The Three Most Important Things in the World: Rice, Ramen, Soju (Xanax)

It's pretty amazing how much children here know about current events. In that respect, they make American kids collectively look like Sean Penn's character from I am Sam. And that guy was seriously retarded. For some reason, people here, including the children, really care about anything and everything involving Korea. I argued with seven 5th graders the merits of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) signed between the US and Korea last month. Of course, their argument was just "Korea is great, blah blah, we love rice" but still I bet less than 5 percent of Americans even know an FTA was signed. I was trying to argue that the FTA was a good thing but it was frustrating because I couldn't use dumbed down English to explain price competition and the power of the free market to them. One kid said Korea was sick of taking orders from America to which I turned to the old standby, you know, the one where South Korea wouldn't exist today if America hadn't saved its ass 60 years ago. By the end of the class, they all told me to go back to America and then they ran into the hall chanting "FTA Bad!"

For some reason I'm tired all the time during the week now. I've been tired my entire life, but just more so than usual, I'm getting a solid 8 hours of sleep a night and playing more than enough online poker, I don't understand it. At work, I'm in some kind of foggy haze, which I can only be snapped out of when a Korean teacher waves something in my face to get my attention. But I guess that's how most jobs work. You get there, turn your brain off for 8 hours and hope you don't kill yourself before the final bell rings.

Next week I'm back to teaching 31 classes a week, a nice jump from the quite enjoyable 26 I've been on for the past month. The school found a new foreign teacher to replace David at the end of the month. On that note, Bender turned me on (might be the wrong word choice) to the best tasting ramen in the world. The stuff is 80 cents but it tastes like gold. If gold tasted really really good. The only problem I can see developing is that I now eat it for no reason, meaning when I'm not even close to being hungry. I guess the real danger will start when I begin puking up noodles in my sleep.

Since Bender and I are apparently engaged in some kind of creepy "Lets See How Many Pictures We Can Post of Each Other on Our Blogs", here's another point for me. Short video, basically me singing much louder than the kids, which is kind of pathetic. But hey, some of these songs are really catchy. I agreed to meet up with the Korean girl who interviewed me for her homework on Sunday, mainly just cause I feel bad because she bought me a bunch of stuff and now I just kind of ignore her when I go to the restaurant she works at, which I'll probably do again tonight. But anyway, she said she's planning a trip with her friends, I have no idea what that means, but it sounds dangerous and possibly terrible. And if I miss out on a Spiderman movie loveseat with Bender to deal with terrible Korean girls, well, that would just be the saddest day of my life.