Filed under: being foreign, food, idiocy (my own), idiocy (other people's), moral outrage
Right now, the childrens are on vacation from school. That means that for on whole month, I am not teaching.
I am also not on a beach in Thailand drinking margaritas and looking at pretty mens, because I am on probation still and do not have vacation time yet. That means: I have to go into work for six hours a day for the month and sit at my desk, reading novels, learning Thai, chatting, and occasionally doing some lesson planning.
It’s boring as fuck, let me tell you.
Today, however, is Friday, and my boss sent us home early. There are only four or five of us not currently taking vacation days, and we’re all twiddling out collective thumbs, so he sent us home. So now it’s 1:30 pm on a Friday afternoon and I’m in my underwear, enjoying a rare moment of internet connectivity, and drinking beer.
Yep, I’m drunk in my apartment on a weekday afternnoon, and I LOVES IT.
FUN FACT:
In Thailand, motorcycles and scooters are incredibly common. Motorcycle taxis are more common than the more famous tuk-tuks, and when people ride them, they usually perch, side saddle, behind the driver, with their shopping on their lap. I’ve taken one a few times, but usually insist upon sitting forwards, straddling the seat. The last time I went on the freeway, and the driver darted between a bus and a transport truck.
WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING, I thought, but I trusted and sat calmly on the back of the bike as I drove through the shadow of death.
Recently, I saw a family on a motorcycle (I assume it was a family, but of course it could have been three people relatedin any number of ways). The man was riding the bike. A toddler was stnading between the man’s knees, holding the handlebars. The woman was sitting behind the man, carrying a bloody bicycle. The man was the only one wearing a helmet. When they got to where they were going, the man did not do a u-turn on the bike (roads in Thailand have opportunities to U-turn around the median every few hundred meters). No, instead the woman got off the motorbike and carried the bicycle over the pedestrian overpass – up three flights of stairs in tropical Thailand heat – as the man roared off with the toddler.
CLASS. ACT.
I just spent the weekend in the hospital. WELCOME TO THAILAND!
As part of the process to get a work permit and extension of stay for my visa, I need to take a course in Thai Culture. A two day course. The module on culture takes an hour and a half. I don’t know if that’s more insulting to me or to the Thais. I was signed up for this course, which was to take place in Bangkok very early in the morning – requiring a 4:30am wake up call and a 5:30 meet up. The gentlemen who were accompanying me and I had decided to travel together to split costs and to help each other find the way – one of them has a Thai wife that was coming along for the ride.
Both were shocked that I managed to make it to the meeting point without getting lost and, I imagine, simply giving up. The people I work with think I`m a helpless idiot, but that`s a story for another time.
At 2am, shortly before my alarm went off, I was curled in the fetal position in the bathroom, sure I was going to die. My stomach was killing me. However, this has happened before, where my grogginess in the middle of the night has led me to paranoia, and I went back to bed. In the morning I was rather sick, but I chalked that up to getting up at 4:30 in the damn morning and sucked it up.
By 7, I`ve taken a cab, a van, and another cab into central Bangkok where the kindergarten that was hosting the course was. The others went off to find some coffee; I wilted. And got dizzy. And couldn`t keep my head up.
Shit, I thought.
Finally, weighing my options, I went to the course instructor to ask him when the next time one of these courses would be offered: would it be worth waiting for the next one, or should I suck it up? He did me the enormous favour of having me sign in for the day and sent me home to bed.
However, not long after reaching home and getting to bed I realized that I was, in fact, dying. I won’t go into the gory details, but it turns out that I did in fact get food poisoning, and the stay in the hospital was not one of my high points. I needed help to shower, and that wasn’t the worst it got.
Now I’m at home, hoping I can go to work tomorrow, with a plethora of medications, each on a different schedule. The nurses were kind enough to get instructions printed for me in English, so I know when to take the pills, but I have no idea what they are. I have gotten used to taking mystery medicine from doctors who don’t have enough English to explain.
I wish that I was writing about some exciting Thai adventures or mishaps, crazy food or tourist attractions or trips but! alas – a hospital visit will have to do.
Gross.
Filed under: idiocy (my own)
I think that the activity I am engaged in might possibly could be construed as Flirting With My Married Boss.
Joking and banter in the staff room is one thing: when it switches over to gmail chat on a Friday night?
Erm.
Because the Drama at school needs to be Complicated.
Filed under: idiocy (my own)
My new apartment does not have a kitchen. Instead, I have a small balcony on which there is a sink. I cook there on an electric grill, and today I bought a hot plate.
I think I just gave myself a shock on my new hot plate. My hand really, really hurts. It may or may not having something to do with the thunderstorm raging outside and the water on the floor of my balcony, so it may or may not be a good idea to try again tomorrow.
I hope I don’t die cooking spaghetti. That would be a really shitty way to go.
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.
Filed under: idiocy (my own)
I’ve been gaining some weight, lately.
Teaching is not a physical job. I never had to work to consciously be active before, and when I got here, I didn’t think about it. I got too lazy to go swimming after a few months, and when I put on a few pounds, I thought: I’m not a big girl. I can afford a few extra pounds.
I knew that eventually it would be something I had to think about. I knew that once I could stop relying on a fast metabolism, I would have to start putting in a conscious effort. I know that if I gain a ton of weight, I will have a hard time getting it off -I have a family history of issues like that.
I’ve been avoiding being conscious of my weight for a few reasons. Most pressing: I’m ass-lazy. But I also cringe at the idea of dieting, of being concerned with my size. It shouldn’t be important, I think. I shouldn’t care if I’m a size 4 or a size 14. As long as I’m healthy, I think, who cares about size?
But the truth is: I am bigger than my natural size. For years I stayed at a certain weight without having to work at it. Now that I am less active, I am bigger. I am bigger than I naturally should be.
And today, I got a heat rash on my inner thighs from where they rubbed together under my skirt. And there was one day when I took the stairs up to my office instead of the elevator, and had to take a break on the fourth floor, huffing and puffing and clutching my McDonalds bag.
Time to cut back on pizza and get my ass back to the pool – at least until I can get back up the stairs.
Filed under: being foreign, idiocy (my own), idiocy (other people's), moral outrage
I just got the scare of my fucking life.
This morning, I saw the sun rise for the third consecutive morning. It’s like I’m nocturnal! But with a day job.
I was not at a bar all night yesterday. It was a work night. Seriously, I would have been home by 3am. I AM RESPONSIBLE. No, I was in the emergency room all night with my friend. Middle of the night scares are never fun: try them in a foreign fucking country.
I left her there at 9am, sure she wasn’t going to die, happily drugged out, no longer awaiting any scary tests, and with someone new on the way to take over for me (I left, but I’m not the callous bitch I felt like, ok?). I slept for 4 hours, slept through my alarm, and took a cab to work.
Moral Cursader and Hero To The Masses that I am, I then led a (slightly sleepy) protest to make sure that said friend’s classes were covered. I work at a school with no supply teachers or back-up plan for when a teacher is sick. That means: I have taught with a bleeding urinary tract infection and with food poisoning. The girl who spent the night in the emergency room, had a meningitis scare, still didn’t know what was wrong, and had a choice between debilitating pain or being seriously drugged out and high was told “not to worry” as she could miss an hour of her prep time.
No fucking way. Annnnndddd – Moral Crusader wins again! Which really means, I have a semi-reasonable boss who realized her mistake when I told her, In No Uncertain Terms, that there was no fucking way in hell that said friend was ok to work. It helped that I had, without consulting either the teachers who were to teach, the friend who was on her way to work, or the boss, drawn up a possible schedule for coverage. (I swear I’m not a control freak under normal circumstances)
Then I drank six pepsis and I don’t remember much of what happened in class, except that I’m pretty sure I was upright for most of it.
Which is all a LOT of backstory for why I am so fucking tired and susceptible to scares tonight.
Because of the six pepsis, I was finding it hard to play the Passing-The-Fuck-Out game, which is one of my favourite games. I finally did: an hour and a half ago. Sweet, sweet release. Then, half an hour ago, Stupid Motherfucking MSN Messenger (SMMM) ran an ad for “Journey to the Centre of the Earth”. Yep – I left my computer on, my MSN running, and the volume turned up. The video clip of the explosions started at approximately 3AM IN THE FUCKING MORNING.
“HOLY SHIT!” I thought, sitting bolt upright, “KIM JONG IL IS HERE.”
Filed under: idiocy (my own)
If I told you about my weekend (slash, three day bender), you would not believe me.
Let’s just leave it at this: I heard about retarded alien babies coming from a different galaxy to fuck monkeys on Earth. I have blue poop. I had sex with two strangers in two nights, once in a bathroom at the bar. I drank vodka out of a bag on the street. I took a cab to the McDonalds that’s a ten minute walk away (fast food nation!). I stopped my friend from sleeping on the street. I put my crotch on all of my friends.
What would my mother think of me?
