Feb. 10th

Wow! has it really been nearly two months since I last graced the WWW with my tales of woe and glory in in the land of the morning calm? So the blogspot suggests. Well, the time for details has escaped me, thus the synopsis cometh.
If I could sum up my last two months in Korea with a single sentence, it would be, "what the fuck?" What the fuck happened to my fear of Korea?, What the fuck am I doing drinking till 6a.m. at least every saturday? What the fuck is in this food? What the fuck did he say? What the fuck is it going to feel like to go back to the western world after this? What the fuck happened to the time space continuum that made two months pass like a week at summer camp flashlights and swimtrunks and all? What the fuck is GW doing, giving us checks for $600 signed "your social security fund"?
Where to start..

Christmas, well everything was open, in the famous words of zazaza and leeds, nobody cares. I drank beer with coworkers had dinner, bought myself a gift in the spirit new shit. It was alright, but no Christmas by any sort of standards I once new. End of story.
New years, this was pretty rad. I spent the coming of the new year with my friend Sun Mi, we watched a huge screen count down the seconds on a large buildings facade. 3,2,1 kiss, 200 zillion people shooting off fireworks above our heads, and we somehow managed to make our way out of a times sq.esque crowd to a taxi. We went to Hongdae, where we watched a show, got wasted, she got a little too wasted, and I had to practically beg her to call it a night and head to her place at 5 a.m. She and I were pretty close for a month, but drunken brattiness, and dragging me to dance clubs wore me thin, and she got pissed when I declined a serious relationship. I do like her, we had a lot of fun, but she'd just end up dragging me places I don't want to go way too often. We're still friends, but I sense a bit of resentment from her at times.

The rest, weeks fly by waaayyyyy too fast, weekends even faster. I pretty much practice the art of 12 beer, all night Hongdae bar crawls on a regular basis. I've been making music with my good friend Jon here. However, this weekend, I decided that we need a human drummer, drum machines piss me off. The kids at my job are cuter than ever, way cuter than white kids (sorry misguided white parents who think they're babies are cute, you're misinformed to the fullest extent) I absolutely love my younger students! One 6 year old girl in a class of mine keeps calling me"appa" (dad) as she attaches to my lower leg and refuses to leave a seated position on my foot. I wish kid, I fucking wish. You rock. I'm doing pretty well at my job now, and marathon 11 hour days are rare. I usually arrive at 9 and leave at 6, fair enough.

Friends, well, they're different here. Many of the foreign friends I have, I hold at distance with the gloves of one who knows we'll leave in 10 months, or in three, or in one even. It's nice to be in a city the size of New York and run into friends at bars often though. Korean friends are less abundant, but I have some, and they really help me with my Korean. There is a girl, and she kicks ass, and her name is Yumi. She studies film, she has the best taste in films, books, and music I have ever encountered in one package, and she dresses quite hip (did I mention cute). We're getting pretty close, I think she's going in for the kill, I'm barely pretending I'm not a wounded gazelle on the savannah, the rest is all night chats at a hukah bar called Nabi, with beer, intimate topics, and cuddling on the floor. If she falls in love with me, I could be done for. This surprises nobody, as I am a romance slut. Text messages abound, broken Korean is spewed. Laughter and comfortable silences make us very content glued together. We'll see how the rest unfolds when her and I go to a Bjork show next Saturday I guess.
(side note) [I've been taking Korean classes on saturdays for 6 weeks (2 of which I missed because Friday night I drank a little more than was necessary). I'm doing pretty well. I can get directions, and have most of my transactions be in all Korean, make jokes with friends, talk about basic shit I want to do. I believe after this year I'll be conversational)
I've had a break since last Wednesday for Lunar New Year. I drank a lot. My friend (Korean American from L.A.) Kathie and I went out Thursday and Friday night. Had a blast making jokes, and laughing at funny "only in Korea" shit, throwing little Korean snacks at a passed out Korean guy near us at Club FF, fucking up each others hair, talking about music, drinking excessively, and talking the long cab ride home away. It's strange to watch how people treat Korean Americans here. They give them constant shit that their Korean isn't good enough, talk shit when they speak English, and generally treat them worse than other foreigners. Once a cab driver just started talking to me in broken English because Kathie didn't understand something he said in Korean. I don't know if she noticed or cared, but I thought it was pretty shitty. Anyway, Kathie is pretty punk, fun to talk to and drink with, she's kinda rad.
This weekend Jon and I did sightseeing type shit, went to a giant several mile fortress wall in a city called Suwon, went to a district of Seoul called Samcheong-dong where the prime minister's house is, and a huge palace, and lots of cultural relics stand juxtaposed with all that is Modern Korea. We walked around for hours in the freezing cold, wandered into art galleries, and hiked a mountain to get a view of Seoul.

I've been reading a lot here in the Korea. I've plowed through some books, despite my hedonistic beverage rampages. I read "East of Eden" by Steinbeck (600 pages!), Two books by Jose Saramago, "Mountains Beyond Mountains" by Tracy Kidder, "Memoirs Of My Meloncholy Whores" By Gabriel Gracia Marquez, and I'm 1/3'd of the way through "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by the latter as well. I've even been working on a history book about Korea when I can take the non-fiction. The University did a number on me though, and progress is a bit slow with that one. I'm now about to go to sleep before the beginning of another week I'm bound to feel has disappeared like dukbokkgi on my plate (did I mention Korean food is soooooo damn good? Jinja mashitah!) I truly miss everyone from my life before, and I lament the fact that the universe won't let any of us ever have things be the way they once were in life. No redo's bitches, get it right. I love all you sluts, and I swear I'll try to do a more respectable job of documenting my existence in Asia. At this point Intrigue or Disdain should perhaps be replaced by bouts infatuation and frustration, but one can't take back that which they say, or write even, so the title remains, a subtle reminder of my quickness to judge, and the worlds remarkable way of transforming a situation in our minds, or perhaps transforming us to a situation. I'll share a small amount of pics for those visual learners out there.


Until next time