Don’t you hate it when you’re sea kayaking in Ha Long Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage site in Quang Ninh province in Vietnam, tip your vessel when you almost crash into a gondola filled with tourists and have to use a laminated worksheet you forgot to give one of your students as a wallet? If I had dime for every time that happened...
My new wallet. Is that Hugo Boss or Armani?
Kelly and I approaching a "cave" and a gondola: see the left of image. I was too busy taking pictures of the cave to notice that we were heading straight towards this other boat. Kelly decided to avoid it by leaning over to the right. We successfully avoided the other ship in the safety of the water. This was also the last photo her camera took and the last dry moment my wallet ever knew.
We decided to try the imfamous stinky fruit. A bit of a misnomer though. It should be called repugnant and nothing more, because nothing in the fruit family should need an enema.
After Cambodia our gang took a quick trip to Vietnam and moseyed around Hanoi and the aforementioned Ha Long Bay. Hanoi was an interesting and bizarrely dichotomous city; you knew there was poverty all around you, but it you couldn’t stare it directly in the eyes and feel it suffocate your soul. It was dirty, but more so from the pollution that subsequently follows when a massive metropolis develops and advances by any means necessary. Inefficiency and disregard to the environment was abound. We decided to escape the pollution of a busy and impatient city and travel to the UNESCO site. The four of us spent two days and one night on a junk (the name given to traditional Chinese sailing ships). I am not bragging but you should have seen the size of my junk.
I returned to Korea rested and ready to attack the 65 hour work week that was rearing its ugly head for the month of January. Korean public schools are closed for an extensive period of time during the first month of the new year to presumably allow the young and overworked students a break from the bedlam that is their education system; but this is not the case. A private school, like the one I work at, jumps on this opportunity, like a pregnant woman on a jar of pickles, and decides to run an “intensive” program. So instead of allowing the students to finally enjoy some much deserved time off from learning, many young-ones are shipped off to English school where they sit in the same classroom for four hours in an attempt to instantly gain command of this ridiculous language.
For New Year’s, Kelly and I headed to the downtown area to experience the “Times Square” of Seoul. It certainly was a little pale in comparison, but amazing nonetheless. At midnight, one of the Korean gates sounded its mighty gong. As the excitement built everyone stood in the streets and launched fireworks into the crisp, New Year’s Eve sky. There were so many Roman candles being fired I think someone should consider renaming them Korean candles. I couldn’t help but reflect that an evening like this would never be possible back home; perhaps this added to the wonderment of the experience. Imagine 500,000 people able to drink legally in public, packed like smelt in a trawling net, and encouraged to launch Roman candles (being sold at the low, low price of 3 for a dollar) up into the air. Only in rule obliging Asia is such an amazing celebration able to occur.
This past weekend, a small group of us took to the slopes just outside of Seoul to enjoy some boarding and skiing. Having only been skiing once in my life, I was a little apprehensive to go and spend the day on the bunny hill by myself. But thanks to my inaugural skiing instructors wise and timeless coaching I was able to keep pace with everyone else and really embrace the slopes. Black Diamond...pff... I hear they make a nice processed cheese slice.
Without any topical introduction, the more I use a photocopier the more I am amazed with these contraptions. They’re easier to use than a self-playing piano. And when the occasional accident happens and they do in fact break down, they tell you exactly where the problem is and what you need to do to fix the situation. If only women were like that. Am I right or am I right?
To keep a jovial vibe in the teacher’s lounge during “Intensives”, Chuck, one of the latest teachers to join the SLP brigade, and I, play a game where we jot down an open ended expression that extemporaneously gets said on Monday and try to come up with as many different, and droll, endings as we can. This week I was the only male teacher at our weekly meeting for afternoon teachers, which spawned the comment:
Chuck and I on New Year's Eve
There’s more women in this room than... and this is what we’ve come up with so far (it’s Tuesday night).
• a Lilith fair concert
• at Victoria Secret on free panty day
• in Wilt Chamberlain’s little black book
• a sale at Payless
• A Sex in the City marathon in Madison Square Garden
• a Jenny Craig meeting on January 2nd
• an ammunition factory in 1945
• a town meeting on the island of Lesbo
• an Amazonian tribe
• an aquarium of pregnant praying mantis
• an OB GYN clinic
• the starting line of a 5 km walk to end breast cancer
• the line to the ladies room on opening night of The Notebook
• at a Hillary Clinton fund-raiser
• backstage at a Guns-n-Roses concert
• in Oprah’s audience
• the drawer where John Smith put all his marriage licenses
Sexily,
Dro
