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 have incredibly unreliable internet at the moment. Why oh why do people insist on putting passwords on their wireless connections? It just makes it harder for me to steal.
(For the record, I do pay for internet. However, foreigners cannot legally sign up for internet and things in Thailand until they have a legit work permit. It could take me a few months to get all the paperwork through. )
In Thailand, you can buy pig uterus at the grocery store; it’s packaged up nicely next to the steaks. Fallopian tubes and everything. You can replace pieces of human heart with pig heart: could you do the same, I wonder, with pig uterus? If so, would a shiny new pig uterus stop me from Puking My Guts Up and Passing Out In Public every month?
If anybody has any ideas as to what you can cook with pig uterus, please – send them, and any recipes, along.
Today I went shoe shopping. I detest shoe shopping. I only own three pairs of shoes – I cut down from four when I left winter behind. I hate only one thing more than shoe shopping, and that is jeans shopping. I steadfastly refuse to go jeans shopping, and instead have my father periodically mail me new batches of the exact same pair. That doesn’t work as well with shoes, however, and I think I went into every shoe store in the gigantic four storey mall I found myself in today. Apparently, plain black flat mary jane shoes are not in fashion. Apparently, flimsy ballet flats in an array of ridiculous colours and with no arch support to speak of are in fashion. Apparently, everybody and their mother wears stilettos all. the bloody. time.
Listen: polka-dotted ballet flats are amusing, and I am sure look simply charming when one is prancing about with one’s friends. But I need Clothes I Can Wear To Work, and pink and yellow polka dots don’t cut it. Not to mention, I am on my feet all day, and I teach 5 and 6 year olds. 120 5 and 6 year olds. Who think, at times, that I am a tree, and try to climb me, or fell me. I would not last five minutes in stilletos or satin ballet flats, even if I managed to get them safely through the rain on the way to work.
A flat pair of mary janes in black leather, however, seems like it is Too Much To Ask.
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.
Last week, I walked into my classroom to find that my students had been writing on the white board. Amongst the usual monsters, pictures of ‘ugly teacher’, ‘we want pizza’s’, there was, in big letters the middle of the board, the following gem:
“Yellow Hair, go back to Canada!”
….Lovely.
Today, I walked to the back of the room while my students were working on their grammar exercises, and had been for 10 minutes. “WJ,” I said to one of my students. “Where’s your pencil?”
He looked at me like a sad cow. “No.”
“No? What do you mean no?”
He shrugged.
“Do you have a pencil?”
“No.”
“Were you going to ask for one?”
“No.”
“Were you planning on just sitting there for the whole three hours?
Sad cow eyes.
siiiigggghhhh
This is related, I swear. No, really.
The staff room at our school operates much like a high school cafeteria. The open hostility simmering just beneath the surface is gone, but the rude jokes, juvenile behaviour, and raucous laughter remain. We spend our day with children: we let loose a little in the staff room. Anuses get mentioned almost every break, my co-workers keep a daily tally of the number of times I say ‘vagina’, and I’ve lost track of the number of times somebody’s been told to fuck off through a mouthful of food.
This is all fine.
There is one gentleman I work with who objects to this. He is not a prude: he does not object to all of the rude jokes. No, he objects only to mine. And it is not only the jokes: I need only mention something that has to do exclusively with women and out come his barbs. I was telling one of the women today about Vaginal Tightening Cream, some disgusting little product I’ve just found on the intarwebs, and was busy proclaiming my disdain when he loudly bulldozed through our conversation. “Very nice, -’b,” he shouted. “Very nice.”
“I wasn’t really talking to you,” I said, turning away from my friend.
“Yeah, but I can HEAR you,” he snarled.
The woman I was talking to turned to me and said, “I don’t think he likes it when you talk like that,” she said.
I’m SORRY?
“He’s a grown up,” I said. “If he’s old enough to see a vagina, he’s old enough to talk about one.”
Look: I am not shy. I will talk about periods – they are, after all, a huge part of 50% of the population’s life, and when we are in pain because of them, it is effing. real. I will give candid sexual health advice, or ask for it, at the staff table. I will talk about my vagina and my breasts as much as, or more than, you talk about your penis. I can objectify with the best of them, and my dirty jokes will make you blush.
Why, when we are talking about subject matter that has to do with women, must we hush it up, pretend it doesn’t exist, go off somewhere private and out of the public sphere to do it? Why are men willing to put their penis in a vagina (and boast about it!) but not to admit their existence later? And why, why, WHY, does it reflect badly on my character when I am NOT shy about sex, sexual health, women’s rights, or my ability to compete with the boys’ club?
Here’s how this relates to the article above. 83% of the women in Egypt have been harassed. 2.4% of them reported it. Why? Because we are ashamed! We are made to feel ashamedin the public sphere of our bodies and their functions, of our sexual behaviour, of our comfort with ourselves. We are supposed to hide all that away until there are no men around to hear it. We are to be appropriate. And for as long as this is true, as long as my vagina and my breasts and my sex don’t exist as soon as I walk into a public space, then my safety, my health, my concerns, and my exclusively female voice will also not exist in those same public spaces.
And that is Not. Ok.
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.”
We were sitting on the subway when an older Korean gentleman sat down next to us, sandwiching my friend between him and myself. He stared for a minute, leaning over her, as if amazed to see me, as if I was some mythical animal he was sure didn’t exist.
“I’m a bloody unicorn,” I thought bitterly as I stared back, making it clear I knew what he was doing. He finally spoke.
“Russian?” he said, tentatively, hopefully. “Russia?” he said again, a little more forcefully, still leaning over and gazing at my blonde hair, eyes flicking down occasionally to my cleavage.
“No!” I said, angrily. I got out my teacher voice. “Anniyo!” I said again, then turned away from him. He backtracked a little, though the sad cow look did not leave his face. “Where are you from?” he asked.
I refused to answer, but my friend, after looking at me quizzically, turned to him and gamely started to chat to him in her new Korean. She was stumbling through, giggling, and he was responding but still staring at me. I elbowed her a few times, hissed her name, but she didn’t understand why I was being so rude to this man and continued to talk to him.
Finally, the subway stopped and I pulled her to her feet. “Let’s go,” I said, shooting a dirty look at the man, who continued to gaze sloppily at me. “Hurry.” As we waited for the doors to open, I stared right back at the man, eyebrows raised. The challenge didn’t work: he thought I was gazing into his eyes, and continued to stare.
The doors opened and I pushed through before they’d opened all the way, tripping as I did so. “Fuckl!” I swore loudly, frustrated.
“What the hell?” she asked. “What’s wrong? Why were you so rude to him?”
“..Seriously?” I said.
“He just wanted to know where you were from….”
I looked at her unbelievingly, realizing nobody had told her and she thought I’d been unspeakably, unnecessarily rude.
“Sweetie,” I said. “In Korea, ‘Russian’ means ‘prostitute’. He was openly asking me if I was a whore. He wanted to know if I was open for business.”
Her jaw dropped. “Oh shit,” she said.
“Goddamn,” I said, looking around. “This is the wrong fucking stop.”
Yesterday, a student threw an eraser at my face. It bounced off, I blinked. “OUT!” I roared. Then, my counselor made him cry.
Another kid got up to pour pepsi on a classmate’s head. When he sat down, his chair had been pulled out and he landed on the floor.
Karma’s a bitch.
