Magic Hole

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I don't mean to say that I've never shared laughter with my co-workers and students and friends here before. Of course I have. But these past two weeks I've been having a lot of shared hysterical laughter with my new department-mates, which has never happened before. Yena's always been in my department, but I Young-Gyung and U Young-Hee moved into my department for the new year (replacing Park Mi-Ran and Im Kyung-Hwa). We already knew each other, but sharing the same office space presumably brought another layer of comfort.

Skipping, awkwardness, the Korean verb for "to lick," and melodramatic hand gestures are involved. I think I've let out another layer of weird, and that's a relief. We'll never be able to talk about rimming, but it's nice to make weird faces at each other. The first time it happened I was so happy, I didn't realize how much I'd missed the kind of red-faced-can't-stop laughter that is normally reserved for skype-biffles.

I think I'll be happy in Park Mi-Ran's relative absence from my life. Spending my school life next to her was a little oppressive.

blood toilet,

sunne-burn'd braine. blood toilet:

1. the stringlets of blood that linger in the bottom of the toilet bowl after I've dumped a keeper-ful of #menstruation in it and flushed once

2. the digital bidet in the women's bathroom at Seoul Electronics High School which is used by my co-workers exclusively when they are #menstruating. I don't think it's against the rules to flush toilet paper down it, but I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to poop in it. There's a different toilet for that. There's also a different toilet for when you just have to pee and you're not on your period, but the digital bidet has a seat that senses movement and prepares to WARM YOUR BUTTOCKS THE MINUTE YOU ENTER THE STALL.

3. the airport bathroom en route Johannesburg --> BsAs, sink full of rusty swirls of maybe-blood, the lower slant of the floor halfway to flooded. The sink clearly clogged - did someone know that the sink was clogged but was so desperate to get the #menstruation off their hands that they rinsed in the sink anyway and then left the bloody water there, because what else can you do when you're #menstruating in an airport bathroom with a flooded floor and a clogged sink?

Maybe the rusty swirly color was something other than #menstruation, but I really hope not.

WHAT ABOUT THE PUPA.

but Loretta used sugar cookie dough and hers was the best in all the land

I don't expect I'll be blogging much from Buenos Aires.

re: how was your vacation?

신성민 (Shin Sung-Min) 님이 보낸글 >>

I'm better than my vacation!

I have been having stomach trouble since last tuesday!

So I can't do something during my vacation! :(

I don't know what got into me!

I'm still suffering from stomach trouble! :(

For "stomach trouble" substitute "severe diarrhea." Because I swear by Gaga, when they say stomach trouble, they always mean DIARRHEA. If they don't mean diarrhea, they mean constipation.

#reasonswhyIlovemycoworkers, #reasonswhyIloveKorea

My anus is unhappy with me these days.**

The head teacher of my department (not the English department - the extracurricular activities department), also known as Mini-Me by her not-so-affectionate underlings, asked me today if I could use chopsticks.

Um. YES. What do you think I've been DOING in the school cafeteria all this time?

In other news, I'm constipated for the first time in 4 months. Turns out, that 3-day weekend where I cooked most of my own food wasn't so good for my bowels. The 3-pound chunk of cheddar cheese Mom sent me for Christmas might also have something to do with it. Tell me, please, what is it about Korean restaurant/cafeteria food that gives me the most satisfying poops of my life?

I've just finished the planning (minus making all the worksheets I'll need) for the winter English camp I'm teaching to students. Now, I have all of 2 days to throw together 15 lesson plans for the teachers' winter English camp. I HATE LESSON PLANNING. Also, I'm super-stressed about the teachers' camp. While I wouldn't say I'm confident at all about my teaching skills, I've long since reached the point where standing in front of a class of 25 students and telling them what to do is a comfortable place to be. It doesn't intimidate me anymore.

What does intimidate me is the prospect of teaching English conversation to 7 co-workers, none of them terribly good at English, all of them older than me (I've told you that age is a huge deal here, right?), 5 of them very experienced teachers (the other 2 are support staff at the school). Their levels of English are extremely different. Sung-Min (tech guy) is probably at the highest level (and coincidentally, also the youngest person in the class, at 30 years old). While the conversations I have with him are slow-going, he is able to communicate most of the things he wants to after a bit of mutual brainstorming and (sometimes) dictionary consultation. On the opposite end of the spectrum is Kim Yeon, the supercilious teacher I've told you about before. Her English consists of "Hello" "How are you?" "I'm fine." and "Touch later!" I've tried telling her that "Touch later!" isn't a common expression (or at least, I don't think it is? Sometimes I get so used to how people use English here that I lose sight of how most of the native speakers I've been around use English). But try though I might, I couldn't convey to her that she should say "See you later!" instead. She still says "Touch later!" every time she leaves my presence. She's 65, and if this is all she's absorbed of English at this point despite studying it through university, I have serious doubts about whether I'll be able to teach her anything substantial in a 3-week camp.

The point is: how can I teach all of these people effectively? Surely I have to make the lesson material simple enough that the lower levels will be able to follow it, but what if it seems too childish to them or makes them feel condescended to? What if they finally realize that I am a terrible teacher?

**I use "these days" to excess these days. Every Korean speaker of English loves to say "these days," and I'm ridiculously hooked on it. Part of that is that I often purposely alter my natural speech into expressions that I know are more likely to be understood (i.e. "lately" --> "these days"), but part of it is that I have always absorbed the language usage I hear from people around me really naturally. It's inevitable; I knew it coming here, and as much as the people I am here to teach want me to speak "authentic" English, I cannot help but be influenced by what I hear here. And anyway, I refuse to correct people every time they use an expression that I've never heard before but makes sense anyway - after all, isn't the different ways that language can be used what got me interested in it in the first place?

I face my own mortality once every week or so at Namtaeryeong Station

It's not often I take the blue line home (it's only a 20-minute
walk to Sadang, and after all the bus is faster)

but at just after 4:20 pm Namtaeryeong is deserted, the trains
come only every 15 minutes or so,
I like that, and the escalator goes down that
unbearable distance between the tickets and the platform.

Walls painted like the pastel
anus of the 70s, anywhere else
I'd walk. Everywhere else the escalators come
in blocks of 20 or so, but Namtaeryeong is deep. It's

best if there's no one else in sight, it's best if I'm wearing
heels that day. I stand still, the wait is unbearable. It will take
my whole life to get to the bottom, and then where will I be?
It will take my whole life for a train to come. I like that.

It's best if a middle-aged woman
stares at me from the other end of the platform. It's best
if I have a clementine with me that day.

I'm definitely watching an infomercial for digital bidets.

And I definitely just saw an animated anus between two animated buttcheeks.

"If You Seek Amy" is the background music.

(Never mind that. The background music just changed to "Jingle Bell Rock." The bidets have red bows on them. Get one for your lover for Christmas!)