Consolatory Back Scratching

This is pretty self explanatory. Children are so manipulative! Also, doing weird things with my hair. Bree says it looks good, so that's all the second opinion I need.

H8U, SUBWAY

Hey, did everyone have a good friday night? Yeah? Well fuck you. Mine was awful on a few levels.

So my coworker Melissa invited me out to her friend's birthday party at this foreigner bar called Happiness or some such shit. All the guys I met at the baseball field last week were going to be there so I was thinking "i dont fit in with those guys" but the words that came out of my mouth were "Sure! Sounds good!"

So I show up and Melissa is like "Hey, Cam's here!" and everyone is pretty much dead silent. No greeting. No 'hey.' So I sit down and listen to them talk and Melissa is like 'you should get a beer' so i go to the bar and say "give me the cheapest shit you have" so i get poured a three dollar mug of Max, the worst beer in the world. I would prefer Keystone to this swill. Anyway.

So i go to sit back down and we play some drinking Jenga and its okay i guess but everyone keeps calling each other 'gay' and 'fags' and im getting a bit uncomfortable. and one guy keeps calling me 'hairdo' and he's like "Yeah, I used to have hair just like yours but then I cut it. Because I grew up." All this after one of my kids called me 'ajuma' earlier in the day, which means 'granny,' because all the old women here have permed hairdos that look like my hair just is naturally at the length it was. I made a mental note to get my hair cut first thing Saturday morning.

So I'm trying to make conversation with people at different points but every time we start to talk, someone else comes up and i get knocked out of the conversation cause they all know each other and have all these inside stories. Or, worse, sometimes the other person would just stop talking to me, opting for silence. Not really sure what i said to make this happen twice but i guess i said something awkward. i dont know.

so, sitting alone, surrounded by people having laugh-out-loud conversations, drinking my beer slowly and staring bleakly into the middle distance, trying to decide how soon i can leave without feeling bad about it, melissa comes up and asks me what i did after school before coming to the bar and i said 'nothing' which kind of killed the conversation. then some other people come over and they all talk to melissa and its the same thing ive been dealing with all night, so i say 'i think im going to go,' and then someone said something i dont know, and then i said 'i dont fit in with your friends' and left like the ball of awkwardness i am. the handle fell off when i pushed the door open as i was leaving. its like this super power i have, to be the most awkward person in a situation where everyone else is having fun and enjoying themselves. i must have been bitten by a radioactive librarian when i was a child or something.

Needless to say I didnt go to baseball today neither did melissa even attempt to contact me. it's going to be awkward on monday, im pretty sure.

TL;DR - i am unfathomably awkward.

so i got the haircut and it was okay. the guy was literally SHAKING as he cut it. i think the mass of curls i had on my head were daunting to his fragile korean mind. there were like four employees watching the whole time and the only woman there who knew english kept coming to ask me if i liked it every 10 minutes. but its short. shorter than ive had it in a while. and i guess its good. i dont really care, honestly. as long as i dont have ajuma hair.

so after all that, i explored some parts outside of seoul with my friend estee. i didnt draw it here cause we were primarily in super crowded areas and im too lazy/untalented to draw all that. and i honestly really dont know how to go about drawing her. im bad at drawing girls. but it was fun. we talked about anime and manga and the korean obsession with 'fitting the mold' and the possible explanations to why they are the way the are/why they dress the way they dress. then i got on the wrong train at a transfer on the way home. well, it was the right line and the right direction, but the line forks and, of course, i picked the train that went to the left instead of the right. so 40 minutes, two transfers, and some desperate asking of directions from confused locals later, i was finally on my way back home. h8u, subway. h8u4eva.

probably going to stay home all day tomorrow. get some work done. hopefully get to talk to someone who wanted to talk to me today but i was busy. maybe lament my awkwardness a bit. psyche myself up for monday when i have to see melissa and hope she doesnt give me the cold shoulder all day or, worse, ask me about my behavior at the bar. i wish she'd just tell me none of them like me and neither does she so i can just be done with it.

I realize this a big jump from the last comic. I have been in South Korea for over a week and I love it. The culture is a bit different than what I'm used to, but I think thats mostly due to the fact that I'm living in a city and not so much that it's a different continent. From what I remember of my few visits to Chicago/Boston/Atlanta, it's pretty much the same except 99.999% of the people are asian. And everyone is really quiet on the street, even when they are talking to each other. No screaming at cars here. But the trade off for this is that there are cellphone display kiosks like every 50 feet and they are all blasting often-terrible-often-nightmarishly-catchy Kpop, because that is all ANYONE listens to here. There are no other genres to be found. Your students listen to it. The old ladies (called 'ajumas') listen to it. Your Korean coteachers listen to it. The business men, walking to work in dignified suits and briefcases full of important legal documents, are listening to it on their pink iPods. I'm surprised my phone didn't come pre-installed with top 100 chart-topper Kpop ringtones.

BUT ANYWAY. The teaching is fun. Morning classes are separated by number (for example, second grade consists of the 2-1, 2-2, and 2-3 classes) and the afternoon classes are separated by color (for example, second grader consists of the 2 Red, 2 Blue, 2 Green and 2 Yellow classes). Some of these classes are very very good. They are all smart and attentive and literate; even some of the first graders can spell quite well. But, of course, some of these classes are nightmares. FOR EXAMPLE: Class 4 Green is amazing. They all know exactly what I'm saying and the context of my words, they can write full sentences with rare mistakes in spelling, and convey their thoughts and feelings with confident articulation. They are FOURTH graders. Then there is class 6 Red (I think; maybe 6 Blue). They suck. They barely understand English and they cannot write anything unless the sentence goes "I like (blank)" but then I have to tell them how to spell whatever word they are using in the blank, because they barely recognize the alphabet. They are SIXTH graders. These classes I usually attempt to give the lesson and play an organized game but, when clearly none of them will pay attention regardless of how much I shout or threaten punishment (which can only really be implemented through taking away points, which only applies if we are playing a game, and only for games that score them points (i.e. punishments don't really mean anything)), I then give up and give them paper to draw so they are at least doing SOMETHING constructive. These classes suck an astronomical amount of ass. When they are not hitting each other or on their cell phones, they are saying what I assume are mean things about me. I assume this because they say stuff in Korean and I occasionally hear either my name or a word I've come to recognize means 'teacher' and then they do that really cruel laughter that children do when they say something horrible about someone. But there's not really anything I can do about it. Thankfully, these classes are few. It makes me feel better that my coteachers, foreign and Korean alike, say that these classes are pretty much impossible and if you can teach them ANYTHING, then you're doing pretty good. As Jenny (Jeni? Je-ni? I don't know if this is her 'English name' or if it's her Korean name; it could go either way honestly) put it, "they have no desire." So oh well.

The rest of the kids are a mix of good and bad (mostly good so far, if not a bit over-energetic), so I can handle that. It's just when I get a class comprised entirely of bad kids, anywhere from 8-14 of them, I start to lose my control/hair/mind. Aaaaaaaaaa

Oh, and I guess I'm on a weekend baseball team now with some foreign guys I've met (from US, Canada, and New Zealand). They are all better than me and I play my first game on Saturday. I'll be the guy with a load in his diaper pants.

Enemy Advantage

So if this makes NO sense to you, direct yourself here.

For the rest of you (i.e. nobody), I have been playing Persona 3 Portable pretty much nonstop for the past 4 days, besides when I have to go to work. But, even there, I wear my pokewalker for the whole day so I can train up my Gloom. I cannot escape video games.

No, let me rephrase: video games cannot escape ME.

Korea Time is drawing near. Hope my E2 number comes through soon.

p.s. blogger made the .png quality look like a .jpeg and i dont know why but i'm too lazy to try to fix it. it's an mspaint comic; it doesn't need to look pretty.

okay, so maybe this isnt funny to anyone but ME, but i'll explain anyway: all of these things are both unreasonable as well as impossible (for where I work, at least). i guess you'd have to work in a place like this to really get the humor of the frustration, especially here in Georgia where everyone talks like an extra in a bad comedy.

can't wait to quit this stupid job and geddufukouduh this country.

Still Here

only the anime/manga nerds will understand the reference in this one. WHERE MY OTAKUS AT Y'ALL

FedEx

I did all of this on Tuesday, actually. Got to FedEx about 10 minutes before they closed.

Now I have to do all my E2 Visa paperwork and prepare for that interview; there is a very real chance they could decline me, which would probably be the biggest bummer of my life. I am confident that I'll exceed their standards though. LET'S DO THIS

Interview

I got a job as an English Teacher at an elementary school in Anyang, South Korea. This has been my career dream for a little while now and it is becoming reality. TR = Teacher Representative. He called himself Scott but I know that wasn't his real name because he is a native Korean and, if you know anything about their culture, there is NO WAY his parents would have named him "Scott." It is surely a self-appointed moniker because his real name is probably too hard to pronounce. Regardless, he was a super nice guy and did his job exceptionally well.

The principal who interviewed me kept giggling, despite her constant reminders that the school is very professional and expects the same of me. Hmm.

That little thing on top of my sub is a Link (LoZ) action figure from sometime in 90's. I also have a Leonardo (TMNT) figure from the 80's too but there is no way I can draw it that small. They are posed for action.

Also, yeah I have two laptops: a netbook for iTunes and Skype, a five-year-old dell for everything else. They are both very slow and kind of suck, so don't start thinking it means I have any money because I am pretty much broke all the time.