Sunday, June 21, 2009

Crazy taxi!

So last weekend Gordlotte and I grabbed a cab from Hongdae back to Cheongnyangni at around 3am. Pretty standard affair for those who don't feel like waiting till the trains start running. Anyways, we happened to grab the PARTY TAXI, with a black light installed and and bumping sound system. And, oh yeah, the driver was a complete maniac and scared us to death. He was weaving between cars and blasting through intersections like a crazy idiot, but alas, sweet justice was dealt when he ran a red light and got nailed by the cops for 80,000 won. He groaned and lamented the ticket while we had a moment of smug satisfaction.

The fun part about that ride was while the taxi was speeding us towards our probable deaths, Gord and I were singing along to this catchy little K-pop number here:



Well, the chorus anyways.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Thursday, June 11, 2009

News


Here's that good news I was promising: Jess is coming July 26. Funny thing is, she won't even be getting the visa, just coming over as a tourist. It's been a looong time since I've seen her so it's going to be pretty surreal having her over here and adapting into a life that I'm already very very familiar with. She's coming just in time for my big one-week vacation at the end of the month too, so not only is she getting a place to stay but also a personal assistant (me) to see her through the rough spots and personally acclimatize her to Korean life 24/7 for the whole week! I'm planning on renting a car and driving around the countryside with Jess, Gord and Charlotte so she can tack on "amazing roadtrip" to her list of reasons why it'll pay off to finally come here.

In other news, which may or may not be slightly diluted by the above news, my good friend Adam Saikaley will be coming and staying with me for a week at the end of June! Not only that, but he's looking to perform here, so I managed to talk to the right people and set up a gig for him. He does musique concrète kind of stuff (check the link above), and I found a great venue that would receive his music nicely. Not only that, but I'm going to be joining him on drums for a bit of improvisation. So anyone in Seoul reading this oughtta come check us out when the time comes. I'll be posting more info on here and my facebook page!

Anyways, those are two big things that are keeping me going right now. My new schedule still sucks and I'm closing the book on week 2 now. Someone is apparently coming at the end of June to lift my burden. Hopefully I'll get some of my old classes back.

I spent the last 2 weekends on the beach and the tranquility was in stark contrast to my busy work week. I'll have some pictures and details up next entry.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

The big switch


UGH, we were supposed to hire a new guy named Richard from Australia, but at literally the last minute he decided to not get on his flight and stay in Australia out of fear of North Korea attacking. So now, everyone at ECC is pulling double time and having their schedule's switched to make up for this calamity. I myself became deeply affected as it resulted in my whole schedule being turned on it's head and then having another schedule stacked on top of it.

To start, I'll mention that all of my favourite classes got yanked from me and replaced with entirely new classes filled with kids whose names I'm going to have to learn all over again. They even took away the class with my little dude Eric who drew the picture of me! He came to meet me before class as usual and when I told him I wasn't his teacher anymore, he looked like he was going to cry. Every one of my other good classes, including one where I explicitly promised the students I would not leave, got wiped off my schedule. The only classes that remained were my sinfully boring class, my screaming class and my nightmare hell class. In fact, they added 2 new students to my nightmare hell class, one of which has been diagnosed with ADHD. THANKS.

All this switching was done to accomodate the fact that, as of June, I have become a full-fledged Kindergarten teacher to replace the one that never arrived. That means I show up at 9 every morning, have a desgnated class I teach a broad range of subjects to, and *shudder* occasionally eat lunch with them. Even after Kindergarten ends, I still have classes up until the time I left normally, which means I went from working 7 hour days to working 9 and a half hour days with less breaks.

Now, they say this is only for June, but if Gord and Charlotte's experience at Dongdaemun tells me anything, they will probably just assume that because everyone is begrudgingly accepting their new schedules, then everything must be fine and they won't need to get anyone new. I really hope they don't think this. They might though because it's a business, and any cost cutting measure is considered.

So everything kind of sucks now. I also had to spend $300 on two CT scans of my head so I can finally find out what the hell is wrong with me.

And I am in pain all the time.

And it's been 3 months since I've seen Jessica. I've never spent so much time alone in my life.

Next post will be all good news, I promise. There's something exciting on the horizon.