Days late and a picture short.

It’s not Friday, it’s Tuesday. There was a mistaken notion that last week, since there were midterms and I had no classes that there would be a plethora of time at my disposal to work on the blog but somehow it ended up being a very busy week. I have no classes this week yet here I find myself busy again… actually working. Well, sort of.

Actually last week Monday and Tuesday was a wash after falling victim once again to my strange back nerve syndrome where I make a random movement, pinch a nerve in my lower back and am crooked and in pain for three days after. This particular movement happened in warm-ups during our game last Saturday, where the surging Outkasts were poised to take on the first place and undefeated Malaysian team that had beaten the ever-living bejeezus out of us in week one, not that I was there for that. This Outkast team, which had lost 24 straight games had won their last two and was a different team than the one that lost 11-4 in the season opener.

Long story short, we didn’t win. The opposing squad was nearly two hours late to the remote location and we were looking for the forfeit as I knew I was unable to move, much less run. However, my spirited new teammates wouldn’t take the easy way out and talked me into staying, and I did, of course. Since I couldn’t afford to stop moving and endure painful back spasms I opted to play the entire 90 minutes—but I didn’t and couldn’t play particularly well since I could barely move...not sure what my excuse normally is. We went down a goal, came back and leveled. Shortly after leveling we ceded goal number two and the chase continued until the 70th minute when we finally equalized again. Like the first time when we fought so hard to even the score we quickly gave up another, going down 3-2 late in the game. After narrowly missing several hard-earned chances there was a handball in the Malaysians’ box and the referee called a penalty kick in added time. Hmmm, I wonder who would be the choice to take the shot… Yeah, it was me. 3-3 tie, top shelf, an inch away from hitting the crossbar, and there was more a massive sigh of relief that gimpy didn’t blow another one over the bar and we lose the game than a celebration. After all that I couldn’t stand up straight until Tuesday, but I guess that’s not so much a long story short.

Wednesday it rained, because we had practice during the shittiest “spring” ever and we called it off. I had spent all day working on a curriculum for my new evening class starting next week. That’s right, starting next week the party’s over. I’ll be teaching a full schedule of sixteen classes per week and two in the evenings… okay, it’s not that bad but it will require preparation, which I’m still working on, obviously. Wednesday came and went but Thursday afternoon I would have plenty of time to work on my craft [sic], or so I hoped.

Before I get to Thursday’s activities I should digress and mention what had been going on during the mornings. Though I gave no midterms I was asked to proctor the exams which meant standing in the back of a classroom for an hour with my only entertainment being the wall, the clock that didn’t move and the sound of pencils moving… buh-roo-tal! That afternoon I was asked to help the other English teacher’s grade exams and sat down for about thirty seconds before I was summoned to go see Ironman 2 with my office team. Tough call: “Hey Chris, do you want to sit here and grade these insanely tedious sections of the exam a hundred times over or would you rather go see Ironman?” “Hmmmm, gee. Let me think…”. So Thursday afternoon I saw Im 2 and can say I enjoyed it and choose not to nitpick about the typical sequel flaws. That evening I had an appointment to get a haircut and a COUGH waxing COUGH and didn’t make it back home until late after opting to meet my good friend Pam in Itaewon for food after my COUGH gay manicure COUGH. Excuse me, something in my throat.

After carefully observing the process of paint drying for 2 hours Friday morning I had lunch and discovered that the exams were not magically graded while I was watching Ironman and spent part of the afternoon grading and the latter half talking to administration about the upcoming months and working on the syllabi for my new classes. Finally, for the first time since I showed up a week after classes started in March, I got some solid answers and direction. The guidance counselor Yeon Joo, who is the person I go to when I need things and fluent in English informed me that the students like me and the A-students, whom I have not been teaching, have requested to be in my class—hence the extra hours. More importantly, it also turns out we have a five week paid break coming up in July and I am guaranteed at least ten days off!! If I am required to teach or choose to stay through the rest of the break (we’re not sure if I have to, can, or might be able to yet) I’ll get extra compensation. My evening classes coming up will nearly double my pay so I can start sending home some nice chunks of Korean won. Also I found out that there is a five week winter break as well starting January 1st. In short, this job is getting better and better.

With all of this vacation time there may even be some pictures. I saw a complaint that I wasn’t posting any and there are a couple of reasons for this. First, I am terrible about taking pictures and don’t particularly like my camera. I feel this has all been seen and done before and never was a big fan of taking pictures of people—I prefer landscapes, architecture, etc. Also the sky has been so hazy all of the time and the weather been so gloomy that I don’t want to remember this when and if it ever passes over. But secondly and more importantly I don’t want to feel I need to rely on pictures to post something new. My last blog died off after I ran out of interesting pictures to comment on and I want this to be more about my writing [sic] than photo journalism. Not to say there will never be any pictures, but most weeks my pictureless words will have to be endured. Being happy to get back into the blog business after a long hiatus, part of the purpose of this thing, other than to wildly entertain and inform, is to discipline myself to write something every week. Therefore you now have my apologies for not posting last Friday and I hope my explanation will appease your extreme anger. Until this Friday, take care everybody!