I’d Prefer Not to.

The window overlooks the major intersection of Yeonsu, a minor subdivision of incheon, which is itself a suburb of Seoul. All night, neon flashes in patterns that must have signaled “The Russian prostitutes in here are a lot better than their domestic equivalents!” a quarter century ago. He wakes up at 4 am to piss sometimes. He leaves his vertical blinds open most nights. The digital faux fireworks still imitate upward travel, explosion, and then twinkling.

Sagging banners declaring language and business success for sale cement the seediness. The fireworks are on a building clearly intended for something else. The seafoam and cream facade shows rust stains from a previous occupant.

Nobody believes me when I call Korea a 3rd World/”Developing” or whatever nation.

Public facilities are squat troughs. BYOTP. There are semipermanent human shit smells in urban areas. The subway goes through areas containing row after row of buildings apparently made of trash and clay tile. There are often no parallel lines in buildings for a good 6 minutes at a good subway train clip.

I like it here. My life is great. I have more amenities than I want, more privacy than I ever thought existed, a much cooler apartment than I thought I would have at age thirty, much less 25, and so on. I am adding more adventures to what I am already discovering has been a remarkable life.

I think I’m sort of happy.

Mr. Mustache.

Almost all things are dandy here. I am spending virtually no money and see ways to save even more coming up. (i.e. “really cook sometimes”). I’m on pace to save around 1/4 of my current student debt this year, and that’s if I keep living my present lifestyle.

Otherwise, I am finally developing real facial hair. I hate it. If I don’t shave EVERY DAY, I get this:

That said, the right girl(s) like it.

The beer here is gross. Pepero (Pocky look/taste-alike) is not gross.

That’s all that’s on my mind. I don’t like shaving. Even with my luxurious Mach 3. It’s slightly less awful than disposables, but Jesus. I will Nair or get laser hair removal if this doesn’t stop sucking.

More nonsense.

Tomorrow I begin giving English lessons to my boss’ boss. I guess I should be flattered. It still intimidates the fuck out of me.

The book we’re using is not really my speed, and certainly not geared to what the student wants. He wants to polish up his sentence structure and grammar. The book is called “Jazz English.” It doesn’t show up on Amazon. That means that it is likely published by my employer. That means  I will spend a lot of time talking about style, and how stupid even the books that try to sound casual really are. It’s still this human-as-automaton approach that assumes the English language is static, but uses aforementioned “acquisition” model; through adulthood, even. If you’re going to pretend a language is static, at least teach it the way people (successfully) taught languages as static entities for 3 thousand years. Get out the charts, flashcards, notebooks/tablets full of repeating declensions, and so on. Otherwise, there has to be something to fix this annoying “you do this because it’s a rule” approach that never teaches you the rules.

I’m not sure what a linguistic ideology would do to ESL. Maybe I’ll think about that during the time I spend reading the same 3-4 short stories over and over lately.

In Which Greg has a satisfying weekend.

Greg Schroeder attended a refresher course from his employer this weekend, and discovered that there are even more attractive women in ESL than he initially suspected. No ugly women teach English in this country. He’s convinced.

Furthermore, there ARE men here who can talk about something besides binge drinking and gang rape. They’re Australian. Who knew!?

He ate octopus (delicious) and hugged 2 Free Hugs guys.

Other fun details in Greg’s life . . .

A 6 year old girl in his morning class has begun to explore herself. He has consulted 2-3 different people about this. Every one has told him something different. One can only keep a 6 year-old’s hands busy so many different ways.

She is learning to write with one hand on her desk.

Greg is becoming much better at ironing. He ironed 4 shirts and 3 pairs of pants today. He also cleaned his apartment. That was pretty gross.

Things are good.

Next month he will start taking Korean lessons. Thank science.

.

Writing to a fraction of a limited audience is a bad practice.

*Edit*

Better taste prevailed.

My average day.

Let’s try this again.

On my average day, my alarm goes off at 7:45. I turn it off and take a shower, often with a shirt on a hanger in the bathroom. Immediately before said shower, I plug in my iron.

I dry off, iron my shirt (yes, naked), and put on my pants. I check the shirt in the mirror to see if it looks like shit. If it does, I fix it. I finish getting dressed, eat 1-2 bowls of cereal, grab my iPod, and go to the elevator. I walk to the bus stop. I get on the 6-1 bus with identical first and the third characters on the white and red sign. After about 10 minutes, I get off and walk about 50 yards to work.

I prep for my morning classes (look over teacher’s guide, syllabus, textbook, make flashcards, etc.) and then go to my morning classes. Then I eat lunch, and then I teach my science class.

At 3:00 I start teaching older kids. I do that for 2-4 hours depending on the day, and then go home and eat. Sometimes I’ll read all night, other nights I’ll go out for a drink or two with my English-speaking coworkers. Other times, I go grocery shopping, or maybe just get some Korean food on my own. The guys I work with claim they’re sick of it from eating it at school. I don’t get it.

Weekends vary too much to really name a pattern. Usually go out to a bar friday. On Saturday and Sunday I’ll either clean up the apartment and do laundry, or go sightseeing around Seoul. No real pattern. Just one happens on one of those days, the other happens on the other. That’s all.

Entertainment! (w/ apologies to Gang of Four)

This week was this week. I received a quick crash course in some entertaining bits about Korean culture.

A brief discussion of iPod dependency.

Perhaps a symptom of Greg’s infatiguable “Uh, sure” mindset, he has taken to using the “autofill” feature on iTunes to put Random Shit on his iPod every morning. Sometimes there is Palestrina, often there is Flipper, other times it is the audio supplements to his Korean book that he can’t get off his damn playlist and he is too lazy to learn to write an applescript, much less actually write one, that would let him categorize it as an audio book.

Greg listens to his iPod every morning riding one of the two bus routes identified as “6-1.” He has to read Hangul (korean writing) to distinguish between the two. This took longer than one would think to master. 3 cab rides, to be exact. He is tired of taking the stares in silence. They’re easier to ignore listening to some obnoxious mix of bad rock, acid house, and tape-loop audio collage.

So, now Greg listens to his iPod in the office writing lesson plans, making flashcards, and photocopying. He got tired of hearing the monotone staccato of Korean he doesn’t understand, so he drowns it out. Effective, really. His desk has become a zen garden. He is a better teacher. He knows that the screaming will end for awhile during lunch, and the blank stares and indistinct consonant sounds during the afternoon and evening are periodically interrupted by the dull hum, flashing green light and then repeated click of making flashcard upon flashcard and 12 copies of a really mundane writing assignment.

That is all.

Posting more because I’m overdue than anything else.

Okay, I get paid this week, I am long overdue for a haircut, and the job is settling down a bit. I have three really, really busy days a week, and two where I can largely check out because I have classes that virtually construct themselves from stock material the publisher makes.

Yes, you just heard Greg talk about that.

Look, I am teaching ESL largely to kids who have been at school for over 10 hours a day by the time I get to them, my employer believes in the “acquisition” model (i.e. “throwing shit at kids and seeing what sticks”) rather than walking them through how English works. Conveniently enough, it also takes a grammarian approach to English, desperately clinging to this apparently rigid “business English” as its goal. Entertaining, mostly because what is acceptable English anywhere is as concrete as a female liberal arts student’s sexual orientation.

At any rate, it’s nice when kids you labor over appear happy and start at least faking English comprehension.

Pictures of me doing awesome things exist. The person who has them is not responding to phone or email. Know that I am happy here, I’m going out, and my job is at least somewhat satisfying, even if it’s partially because one could do it asleep with one leg.