occasional pop music profile #1

okay, so this exists:



Please note:
@2:00 - that dog is all up sniffing on that dude's biebz
@2:50 - THOSE ARE DALMATIAN-PRINT KNEE HIGH SOCKS

My favorite lyric is "Dalmatian Doggy Dog."

fake maple syrup which tastes like American fake maple syrup, sunflower-seed pancakes

I'm going to Jeju. I'm not going to Jeju. I am going somewhere. (I have no idea where I'm going.)

I am not climbing the tallest mountain in Korea. Will I climb the second-tallest mountain in Korea? Maybe I'll just climb Gwanak-san. I can't even depend on myself for simple things (like getting on the airplane) anymore.

For the duration of last year I was mainly content to stay in Seoul all the time and not in a hurry to see the rest of Korea, I think because I had no definite plans of leaving. But if I don't re-sign another contract (and I don't think I will) then that means I have 11 months left in Korea. I want to travel, I want to climb all the mountains and swim at all the beaches and visit all the hot springs.

But who will travel with me? Because the problem is that I cannot be relied upon to follow through on anything unless there is someone doing it with me. It doesn't matter how simple the plan is, how easy to carry out, or even how many reservations I've made. It's a proven and time-tested fact that I will wake up on the morning of the deadline and slowly burgeon into a panic-attack, during which I will cancel everything and go back to sleep. Never underestimate my social anxieties.

Which is all to say: I am not normal and cannot interact with people normally or make friends normally and I hate that about myself.

1. the single-minded stress of my 3rd graders, who sent in their first round of college applications last week, & how even the best class wasn't ready for their speaking test

2. oh, Jae-Pil can sing

3. how female desire is even less present in Korea than in West Michigan, but i have already invested too much anger in this

4. i want to come out to my school, and won't (my co-teachers are still hung up on whether there's a homosexual gene)

5. i don't think i will spend another year here, (these days) i think it's 2 years and out

6. i'm going to Jeju Island tomorrow morning for the whole of my Chuseok vacation, i hope it's fun (i might climb the tallest mountain in Korea). i'll be back next Sunday.

teachers' choir started again last week

(I can read the lyrics this time), and I thought for the first time, "oh, it really has been a year." School festival is this Friday, and I can't wait to see my students singing and dancing. I want to say 여름동안 울었는데 요즘 점점 안 울어지고 있다 but instead I'll say these days I am little by little coming out of the depression I fell into over the summer. Maybe it's because of the start of a new year, maybe it's because of the rainy season, maybe it's because of the approaching fall. I'm not entirely sure of why I became depressed or why, given the depression, I have become un-depressed now, but anyway.

I think I'll be blogging regularly again, now. (It's hard for me to communicate openly when I'm depressed.)

My dancing students, my Ro-Jun students, my after-school-soccer students keep on trying to get me to play after school soccer with them, and part of me wants to, but the other part of me says, "Oh Pam, remember dodgeball? Don't embarrass yourself." But the real question is: will my students like me more if I play soccer poorly with them, or if my soccer-playing abilities remain a mystery? Because in the end, that's all that's really relevant.

seriously, the facebook?

do you know who you're talking about?

i've acquired a taste for raw fish

sushi for lunch

left to right: 1. crunchy mango texture, 2. soft salmon (my favorite raw fish), 3. ambiguous, 4. tuna belly, muscle-y, made me gag.

dear raw fish: you don't scare me anymore

the south sea, suicide rock

이영경 샘

we could see japan

port city

bird on a rock

Busan's many harbors

those are restaurants, on the flattish area at the bottom of the cliffs

we only ate raw fish that day

i tried to eat one, but when i picked it up the shell rotated and i got scared it was alive and gave up.

i don't even know what that IS but EAT MY ANUS

then we had fish head and fish tail soup

"teachers' training 2010"

ONE SHOT

my first time eating raw fish was terrifying. it was after this picture that the night went downhill. almost everybody got drunk, one of my male co-workers made an extremely inappropriate pass at me, we ate ice cream, wandered around the beach, sang at a noraebang (karaoke) and passed out on the floor. next morning we ate "hangover soup" for breakfast and went sightseeing. i'm definitely a better teacher now.

ps. tried wordpress, didn't like it

(it's easy to tell when i'm depressed because i stop blogging)

my favorite thing

these days is stews with entire animals in them. For example,

삼계탕, which is a headless, featherless, gutless chicken in a bowl with some spices. For example, 오리백수, which is a headless, featherless, gutless duck on a platter with rice stew and some cooked chestnuts.

I still can't eat meat alone, at home. I still gag. But I crave it. Right now, for example, I'm craving a chicken drumstick. (But if there was a chicken drumstick here, I wouldn't be able to eat it-alone, in my apartment.) Yesterday I was super into the duck stew I had with my co-teachers, so much so that I was inwardly a little ticked when Park Mi-Ran took a leg from our platter and put it on the platter at Han Jin-An's (older male co-teacher) side of the table. I was going to eat that meat!

I peeled all the meat off the bones and when I fished out 2 linked vertebrae from a chunk of meat I'd put in my mouth, I thought briefly about putting them back in my mouth to suck some bits of meat off of them (the vertebrae), and also to re-investigate the strange way they clicked around in my mouth.

But I still can't eat the duck porridge I brought home with me, much as I would like to.