In the mornings I walk out of my apartment and I walk past a small se tak,-dry cleaner, I've yet to figure out if the family that runs it has open 'hours'. I walk along the one way street past a small mom and pop convince store that's always opening right as I walk by. An older woman who lives behind her little store always waves at me with a large beaming smile. I wave hello, sometimes I try to say anyong haseo, but usually I find my self just smiling and waving back. I walk along the main street into down town hearing the sounds of the animals waking up in the pet stores, taxis and buses speeding by bringing people to work, and the smell of the morning burning off from the sun that is popping out from behind the mountains.
I walk through alleys of traditional bars that are closed and quiet with sheets covering the the bananas and other food to be handed out that night to the waves of businessmen, students, people of kinds who come to drink and enjoy the company of their friends in the night. Then I finally enter downtown quiet and empty. It's oddly clean. In my mind I still see the masses of people who walk the streets of downtown window shopping, laughing, wandering the streets at night arm in arm. I'm also very curious how all the mess from the night before could just simply disappear before morning. I then go to work.
My first day here wasn't so comfortable or familiar.
When I stepped off the plane at Inchoen International Airport I was scared. I was nervous. I didn't know what would be in the city of Daegu. As I wondered off the plane I was lost I had no idea where to catch my connecting flight. I felt like a kid who had lost his mom in the supermarket, who in a near state of panic has the choice of wetting their pants or begging the cashier lady to use the telecoms to find 'mom'. Well I would have been that little kid about to wet his pants if it wasn't for an older American man who happened to sit in the isle next to me on the plane. Earlier on the plane I had heard a loud sigh. I turned to see the man with the white hair and wearing a button down shirt and tie. I asked him if it was his first time to Korea. “Oh no, I'm used to the 11 hour flights. I've done this many many times.” We began to talk and I found out that he too was going to Daegu. I guess he was my helpful cashier.
I would have been lost as we walked passed immigration and into the shopping mall of the airport in all it's glitter and newness. The old man reflected to when it was him desparately lost in this airport, and how some old guy had helped him. He told me about his time in Korea about some customs, some phrases, all the really important things that I could only listen to with one ear. I was busy being scared. I kept thinking, how the hell am I going to buy milk when I can barely say hello. How was I going to survive in a country where I couldn't speak the language, didn't know the customs, or if it was even safe for Americans. (This was right after the nuclear tests in North Korea. And Americans are naturally paranoid about the outside world) But he did say one thing as we walked together to the terminal destined for Daegu. “These are the friendliest people you will ever meet. They're kind, I don't mean kindness in the sense of leaving you alone, I mean the type of kindness that you can only understand once you live there”. I didn't believe him. It's a city. I've been to many cities and in the end they all share the one quality, they don't have time to be kind.
Thanks to that older man whose name has disappeared in my mind, I got to Daegu. And for the first couple of days I really didn't know what to think about the place. It's criss-crossed with many little alley with mom and pop stores everywhere. There's a dry cleaner around every corner and that never keep regular hours. People are always awake. Even in the dead of night you see old women, business men, college students always walking one place or another and entire streets that are completely inhabited by one product. Example, cell phone street. I was completely amazed at the rate that construction happens here. I walked by a place that had just started to be remodeled the first full day I was here and two days later they were selling cellphones. Was the paint even dry? How could anything like that happen so quickly? All of this I took in the first week I was here and I quickly realized that it's very different from what I knew in America. Different in ways I like.
One thing is for sure is that all though I've been here two only two months, I've come to really respect and appreciate the vibrancy and constant lust for life that is so apparent in the smiles of people around my neighborhood and the gallery of people every night that walk the streets of downtown smiling and laughing arm in arm. You don't see this level of life in most cities. At least not most cities in America. I admire it greatly. I'm beginning to make friends and at night I meet with them practice what little of the language that I've learned. (Practice is a loose term, maybe butchering the language gives the better image.) The longer I stay here the more feel apart of it and more alive.
I've come to this simple conclusion, I like it here. There's no better way to put it.

Joe Milan Jr.

Living a far way from home.


It's my third week living in korea. I figured out important thing, it's so hard to do something completely new.

I went snowboarding for the first time. Well to be more accurate I tumbled down a snowy slope for half the day. I did this one really cool move I call it the “Oh fuck I'm gonna die” propeller move. It's basically falling and twirling down the slope for a good ten yards while thinking... Well you get the idea. Needless to say I limped a little for a couple days.

Korea is different in many ways from the US, but that I was expecting. What surprised me is how fortunate I am to be working at my particular school. I am by far the least experienced teacher, and I'm surprised in the cultural differences between Americans and Brits. I don't want to go into detail but let's just say I think I'm just tipping the iceberg with the discovery that almost none of them have had a Peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But going back to my work, I'm outclassed as a teacher. In a odd way I feel like I have to work three, four times harder to produce anywhere near the acceptable caliber of work. Observing the other teachers I learned that they are good at what they do. Because of the amount of work I've been doing, I haven't had the opportunity to explore the city. In way I'm little glad, it gets tiring trying to do things in a language you only know a handful of phrases in. Living here and doing things is actually harder then I thought it would be. Trying to fumble through basic tasks like buying water or figuring out how the hell to operate a washing machine really makes you feel dumb. Especially when you have the passing thought that you should know this.

I like it here. It's hard to explain. But the more free time I get and the more I just go and do stuff the better I feel about everything. I won't lie it's hard. But then again I think I'm harder on myself than the situation is. Maybe something comfortably familiar like a stand up shower, or just something that I sort of fit in with, perhaps if I felt like I wasn't so far away from home I wouldn't be.

I will try to take some photos this week to show you all.

Later.

I'm not scared, just terrified. Tomorrow I will get on a plane for a country I've visited casually for years, without being anywhere near fluent to the language, and starting a job I never really considered before. I'm going to teach English in Korea. South Korea for all of those ignorant to that part or any other part of the world.


But yes I'm qualified. I have a double bachelor in English and Drama writing. (You know the hard ones to get), and I have a teaching certificate. Um, it sounds like I'm qualified right?

But what if I'm that one...

Teacher that everyone gives the terrible nick names like “Professor Dumb-shit”.

I would really hate to be the very thing I loathed so much during my tenure as a student in the world of schools. It's funny, when I applied for this job I was decently qualified I guess. But it just doesn't feel like it. Up to this point I've been a dish washer, music “sales associate” (the bastards wouldn't even let me have the title of salesman or something to at least pretend that I was important), mail handler, Park Guide, computer wannabe fixer (I forgot my official title but it doesn't matter since I really had no idea what I was doing), and most importantly film production assistance. The last one there is the only one I really felt like I was doing something worthwhile. But whats odd is none of these jobs were “Full time”, or better put the job you work like you exist in the real world.

Now I'm suppose to work. Do something a little more involved then manipulating a camera or light, I suppose to teach English, (or at the very least Engrish). Maybe this is how Professor Dumb-shit felt, that sneaking feeling from behind that you were suppose to do something and you didn't, like really learning how to do your job. Or learning English

Or maybe it's nothing.

I have been watching a lot of the A-team, and Magyver. Perhaps if shit hits the fan I'll “pity the foo” and tie a shoe string around my students heads and throw them out the window, while finally being able to explain how the English language is really just an exercise in winging it, and maybe just maybe that all will end with smiles and cheesy 80's electro piano in the background.

Wish me luck. And next time you see a Professor Dumb-shit, just think you too may personally know one. So “Pity the Foo” and use your tube sock to make a member's only jacket and make a quick escape.

Pictures- an attempt to be completely honest.

I recently returned home after a reasonable incubation period of college. When I left, my mom turned my room what may be best described as a “memorial” of me. Pictures, awards dating back to elementary school adorn the walls. The pictures are hardest to look at. Even harder are the yearbooks. Girlfriends, girls that I should have made friends with, that picture of me with that grin of spiteful arrogance. I get a flash backs and that sinking feeling in my stomach when I look at all of this, thinking of who I was then.
Do you get that feeling when you look at yourself in pictures? The feeling is like the one you get right before you get in trouble.
I think the cause of this feeling is my current guilt for some of my behavior. Behavior like telling classmates of questionable intelligence that I'm destined for greatness, unlike their destiny of working at Jiffy lube. I also remember refusing to give a free autograph in their yearbook. I believe I said something along the lines of “since I would most likely not be frequenting Burger King or staying in this poo-dunk town with people who are so idiotic that they may forget to breath, it would be un-genuine of me to sign your yearbook because I don't gripe at all in the thought of never seeing you again." When that blank look of confusion would wash over their face I would translate. “I don't care about you enough to get your phone number just so I don't call you, and I don't want to give my name or phone number.”
That was mildly cruel. I should have just wrote in their yearbook...

“I hope you don't bring down the collective I.Q. of humanity by having children. Have a great life in and out of jail”

-James Bond.

You know what, I feel guilty for not writing that. I'll just have to live with that guilt.

Whoredom

“I like chewing gum.” coming from a early-teen cheerleader; the voice demands a disdainful shudder. That phrase, for whatever reason, etched into my mind for several days. It's like a bad case of rabies with the whole foaming at the mouth... But it triggered a course of memories, flash backs to `nam... I mean, the days in yearbooks or better known as high school.
Anther phrase kick started thoughts, “And he was like whatever (squels) and I was like whatever!” that almost throttled my hurling reflex, but irony had it that the Commercial was being played during a break in the an episode of southpark titled “I'm a stupid whore”. A throbbing commentary about Paris Hilton. During reflexion of the scotched taped replay of that commercial in my mind while watching south park I asked myself the question, are we (society) celebrating status-defining vanity and whorish irresponsibility?
In the greek system I encountered many “sorarsituts” who demonstrate the advantage of an upper class upbringing with listening to great thinkers of our time like 50 cent. (Pronounced fiddy.) And using their advanced college vocabulary of along the lines of “Crunk” and in speaking in phrases like the famed valley girls. They also dress in step with Paris Hilton, the current role model for young girls who want to get ahead in life. Their actions at fine fraternity balls, I mean dance parties and festive gathering are appropriate to the attire they wear. But let's not forget the fo-hawk sporting, tight shirt wearing, keystone drinking frat guys who yell in drunken incoherence “woo, yea! Woo, Yea!” repeatedly between bong hits and socializing with the fine ladies of the sororities. It is safe to say that college, is mired in Paris-like whoredom.
That brings another question to mind, what does Paris Hilton do? Why is she a house hold name? Can I too be a house-hold name if I release a porno with yours truly as the star. Perhaps the secret lies with the with terrible camera angles and the use of night-shot. Maybe Nobel winning?
Maybe I'm wrong to assume that whores are bad, they do wonders for entertaining the masses. And maybe the young cheerleader's commercial is stuck in my mind because the voice is so horrid that suicide is within my grasp, or perhaps the worse possibility of all... I'm a pervert.

Naw.

I prefer to get my ladies crunk. Wink.

Why there is so many fat people in America.

There was a time I came home from college on a break and my mother called me a fat-ass and lazy. She was commenting on my beer gut, to be honest wasn't caused by beer but by rum, and further more she stated that there was no justifiable reason to have a gut rather than a six-pac at my age. Keep in mind I'm 6'1 and weighed 205. I wasn't obese, I could see all my lower extremities. But I did become paranoid about my fat and started to eat better and workout. I would've been “hurt” if I had feelings, thankfully I don't.
I was a little shocked that my mother would say this to me, mainly underexposure to her cruelty had made me weak. Also it's so socially taboo today to comment on someone like that, (except for those fucking evil smokers who are almost as evil as baby killers). Come to think about it I remember back in third grade I was sent to the principle's office and i think suspended for recommending to a fat girl to go see jenny craig.
Think of the repercussions that would occur if you called someone a fat-fuck? You would get sued, maybe loose your job, and they would get fatter eating donuts to make their bruised feelings go away.
What kind of over sentimental, weeping, fainting goat society do we live in? If we were allowed to criticize fat people openly like we criticize smokers we'd all get paranoid and eat better, maybe workout and ultimately be healthier. We could set an example to our illegitimate children.
There is that distinct possibility that sheltered fat people would kill themselves. But then again I think about all the times I was on a six plus hour flight sitting next to a person who's rolls would roll off their coach seat onto my arm causing it to cramp in pain. Being fat like that is indicative of their heath anyways right?

I don't know, it's just a thought.