You really wouldn’t believe . . .

 . . . how depressing and awful the post that was here five seconds ago really was.

Ugh.

In some ways, things are great, in other ways, it’s a whole lot of nuthin’.

I have 2 cans of Skyline Chili anxiously awaiting finely-grated cheddar cheese, mustard, and hot dogs, or maybe some spaghetti and some beans that I really can’t believe I’ve been too lazy to eliminate.

I’m not drinking a whole lot, but at really weird times, and weird things. I went through a rice wine phase last week, and yesterday I made myself some gunfire after work. Because it’s really fucking cold.

Cold Showers.

Well, no more of them, anyway.

Since moving into my new apartment almost 3 (!) months ago, I have had a very poor relationship with my on-demand water heater/central heating. These are generally the same thing in a Korean bachelor apartment.

How’s this work? There are pipes under the floor in apartments. Your apartment gets hot by heating, and then pumping through the floor, the apparently-not-safe-to-drink Korean tap water. This is all fine and dandy, except you also control when your apartment sends real hot water to the whopping 2 taps in the apartment.

This is also fine and dandy . . . until the labeling on how to send significantly hot water to, say, your shower, is not only in Korean, but in Korean jargonese that isn’t in dictionaries.
I finally found one way to make my water kind of hot for a couple seconds. This was enough to get myself wet, turn off the water, lather up while freezing in the unheated glory of my bathroom/laundry room, then turn on the water again and wait for it to get hot again. This is obviously not very satisfactory. And it took a widely-varying amount of time for the water to get hot enough to take a real shower. So now, patient reader, I am going to teach you how to take a hot shower in Korea.

WTF.

I just looked at my stats.

Who the hell googled “Greg Schroeder needs”? Seriously. Fess up.

The Name Game.

Part of what makes ESL education bearable is when you have students who are not insufferable zombies.

Before you chastise me, I’m totally fine admitting I’m a mediocre-to-pretty-bad teacher. So, I’ve decided the best approach is to grin, bear it, and talk with the kids like I’d talk to any other kid who seems half-human. It’s been working wonders for my mood. The best example of this is an all-male middle school class I teach.

Now, backtrack with me for a bit, to the first week of December. At the time, the boys had nicknamed themselves Alex, Ben, Dummy, and Monkey Man. This was permitted to stand.

In the spirit of the season . . .

First, Monkey Man became Rudolph, as in the famous reindeer. Then Alex, Dummy and Ben became Sled, Santa, and Present, respectively. This was plenty surreal, even for my taste.

Then, shortly afterwards, we acquired another student. Okay, by “shortly,” I mean “Mid-January.”  I was anxiously hoping that the novelty of the Christmas names would wear off, and some relatively traditional English names would stick. Hell, I’d like them to start going by their Korean names. But that’s a very different discussion. Probably the same discussion that would ruminate on the affinity between the name “Cindy” and fatness among South Korean youth.

Anyway, the Christmas names weren’t going anywhere. We picked up a new student. Somehow, this student was informed that he needed a Christmas-themed name if he was to be a part of the class. I blame Rudolph, who is probably the brightest kid in the class, and the laziest. You know the deal.

So, hoping to avoid the weirdness of “Present” and “Sled,” I ran down the list of Christmas Folklore characters. After Frosty, all parties present at the nativity, Herod, all 8 reindeer besides Rudolph . . . the class claimed that the new boy’s name literally meant “Comet” in Korean. I don’t believe this for one minute, but they seem to think they need to justify giving him a weird name. I seriously don’t give a shit. I hate the practice of giving kids English names in general, and making them ridiculous at least makes me amused while I feel I am destroying their cultural heritage, and my capacity to say Korean words is questioned.

When I first met them, they were comically bad at doing exercises in the books we use. Awful. One day, they were screwing around so much I just gave them the whole thing for homework and told them, rather calmly, I would toss them out of the 7th story window behind me, so help me God, if they got one wrong.

The entire class got 2 wrong. Since then,  things have been better. It snowed today, and rather than play some mind-numbing game that entails speaking English for the sake of speaking English, we went outside and had a snowball fight. I shoved a huge wad of snow down Rudolph’s collar. He squealed like a little girl. The class then assaulted me with snowballs for a good 5 minutes. I finally repulsed the attack, and we went back into the building. It was nice.

In Which Greg is distracted to hell.

Honestly, everything I can think about to blog about is far too personal/directly related to work.

I will blog when I feel I have content appropriate for this blog-of-a-not-15-year-old.

The New Years Resolutions have been largely ignored.

Number 2, 4, and 7 are doing okay, but otherwise there is no progress whatsoever. I have yet to set foot in a *real* grocery store in 2008. My fridge was pretty disgusting going into this weekend, but I finally cleaned it. That said, here are the current contents. I’d tell you what it was before, but you would almost certainly vomit.

Red Pepper Paste: ~ 450g

Gatorade (or “Kei duh lay”): ~ .5 L

Orange “Juice”: ~1 L

Hot Dogs: 7

Beef Shoulder: 1, frozen

Onions: 2

Beer: 1 L

Grape Jelly: ~300 g

LotteHam (private label Spam)(The remnants of a Chuseok gift from a student at my previous employer): 400 g (200 low salt, 200 regular)

Strawberries: 35

Yes, you just read a complete list of goods in my house that require refrigeration. Yes, I’m digging that deep.

I’d give those strawberries about 30 more minutes. No, I’m not pregnant.

In which Greg breaks a resolution.

#1 (I will only drink once a week) is gone. BUT I’ll keep at it, of course.

I’m currently cleaning my apartment, and I met up with my coworker and her friend to study Korean this weekend. I haven’t cooked yet, and this post is getting boring.

I smoked a hookah, ate pho, ate real pasta/caesar salad, ate Indian food, drank a fair bit of red wine, listened to waaay too much indie music for my beloved reputation, and really could not have asked for a better weekend. I mean, I could have received a harem and a sizable trust fund, but we can’t win ‘em all.

Know I’m doing well and I’m just too tired and too interested in living to really bother with blogging thoroughly.

New Years Resolutions 2008

I am pretty sure I’ve never made a New Year’s Resolution. Here goes nothing:

1. I will only drink once per week.

2. I will not rush into a new monogamous romantic relationship. (Anyone have ideas on how to make this more concrete?)

3. I will make a concerted effort to learn enough Korean to have some dignity as a teacher of a foreign language.

4. I will clean my apartment at least once a week.

5. I will cook at least 7 meals per week. Cereal and ramen don’t count.

i. I will make a major grocery shopping trip every week.

ii. I will grocery shop from a list.

iii. I will haul my butt to E-Mart rather than the tiny little mom and pop place for this.

6. I will either start going to a gym or piano lessons, or both.

7. I will send at least 1 piece of snail mail to the United States per month.

8. I will make at least 1 outgoing phone call to the United States per month.

9. I will log my time spent online, develop, and implement a plan to reduce my idle surfing time. *

I think that’s it. Questions? Comments? Suggestions?

*Late addition (11:00 01/01/08)