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.

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

knitting again

oh gosh, knitting again, knitting an owl sweater, knitting a turquoise short-sleeved owl sweater with coral button-eyes, oh gosh.

Knitting feels like home, I can't figure out why I ever stopped, why I haven't been knitting all this time. I am so much less anxious all the time now that I am knitting.

But you know, I know the reason I stopped: NO KNITTING BUDDY. Which is to say: I have a knitting buddy now! She knows how to ask questions about yarn in Korean, which is the best thing ever. And she likes talking about POOP, which I have taken to mean we are soulmates.

I'm in a good mood tonight. Lesson planning finished, knitting up a storm. <3, everybody.

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?

YR GONNA LOVE MY FONDANT POO

I accidentally woke up two hours early for work today, and I'm spending the interval watching a show called "love love cake." @bird_esque @twcwar, my fondness for cake-making shows is entirely your fault.

Since I spent almost this entire weekend grunging about in bed, I watched a lot of TV. Top finds include:

1. Anne of Green Gables, dubbed over in Korean. It was at the blue-puffed-sleeves dress/Christmas ball scene when I found it. Hilarity ensued.

2. When I did the celebrities lesson, I found out about a new TV drama (called "Iris") that is all the rage with my students. Saturday, I found it. Starring Lee Byung-Hun, Seoul's current heartthrob.

These days, it's pretty normal for me to watch Korean soap operas while I'm making dinner/pretending to lesson plan/writing my blog in the evening times. And even though I understand almost nothing, I've gotten to the point where I know the characters from all of the most melodramatic shows, and can cruise channels for my favorites. (@bird_esque @twcwar new "smut" addiction?)

Cake-time is over. Pretending-t0-get-ready-for-work-time is now.

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!)

"Did you poop on my head?"

A lot of the students at Seoul Electronics High School smoke. In Korea, smoking is typically seen as an exclusively male habit (read: many women do smoke, but never in public. There are special smoking rooms in many public restrooms for women). But both girls and boys at my school are frequently caught and reprimanded for smoking on school grounds.

On a practical level, what this means for me is that when students ask to go to the bathroom during class, they usually don't have to go to the bathroom. They want to go to the bathroom to smoke. Which means: as much as I am opposed to the public school system having power over students' bodily needs, I can't just let them go without a fuss.

This conversation happened in one of the 2nd grade classes I have with Han Jin-An yesterday:

Student: "Teach-ah, toilet!"
Me: "Oh, you mean 'Can I go to the bathroom, please?'"
Student: "Yes, can I go bathroom please?"
Me: "Okay, you have 1 minute."

Student clutches at his stomach and makes groaning noises, then appeals to his classmates to help him explain the situation to me.

Different Student Who is Very Good at English: "Teacher, it's poop!"
Me: "Oh, really? Okay, 2 minutes."

Entire class erupts in laughter.

Student: "Teacher!"
Me: "Okay, okay, just hurry!"

Student hurries to bathroom.

One of my favorite things about South Korea is the absence of poop-phobia. What students in any American high school would have been willing to tell their teacher that they had to poop? My co-teachers are also occasionally frank with me about their indigestion and poop issues. <3

If you want to read more about South Korea and poop, click here.

pickled radish, pickled

jellyfish, I mean, same goddamn difference.

LOOK AT THIS MAN. ISN'T HE MAGNIFICENT. (I'm a creeper, duh.)

BUKHANSAN. The beast of Seoul.

Teacher's tea time topic: are you an adventurous person? I'm really not trying to stack my own ego, but I was well and truly flabbergasted by my co-teachers' collective response to this topic. I was the only one willing to try most things. And they were appalled to learn that I had, in fact, already swum in a lake at night, and more than once, too.

Sweet potato noodles, sesame. I eat sesames in almost everything now.

Big-ass maple leaves carpet the streets. <3

If those aren't rainbow mosaic sculptures of poo, then I haven't a goddamned idea what they are.

팜

I can now read most Korean characters, and am capable of producing hangul (the Korean system of writing) on or off my computer. The above is Pam (pronounced "pahm," the British way) in hangul.

Three Korean cafeteria meals later, my vegetarianism is still intact, minus one accidental bite of a fish patty that I thought was breaded zucchini. The food is quite good, especially once I learned that the vast majority of the sauces are quite spicy and thus, for me, something to be avoided (for now). Hopefully, my spice tolerance will improve in the course of the year. I'm especially a fan of how much they rely on fresh fruits and vegetables over here. I have mango juice and bananas with nearly every meal, as well as broccoli, carrots, cucumbers, etc.

I hadn't bonded much with my roommate (Christina) before, but yesterday she asked me if I'd pooped since I got here. "Yes" was the answer, but then she followed up: "Yeah, but was it a good poop?" No. It wasn't. I'm officially in love. We are also mutually open about the fact that we tend to fart in our sleep.

As of now, I have a Hello Kitty subway card and nearly no free time. I get up every morning around 7 and it's beginning to seem not only normal, but preferable. I hardly recognize myself.