Taxes? What taxes?

Check out the "corporate films" at the English Village link--you want the PR one. It's about 5 minutes long; I'm the witch.

Thurs, April 6: Taught, without much trouble, my first classes here. Glad I’m good at winging it! Kids are very cute, except for the ones we want to drop-kick. It’s difficult to determine what English level they’re at, in terms of distinguishing between shyness and low ability, but we’re trying to work some stuff into the classes so we can suss that out as soon as possible. Went for my first swim in the gorgeous 25-meter pool—low-chlorine but crystal clear, cool, and with lots of natural light. Hooray! Then met up with Anne for food, wine and conversation at Greenspace in Heyri (more on that soon), where we were treated to extra glasses of wine….so I was late to a showing of “Office Space,” courtesy of our community events team. Nice to have free ,pre-planned showings of good movies of all varieties less than a 5-minute walk from my apartment! Woohoo!

Fri, April 7: More of the same teaching, a rehearsal for the parade that should have been in our schedule but wasn’t, and it was WAY too much for us to learn in one hour, so we all got frustrated and pissed off, and then frustrated and pissed off that we were frustrated and pissed off over something that was dumb, when we easily could have just not rehearsed it and let them see what it would look like with three people doing what 10 had been doing (we’re now on split schedules, so the parade had to be rechoreographed with half the people). We recalibrated and joined our friends to celebrate the birthday of a co-worker at a restaurant in nearby Gumchon, then went to a bar where the pull is the wacky bottle-throwing/juggling show the bartenders do.

Sat, April 8: street entertaining (and most of the kids now here for specific programs are way too old and too cool for our schtick, so we’ve got major revamping to do) and teaching, then a passion party at Anne’s (she’s the queen of “underground” parties that pretty much encourage scantily cladness and dirty-mindedness by the end of the evening). I didn’t stay too late (I left partway into the group grope, if that gives you any idea), as I was getting that dry-throat, warm-faced feeling that felt like a cold…

Sun, April 9: felt a little better, did the street edutaining and classes, hit the gym for a quick workout, and was all set to crash early…but was listening to FUV’s Sunday morning program and heard that my high school pal, Rachel Sage, was going to be interviewed at 11pm my time, so of course I stayed up! What better reason? So crazy to listen to radio from home, and to someone I know on the radio to boot! Teehee!

Mon, April 10: Slept for 10 hours and spent a blessed part of the day in my pajamas! Hooray! Felt better, so went for a 90-min. run mostly along the DMZ(!) Not as bad as you’d think: Where I am, the DMZ is along a river. On our side is a major roadway, flanked by dirt paths. Ya can’t go to the barbed-wire side closest to the water, but you CAN run along the path on the S. Korean side—and wave to the guys at the other end of the tunnel to the N. Korean side (the guys are S. Korean, obviously). How crazy is that? It was a great run, I hit the gym afterwards, then a couple of hours later started feeling crappy again, so bailed on chorus. Right about at this time, we were starting to hear about some of our co-workers having to go to the hospital b/c they were coughing up blood. It turns out (and I’m not sure exactly how I really missed it, except for that fact that there seems to always be a layer of dust on everything here) that we’d had a MAJOR dousing of Yellow Dust from the Gobi Desert in China—one of the worst since 2002, when it made all kinds of international news. Ah. Everyone is okay, but it's a week later and we're all still hacking away. I think I'm over the worst of it, but clearly have to find a website that has updated info on the scene so I know when to run inside (yuck). Slept for 9 hours…

Tues, April 11: got some work done, felt better, went for a 2-hr ride (I hadn’t heard about the dust factor yet), then into Ilsan (45-minutes by bus) for some wandering and grocery shopping w/Elana. We got some excellent stripey socks for dirt cheap, found some soft-serve ice cream, and stocked up on veggies for the week. Didn’t make it back in time for a screening of “Frailty,” but I’m gonna borrow it and watch it on my own.

Wed, April 12: felt terrible. I’m blaming it all on the dust, as my cold symptoms didn’t happen the way they usually do and the sleep wasn’t taking care of it. Made it through the day; fortunately we’re really low on kids this week, as the One Day Program’s bookings don’t pick up until May. Went to a meeting of Visual Arts practitioners and fans and found out more about the AMAZING place that Heyri Art Village is, just next door. Painting, sculpture, floral art, architecture, film, music…you name it—it’s there! It’s government-sponsored (they lost a whole lot of tourism money when they cracked down on prostitution and so are now pouring money into the arts…), but these artists are already extremely well-established, if not outright famous. Much of it is still under construction, it’s evolving before our eyes, and there are fantastic opportunities to develop relationships with their community. Anne always says it’s the reason she took this job. I’m so excited about all the performances, exhibitions, classes, and hang-out spots—let alone the cool people! Check out the links! Most Excellent!

Thurs, April 13: classes, meeting (the weekend parade is cancelled—it took too many teachers out of the classroom and wasn’t at an appropriate age-level for the kids we have coming now). Exercised INSIDE, nice and easy, and worked some of the phlegm outta the ol’ system. Put on my comfies, took out my contacts, popped some popcorn, and went to watch “Memento” in the seminar room (I’m seeing more movies here than I have in YEARS at home!).

Friday, April 14: classes, some empty, but that gives us time to get other stuff done, so it’s all good. Swam before a meeting about the status of our soccer league, which is not what we want it to be; the fitness center is not being cooperative in the western way we’d like them to be. They’re not as connected to us as we’d all (including the Director of Ed) thought, and have little incentive to cater to our desires—even though we’re paying members. It’s been a source of major frustration for all. We’ll see.

This weekend will be street entertaining and teaching, and on Saturday I’ll run right over to Heyri for a special performance of Korean folk music and dance that our visual arts and otherwise interested folks were specially invited to attend, with a reception to follow. Sunday’s workday will be followed by an improv group session and another underground party, themed “Hail Spring, Hail Fertility!” (‘hic)
I have Mon-Wed off, and plan to see the cherry blossoms at their peak, probably in the big park in Seoul, go to Heyri to explore some galleries and have lunch, try a new restaurant somewhere, and explore on bike and on foot. There’s also the first meeting of the Cooking Group, and a Euro Party to welcome the new staff, and a soccer game. Eeeeek! Hopefully I’ll sneak in some sleep, too!

Other fun stuff involves watching the dramas of relationships play out—co-working, neighboring, romancing. It will be interesting to see how they all evolve in this tiny little community where you’d be hard-pressed to keep any sort of secret. The straight single guys are definitely enjoying their ratio to the single women, and the influx of mostly female Eastern Europeans should merely add to their fun, much to the dismay of many, no doubt! Most amusing—many are not too far out of college (or at least the mentality) and easily fall back into the behavior (and their bodies can take the partying…).

Socially, we pretty much spend most of our time off with the other people on our shifts. Some work weekdays from 1-9, and we don’t see a whole heck a lot of them, except in passing. The ODP teachers have all been switched to one of 2 weekend schedules, as they realized that the bulk of our traffic will be on the weekend—but we’re still only on the same shift with half of our population. Hopefully there will be a free night (imagine!) when I can have a party for people I don’t see enough of…

Good luck with the taxes, good luck at the Boston Marathon, Happy Ides of April, Happy Easter! I’m goin’ to bed early—Good Friday, indeed!

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Xoxo
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