What and where is Korea?

Keep your eyes peeled to the streets! You may find money dropped by one of these drunkin souls wondering around avoiding their decrepit marriages. Yep, I guarantee every person in this photograph is totally trashed. It's sadly no different on any other night of the week. It is also good to keep your eyes to the street to avoid stepping in throw-up and other bodily fluids. You gotta have a keen eye though, just like massive rave-parties the money is hidden amounst the garbage.

The following is a survey of my local convience store "1+ 24 mon ee-eh gong" (?) <-- i'm learning to write and read korean and I think that's what it says next to the 24. This particular one I guess is open.. 24 plus 1 equals.. uhhhh 25 hours a day. My god these Koreans work too hard. No seriously they do work too hard. It is paritially why they drink so god damn much and kill themselves so much.

All convience stores here sell soy milk, honey water, ineffective coffee cans, chocolate milk, and other drinks in heated cases. It is genius.

Drink too much last night and you are out of the kumbucha your buddy shipped you from Madison Market or any Coop on the West Coast?

Drink Morning Care or any variation of hang-over drinks! Ignore scientists that report hang-over drinks have little to no effect!

Bliss.
Soy milk available anywhere hot or cold.

The ubiquitous pomegranate juice.

Koreans must love this stuff because every store has some brand of pomegranate juice. In fact I bought a large bottle today.

It might not be the pomegranate- it might be all juices. Most convience stores in Korea have crushed pear, wild berry, orange, mango, etcetera.

I bought the heated honey water because my stomach hurts. I wonder why USA doesn't have this in convience stores for upset stomachs and just for the sweet taste.
But I'm a feckless tree hugger. What do I know.

I agree. yogurt is as gross as guts!
at least I think it is yogurt...

These iniquitous bags of crap should be avoided. Korea is the #1 creator of Monosodium-Glutamate (MSG).

Korea has these 24hr restaurants that sell everything from breaded dead cow to kimbap rolls. This particular one has gross food but it is cheap. I sometimes go here for take out before work. The daytime women-workers are pretty cool while the evening women are bitches.

In USA after you turn around 30 years old you aren't going out at night too much. While in Korea people of ALL ages are out eating and drinking til the crack of dawn allowing places like this to stay financially sustained.

When you are in Asia and being pressured to do well on your math exams but you just hate Calculus and you are just plain bad at it...

Don't kill yourself, use ANTI-CALCULUS TOOTHPASTE.

Yes with Clinx, the ANTI-CALCULUS toothpaste you will never have to do math again and thus won't have to slit your wrist! WOW

If you aren't very good at soccer but enjoy the sport like I do....

THEN GET COMPUTER FOOTBALL SOCKS!

computer enhanced to know when you are going to kick, jump, run, or stand.

Why spend $200 on adidas shoes that have microchips when you can spend just $19.99 on COMPUTER FOOTBALL SOCKS.

SEEING THIS PICTURE BRINGS A SMILE TO MY FACE.
currently I am tipsy from wine from spending an evening with white people from Europe and Europe's previous jail country. Good people but they kept bring up the nostalgia of marijuana. I didn't partically appeciate this. I left.

This food is what I have been referring for quite some time as "MOUNTAIN FOOD." I am lucky to say this food is 1 block from my house. An aspect of Korea I will miss and wish I could implement into my own culture founded in Bainbridge and Seattle: A wonderful restaurant a block from me. I guess the coop in Bellingham was that for me.

But this restaurant is my refuge in Korea. After a long day of disrepsectful brusque brats I retreat to this restaurant to the softness of the owner's voice and the continous servings of mountain vegetables. By the end of the meal my thoughts have left school and arrived right at the restaurant in the moment. Such an event is rare in that my thoughts are usually on money or Seattle or the mountains. The money aspect I surely am NOT proud of.

As I leave the restaurant my consciousness, unconsciousness, and physical being seperate completely and settle into abstraction. No thought enters my mind; rather it flies right through me as my lofty mind stagants. Without a connection between mind and body my legs clumsily stumble one in front of the other after leaving and implicitly providing the host with my goodbyes. Once on the street I can show my true self: my eyes stares up in the sky not in search for my mind rather the fullness of my stomach is probably pinching a nerve that forces my eyes upward. My mouth hangs open for reasons unknown until I reach my apartment where I collapse on my bed. I think, "That beer I was contemplating purchasing before dinner can certainly wait til tomorrow."

For anyone who visits me you will experience this restaurant AFTER I show you shitty food. I did the opposite when Kirsten came. Big mistake I think.

Part of a letter to a friend about my current work situation. It is a situation I will never experience again for two reasons: it is highly unique I sense and I will avoid it at all cost.

na I won't get fired I think because they are blaming me for some bullshit when they just threw three 6grade classes into one classroom with an adult conversation book and expect everything to be peachy. NOPE. I mean the conversations in the book are discussing doing taxes and drinking what kind of martinis are the best and discussing marriage issues! HAHAHHAHAHAAH fuuuck and all the while 4th-6th students are kicking each other and yelling like fucking angry monkeys and since I'm recently told not to punish my students at all anymore all hell has broken loose. The reason I was told to stop punishing the students is because parents have been calling saying their child is "afraid of me." Well I agree in that Koreans are sheepish people and it is demonstrated every time I turn the corner of anywhere in Korea. Everyone jumps at the sight of me. Even the students who love me and give me candy every day. The students whose parents are complaining the are students who frequently get in trouble in my class and so tell their parents "I'm afraid of the big mean American!" Clever fucks; good revenge. I would have done the same thing at their age. My punishments were yelling "BE QUIET!!!" and making the troublemakers sit in the front of the room on the ground and the worst of all was making everyone sit boy girl boy girl. And I've been told to stop all these techniques even though the korean teachers are pushing the kids up against the wall and hitting them in the back with their knuckles. So now when a student is kicking another student I say in a monotone voice, "stop it; stop it." and leave it at that. Of course the kicking continues and I continue to say monotonely, "stop it; stop it." Since the discontinuation of Alex reign of relatively minimal force the yelling has reached previously unknown decibels to the point where a few girls are sitting there with their fingers to their ears. See my students are ghetto crazy bastards. They are seriously like wild christian pig eating animals. Now I have never liked yelling so I have to go into my happy place: soon enough being with my NW friends again laughing away after blazing it up on a beach near Seattle with my pocket overflowing with cash. And I must think of all the jobs that are worse, like reading in my student's adult textbook about the man who is stressed over the stock-holder presentation that he has not prepared. At least someone is getting something out of this damned textbook.

top 5 things about korea:

1. Time in another culture to find that USA is one great motherfucking country although our government is at an all-time low. The chance to go to places I have only seen in books and on TV. Time and a place to learn about myself. Time away from a large social group and hobbies so that I can read many books, play trumpet and meditate. An opportunity to jump to other Asian countries like Thailand and Japan. An opportunity to realize I absolutely never want children unless I'm tricked into it.
2. discouvering boulders in buddhist temples and climbing them when no one else has.
3. Sleeping in as if it was Sunday everyday since I don't start work til 1pm or 3pm. In fact the idea of going to work at 8am or 10am seems crazy to me now.
4. eating mountain food
5. the bus system. Man if I was in Seattle and wanted to go to the cascades I sure as hell couldn't do it for 12 bucks round trip let alone on a nice-ass bus.

top 5 worst things about korea:

1. children
2. being stared at and pointed out
3. excessive consumption of pig meat (not me of course. GOD NO)
4. totally confused and pushy driving habits
5. lack of marijuana and an inauspicious propaganda towards it while alcohol is looked upon with mirth and encouragment.

Like many people I live for the weekends. I didn't feel this way when I was in school. I'm afraid of this weekend-doom many people face. Just always thinking of the weekends. When I was a barista the office-cubicle workers would say to me on Monday morning, "The weekend was too short!" They say this almost every Monday. Although I hated my job too I didn't feel that way because I was off work at 12pm. Everyday was nearly a weekend for me other than I spent so much time trying to find a "real job." But is a "real job" something where you say on Monday that you wish the weekend was longer?

Talib Kweli said, "If you are afraid to die then you aren't living your life right." Similarly if you aren't ready for Monday you aren't living your weekends right!

I think the trick to having a good weekend is by exhausting yourself in what you enjoy the most.

All weekend I was climbing. It was excellent and super relaxing. First I climbed at Oo Om Mountain just 20 minutes from my house. I was sitting meditating on my pad when these two koreans came up to me and took out two teacups and so I said in Korean, "ahh tea?" and the woman said "yes." They proceeded to sit down and I thought, "Of all the places they are going to sit on this mountain it is next to me?!
I got up and began putting my climbing shoes on. That's when they pulled out a bottle of soju. Not tea!! High-concentrated alcohol.
When I began climbing up the rock they were rather surpised. When I got higher they were all "DANGER DANGER!" hahahahah
I ended up drinking a little soju and eating oranges with them.

On a different topic:
Friday night I went drinking with my co-workers. It was fun cause I understood.. 20...15% of what they said.. okay that was sort of annoying but I could say stuff and actually make jokes in Korean which was fun. I noticed that the alcohol made me feel better by the end of the night. But the feelings of my shitty work were right back in my gut Saturday morning.
But after two days of rock climbing in beautiful natural environments I feel great. I am ready go into work today, Monday afternoon, ready to deal with this fucked-up stupid situation that I'm sitting smack dab in the middle of.

My ex-boss used to say how stressed out he was and how he drank to fix that. Well maybe your so stressed out because of the alcohol. Maybe he just needed to go to a mountain and look at the trees.

I've been eating the best food this weekend. Especially Sunday with Korean mountain food at a restaurant in the middle of the forest and then Thai food cooked by my Ryan's girlfriend who is visiting for a few weeks from..well.. Thailand. Ah the Thai food made me totally high.. maybe because the last time I ate Thai food was in Thailand and.. lets just say I lost a lot of things there.

Ah.. all the good food was a mouth receptor orgy.

what's up buddy.
nice to see you again.

this is so fucked.. i'm feeling so frustrated

see it doesn't really matter if my students are learning in these korean private schools. what matters is if they students are happy and it seems like they are learning!!!!

so all these parents in all my classes have been calling and complaining.. i'm sure they don't call when i do something good.

it seems the students are saying they are scared of me because i am foreigner and I yell at them to be quiet all the time!! well if they didn't FUCKING TALK THEN I WOULDN'T YELL!

My coworker said, "remember when you were that age. you have to have that mentatlity" I said "In my classes we didn't ignore the teacher and talk away." and he said "that is USA, you have to think that you are in korea now" ohhh okkkkk

So today I stopped yelling at them and just let them talk all class long.. only when i couldn't hear myself talk did i say softly, "be quiet please. be quiet." It doesn't really help.
I like this system more because i feel less stress and high-blood pressure of trying to actually make the class be quiet.

There is this one class I've already given up. I used to yell at them to be quiet and they totally ignored me. So I now barely teach them in that class. The students rule that class. I'm told parents have now been calling and complaining that I'm not teaching.

So if I tell them to be quiet and try to bring order to the class I get in trouble, and if I let them talk while I'm teaching I get in trouble.

This private school system is so fucked up. Students don't care because it is extra private schooling and if they get in trouble they tell their parents and the parents pull them out of the school which is bad for the private school's business. I have to walk this line of where I seem like i'm teaching them while letting them do whatever the fuck they want.

I hate children.

This is Audu in Lagos, Nigeria. Now the fact that he is living in Lagos is very important. People of other areas of Africa I would be embarrassed to compare. Anyway, he is featured on this interesting BBC article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4805528.stm

They are trying to make him out as being poor.
He makes about 450 bucks a month and his rent is 8 bucks and his monthly food bill is 59 bucks.

When I was last living in Seattle I was making less than 900 dollars a month, my rent was 230 bucks and my monthy food bill was about 160 bucks.

Audu, don't feel sorry for yourself man... you come to Seattle and you'll be pretty much just as poor. If not poorer because my rent was super low because I was living in a god damn warehouse.

The neighborhood I live in.. it's about the size of Winslow, Bainbridge Island. Don't know what that is? Go on google earth.

Anyway here is a map of it and if you look at it in detail you will read 10 public schools!
My god. It makes perfect sense by looking at all the large apartment buildings. I mean this neighorhood probably has more people in it than all of Bainbridge Island which is the size of manhattan, NYC.

flash* of a v4/v4+ slab~.

did you know i'm ninja?



* a flash is a climbing term that means you walk up to a climb that you have never attempted and you just do it first try
~ slab is a rock face that has very small features for only your feet. You can't really grab on anything even though you try to. Your feet must walk up the climb taking advantage of excellent balance and friction. Often the foot holds (usually credit card sized) are far apart and you must put a lot of stress on your legs.

Alrite. Last few posts... ahhhhh not funny and I've been... ummmmm in a funk.
I was so upset that Friday night I was seriously considering going back to Seattle beginning of April.

I found a cure though. It was easy. I just had to climb some boulders in "the bong" in Seoul which gave me near organsms and I had to drink a martini in a jazz club.

So i'm peachy again

When I first got here I only ate at the stands. Unlike the stands in Thailand, the stands in Korea make me want to cut out my stomach to avoid digesting the shit.

Then I discovered I can order food at restaurants. The restaurants I went to were these lower-class type chain sort of things..Basically pretty cheap okay food. Now I avoid those as well because of the lower-quality food and the giggling school children and loud soju-warriors who are usually spread throughout these joints. I now spend an extra 50 cents (totally at $4 for thie pictured meal) and I go to a high-quality restaurant in a sit down (and I mean actually sit on the ground) restaurants surrounded by intellectual and business class. I hate to sound pretentious but I prefer to be around those types unless I"m hanging out with starving artists and musicians. I can't find those here though; I gotta go to Seoul.

Anyway these high-quality meals are one of the primary forms of enjoyment recently. I am really down lately and crave to return home. But I won't with the similar tenacity my sister has. A level of tenacity that can be maybe a bit harmful. Even so, I will not allow it to become harmful by concentrating on what I enjoy: beautiful mountains, good food, good meditation, and Turkish coffee my sister sent me. FUCK I want my turntables and my friends and a fat joint.

It is good to be different sometimes. While other times it sucks because there are such few people to relate to and such few enjoyable activities to do.

For those of you who know. I bought those high-top shoes almost 2 years ago and they are still going strong. Just a good cleaning and they are like a 70 year old athletic vegan that just got a good massage and scrubbing.

The othe weekend I did a climbing competition. For $10 you got a tshirt, lunch, dinner, and since I got 5th place about $20-30 in prizes.

This picture is of Geyou Heyung (that's the closest I can get to spelling his name in English) and he is wicked strong and an awesome guy.

It was so packed in this little gym in Seoul and since Koreans seem to be clueless when it comes to Danger little kids kept getting fallen on and then started to cry. I found it a little humorous just because of the fact that no one was learning from this mistake. I also found it humorous because as a grade school teacher I now loath children and wish misfortune for them all. WHOHAHAHAHAHA

I thought trimming trees was dangerous in USA! These guys got on no protect and are trimming between powerlines!! As I took this picture one of the branches dropped and bounced off the ground and into a store window shattering it. I figured if that's all that's broken that day they did well!

Another comment about that adult text book I'm using for my young students.
Some of them know such little english that they write S backwards!

So I wonder how long I can just speak complete giberish until someone actually figures out I'm not actually speaking English?

When had bowling become an aerobic sport? When I think of an aerobic sport I think of running or boxing or biking.

When I think bowling I think of middle -aged lower-class men with beer bellies dropping heavy balls on the ground with a cigarette hanging out the corner of the their mouths. The only sweat being released in this "sport" is caused by excess pig meat and alcohol.

Hey little girl in the window playing the piano.
Can I buy you?
Are you for sale?
Am I in the red light district of Korea?
How much?

I love how I can get on top of about any roof in this country. They are practically always open!!

Notice the cross in the picture. There are about 1 or 2 churches on every street in this country.

For me???

it sucks to get your bike stolen.... mine wasn't though.. not yet at least

I'm doing this new thing in Korea.

Whenever a kid says hello to me as I pass them on the street I say
"huh?"
"hi!"
"what?"
"hello!"
"huh?"
"....hi..."
"what?"
"sorry..."

i hope i'm not destroying their confidence too much by making them think they can't even say hello correctly!

AHHH the air is WICKED FRESH pololo style. I can get my buddhist ding on here. DATS RITE YO
"YOYOYO. What up B dog!"
"You know, same old same old. Just drinkin some juice waitin for dis enlightenment but mannnnn I'm getting tired of dis shit. WHEN IT GUNNA HAPPEN YO! Anyway, how was dat meditate walkin you do?"
"the view was bombastic as a muthafucka! Yo B, wanna get a bite to eat at Lotteria. I'm itchin for a hamburger!"

It ain't MiccyDs but shiiittt dis Lotteria hamburger is damn fine. I could go for one of dos espresso shakes da people been talkin all about- COLD GOT TO BE YO!

Somewhere along the line of the idea of "sandwich" got confused when intergrating into Korean culture.
Especially the one of the top right; that's not cheese that's cabbage and below it is ham.

and I!!!! will always... LOVE YOU OOOOoooOOOOO

This is where I go when I want to relive the moment of the Body Guard and when of course when I want to drink some coffee and then some coffee.