Blow me, Elliot Choi

Today was Teacher's Day, which is apparently kind of important here. It now seems to me that it may be geared more towards female teachers as today I got a rose, some face wash, makeup and some sort of liquid that smells good. It might be perfume. The best thing I got was a laminated ribbon with a lion's face pasted in the middle. That was cute, even though half the kids still don't know how to spell my real name. The girl who gave me the ribbon also wrote me a note, it reads: "To: lion teacher, Hi My name is Judy. Teacher thankful. Teacher thank you." I bet the real teachers, like the ones at the public schools the kids go to in the morning before they go to english, math, science, piano, history, food, animal academies afterwards, get much cooler stuff. Since all the kids that come to school tomorrow will be different from today, I'm hoping for a gift card to KFC or at least a half dozen bottles of soju.

McDonalds breakfast is so good I waited there from 4:30am until 5 Sunday morning just to get the Massive. What was kind of gross was that Jacob, the guy I met at Woodstock last month and have been hanging out with a bit now, ordered a Big Mac meal at 4:30, finished that in about 3 minutes and then waited until 5 with me to get a breakfast meal. I pleaded with the cashier to not serve him, but quickly realized I was not speaking Korean.

Saturday night was a giant white party in Hyewha, probably the coolest place near my apartment without going all the way downtown, I think even the owners of the place were white and I'm not even sure if that is legal. I thought you had to be either an English teacher or military in order to live here. But anyway, great advertising on their part, a ton of people there. The Koreans looked out of place and that's just a tough thing to pull off in Seoul. They also gave out a ton of free shooters, which couldn't have contained a lot of alcohol, otherwise I wouldn't be typing this right now. It was weird that it seems like Bender and I have now been here much longer than most of the other white people we talk to. One guy just got here two weeks ago, I have no idea what they could feel like. It's one of the reasons I'm glad I keep this thing somewhat updated, otherwise this whole experience will just be a blur within a week of going home.

Sunday went to Seoul Forest, which is basically Seoul's attempt to create Central Park in Korea. But really it was just a lot of trees, a lot of walking and a ton of deer. There's seriously a huge area roped off with just deer in it. Deer might be the lamest animal ever. Fuckin deer eat the plants in front of my house, people do not want to go some place to watch a stupid deer roam around. There was a giant fountain there that had a bunch of kids running around in it and that was awesome, but as you can see from above, my picture isn't as good as the one on Bender's blog. That's cause we only stayed there for 2 minutes, then Bender promised, he did, that we could come back later. But he broke my heart. When we got back around 7:30, the kids were gone, the fountain was off, and Bender was still a bitch.

The Korean teachers have started to play this Korean crap music on the radio in the office. It's really loud and really crappy. No one has even gone near the radio in the last seven months and now suddenly, I'm working in a Korean dance club. It's tough to watch Heroes with that garbage playing in the background, but since I'm watching TV and the Koreans are preparing for classes tomorrow, I don't feel I have the right to complain. Next week we get off on Thursday for Buddha's Birthday and apparently I need to go to a picnic with my coworkers that morning. I honestly cannot imagine anything more awful than a picnic with my coworkers. Everyone once in a while I'll think oh ok, they're not that bad, but within five seconds it's back to wow how have you people not killed yourselves yet? Plus God I wish they were American.

Interesting note: 31 percent of Americans are obese compared to 3 percent of Koreans. Those are also the same percentages of people I can hold a conversation with without wanting to slit my throat.