Twas the night before Christmas...

And all through the house,

Not a creature was stirring...

not even a mouse...

When all of a sudden in my ears I did hear,

A gunshot that rang through the night sky so near.

I sprang to the window and threw open the sash,

Just to see a in the distance, a faint ruby flash.

It was Rudolph! He exists! but not for much longer,

Apparently he had been shot down by one much stronger.

While he fell through the sky, antlers a-flalin,

I heard in the distance, that stupid b!tch Palin.

"Oh deary me!" she cried with delight!

"How easy to shoot when with that glowing red light!"

"I was just thinking, ya know, that I needed some meat,

and, golly gee whiz, the kids wanted to help with the feast!"

"So we hopped on our snow mobiles (or whatever the hell she calls them) even the little retarded one,

And I handed them each their own, personal gun.

"And, well, ya know, we saw this red light kinda zooming around through the sky,

And I thought, what the heck?!? I bet that darn thing'd make a right tasty pot pie."

"But Ms. Palin! Why would you do such a thing?!" I cried in despair.

"I may not answer the questions that you want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also." She replied with a dumb stare.

"What? I've heard that line before! You must be some spawn of satan come to ruin Christmas!" from her some answers I sought.

"Absolutely not. I think that, if I were to give up and wave a white flag of surrender against some of the shots that we've taken, that ... that would ... bring this whole ... I'm not doing this for naught."

"Oh wow, 'naught'! what a big word for you sarah! Wait, i'm missing my point here!" I cried

"You killed the most famous reindeer of them all....." I sadly sighed.

As she dragged off the dying red light in the cold dreary night,

I couldn't believe Christmas Eve had brought such a sight.

On a good note however, as I gazed on her with the corpse she did carry,

It was great to know that the dumbass wouldn't be in our white house come January.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

East Vs. West Graphic depiction

This is great, and some of them are amazingly true:

http://buburuza.net/?p=8664

Please check it out! It explains a lot of my praises and frustrations with this country!

To.Alex

Yesterday as I finished up my last class, I received a nice letter from one of my less than lovely students. I don't think she has participated in class even once--she is usually sleeping or straightening her hair or playing cards or talking in korean with her boyfriend....anything but speaking English. She is one of the "cool" girls with a major teenitude. But, apparently she does know some English, i have proof now. Here is a transcription of the letter, it's pretty cute:

To. Alex
Hi Alex my name is 신소라 (Sin Sora).
Alex Cute. me too ^^*
Alex, school fun? ㅋ
I'm not like school
Bye Bye (picture of heart) Alex.
I love you.
~ (another picture of heart)

from. Sora.

After she gave it to me, she wanted candy, but I didn't have any. Now I know the price of love for ninth grade girls--Chocolate (strange, that doesnt seem to change much....).

Chicken University

Happy Holidays Beautiful People!

So, I'm still in Korea, fancy that. Life here is becoming more routine and less hilarious, which is fine—all of that amusement can be tiresome. A couple of weeks ago, actually, I was so fed up with Korea that I wanted to hike north, through the land of Kim Jong-Il (maybe have a bit of a chat with the little, dying man), a nice hike through Russia, and then a refreshing swim to the land of Palin…The sound of Hangul-mal (Korean language) was like finger nails on a chalk board, and the superficiality and artifice that seems to drape over every single thing in Korea were really, really starting to rack my nerves. My good eighth grad girls were caught drinking at the elementary school (and one of them vomited—at the elementary school), the ninth grade boys have severed themselves from any notion of respect and "normal" social behavior, and my sixth graders have started to draw phallic symbols on everything and anything in sight. Oh, the joy of teaching middle school.

Please, do not worry or have many negative thoughts toward this country! After a bit of ranting, I will share some incredible acts of human kindness and beauty, and some fun times in Korea.

One of the more entertaining and god awful boring things I've done in the recent past was a teacher's "Retreat" to Chicken University—at first I thought maybe we were going to a school of poultry science or something, but no, it is actually called Chicken University!!! Haaahaaaa. I guess it's a place where people from a large Korean fried chicken chain, under the name BBQ chicken (BBQ= Best of the Best Quality) come to train and be surrounded by chicken-ey things. Mom, you would have loved it, there were huge roosters everywhere!! I will post pictures soon. Well, this "Retreat" was not what I expected; it involved all of the teachers and administrators sitting around a table, with a lot of chicken and other food, for SEVEN hours…talking about how to discipline the students (which, you can tell from the first paragraph has worked incredibly well). They did this all in Korean, of course (which I am not angry about, only two of them speak English). In the few instances that I did know what they were talking about, I would pipe in with a suggestion and promptly get shot down, or looked at like I am a crazy, naïve white girl who has no say in how to discipline the students. So why was I there!!! Aaarrrggghhhhh….I wasn't happy to say the least.

With that said, any of you who were "bad seeds" in your schooling years have any advice for how to deal with these hellions?? I'm pretty sure these students are more like the American "bad" students of the eighties and nineties than they are similar to anything the Korean teachers are familiar with. P.S. after SEVEN hours of bickering, there were no conclusions or decisions made. It was all a grand waste of time and energy. I did get out some wonderful poetry though, classics I'd say. Here is one :

I am so bored,
This is worse than orientation,
At least I have Somaek and apples.
Let's just send all of the little F@#$#ers to boot camp!

Beautiful, isn't it? I was truly inspired.
After staying up until 1 A.M. talking about students we awoke the next morning at an ungodly hour and went for a hike, which ended up being Very Danger. It was a short hike, on Dodomunsan, which means "Crying Pig Mountain." It should have been peaceful and quick, but the teacher who led us was keen on going off trail—which was cool, apart from the two older ladies with us and my aging principal. He brought us to these cliffs that, if someone had fallen or slipped, would have killed one of us. The way down was less treacherous, and it was enjoyable overall.

That same week as the teacher's conference I spent four days with the seventh and eighth grade students at a kind of camp, where they learned about Korean history, did team building stuff and generally practiced good ol' Korean camaraderie. It was very fun, I got to rock climb a bit with the kiddies, and we all bonded. I was the only non-Korean there with three schools present, so I was part of the entertainment for the few days. Fun fun. I think that week straight of only Korean interaction is what helped drive me to my state of discontent. That, and missing the excitement around elections…GOOObbbaaammaaaa!!!

Since then, things have looked up! I've gone on some more hikes, visited some fellow teachers and celebrated Thanksgiving! A couple of weekends ago, three of my friends and I visited Mt Seoun (or Seounsan) in a neighboring city. It took us a long time to get there (about 2.5 hours on a bus, in a car it would have been about 40 minutes), and we were hungry once we arrived. (annnddd, we were a bit lost, I was the organizer…never a good thing. I thought we were getting dropped off at the bus terminal, but apparently the bus doesn't stop at the terminal, so the bus driver kind of dropped us off in the middle of the street once he realized we were still on the bus, and we had to wander a bit to get our bearings). We stopped in a restaurant that was closed, so we left, but then the owner yelled after us and told us we could eat there still! It was so nice of him, and it was a great place to eat. For 9,000 won (about $7) we could eat as much as we wanted from his buffet. And this was no ordinary buffet. It had all of the Korean side dishes, like kimchi, veggies, little shrimpy things, condiments, and other Korean faire. The best part, though, was the huge array of raw meat to choose from. There had to be about twelve different types of pork and beef, in different marinades and different cuts, and we could take as much as we wanted. We just grilled it all on our table and did the lettuce wrap thing. It was delicious, nutritious and extremely kind of the old man.

We finally made it to where we wanted to hike, after a long cab ride, and hiked a bit. People on the mountain were extremely nice too. One kept taking pics of us and told us he would e-mail them to us (which he hasn't yet….) and we were fed pretty well on the way up as well. After we finished the hike, we couln't figure out the bus schedule, cause it didn't appear to go to where we needed to catch a bus home. There was a temple at the base of the mountain, so we checked it out, and a Korean woman started speaking to my friend Sarah. I approached her and asked her if she could call a taxi for us, and Korean hullabaloo ensued. About ten Koreans immediately came from the woodwork, and in about ten minutes we were in somebody's car headed for the bus terminal. These people are crazy, and nice. Crazy nice. The best thing about that little interaction was when the woman showed us her "studying English" notebook, and the first thing we see is the word "lusty" and how it used in a sentence and then translated into Korean. Hilarious.

Well, this is getting pretty freaking long…but I'm gonna keep writing.

Last week a few of the Americans in town and one Canadian and I celebrated Turkey day in my apartment (which is extremely small). It was nice, we had fried chicken, mashed potatoes, corn, mac and cheese, apple Danish things, and some wine. There was a small incident with the wine. I'll include one picture, to give you an idea, you can ask later if you'd like. It was clumsily hilarious.

I've also participated in the national sports of badminton and ping pong, and seem to be alright at both. But, I am not a fan of competitive ping pong. Or should I say, table tennis. The boys here are way too competitive. Whatever taste I had for poker is now totally gone, and I'd rather never speak about American football ever again (since I was such a fan before!!). I'll stick to playing with the girls I guess, they are way more fun.

Okay, I'm getting sick of writing now…sorry to rattle your ears/eyes. I hope the Holidays are treating you all wonderfully and with great cheer and all that jazz. Miss you mucho, wish I could be at home during this time!!! Let me know how life is going for you all!! Peace and Love, Alex p.s. I did start a blog, it is http://www.arexinkorearand.blogspot.com/, it is a bit random, and so far has a lot of Calvin & Hobbes cartoons. But check it out, leave me some love, maybe it will entertain you a bit. I'll try to update that more often than I write e-mails. I will also post e-mails to the blog.

I'm Walking down the Street with my Nike's on...

This past weekend was swanky-chic and a lot of fun! Since my birthday was on Friday, and two of my friends have birthdays on Thursday, we all decided to celebrate together by seeing some DJs at the Seoul W hotel. I had never been to anything like it, I've been in very nice hotels (Thank you dad :)) but I have never been to a night bar super swanky scene like this one. Koreans, and I think Asians in general, are especially adept at dressing to the nines and looking overall fabulous. Their impeccable style was complemented by the incredibly chic interior of the W's Bar--the Woobar (doesn't have that classy of a name...). Everything was white, white, white, with a huge bar--about fifty feet long. The Dance floor was shrouded in mirrors and the Dj booth was this space age looking bubble pod thing. And there are these egg shaped pod chairs everywhere too...Pretty futuristic and surreal.



We saw some pretty good DJs, house music mostly, and a House band called Oriental Funk Stew--I failed to hear any funk though...more Disco-ey. One of the best songs, which I have to track down some how was a remix of a song that goes, "I'm walking down the street with my nike's on..." and it repeats it a few times. There were also some remixes of some pretty bad songs, like that annoying "One more time" (not britney spears, the more nineties sounding one...), which the Koreans loved.

I have to say that at first I felt TOTALLY out of place....not expensive enough clothes, skinny enough legs, high enough heels (or any heel at all really...) or done up enough hair and make-up. I got over that relatively quickly though once we started dancing and realized that those people who were all made up and expensive A) didn't care what we looked like and B) were not having nearly as much fun as we were having.

Finished off the night at a cute motel with cheap rooms (about $20 a pop!) and had breakfast at an "American Diner" the next morning (wellll, i guess it was almost 2 P.M.). I had real bacon for the first time in a while!!

and the love affair continues

My obsession with Calvin and Hobbes continues, and perhaps is getting stronger. I totally forgot how perfect this comic strip can be for almost any occassion. This one for example...it explains korean cuisine to a T. hahahaaaaaa....freaking hilarious.