iam.alive

One thing you may notice is that for all its navel gazing, this blog lacks a certain amount of visual content featuring me. I’m shy. Consequently I have a nice big camera and I prefer to stay behind it. However, I have recently been caught on video by my friend Cait and she posted it on youtube.

If random strangers are going to see this, I may as well share it with my nearest and dearest.

(Click the image to view the video.)

Well, Friday was my birthday.

This is the 4th birthday I’ve spent in Korea and I would have to say that it was the best. On Friday night, Greg, Robin, Cait, and the Other Marie ate Korean BBQ and then had a couple drinks at a hof near my house.

Yes, there is another Marie. It’s weird and it sounds like I’m talking to myself whenever I speak to her. She teaches at the middle school adjacent to my elementary school. I have a list of all the foreign English teachers in our city and was surprised to see my name on the list twice. As it turns out, it wasn’t on the list twice; it was her. A few days after I made that discovery, I met a girl who attends that middle school. “What’s your name?” she asked me. “My name is Marie, what’s yours?” I replied. “Uh, my, uh, English teacher, mine, uh…” the poor girl was very confused meeting two English teachers named Marie. Later that week I saw a tall woman walking down the street. She could only be The Other.

“Hi! Um, is your name Marie?” I asked after I chased her about half a block down the street. After I introduced myself we had a good laugh about the weird coincidence. While I’m sure we have some similarities I know we’ll never be mistaken for one another. First of all she’s American and secondly, she’s tall.

But I digress. Dinner was delicious and the next day was even better.

Unable to let me drink my morning coffee, Greg begged, “Is it time to open your present yet?” Attached to the beautifully wrapped Korean knitting book was a letter. In it he detailed my most awesome birthday special day plan.

We started out by going for lunch at Noryangjin fish market. There I was able to pick out whatever fish I wanted and we at it as sashimi. Sadly, I have no idea what kind of fish we at but it sure was delicious. All the fish mongers loved my tattoos. As we walked through the market I heard a lot of “Ooh! Berry Goot!” and was pointed at a fair bit. Did I mention the fish was delicious?

After lunch, we went to Yongsan electronics market and I got something I’ve wanted for a very long time: a tablet! Sadly, the tablet I bought didn’t work. My haggling had resulted in me getting sold an open box model. None too pleased Greg called the shop and ultimately told them we’d be back the next day. Armed with an email translated into Korean by my coteacher, the exchanged for a working model the following day was painless.

A little disapointed by the non-functional tablet, Greg and I headed down to Oido to watch the sun set. Salt air will cheer me up almost any time and it was a great near-end to an almost perfect day. After we got home there was pizza, a zombie movie, and a back rub.

I may have the best boyfriend in the world.

Yes, there are photos. No they’re not online yet. There are, however, photos from my trip to Canada up on my Flickr. Right now there’s only the photos from when I went to Fredericton but the rest should be up within the next couple of days.

I’ve been researching many different pieces of software over the past couple weeks. Today I’m trying a new browser I found called Flock. One thing I might like about it is this blog editor. I’m not actually writing from inside my Wordpress interface but from the browser uploader in flock.

This is possibly great because I can compose blog posts offline and upload them when I get an internet connection. For someone who’s been, uh, borrowing wifi since she got back to Korea, this may be a very good thing.

In the Great Crash of 2008, I lost a lot of data. That actually is a blessing in disguise. My entire backlog of photos disappeared. That means I get to start fresh. Last night I uploaded a set to flickr.

Despite all the shit that went down at my last job (if you know you know; if you don’t know I’m not writing about it. Korea has crappy libel laws), I really miss my kids.

It’s a good thing I love my boyfriend. And that I have a fantastic sense of humour. Otherwise, when he accidentally set of somewhere between one and five stink bombs in my tiny loft apartment I would’ve been really angry.

In other news, well, I’m now living in a small town called Siheung. It’s outside of Seoul and not really on the subway line. I’ve got to get on a bus and ride for about 15minutes to get to Bucheon Station on the number one line. From there I can either go into Seoul or get on another bus to get to Greg’s house. It takes me a solid hour to get anywhere in Seoul and between 40-50minutes to visit Greg. This is, however, much closer than Greg and I have ever lived to one another.

I also teach in public school now, not a private academy. This is something I didn’t think I’d ever be able to do. Public school classes are 30+ students. I believe most of my classes are 32 and I have one class that’s 35. We have to bring in an extra desk for that class. I don’t know any of my students’ names. I thought it would be too stressful being in such large classes. In the hagwons (private academy), the largest class size is legally 12 students. I occasionally have taught classes as large as 14 but that’s been it. Had I not done nearly 3 years in the academies, I think public school would be really overwhelming but as it is, it’s not that bad. I have an amazing co-teacher - her English name is Mickey - and with her help, I’m settling in very well.

I’m also settling into my new apartment and neighbourhood well. I live in a small lofted officetel (studio/bachelor apartment). It isn’t as large as my last apartment and the neighbourhood definitely has a different charm than Sungshin where I lived last, it does have a very folksy kind of charm. And a samgyeopsal restaurant next door to where I live that always seems happy to see me.

On Friday night when Greg came over, and we decided to go for samgyeopsal as it was close and comfortable. My anxiety had been through the roof all day on Friday and I was not up to venturing outside my comfort zone. The restaurant was crowded and all the chatter made me feel overwhelmed. I was concentrating on Greg’s ramblings about csound and the delicious barbequed meat as the voices at the next table grew louder and more aggressive. I was mostly able to ignore it until, BANG! an ajosshi slammes his fist down on the table and starts cursing out his friend.

It all happened pretty quickly. I noticed that it wasn’t his fist he slammed on the table; it was a pair of kitchen scissors. He’s yelling. His friend is yelling. He stands up shoving the table at his friend and knocking over a significant number of the evening’s accumulated beer and soju bottles. He’s yelling more, standing right next to our table scissors in hand. His friend is yelling back but is definitely more calm. A third friend is trying to get the scissors away from him and the restaurant owner has come over and is trying to diffuse the situation.

Thankfully it was fairly easily diffused. The owner got the scissors taken away, the calm third friend paid the bill, and the drunk violent guy flounced off only to return moments later because he forgot his cigarettes.

As I said in the beginning, it’s a good thing I have a fantastic sense of humour.