typing errors drive him to eventually spank her, bent over his desk...she likes this, gives up cutting herself and becomes his dominated love slave. It wasn't porn of anything...in case you're wondering. Anyways, it successfully prevented me from leaving until midnight when the phone rang and I was called out to the bar...


CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM!

I've really been missing, Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm lately. Luckily, Dylan, a teacher here, is going to d/l the new season for me and pass me some discs...Pritt-tee, Pritt-teeeeeee, Pritt-tee, Pritt-tee GOOD!

Oh yeah, and I've shaved my head. I haven't had hair this short since grade four... you know everyone gets that urge sometimes, girls go through it, wanting to cut their hair short...."pixie style"....blech!
It has been nice to not have to do anything before I leave the house....
So...for everyone back home, you can laugh at me in new pics that I'll post when I get back from Seoraksan...

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Gangneung-si, Gangwon-do, South Korea

So last weekend, I took the plunge and bought a DVD Player. Luckily, I found one at E-Mart for 129,000 won...which is much less than I was prepared to pay. It's not name brand or anything, but does the job and matches my silver TV and SkyLife box very well. I got home and spent the night watching "Dustin and Kiran Do Canada" on VCD....which was great, I can now watch it from the comfort of my living room, instead of in the cold office at work, on the computer.
On Sunday, I made my wat to a video rental store in Kyo-dong and was disappointed with the selection. My main objective was to find Korean movies, that I could now watch with English subtitles. The store was in the basement of some building complex and when I walked in I saw what looked like hundreds and hundreds of DVD's on the wall. They were actually just "graphic novels" which you can rent from the same store. I found the DVD shelf, there were only about 50 and none of the titles I was looking for. Even the Western movies they had were lacking in quality. I ended up renting "Equilibrium" which was not as good as the posters proclaimed....they read something like "Forget the Matrix, here's Equilibrium." The opening sequence was really good, although I was expecting a complete rip-off of the Matrix's bullet-time sequences, I was instead treated to something quite different. Apparently, in the future, after a Third World War, the surviving world leaders have decided that "the ability to feel" is the greatest problem facing manking. So they outlaw all feeling and anything that may cause someone to feel, including poetry, paintings, music and color. The last great city on earth is called Equilibrium, and there is a special police force who have developed extra-sensory skills that tell them when people are feeling. An interesting premise, but poorly executed. Christian Bale, one of my favorite actors (expecially for his role in American Psycho) plays the main character. They have learned this special art of aiming their weapons (taught by "The Father" and based on geometric principles) that allows them to kill a bad-guys while standing in the middle of a dark room and not even getting scratched by a stray bullet. It was the only thing, I would say that was done well and used as the opening sequence...after that, the movie went downhill, and nothing could save the weak plot line and weak characters.

I also rented X-Men 2, which was decent. I was most interested in seeing scenes of Vancouver, but they were so well disguised that my city was virtually unrecognizable.

This weekend I went to another video store downtown which is owned by the parents of one of my students. They had a much larger selection and I ended up renting "장 화, 홍 련" (Jang-Hwa, Hong Ryun) or a "Tale of Two Sisters." It was a confusing, psychological thriller about two sisters who go to live with their father and step-mom at a house in the country. We learn that one of the sisters is actually dead, and the other believes she is still alive. This other sister is "sick" and often confuses her step-mom with herself and herself with her sister. It really doesn't come together until they end, but was shot very well and is really creepy. I also rented "주온" (Ju-On) or "The Grudge" which is a Japanese thriller. It's about an ancient Japanese curse. If you kill someone you love, you become cursed and then die and the last person to see you live, dies as well and on and on and on. It was beautifully filmed, and also very creepy. Opening shot was a black screen, with the name of the character to die scrawled in script, and on and on and on. Each five minute or so sequence features the death of one character that has been cursed. The story follows each person that has come in contact with the characters, all originating in this house, inhabited by the ghost of a dead boy (the son of a murdered woman) and the ghosts of each person who has previously died of the curse. It sounds a little confusing and was at times, because the time-line didn't quite sync, generally attributable to poor editing.

One thing I have noticed is the prevalence of female ghosts, which all look pretty much the same as the one featured in the recent Japanese thriller "Ringu" or (The Ring). The Ring is one of my favorite movies. But the image of the young girl, face covered by black hair, in a dirty dress and crawling, knuckles clenched on the floor was used in both of these two other films. I hope they don't start over-using it, to the point where it becomes a parody of itself. One of my favorite scenes from the American version of "The Ring" is when she comes out of the TV near the end and how the image is slightly fuzzy and jerky. This too was used in "Jang-Hwa, Hong Ryun" and "Ju-On", as well as the idea that once someone is cursed their faces appear distorted in photographs. In "Ju-On" this means that your eyes are seemingly cut out of the negative leaving a black hole. Instead of saying "seven days...," the phone calls in "Ju-On" featured that creaking sound you can make by closing your airway and vibrating your throat.

All in all, I'd recommend both movies....but they really could've been called The Ring 2 and 3. No creepy videotapes though!!

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Gangneung-si, Gangwon-do, South Korea

Happy St. Patricks Day! (yeah, it was yesterday here in Korea, but for most of the people who would read this, it's today)

I was at the Warehouse last night. Ras played some good Newfoundland drinking songs which were good to hear in this country of loud non-stop techno music.

I'm exhausted this morning and stressed out because of my misbehaving children! Especially, my oldest class. I have students sleeping, throwing erasers and crayons...students that do nothing but yell all class long, tear up other peoples work, make paper airplanes with their assignments, roll their papers into swords and have fights, kids who just get up and walk around and start "chicken fighting" at the back (this is where they stand on one leg, hop around and smash into each other, it's more popular than you'd think....), kids who refuse to stop talking, kids who speak Korean all class long, yell out answers when I'm asking other students, call me dong-teacher (kind of translates to shit-teacher) if I don't give them playtime every day and all other imaginable manners of craziness....AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

I've been told by other teachers here to start making them do push-ups and also to punish the rest of the class for the actions of one or two students....I am going to try this, cause it's getting way out of control....you know I'm spending half the class just yelling at one student and it's starting to adversely affect the rest of the class...and I can see it in their faces, they are just sitting there like what the hell is going on and one kid is being a nightmare, all class, every day...

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Gangneung-si, Gangwon-do, South Korea

i am still recovering from last night. first i went for dinner with Soutthida and then to the Warehouse for drinks. We tried the Warehouse Cocktail...a tantalizing mixture of "something special" with your choice of mix...we went for the four seasons. Not surprisingly the secret ingredient is Soju...topped off with some triple sec...for flavor, I guess. Ryan tried some after first saying "I'll try it as long as there's no Soju!" We tricked him...HA HA, he liked it anyway, I think.

And officially, Soju will be the death of me! Kate had brought some of her Tae Kwon Do instructors out for drinks and there was some bizarre drama going on which I won't divulge here. Later in the night, I went with Kate and her friends to DrugBar for Soju. I think Soutthida was angry that we were leaving, I hope not! This is when things started going downhill...I was drinking beer and trying to converse with Kate in french to confuse our hosts! I don't really remember the topic of conversation. Wait...I was trying to press Kate about her Tae Kwon Do skills, she said she felt comfortable that she could kick my ass if I tried to attack her. So there you have it, I've always wondered if people who learn martial arts could actually use them in a real situation, so now I believe she can.

From DrugBar we decided to "Noraebang it!" (a definitive example of Konglish)
I was assured that our bill would be taken care of by our hosts...for some reason I was worried about the cost of this adventure?!? We were in the room and suddenly a tray of beer appeared and then was consumed. I have these flashes of singing with Kate and her friends singing and then people going out and then going back in. I don't really know what happened there.

Then I went back to The Warehouse and shot some tequila with Mr. Lee from Bumpin'
I don't know what happened after that. I woke up at 2pm, seconds later my World Map poster fell off my wall, there was puke in the sink, clothes on the floor and crumpled bills and coins scattered all over my desk. How and when I got home will forever be....a mystery.

Today I read Soutthida's posting on Spam. I thought it was great by the way. I've never tried Spam, I don't think I could. She wrote a haiku that mentioned how her Spam was "glistening with salty gel"...this is scary, reminds me of tinned cat food and that gel substance that farts out of the can at the end. Shudder to think....

She also posted a picture of some innocent-looking cute children. For anyone who has never done this type of work, children are innocent, but yes as she said "Looks can be deceiving!" So true, so true...when you look at my photos of my students...remember that....looks can be deceiving...very very deceiving...

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