31 kids, 5 days, 4 hours....vs.....me
I'm blogging at a coffee shop and I just got bit about 129 times by mosquitoes. This apparently doesn't kill the damn things.
So, having explained the last few days with pictures instead of a tedious and confusing read through my mind, I choose to bore you now. Mwahah.
Jon and I always talk about how lucky we are and how easy it is to lose focus of what Korea really means for us. This isn't a career for either of us, much less any white person in Korea as of now. Most of us are in search of a fun, eye-popping experience, and in a desperate struggle to combine work and play. Its a struggle that sends me home by 10:00 on week nights and gets me up at 6. It is a cognitive fuck everyday, you want to try new things, go to new restaurants or bars but you're exhausted from the previous work day.
Nanta is a pizza shop in Mokpo that sells 5 dollar medium pizzas, I go there about twice a week and, dissonance aside, I beg for a new "nanta" but frankly am too exhausted to look for it.
To any waygookin reading this, or understanding the last 10 months of my life. Korea isn't easy. You want to travel, you need to try new things. But there comes a point where 5:00 comes too soon and you just go home to watch Entourage or Son's of Anarchy. Two great shoes granted, but limiting in the inordinate growth gained by traveling.
Every morning I bounce out of my plywood bed, and hustle to my 'coffee' for 2 hours with JB and Sandy, irregardless of the poor quality my computer records it on. I then walk about a half hour to school, sweating the entire way, change at school and teach alone for 3 hours. By then, the 2 hour coffee break of life I named my "introduction" has created the most debilitating coffee-crash and I'm just ready for TV. Usually, my perfunctory habits in the morning leave me with 20 minutes to kill while I download an episode of TV.
Thank god pre-season football starts in just a little.
The weekdays are full of professional possibilities; studying (and apparently failing) the GRE, publishing articles, finding Notre Dame in Fremantle. The weekends full of personal and every other kind of possibility you could imagine in Korea. Flying down a black diamond in Muju, stealing the hat of a dude from Georgia (the country), eating live octopus. Getting hammered, singing "Let it Steve" in a bogota next to a famous bridge in Jindo. Seeing some of the most amazing people I've ever met or drinking mock-o-lee in a tent with agashis. Sleeping. Ferrying 40 minutes to one of the most beautiful places in the world, or taking a cab 15 minutes to another gorgeous place called "Yudalson."
As awesome as the weekends sound, the weekdays have their bad-assery associated with them too. I came here to do two things: do something I've never done before and have fun. I get to do both everyday I go to 'work.' As shitty as it sounds to wait to watch TV, or to listen to a horrible recording of a morning show, or to be away from the fam or anything else associated with living abroad...(like the lack of Dr. Pepper)...It is exactly what I love about Korea.
I've got 2 months left and chances are I'll leave 3 weeks after my contract is over. Giving me all sorts of chances to finish what I've started. The fun and the novel experiences will come, all I need is patience.
GO NOTRE DAME!!!!!
