So remember how I was going to cut back on my spending habits and realize I'm an English teacher and not a CEO? Here are the facts. I got my first paycheck on Friday, right on time, since I had one dollar left in my pocket. I withdrew $200 after work. I woke up on Saturday morning with $20 in my wallet. Sure, there were multiple bottles of liquor involved, but jesus, JESUS. That's it, this week, there are going to be some serious changes. I'm only eating ham and cheese sandwiches from Mini-Stop from now on.

I'm a big fan of what I call the Korean Height Adjustment. In America, I'm about 5-9. Here, I'm six-foot. That's right, if you're white, you add three inches to your current height when you get to Korea. I'm taller than I'd say about 75 percent of the people here. I'm 100 percent more white, though.

November 11 is Pepero Day in Korea. Pepero is basically a long thin cracker covered in chocolate. It's on 11/11 because um, the date looks like sticks? I think it's similar to Valentine's Day in America and all of the kids brought this stuff into school on Thursday and Friday. The only weird thing was a few of the kids would give me a box of it and then five minutes later come running into the office yelling "Pepero! Give me Pepero!" I was confused. They give it to me and then I just hand it back to them? I obviously did not give them anything.

I made the great decision on Thursday to start spreading office gossip to my classes. I told class of genius girls that my new boss was going to be Claire and that she was the niece of the school director. Yeah, so apparently the girls did not know about that relation so they got all "Oh but Claire is so young! Blah blah, so-and-so is older!"It's ALL about age here. Words such as "skills" and "talent" do not exist here. Anyway, I realized my mistake immediately, but it was too late. One of the girls called Claire to find out if it was true. Mind you, she called her DURING class. When I got back to the office after class, Claire asked to speak with me for a minute. Saw that one coming. I think I successfully pleaded ignorance by saying I thought all the students already knew she was the director's niece. But the whole having a student making a phone call during class, that's not good for business. Make that sign #267 that I'm a terrible teacher. Oh, and yeah, when the student asked Claire if it was true, she said no.

Ahh, that damn peace sign. If a Korean is posing for a photo, you can bet your life that if they have hands, that will be making it in some form or fashion. It makes me so angry. I don't know why, but I just want to go up to these people and go, "No, no one EVER does that in America." And trust me, that's the only reason they do it. Today, and you can't make this up, Bender and I walked past two girls who were taking pictures of each other while making the peace sign with one hand and holding a pair of tongs in the other. That's right, TONGS. The kitchen utensil. They didn't even have just one pair. They had one big pair and one small one. The worst part was they were walking faster than us so they'd always get ahead to a new location and we'd end up passing them as they continued with their photographic circus. You have to give Korea that: everyday, you are guaranteed to see something absolutely ridiculous.

The most ridiculous scenes usually involve drunk people. And I know, you're saying "Whatever, I've seen plenty of trashed people, nothing new." No, no you haven't seen anything. Koreans don't drink to get drunk. They drink to get annihilated, destroyed, comatose. In fact, I'm pretty sure they don't stop drinking until they stop breathing. Go out on a weekend, hell, any night really and you'll see at least a half dozen people getting sick on the street. The worst was when I saw a girl curled up in the fetal position on a street corner and her boyfriend was sitting over her with a smile on his face. Oh yeah, it was Sunday at 1pm.