Dumpster Dogs Bike to Busan

In 2015, I quit my job in Seoul and started an extended bike tour. K flew in from Virginia for the first bit of my trip. He helped see me off and ate an irresponsible amount of food.

I drew these vaguely narrative comics for K about a year an a half ago but didn’t give up on the idea of coloring all of them until right now.

Here ya go, K.

DAY 1

DAY 2

DAY 3

DAY 4

DAY 5

DAY 6

DAY 7

K and I spent a few days sampling new flavors of soonari and squatting in Busan’s finest Jjimjilbbangs before catching our ferry to Japan.

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

The Four Major Rivers Trail

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

Early morning soju with our campsite neighbors

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

Lost in the mountains

Top of the 500m climb

That biker motel

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

Ferry to Japan

한국 끝!

 

Taiwan, not Thailand

Hello internet.
I’m still wandering about, squandering my savings.

After my 3 months in Japan I moved on to do 3 months in Taiwan, which is a country that is neither Thailand or China.

One of my first days in Taiwan I was at a night market, standing in line to buy some quail-eggs-on-a-stick before I got bored of the tiresome chore of waiting and began to wander away.
Soon after, someone tapped me on the shoulder and I turned to see two dudes holding a bag full of quail-eggs-on-a-stick. They pushed the bag into my hands and ran off screaming, “NO ENGLISH-YYYY!!” before I had a chance to terrify them with a “thank you”.

Thus set the theme for Taiwan: awkwardly/wonderfully/overwhelmingly generous people on a weird, beautiful island.

I realized pretty early on that it’d be difficult to write anything about traveling Taiwan.
You see, Taiwan is the best one.
And by ‘one’ I mean country and while I understand that I haven’t been to the vast majority of countries, – it does not matter.
Taiwan is still the best one.
The people, the food, the scenery, the bountiful convenience stores, etc.

But. I know. –
There are few things more useless than positivity on the internet and I really have no interest in having you read anything about the #blessed #wanderlust of Bethany fucking Ellington.

Ferreal tho~

One time I went in for an interview at a modeling agency in Taipei and they asked me if I’d ever worked in Milan and immediately offered to sponsor my work permit and I blushed and giggled and said, “oooh, staaaaaaahp”.
#grateful            #inspired            #eatpraylove

You see that? You hated that.
You just finished another mindless 8-hour day at work and you’d much rather revel in the endless disappointment of some vague acquaintances’ facebook nonsense than read about me having a nice time in the pits of Asia.

It just doesn’t seem fair to leave out Taiwan, tho.
So let try to focus on the negative.

To be fair, I only ended up at a modeling agency because my strict travel budget has turned me into a slimy, opportunistic street gremlin.

Other clawing, mercenary schemes include begging:

Here I am “selling photos” (re: begging).

People offer monetary donations and in exchange I give them a picture and regale them with an inspiring story, – assuring them that the abandoned dreams of their youth still flourish and soar within me as the free little butterflies they were born to be.

Afterwards, I lick my thumb and count my money like a world-weary baroness.

Also, I briefly returned to the job to which I’d promised myself never to return.
The one I hate the most.

Elementary English teaching:

Butt.

At one point I told one of these bastards that “thirteen” didn’t count as “thirty” and he started screaming at the top of his lungs and raised a chair above his head to hurl at me.

WHAT ARE CHILDREN?!?!WHAT IS WRONG WITH THEM?!?WHY DO THEY EXIST!?!

Taiwan is a popular cyclist destination as there is (kinda) (supposedly) a bike path around the whole island. There is NOT a bike path around the whole island but it is still pleasant. Or rather the east coast is extremely pleasant and the west coast is mainly a congested mess that people bike through just so they can tell people that they biked around Taiwan. Which is precisely what I did.

I started on the west coast and it looked like this:

But did come with some nice coastal side routes:

At one point, for a break from the highways, I decided to take a detour to the coast to watch the sunset.
What I found was a wind-turbine dotted swamp.

On the way back to the road, I passed a massive, rank garbage incinerator and two bats hovered terrifyingly close to my face for the duration.
Here, the internet has preemptively reenacted said scene for you.

My first volunteer gig was a hundred kilometers or so into the west coast route. It’s a restaurant/resort on a beautiful mountaintop run by three generations of a rull wonderful Taiwanese family.

The Wu family being great.

The water below these lounge chairs is a densely populated frog pond.
I once caught one of the sons putting his cigarette out in it. When I asked him why this was his ashtray of choice, he told me the tadpoles have it too easy and he is helping to build their character.
He also strongly encouraged me to read The Power of Now.

My favorite among them was A’gong, the dementia-addled grandfather. The family is relaxed and kind enough to not put him in a home and instead has him live in their care at the resort. A’gong spends his time walking from one restaurant table to the next, helping himself to the customers’ teas and reminding everyone to eat well and stay warm. Sometimes he forgets where the bathroom is and pees in the middle of the restaurant. The family, being chill as hell, just laughs it off.

They have very bad reviews on TripAdvisor.

My job there consisted mainly of sign-making and enjoying really nice coffee, tea, chocolate, wine, food, views, and resort rooms, etc.

If by some chance you ever want to volunteer in Taiwan, I’d highly recommend Roll In Farm. It’s lovely, easy, and the over-worked manager, Jedy Su, is a saint as well as a badass.

On my way to Roll In, I’d spent a night at a cheap roadside love motel. Whilst wandering the halls in search of potable water, something big and black flashed across my peripherals. It stopped for a split second and I recognized it as the largest, fastest spider I had ever seen in my life. I ran back to my room and prayed to any available higher powers that I never run into that thing again.
A few nights into my stay at Roll In I was sitting on my bed, probz watching Adele’s new video for the 5^th time in a row, when suddenly that giant black flash was ON MY BED RIGHT THE FUCK IN FRONT OF ME.

There it is.

I jumped around screaming and then got the daughter to come chase it out of my room with a pink pool queue.

This string of near-spider-experiences lead me to my second volunteer gig – a yoga studio in the woods that was actually just a giant spider zoo with beds.

I first saw one was on the wall outside my bedroom. By this time I was a hardened enough to pretend not to be terrified.

That was until I got up out of bed in the dark to turn the fan down and my flashlight settled on the green glowing eyes of the spider that had followed me into my room to watch me sleep.

I was in a sort of yoga-warehouse with 9 different empty bedrooms so I decided to find a new room for the rest of the night. What followed was a fucked-up nightmare in which each room was inhabited by progressively larger, scarier spiders.

I did not sleep for my first few nights there.

Here’s another one that was tryna get at me through my bedroom window. I tried to close the window, hoping to push it outside. This only served to crush some of its legs and violently anger it. – – It flew out and chased me.

Some other night I was brushing my teeth when I saw, on the wall next to me, yet another giant spider. This one had a huge, still-alive cockroach rammed into its maw.
The cockroach looked into my eyes and whispered, “help” before the spider ran off into the shadows.

I made a drawing of this in my journal that I’ll include here so you can better understand my trials:

Anyway, the yoga studio was run by a dude named NoNo who is fascinating man and a master of everything (esp Asian stuff); kung-fu, tae kwon do, boxing, yoga, meditation, chiropractorin’, accupunture, sports massage, permaculture, etc, etc.

One time I saw him pop a cork on a needle, gouge it into his hand, and set it on fire. For his “chi”.

Anyway, Nono was super great and fascinating and my work at the studio was just to tame the street puppies born on his property.

There they are.

But.
Back in Japan, during some cycling days, I’d learned that I could go about one week without much social interaction before it started to get to me. One and half weeks and the conversations and narrations in your own head stop — you no longer have anything to say to yourself — and you’re left with nothing but the symptoms of a budding situational depression.
By the time I’d arrived at the yoga studio I had not talked with another native/capable-of-subtleties English speaker for seven long, long weeks.

I was going right out of my fucking mind.

Regular-ass people, I do not recommend extended stays in the Taiwanese countryside.
Worm-y mole people, I know some places you might like.

So, to remedy the situation, I cut my yoga studio time short and I pedaled off to Kaohsiung where I met 700+ foreigners and talked at them for a record 168 hours straight, -only stopping occasionally to gasp for air.
Thanks, guys.

 

Then I started the east coast.
The east coast of Taiwan is a mixture of Ireland and the Caribbean.
As in – super green and super blue.
Plus lotsa monkeys.

Rull stunning.
You should do it.

I found that while biking and biking and biking, your body goes into flow and your mind wanders off with no real direction or distraction, – revealing your baseline psyche to be as unstable and inane as you always feared it was.

Brain while riding:

-Remember that time so-and-so said that funny thing? (*insert LOL*)
– Remember that time whathisface said that shitty thing? (*insert grumbling*)
– OMG, What if so-and-so DIED?!? (*insert actual fucking crying*)
– Am I hungry? (*insert quizzical expression*)
– Long, drawn-out, entirely improbable, hypothetical situation in which I can play every instrument in the band and sing at the same time. (*insert confusing series of expressions*)

[Repeat – only pausing to refuel with 7-11 tea eggs]

So, anyway.
Taiwan was lovely and it taught me a lot of important lessons:

1.) The hardest part of being vegetarian is not being able to share your food with cute, ungrateful street dogs.

2.) After the novelty of cultural experiences wears off, stinky tofu just tastes like someone farting directly into your mouth.
TL;DR
-Taiwan is the best
– Yun Huang is even more the best (also Ikuyo Kito is the best, too)
– Taiwan really likes to set things on fire* and is covered in tiny lizards and giant spiders

*here’s Taiwan setting an entire boat on fire – complete with 8 million fireworks to really rub in the fire theme.

Thanks, Taiwan!

PS: here’s a Taiwanese parrot eating a str8 up chili pepper like it has never given a shit about anything in its life.

This is (no longer) my K blog

Dear friends and family and internet,

I am not dead.

Also sorry if I haven’t responded to your texts or emails or facebook messages or if I never set an actual time for our forever impending Skype date. I am not avoiding you, I’m just not a very good person.

This apology does not mean I’ll be making any attempts to grow up and sort my self out and be better at keeping in touch.
Soz.

For those that don’t know, I quit my job in Korea and am using my savings to voluntour through asia.

So, here is a summary of what I did for the first leg of my trip –  a three month stint in Japan.

———–

K and I arrived in Osaka after a 19-hour ride on a “cruise ship” that was actually a cargo liner delivering Korean ramen, honey butter chips, and flavored soju to Japan.

We biked and couchsurfed around Osaka and quickly grew frustrated with how confusing and expensive Japan seemed to be. We politely gave Japan the benefit of the doubt, assuming we simply must have been doing something wrong.

On our third day, K kicked a car on accident and had to sit in a police station for two and a half hours while they tried to charge him $1000 to replace the entire bumper.

If you look reeeeaaally closely you still can’t see any scratches on her precious bumper.

That’s when we began to suspect we weren’t actually doing anything wrong and Japan really is a black hole with a ravenous appetite for your money and zero patience for your whimsical, childlike shenanigans.

There were a few times on our trip when K or I dropped to our knees, emptied our wallets onto the pristine Japanese sidewalks, and wailed,
“TAKE IT! TAKE IT ALL, JAPAN! ISN’T THAT WHAT YOU WaAAaAAAaNT?!?!!” before crumpling into a fetal position around our 100 yen cans of alcolpop.

Soon after realizing Japan would be a challenge, K and I brainstormed a comprehensive set of guidelines to help us better enjoy the rest of our trip.

I’ll share them here should any of my faithful readership ever need them on their own adventure!

---

---

Bethany & K’s Tips For Traveling Japan (on the Cheap!)

Step 1.) Eat directly out of the garbage.
Step 2.) Bitch loudly and passionately.
Step 3.) Leave Japan.

#travel #wanderlust #inspired #authentic #lifeisgood

---

---

After a few days in Osaka we biked on to Kyoto where we continued to act like homeless dogs that didn’t understand what a vacation was.

We ate strictly at convenience stores when we were not chewing off bits of our own skin in an unresolved protest against overpriced ramen.

We also saw lotsa pretty stuff and had a great time and sang karaoke and met great people and yada yada yada.
Kyoto is really nice.

THEN we finally made our way to Tokyo where everything smelled of a newly-opened Gameboy and the hostel clerk was a robot Lolita girl with cartoon hearts and sparkles surrounding her head.

In Tokyo we found Kim, our long-lost Japanese buddy, who accompanied us on the grand march through an endless corridor of anime porn.

And we went to a maid café and had owls sit on our heads and ate lotsa sushi, and followed our lovely couchsurfer to a massive gay club where we danced with scantily-clad men and swam around a filthy dance floor pool in a Pikachu outfit ‘til sunrise.

Also, the immensely tangled spider web that is Tokyo’s rail system created such an immutable and consummate hatred within us that it formed a separate, animate being that will continue forever, haunting the train station attendants with frantic mispronunciations of station names and wildly indignant whining.

All in all, lotsa fun was had. In case there’s any doubt there, here are pictures of K having a great time in Japan.

Ooooh, Dotonbori! You’re so lucky, K.

Looks like a nice evening in Osaka ^^

What a lovely day to bike to Kyoto.

Are you feeding Japanese macaques? Wow!

Arashiyama bamboo forest? So cool!

The Golden Temple is so spectacular!

I hope you got a good fortune, buddy ^^

Fushimi Inari? I loved Memoirs of a Geisha!

What did you eat? I bet it was oishi!

The Kabuki theatre in Ginza?! *swoon*

Sanrio World? Did you meet Hello Kitty?? ^^

Shibuya? Really living the dream, K.

Oooh, Kaaaay.

---

---

After K flew back to D.C. I made my way to Japan Cat Network, a tiny piece of heaven in Fukushima.

DONATE –> DONATE –> DONATE –>  https://japancatnetwork.org/

There are 30-some cats and 2 dogs.

It is paradisiacal and living there confirmed my suspicions that I would like to own no less than nine cats.

My volunteer responsibilities consisted largely of taking selfies with cats. This cat has three legs.

This one is so fat that she can’t reach an area on her back and it develops a single dread lock. Adorbz.

There it is ^^

This one has no teeth.

This one eats rubber bands.

This one’s face always smells curiously bad.

All of them were perfect.

….except for Troy.

Look, a kitten!

Anyway, when I wasn’t relaxing on a bed made of finely compacted cat fur I was biking through the rice paddies, swimming at the lake, hiking Mt. Bandai, or hanging out with the other volunteers.

Lake Inawashiro, a few kilometers from the cat shelter.

Atop, Mt. Bandai, behind the shelter.

Surrounded by rice paddies.

Also, the cat shelter was softly nestled amidst tons of old garbage (because Japan charges you a bajillion yen just to throw your damn trash out (–no exceptions for charitable organizations, WELCOME TO JAPAAAAN)) so we made a junkyard gym.

Also also, the shelter is/was graced by two live-in volunteers, Aoi and Mari, who, in retrospect are probz/def the best thing about Japan – right up there with convenience store sushi and Kumamon. Look at how great they are. ❤ ❤

---

---

After a month at the cat shelter I took a train to the west coast and then hopped a night boat to the remote Sado Island. I set up camp in the dark on some beach, resting assured that the tide would come drown me in my sleep.

It didn’t.

Instead I woke up to some old dude doing stretches on the beach. I asked him where a bathroom was (toy-ee-reh – doko-desu-ka?) and he led me back to an abandoned resort that his friend was converting into a retreat for musicians and artists.

Turns out he was just sorta housesitting for his friend and I could do the same in exchange for a few hours of vacuuming each day.

I very quickly came to realize the situation was not as ideal as ‘vacuuming = free food + accommodation.’

It was more like ‘vacuuming + keeping an extremely talkative and lonely old man company for as long as he excitedly talks at you = free food + accommodation’.

The man never stopped talking. Never.
And it was all directly at me so I had to pretend to pay attention even though it was 99% in Japanese. .

But, I still got to go out and cycle about the island for most of each day.
The island was almost completely devoid of life but was extremely pretty. –>

Another highlight of Sado Island, beyond it being pretty, was meeting this dude – Charles Robert Jenkins. After being held prisoner in North Korea for 40 years, he moved to Sado Island to be with his Japanese kidnapped bride and now works at a museum gift shop selling rice cookies. He has a thick, often incomprehensible, rural North Carolinian accent and repeatedly informed me that the “North Korean gubamint’s a lyin’” and that the “North Korean gubamint’s biggest liar e’re was”. He also told me stories about his life in Pyongyang and showed me the 8 books he has published on his experiences. Rull fascinating.

Anyway, I wanted to explore more but home life with chatty man was getting pretty insufferable and, at times, really creepy. So, I packed up and left.

To the left is chatty man, deliriously laughing at nothing, per usual. To the right is the much quieter retiree who owns the retreat and who came to visit us for a night.

I took a boat back to the coastal city of Niigata where the quieter, more enjoyable retiree allowed me to stay in the musician’s studio above his noodle restaurant/jazz bar.
So, again more free food and accommodation in exchange for ‘work’. His ‘work’ was quite blatantly just taking me around as his foreign lady show and tell – which wasn’t so bad but I was pretty done with being dragged around by Japanese men at that point.

One day he took me to his yacht club to ‘work’ as they were having some sort of festival. He put me on a yacht with a camera crew and now, somewhere on the Niigata local news, is a story about an extremely confused white lady on a boat.

Another day I came home to find that chatty man had come to Niigata, snuck into my room, and left a song he’d composed for me on my bed.

Well intentioned, I’m sure.

---

---

So, again, I packed up and I began my ride down the coast towards my next volunteer gig in the mountains of Nagano.

The ride was extremely pretty and also dead. Japan has 8 million abandoned houses in total and I’m pretty sure I cycled past about 5 million of them.

---

---

After a few days I made it to the farm.
The farm was on top of a mountain, was super beautiful, and was run by a rull nice family.

I spent about three weeks there, mainly playing Boggle with the other volunteer(s) and taunting/being taunted by the farm’s resident 6-year-old before setting off on the long, scenic route back to Tokyo.

---

---

Cycle touring comes with a lotta frustrations and complications but it is definitely worth it. By that I mean I almost died once or twice, I’ve spent hours pushing my bike up mountains in the hot sun, my leg is currently one giant bruise, I have compressed a nerve in my wrist so badly that I have lost the feeling in my left index finger, my laptop and passport fell of my rack once and I almost panic-vomited before finding my bag an hour later, and Google maps is a constant battle with my crappy old phone.
But.
Also.
Biking around with no real goals in mind, sailing down mountains and along coasts, wandering through old temples, exploring abandoned villages, making friends with strangers, and answering to no one at all is just about as liberating as you’d imagine it to be. Plus, it comes with a view.

Yamanako Lake

Gotemba Peace Park

Finally finding Fuji after a fews days of cloud cover.

A Fuji sunset after a day of cycling.

Wandering through Enoshima.

Lunch on the highway.

Kamakura touristin’

Yokohama Chinatown

Yokohama Harbor

Also, whenever cycling I have an unnecessary but uncontrollable urge to stop at almost every convenience store. I usually don’t even buy anything. Just get free wifi and check out their selection of weird anime porn and cat magazines.

So. Actually. Most of my trip looked like this:

TL;DR —

Japan =
expensive
confusing
nice ppl
pretty
expensive
cats & porn
expensive

Thanks, Japan!

PS: This is where most of my photos get dumped, in case anyone’s interested. – http://www.eatstraighttylenol.tumblr.com

Komix Kontinued

I’d like my cake with potatoes and beans, plz.

.

.

.

  “Business English” classes.

.

.

.

Easiest writing system in the world and the people who refuse to learn it.

.

.

.

True story.

.

.

.

If a Korean tells you that you look tired they really mean ‘you look busy’, which is to say ‘you’re a good worker’.
It’s like a compliment that will never ever feel like a compliment.
Also having a small head/face is good…..?

.

.

.

Dating is hard, y’all.

Expat Komix

Extremely confusing springtime ritual

One Size Fits All – Asian Size

Srsly. 6 apples will run you $10.

If you say anything in Korean, even something as simple as “hello” or “thank you”, people will respond with “You speak Korean so well!” and “You are Korean!”.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             
It’s either encouraging or wildly patronizing depending on how you’re feeling that day.

The Expat Community

This guy comes by selling rice cakes in the middle of the night, screaming all the way. Whenever I ask Koreans why he’s doing this they just laugh and say “tradition”.

No, not you/your relationship.
#BitterFemaleForeigner

Just give up and take the pills

Escape from Narnia

“Ok, guys, TOEFL format answers, please:

What is your favorite food and why?”

“**Ahem* *…

..Teecher.

My favorite food is fried chicken because fry chicken is very delicious and crunky.

Also, I like fries chicken because I was a chicken in my previous life and… I love my family.”

“…….”

“It’s true…. I ate many caterpillar.”

“……”

“Currently, I have many family in my stomach.”

“Martin….
…..sit down, please.”

****

I quit my high school teaching job two weeks ago.
It’s not that I didn’t like it. The campus was nothing short of a resort, my house was great, Banjo was happy, and rarely a week past where I didn’t cry laughing at my adorable students.

BUT.

You know that Kim Jung-Un guy? You’ve heard of him, right? The guy who sent a menacing FAX message a few days? The guy who got pissy drunk and killed his uncle and eight top advisors last week? The guy that’s still using a Dell, for Christ’s sake?

Well, his particular brand of baffling illogical nonsense is not exactly an isolated case.

“Traditional Korean”, as young Koreans and expats would call it, is beyond any rational comprehension.

I once met a guy at a 2lbs burger eating competition who perfectly summarized the flaw of Korean traditional logic in a simple anecdote.
I will now steal his story and repackage it as my own.

I was at this make-your-own sandwich place, not unlike a Subway. The lady was behind the bar putting together the club or BLT or whatever it was when I politely asked that she not put mayo on it.

Shocked to the point of fright by the suggestion, she adamantly refused.

“No no no, mayonnaise is on this sandwich-y!”
“Yea…..right…..but.  could you just not put it on?”
“Oh, no nooooooo.”
“Hmm? Just don’…… put….it….on….the thing.”
“No no, dis sandwich. Mayonnaise, yes.”
“Yo. I’ll pay extra to take the mayonnaise off. Just don’t put mayo on my sandwich, please.”
“Nooooo. Noooooo.”

This went back and forth for far too long before I left, pissed-off and sandwich-less because, somewhere within the pits of this ajummas drippy cobweb brain, the idea of a BLT without mayo was an abomination of all things right and holy.

That’s “traditional Korean” logic for ya.

Anyway.

It was this rare breed of crazy that I spent the last four months working for.

The school was run by your typical eccentric millionaire character. He lived in a mansion on a hill that overlooked the campus and he only came down from his spire once a month to tell everyone what a bad job we were doing.

He had a clone dog that was a top student at an exorbitantly expensive clone-dog obedience school.

Some time last semester he got drunk and met some equally drunk man who claimed to be a “famous” reverend from Seoul.
So, naturally, he hired him as the school’s principal.

Despite having fully native speaking teachers and nearly fluent students, they hired a new English teacher who spoke not one single word of English.
Non-English-Speaking-English-Teacher relegated himself to the broom closet for the entirety of his time at the school. Really really. He just sorta stayed in there.

One time, Drunk Reverend recruited some hapless new middle school student and trapped him alone at the school over  a four-day weekend. The idea was that if he couldn’t go home, he could’t “complain to his mother” about how shitty the school was, and he couldn’t demand a refund.
I found this kid on a Thursday at 11am, holed up in his dorm with the jumbo bucket of KFC Drunk Reverend had hoped would sustain him over the long weekend.

The students all began to run away or at least begin to draw up their escape plans.

At one point it was obvious that there would only be five students returning to the school the following semester.
I met with Drunk Reverend about this issue to which he said,

“Yes, we will have five student. What is problem? I don’t see problem.”

They seemed to put most of their administrative efforts in to making pointless flyers and coming up with ways to cheat the foreign teachers out of their paychecks.

We had one guy who was brand new to Korea and understandably dazed.
He got a cold and went to Drunk Reverend to ask where to find a doctor. Drunk Reverend immediately declared his cold to be a blatant case of tuberculosis and banished him to a two-week, unpaid quarantine.

The campus was promptly littered with flyers about Mr. Eggen’s ever so unfortunate fatal illness.

When I announced to my kids that this teacher had coughed a drop of blood and was banned from work, my personal mentee/student looked dumbfounded.

“But… Ping Pong…

One time I eat ONLY fried chicken.
Five days. Only chicken.

I puke blood.

But.

It’s OK.”

 

So. I escaped and moved to Gangnam  (yes, America, – like the style).

Through a series of Craigslist accidents (what else is new) I found myself at an interview with The Princeton Review.

Aaaaand, to make a short story shorter ––

Now I’m an academic coordinator for The Princeton Review at Hyundai/Kia Motor’s World Headquarters in Seoul, South Korea.

But actually, I’m just a glorified receptionist with literally no responsibilities and I’ve spent the last week knitting mittens, reading Fun Home, and covertly eating gimbap behind my fancy desk.

Life is weird, folks – if you’ve learned nothing else, let it be that.

So, right.
A lot has happened since the last time I wrote but I was too busy trying to survive in a dystopian Narnia circus to log in to WordPress.
Sorry.
Let me see what I can recall…

At one point, I had subsisted off of only kimchi and ramen for so long that I ate myself into an acute nutrient deficiency. I only figured this out because my tongue turned white and tried to split itself into frills. I walked around for about a week holding my tongue together with dry soju tent napkins.
Conversations were awkward.
Eventually I found a doctor who chemically cauterized the surface of my tongue and told me grow up and eat more fruit.

But.
We’re not here to talk about my low points.

I took kick-boxing classes for a bit.
Turns out I’m better at disappointing myself than exercising.

I bought a car. The fuel gauge was definitely broken until I realized that gas really is $10 a gallon over here.

I’m trying to sell it now that I’ve moved but apparently I’m the only person in Korea that ever wanted a finely eroded 97’ Hyundai Avantage.

I’ve been working on a series of ads to try to convince even the most discerning of craigslist shoppers.

I ate a live octopus for my birthday. Just ripped it out of the ocean and bit its legs off.
It’s ok though, they do that here.

I also ate this thing called “Gaebul” which I’m pretty sure is Korean for “dog dick” or “fire worm” or “you should really reconsider ingesting this”

Not good.

I’m considering going back to school to get a degree in Korean. I’m pretty much proficient in it now. Got all the important phrases down.

“Hello.

Thank you.

How are you?

Where are you from?

Is your child a doctor yet?

Where is the bathroom?

Do you like bananas?”

And,

“Wow! Big gourd!”

I joined a Korean traditional dance group.  We drink  rice wine and walk barefoot along the edge of a sword’s blade. Then we slaughter a virgin pig and wear its carcass like a cape while dancing to ancient drum rhythms.

 

A few of the things I just said were lies.
Anyway.
Yesterday was Christmas and, dear baby Virginia, I assure you I spent the day wearing only black, curled in a fetal position, and softly weeping while listening to this song on repeat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGsIatIs_yc

It seemed the only fitting thing to do on my second Christmas away from home.
I hope your day was as devoid of joy and merriment as mine was, I’d be deeply offended otherwise.

As a holiday reward for reading this far, here is a playlist of all the songs I listened to too often in 2013. Hope you enjoy  – Merry Christmas and a happy new year!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpUYeILy1Ok&list=PLscAzFTg-AISlKu5rPefOrPZD1N7iUOvR

Plus this one song that’s too cool to be on Youtube.
https://soundcloud.com/used-cassettes/ktx-1

Poop Poop

I woke up this morning to find a pile of strange black bits on my rug.
Took me a few minutes to realize it was my black flip-flop, eaten and regurgitated by my semi-feral cat.

Came home tonight to find my bed covered in thumbtacks. Banjo climbs my wall, pulls  the tacks out of my posters with her mouth, and then spits them on my bed.

Really really.
She does that.

Impulsive subway purchases come with unforeseen consequence it seems.

She’s all grow-ed up, though. I ripped a big hole in her food bag and now she pretty much takes care of herself.

.

I did speed reading with some of the baby students a while ago.
David took 9 whole seconds to read a simple sentence, so Matthew began to point and laugh.

“Ok fine, Matthew. Now it’s your turn.”

Chest puffed out in anticipation, Matthew pounded out the sentence in 10 long, stuttered seconds.
David began a victorious, mocking song and dance that lasted only the amount of time it took for Matthew to swing around a punch David right in the ear.

David cried.

Matthew cried.

I think another kid started crying.

Precious moments, y’all.

.

I took me eight full months to finally wrap my mind around the fact that I live in the second largest metropolis on the planet. I’m surrounded by 11 million of the craziest people in the world, overflowing from every little possible space, at all hours of the day, doing whatever the hell it is they do on their smartphones all the time.

Everything I do, everything I think, all my friends, students, and everything I experience means absolute dick, relatively speaking.

Floored by my sudden grasp on my own anonymity, I fled to the subway.
I crammed myself between two teeny old people and publically ate an entire roll of chocolate-coated Diget cookies while making eye contact with whoever cared to look my way.
I ate in a languid, mouth-half-closed fashion and left the train with an unruly beard-bib of crumbs.

…. thus concludes the tale of my 30 minute existential crisis.

.

One of my adult students asked me to give her an English name. I knighted her “Bambi” and immediately realized my mistake.

In Korean, ‘Bam’ means ‘snake’ and ‘bi’ means rain.

Something about being called ‘Snake-Rain’ didn’t go over well with a 50-something year old woman.

On the plus side, if I ever take up Mysticism, I now have my shaman name.

.

They say that when living abroad homesickness hits hardest at the 3-month mark. My 3-month mark coincided with the Korean winter and I was too busy staving off frostbite to notice any emotion.

Recently though, I was offered another (irrefutably wonderful) job in Korea with a one year contract starting in September.
The idea of not seeing you guys for at least another year punched me right in my shriveled, desiccate heart.

I occasionally have dreams where I return home to find everything has changed….

Verdin’s pregnant.

Nathan’s behind her, wearing a wife beater and pissing in a kiddie pool.

Erica’s in medical scrubs, chain smoking, and breast-feeding a chinchilla named Bernadette or Madame Pompadour or something ridiculous.

K only appears in pixelated, 90’s video game graphics.

Cam’s dating that drunk dude that lives in my dad’s basement….  Oh, Waaaait.

(Jill’s still a sass-hole)

Point is, guys.
Please hold off all changes, progress, and decisions for another year or so lest you continue to fuel my petty nightmares.

.

One of my younger students was crying in class the other day. I tried to ignore her but she kept at it for so long that I knew I would have to address it.

“Grace, please go cry out in the hall.”

After Grace excused herself I quieted the class and put on my best sternly disappointed teacher face. I crossed my arms and let them whither in silence for a bit before asking (in the simplest of sentences, of course),

“Why?
……
Why. Grace. Cry?”

There was a moment of quiet and nervous looks before Matthew stood up in what was clearly his most valiant act of bravery and betrayal to date.
He pointed at Stella.

“Stel-rah.

Sheeeeeee. Saayyyyyyyyy.

Poop Poop.”

 

That’s it. That’s pretty much it.
If you were wondering how I was or what teaching is like or what kind of magnificent, fascinating things my life abroad has lead me to. —

Stella said ‘poop poop’ so Grace cried for an hour.

.

Anyway.
I move out to the Korean countryside next week to start a new job at an international high school. They’re giving me a significant pay upgrade, my own house, Korean lessons, guitar lessons, and my own plot in the garden.

I think Ima get me a 4-wheeler and take up whittlin’.

For the most part I’m looking forward to it but I am a little bummed about leaving elementary school. Today I got paid to make clay animals with a bunch of adorable 5-year-olds while listening to Roy Orbinson’s ‘Pretty Woman’.

In one of my “classes” my “job” is just to play with some 3-years-olds.
All I have to do is pretend to be a big, scary dragon for 40 minutes and the kids shit their pants laughing.

In another class today we played I-spy.
One particularly dopey girl declared that she spied something “beginning with five.”
Unintentional geniuses, these guys.

This job ain’t that bad and the babies are mainly wonderful.
I’ll miss ‘em.

TLDR;

–       Cat.

–       Babies.

–       I’m moving to a new job in the country.

–       I miss all of you all the time.

Five-Legged Horses

When I was first applying for this job I was concerned that I was far too sarcastic to properly communicate with children. I have since learned that masterfully wielded sarcasm is, in fact, the most useful skill an elementary-level teacher can have.

“Teechataachateechateechateechateecha!”

“Yes, Soobeen?”

“Meee.    Sistaaah.    Birrday.        tomarow!”

“Your sister’s birthday is tomorrow??
WHOOOOAAAAA!

Soobeen,

THAT.

IS.

RRREALLY RRREALLY.
IN-TER-EST-ING!!!!”

“Teecha! Meee greeeeen color like! VERRRRRRY like!”
“WHOOOAAA!
WHAT. A. GREAT. SENTENCE, YONGWON!”

“Teecha! Meee   sookjay. NO!”

“You didn’t do your homework?!?!

Wellllll……
I guess that’s ok today.

Because your English is already SOOOO GOOD!”

I have also come to the realization that your kindergarten teachers never gave a crap about what you brought to Show and Tell.
Not one single crap.

A few weeks ago I told one of my students that whenever I see a squirrel I catch it and eat while it’s still alive. I savor the seasoning of its squeaky screams.

Then I completely forgot that I’d said that.

Until a few weeks later when, in an attempt to interrupt whatever story we were reading, she lowered her voice and whispered,
“Teecha. Did you eat squirrel today?”

I told another student that if you cut off a rhinoceros’ horn it’s full of neon yellow blood and, if you drink it, you grow a foot taller and get REALLY REALLY strong.
The next day he told me that he had his mom Google it and they couldn’t find any sites selling rhino horns.

Apparently, one of the other teachers at my school has convinced his classes that horses in America have five legs.

I went to the doctor the other day and told him I had a sinus infection. He said,
“I think not sinus impekjun.”
Then he shot novacaine up my nose, rammed a tube up there and took pictures of what may have been the dark underside of my frontal lobe.

Then he looked in my ears and made a lot of wise, drawn-out Korean vowel sounds.

“Aaahhahhhah. Ooooooh.  UUUUUU.”
and then he put a tiny vacuum in there.

I’m not even sure if we have this ear-vac thing in the US but, in the case that we don’t, I urge you all to go write your senators and demand they be installed in every hospital, doctor’s office, clinic, and 7-11 today.

It was revolting and miraculous.

He pulled out about five grams of wax, some pennies, and a holographic Charzard I’d hid in there when I was seven.

I can now hear whispered conversations in Australia. Before they happen.

 

I’ve been taking these community-run guitar lessons at my local elementary school for about a month.

So, I’m pretty much a pro now.

They put me in what I assume to be the remedial, do-re-mi corner of the room. I play Jingle Bells until my hand cramps while the rest of the class plays Rod Stewart songs and the old-man instructor sings along in a screechy, broken English.

We’re playing a concert next week at Yeouinaru Middle School (strictly Rod Stewart covers).
You’d be welcome to come watch but, every time I go to text the invite, my iPhone autocorrects to “Urinary Middle School”.

Took Banjo to get spayed last week.

The doctor’s name was Yu Suk.

Dr. You Suck.

Doesn’t help that the first syllable in the Korean word for ‘animal’ is ‘dong’.
You Suck Dong [mool] Hospital.

My adult students threw a surprise ‘coffee-party’ in class the other day.
We drank a bunch of coffee that had been passed through the digestive system of an Asian mountain cat.

Cat poop coffee.
It’s a real thing.
Most expensive coffee in the world, actually.

At the end of class, they presented me with another gift.
This one was a bag of coffee with a picture of a squirrel on it.

So, now, I will forever be patiently awaiting a time so special as to merit the consumption of my coffee-beans-that-have-been-shitted-out-by-a-squirrel.

I tutor these identical, five year old twin boys.
JiSuk and JiHo.
It was snack time and the boys always bring bottles of apple juice.
Jisuk stared at me and took on a very serious tone as he said,
“Teecha…….
Look.”
He lifted his bottle and stared down its mouthpiece. He then lowered it slowly and revealed a stream of apple juice tears flowing out of his left eye.

“Jisuk.
…..Why did you do that?”

“………….”

“Jisuk…. Give me the apple juice.”

He retorted in a husky whisper,

“But……
teecha……
………I like.”

 

 

Ummmmmm……. There’s not much left to tell you, infinite mass of adoring readers.

So.

Uh.

 

Here’s a list of miscellaneous information about Korea that I hope will one day serve you well at a Tuesday night Molly’s Trivia Tournament.

1.) In Korea, Quesadilla is pronounced “kway-sa-dee-rah.”

2.) The Korean word for “Shooting star” literally translates to “star poop star”.

3.) In case of emergency, 911 is 119 . It’s BACKWARDS.

4.) Whistling at night attracts snakes.

5.) But it’s ok cause the Koreans killed all the snakes a few years ago and stuffed them into bottles of cheap booze to make an illegal aphrodisiac.

6.) No one in South Korea gives a shit about what’s happening in North Korea.

Really. Not even a little bit.

7.) All rain in Seoul is acid rain and if you don’t use an umbrella your hair will fall out.

8.) “Konglish” is when Korean people butcher the English language either by misuse or by combining English words until they are no longer English.

“Cunning” is cheating. “Cheatingment” is flirting. “Pama” is a perm.
And, my personal favorite, “skinship” is when friends are little touchy-feely.

9.) Young Korean children believe that if you leave your toenail clippings on the ground a rat will come eat them and then morph into your (presumably evil) twin.

10.) 1 in 5 women in Seoul have had plastic surgery. Women get double eyelids, pointier noses, and they saw their jaws down to a narrower shape.
They end up all looking exactly the same.

In Konglish we call this “Dr. Twins”.

Here’s a picture of all the 2013 Miss Korea candidates so you can better understand this. http://i.imgur.com/1IoM5AK.jpg

 

 

I wish I had more to tell you.

But.

I don’t.
Life’s pretty cool but I’m still steady on complaining about everything.

Also, I really miss you all.

RRREALLY RRREALLY miss you.

Chicken Hair

One night, I was walking around half drunk and alone at 2am (casual). A few yards ahead of me was an empty car parked on the side walk. The car began to slowly roll backwards. No one was in the car, rather, someone had parked it in neutral and it was now rolling it’s unmanned way down to the four-lane highway beneathe it.

I stood there.

And watched it.

It finally stopped right in the middle of two lanes, perfectly perpendicular to traffic.

Car’s honked and swerved around it. I even watched a few police cars idly do the same.

I marched up to the nearest bar, hoping the owner of the car would be inside. Some tiny bartender lady came out. I dragged her to the sidewalk, pointed, and said,

“이거 차. 드라이버 없어요!” And I don’t speak Korean or anything but what I think I said was,
“That car. No driver.” (There’s no driver in that car!! For the love of God, someone help!!!).

She looked at the car.
Looked at me.

And then pointed at a taxi and said,

“Taxi.”

“What? No, no. I don’t need a taxi. 이거 차! 이거 차!”

“네, 네. Taxi.”

After about a minute of this hopeless back and forth I gave up and let her retreat to her bar and I walked off, leaving the car to its inevitable destruction/possible ruthless slaughter of less attentive drivers.

.

I was so frustrated I spit.

And I can’t spit very far so I accidentally spit on myself.

.

I decided right then and there that I was going to dedicate myself to learning this damn language so I would never feel so helpless again.

I have since learned very little/not a single practical sentence in Korean.

.

Really, any time I try to use what Korean I do know it only comes back to bite me in the ass.
.

“꼬추 means ‘pepper’, right?”

“No, that means ‘penis’.”
.

“………….뚱 means ‘soup’, right?”

“No, …….that’s ‘poop’.”
.

“Well,….. 씨발’s ‘eighteen’, right?”
“NO! Don’t say that again, ok?”
.

The other day I told my lowest-level class that we would have no test on Friday.
In an attempt to clarify I said the same in my very best Korean.
“금요일. 테스트. No!”

I assumed they understood as they responded with an unprecedented enthusiasm.

“Teecha! Friday – NO!?”

“Yea, yea, Friday – no test!”

Then.
On Friday.
Half of my class was absent.

Crap.

.

Some of my kids started calling me “chicken hair”.
There’s really no story to that.
I just have chicken hair.
That’s all.

.

I joined a gym the other day.
I signed up on a Sunday when the gym was closed and the building was silent except for a low hum that was either the fluorescent lights or the gym owner’s quivering biceps.
Apparently, this guy is the 5-time bodybuilding champion of Korea.

He handed me his business card that somehow managed to squeeze four top-bodybuilding-form pictures of himself on it and said,

“My English name is ‘Diesel’.”

I shit you not.

His English name is Diesel.

After he bragged about himself for about half an hour he asked if I had a boyfriend, if he could have my phone number, and told me that we should “do a language exchange sometime”.
I attempted to make my escape but, before I could, he went in for a hug.

Face nestled firmly between his expansive, meat-pillow pectorals, he lifted me to my tip-toes, swung me from side to side and said,
“I don’t want to let you go.”

Now I’m afraid to go to the gym without my roomie.

Hairy Potato

“No, teecha! Me name no Jack!”
Jack firmly plants both hands on his desk and screams,

“Me name Harry Potter!”

I would’ve thought he was joking had he not been loudly proclaiming this everyday for three weeks. He’s been writing ‘Harry Potter’ on top of all of his assignments and refuses to respond to ‘Jack’ anymore.

In Korea, most students have two names, their Korean name and their English name. Their English names are usually picked out by their parents or their teachers but, sometimes, the kids pick out their own.
It’s always very obvious when they have.

Somewhere, running around the school, is a little girl named “PikaJulia”.

On a side note, earlier today, Harry Potter was wildly flailing his arms about in class while screaming accusatorily at the student next to him.

“Teechaaaa-aaaa-aaaa-uh!
Seong-Bin me say ‘Harry Potato’!!!”

Harry Potter has now become ‘Hairy Potato’ in the eyes of his mocking peers.

The same goes for English teachers and Korean names. I told my students they could name me. They gave it about one second of thought and excitedly dubbed me “삥뽕빵” which, depending on the translator, could be ‘Ping Pong Pang’ or ‘Ping Pong Bread’.

Either way.

Me name Ping Pong now.

I got a faux hawk a few weeks ago. The next week I got rull drunk, spent too much money, pieced my nose, and woke up hungover next to a kitten named ‘Banjo’ (or ‘반조’, if we’re being culturally sensitive).

Now I have a faux, a piercing, and a stain-covered hoodie, so I’m officially the coolest 16-year old you know.

I’ve recently found many of my conversations blurring into a realm of non-sensical Konglish; the other day I told a friend that he was quite a shitty person.

So, he responded with,
“Oh, yea, sure. I know.

Like old apple pie.”

I obviously didn’t understand so he politely continued in an attempt to explain,

“But you can always put me in the microwave.

So,

there is still hope.”

What I’m trying to say is, nothing makes sense and the transcriptions of my friendships over here read like absurdist plays.

“What do you sink of the peoples from the Portland?”

“Uhm. I dunno. Why?”

“………..Grey, it is a color dat sounds like ‘great’, so I think grey is a great color.”

“Ok. What does that have to do with Portland?”

“What? I am not talking about dat anymore.”

.
.
.
.

A friend took me to get my saju recently.
Saju is the Korean equivalent to a fortune teller.

I think.

I told the saju-lady my birth year, month, day and time and she channeled the universe and talked at me in Korean for half an hour.

Then my friend turned to me and began to translate,

“She say 2012 was bad year for you. 2013 will be worse.”

“She say 2012 was like this,”
and my friend hit himself across the cheek,

“but 2013 will be like this,”
and he hit himself on the forehead and knocked his whole head back.

So.
Life is a big slap in the face.

Thank for the heads up, Universe.