I made it to Thailand.
Nobody put cocaine in my luggage, I’m not a brothel mommy, I haven’t been sold into prostitution, I haven’t been left high and dry and unemployed, and I haven’t died of heat stroke.
Yet.
I have been here four days and three nights and I already have a functional cellphone, an apartment, and prospects for extra work.
I have no hot water or kitchen in my apartment. I’ll be taking cold showers for a year, and I have a sink out on the balcony. I will be cooking on electric grills on the balcony. Which is, actually, lovely.
There are lizards in my bathroom.
Filed under: being foreign
Here are two instances of Korean strangers being exceptionally kind to me even though they couldn’t speak to me.
1. Last night, I was walking home in the rain. I had left my umbrella at the pension office, so I was getting wet. I’ve had Korean women share their umbrella with me before – walking beside me until I get to my store or the subway station. But this guy saw me and wasn’t going my way, so he just handed me his umbrella and smiled. then he ran through the rain in the other direction.
2. I was packing, and I started to bring my garbage bag down to the first floor. It was a 100litre garbage bag – it was about as big as me. I dragged it to the elevator, and when I got to the elevator there happened to be a delivery man in there on his way back from a delivery – with an empty wheelie cart. He took one look at me, smiled a little, and took the bag from me. He heaved it onto the wheelie cart and took it to the dumpster, and heaved it up into the dumpster for me. Then he smiled and walked away.
Filed under: being foreign, idiocy (my own), idiocy (other people's), students, travelling
Two weeks tomorrow, I will:
- be finished working the asshole who says ‘black people look like monkeys’ and ’some rape is consensual’, the dumbass who needed help to buy condoms because at 24 years of age, she thought the pink box was for girls and the blue box was for boys, and the girl who knew a few Koreans in Chicago and thinks that trumps a year’s experience in the country. Seriously, in her first week, bitch corrected my pronunciation on my kid’s names.
- be finished working 12 hour days. Whoever thought 9 hours of teaching a day was a good idea was clearly smoking laced crack.
- be finished trying to impress middle school kids. Somehow, when I’m telling jokes and nobody’s laughing for three. hours. straight. I feel like the most uncool kid in the classroom. I’m the teacher.
- be finished packing.
- be on a plane to MOTHERFUCKING BANGKOK.
Reasons I am excited for Bangkok:
- the name.
- Tigers and elephants and monkeys, oh my!
- A more diverse city, including a visible gay community and more races than ‘Korean’ and ‘English Teacher’.
- Beaches
- Rainforests
- A city where drugs are available. No, I am not planning to partake – sounds like a great way to get the HIV or find myself sentenced to death, but Korea’s weird – drugs are literally not available here. Bangkok, for that reason alone, will attract a much different crowd.
- A civilised work schedule. Breaks between classes? No high school kids? Less than 4 teaching hours a day? Sick days? Sign me the fuck up.
- A more adventurous crowd of expats (hopefully) instead of the incestuous douchebaggery reminiscent of a high school cafeteria.
Reasons I will miss Korea:
- The willingness of the Koreans to bend over backwards to understand me, as long as I don’t attempt to speak their language.
- The women who walk beside me to share their umbrella or their fan when I forget mine.
- Drinking with strangers who offer me drinks on my birthday.
- Knowing all my bartenders personally.
- Children who are respectful and polite and carry things on the elevator for me, right before counting my fat rolls.
- Public drunkeness. Seriously. That will never get old. A new electronics mart opened across the street from work the other day, and their promotion? Giving away free beer. There I was, at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, walkind down the street with a paper cup of beer.
Funny things I have done recently
- Had a class full of eight year olds running around with their hands clapped over their ears shrieking “No potato, teacher! No potato!”. I told them their ears were dirty enough to grow potatoes.
- Had a class full of seven year olds with gold stickers all over their faces. They got a sticker every time they got a word right and I had nowhere else to put them.
- Got away with watching ‘Mulan’ in a senior class.
sigh.
Things are … not good.
I mean, they’re not bad. Relatively. I’ve been a lot worse. I’ve been in darker places. The fog has been much, much thicker.
But things are not good, right now, and things are falling by the wayside. Things like washing dishes, buying milk, eating vegetables, changing my sheets. Some days I just forget, you know? I am having a harder and harder time staying sane in the staff room at work, choosing between being rude by not saying anything and being rude by saying what I want to say.
(Really, though, can you blame me for saying those those things when I work with a man who says that black people look like monkeys and that some rape is, in fact, consensual? Can you?)
I am working 12 hour days, with nine hours in the classroom. And it says a lot that I am more exhausted by my adult co-workers and bosses than I am by 9 hours with 7 year olds.
Things are not good.
I am packing up, which really means that I’m overwhelmed and exhausted. I’m just moving shit around. Less three weeks to go until I fly, and while three weeks sounds like a lot, I’m working twelve hour days. Which leaves me 4 weekend days to pack before I get on a plane.
