If there is one overarching, all-encompassing and as yet unanswered question regarding all my adventures over the past several months it is this: What am I supposed to do with all my crap?

When I left Korea last August I stored the bulk of my belongings with two friends in Itaewon. The rest I either packed up and took with me or simply abandoned. I had some good shit too. Whoever got my apartment got some good stuff.

Once I got to Portland I re-visited some of my crap that has been in storage with some friends since I first left the US over five years ago. Some of it I got rid of, like the brass table lamp that seemed so precious in 2002 but that in the intervening years I'd forgotten I'd even owned. Some of it I moved from one place to another. Then there were a few things I took out, fondly remembered, and put back until the next visit, when I am likely to do the same thing again.

At my parents place in Arizona I dropped off a bunch of crap I acquired during my travels that I wanted to keep but that I don’t need to have around me on a day-to-day basis, like ticket stubs from the Bolshoi, and some of the “we love you teacher” notes I’ve gotten from students in various classes.

Also in Arizona, I participated in what has become a regular ritual during my visits home: going through my old stuff one more time and throwing away more of it. It’s amazing how as the years go by less and less of it becomes important. Things like letters and pictures are always automatic keepers, if for no other reason than that letters written on paper are such a quaint little throwback to the last century. Other things however, like the Scritti Politti cassette I bought for a dollar in 1994, I’m not so sentimental about. Into the Goodwill pile it goes. It was also fun giving away clothing that has suddenly become too big for me.

All-in-all, I reduced the net volume of crap I have stored at my parents from around four medium sized boxes to two. Along the way I did get a whole bunch more new stuff (But I really NEEDED it, don’t you see?) and ended up worrying about going over the airline luggage limits. I had no idea what I was in for. I’ve already recounted my China Airlines baggage saga, so I won’t go into it again here, but it’s just another example of how unmanageable (there’s that word again!) my stuff has gotten.

There is a price to be paid for this kind of life. There is a choice to be made. If you want to travel and be unattached, you have to either learn to travel light, or accept that you are going to have a more or less constant problem of what to do with your crap. You can pay extra to lug it around with you, burden your friends and family with it, or just abandon parts of it periodically to lighten your load.

Hey, wait a minute! It almost feels like I could extrapolate that into a larger statement about life and relationships…

Nah…guess not...

Labels: The life of Brian, travel

I’ve been in my new apartment for nearly a week now, but things are still very much in limbo with no word still on exactly when I will go to Japan for my visa, or when I will actually start working.

When you aren’t working it’s easy to settle into a state of inertia. Getting out of it is hard. Today I managed to get up at 7:30, get breakfast and have somewhat of a normal morning routine, but it was almost painful. After breakfast, instead of studying or doing housework as I had intended, I settled for watching Southpark DVDs on my computer. At a quarter-to-ten, as I was about to fall asleep again on the sofa, I shook myself awake and got myself out of the house.

Today I’ll meet a friend for lunch, go to my gym and do some other things, then pick up some more of my things from the goshiwon and head back home tonight. It’s become my standard joke that the apartment in Ha-nam is my country house (or dacha), while the goshiwon in Seoul is my urban penthouse. Neither could be further from the truth. Still, as long as it’s paid for, it’s nice that I can use the g-won as a place to stay on the weekends. That way I can stay out late on Friday or Saturday nights and not have to worry about catching the last train or bus back to Ha-nam. I even know someone who rents a goshiwon specifically for that purpose. He lives about two hours from Seoul and comes into town on the weekends. At around 300 dollars a month though, I think I’d better just suck it up and get to the train on time.

Two more quick things: It’s been a long time since I’ve posted any pictures. Tonight I will get my camera from Seoul and take it out to Ha-nam. Hopefully by the end of the weekend or early next week I can post some pictures of my new environment. Also, you (you know who “You” are) may have noticed I’m trying to write more frequently. That’s because it’s almost November. Nanowrimo is coming up, and God help me, despite everything that’s going on I can’t help but have another go this year. To that end, I’m trying to get myself in the habit of writing every day, and figured this would be a good way to do it. As usual, no promises, but I’ll try to keep writing throughout the next month.

Labels: The life of Brian

The good news is I sort of have a new job...only I haven't started yet and don't know exactly when I will. The other snag is, it's not in Seoul. It's near Seoul, but near Seoul as you may have deduced, is not the same as in Seoul. My new residence is in Ha-nam city, in Gyeonggi-do. Ha-nam (not to be confused with the Han-nam, discrict near Itaewon) is directly east of Seoul, past the terminus of the purple line. Although it's right next-door to Seoul, it is a world away. Instead of bleeding into the suburbs (as is the case with the Seoul-Incheon nexus) the city just stops suddenly after Olympic park. Ha-nam is decidedly in the country. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, at least not yet, just describing the scene.

The school where I will be teaching is in the western district, while my apartment is in the east. The apartment is two-bedrooms and is located at the end of a corridor on the sixth floor of a block of flats in a typical Korean high-rise apartment complex. Standing on the balcony outside the front door and looking out over farmers' fields and the Han river and distant mountains, it feels as if my apartment is at the very edge of what could be considered the Seoul metropolitan area. It's probably just a psychological reaction...probably.

To manage the distance I'm actually thinking about buying a used car. Something no more than 1-2 million won (1-2 thousand dollars) should do. Also, I learned something yesterday that makes me feel slightly better about the whole thing. the route they originally told me about takes more than 90 minutes from my home to the center of Seoul by bus and subway. However, yesterday I discovered a different route that got me from A to B in about an hour. That psychological barrier of an hour makes a big difference.

There is nothing around me...and I do mean nothing. Just a "supa", a fried chicken shop and a couple of hogwons. It appears though that the next complex over from mine has a decent gym, so I'm going to look into that sometime next week.


I'll be teaching at an elementary school this time, and that's seriously just about all I know about the job so far. Tomorrow I have a meeting with the school and I'll hopefully learn more. Right now I'm waiting for my paperwork to be processed so I can go to Japan to get my visa. That will take a few more days, and then I guess I'll start work around the first of November.

Between you, me and the Internet, I'm thinking I might leave this job in a few months and try to go back to a Seoul public school. Changing jobs in Korea is easier said than done however. So many, many things remain to be seen...

Labels: The life of Brian

Let me try to get up to date as quickly as I can...

After I finished the test I felt unsettled and though I had intended to stick around and explore Albuquerque and Santa Fe a little more, the only thing I could think about was getting out of there. So I hit the road and decided to drive all the way to Phoenix, or at least as far as I could, in one night. A funny thing happened on the way though. Somewhere around Holbrook the ghosts of a thousand previous trips I'd made along those roads came rushing back and traveled with me all the way through northern Arizona along I-40 though Flagstaff and down I-17 to Phoenix.

The rest of my visit with my family was ok, once I settled into it. While I was a home a cat that had been in our family for 20 years, since the day she was born in fact, finally passed away. In human terms she was well over 100 years old. Though I knew she was old and frail, I selfishly hoped she would die either before or after my visit home. In retrospect however, I'm glad I was there when it happened. It was hardest on my mother so I'm glad I could be there for her if nothing else.

From Phoenix I flew to Thailand to see a dentist. The whole thing got far too complicated and expensive, but at least the dentistry part went well.

As briefly as I can put it, I booked a ticket to Bangkok on a whim more or less, then started having regrets and looked into changing the ticket. As it turned out, the cost of changing the ticket was only a little less than just buying a ticket from Bangkok to Seoul. So I went that route, but didn't figure in in all the extra costs that go along with that: hotel, food, the money I inevitably spend trying to buy my way out of boredom.

And then there is the luggage issue. The story is long and not all that interesting. Suffice it to say, the checked luggage allowance on inter-Asian flights is substantially less than on trans-Pacific routes. Airline clerks will give you a break if you ask nicely, but won't just let it slide. Just as there is no such thing is a free lunch, "free" stopovers are also never really free. In case you should ever need to know, it costs about fifty US dollars to send an 18 kilogram package from Taipei to Seoul by airmail. Also, the Taipei main post office is open till 9pm, but doesn't take credit cards.

I got back to Seoul on October 1st and have been staying in what's called a goshiwon. It's something like a dorm room that you can rent from month to month. They are usually located near universities, and are meant for students who are studying for exams and need a place to work uninterrupted. The main word that comes to mind is "small" followed closely by "dark" and "stuffy." It's about 2.5m x 1.5m. If I lay on the bed, which is little more than a cot really, touch my toes to one wall and stretch my arms back over my head, I can just about touch the wall at the other end of the room. There are no windows, so for the first couple of days I woke up at odd hours extremely disoriented. I would think it was 4am, and then would check my watch to find out it was half past ten.

This the first time I've come to Korea without a job already lined up. It's a different sort of experience. Tonight I have a phone interview with an elementary school at the eastern edge of Seoul. It's not ideal, but probably the best I'm going to do right now.

Oh, I also found out I passed the test I took in Albuquerque last month. Now I just need to get the English credits I need and then I can enter a teacher education program. I'm being patient. It will be worth it...right?

So here I am, back at the same table in the same cafe in the same city, still writing about all the stuff I hope I will do, and doing some of it, but nearly fast enough for my liking.

Labels: The life of Brian

So about two weeks ago I went to Albuquerque to take a test because I have this idea that I’d like to be a teacher in New Mexico one day. It could, I suppose be a simple and clean cut proposition, but remember this is me we’re dealing with. I’ve managed to turn a simple trip to Albuquerque into a massive Homerian (Simpson, that is,) undertaking. Still, the story is worth telling because it has everything to do with where my head has been, and why I haven’t been writing so prolifically these past few months. Ok, ok, why I haven’t written jack shit since I can’t remember when.

To be as succinct, as I can possibly manage, the story of why I went to Albuquerque begins about a year ago during my 2006 visit to the US, wherein I decided that what I really want to do with my life is to become a “real” teacher in an American public school. Throughout the past year I considered the problem of how to get certified to teach in the US when suddenly, with the help of a friend, I hit on the idea of trying to get into an alternative licensure program in the state of New Mexico. Up to that point I had been considering several different geographic locations and routes to certification, but when I heard about the program in New Mexico, something just clicked.

I ran with that idea for as long as I could, being so convinced that I was taking the right course that I talked about my plan as if it were a done deal, and neglected one small detail. That is, I forgot to check whether I was actually eligible for the program. It logically follows that this would not be worth mentioning had it not turned out that I am in fact, not eligible. Oops, my bad.

Frustrated, but determined–to borrow a phrase–to find a new way forward, I reevaluated my plans and decided first to drop the “alternative licensure” route and pursue teacher certification through somewhat more traditional means yet still aim for New Mexico. Secondly, I decided to return to Korea while I work on getting my education and financial duck lined up in preparation for my big move back to the states.

Perhaps it would make sense here for me to mention that the main thing holding me up is that I don’t have enough English credits in my background. Funnily enough, tt turns out if you want to be an English teacher you have to have spent some time studying English. Go figure. My French major (je ne sais pas pourquoi) plus some decisions of a decade earlier, left me a few credits short of the “highly qualified” requirement. As of right now, I am registered to take some English courses by distance learning from a university that I shall not name for the time being.. Since I can do the coursework anywhere I want–that is the whole point of distance learning after all–it just made sense to go back to Korea where I have a large circle of friends already established, and where I can work less than six hours a day, earn a full-time salary and live rent-free.

By the time all that fell into place however, I had already signed up to take the NMTA, a basic skills test required of anyone who wants to become a teacher in the state of New Mexico, and which is actually a pre-requisite just to get into the teacher education program I want to enter. So I decided to just go ahead and get it out of the way right now. It also wouldn’t be a bad idea, I figured, to at least go check out the place where I was planning to spend at least three years of my life, and hopefully longer.

On September 7th, with a rented car and a reservation at a national motel chain that must waste a lot of electricity, what with their leaving lights on all the time, I arrived in Albuquerque.

I’ll not say much about the city of Albuquerque right now. My judgments about Albuquerque are probably unfairly influenced by my feelings about Portland. I think in time I could develop quite an affection for Albuquerque…but I didn’t have strong feelings about the place on first glance, not like I’d hoped I would.

As for the test itself…it was mostly ok. There was a lot more algebra on the exam than I expected. I got bogged down on those parts and then had to hurry through the essay at the end. In retrospect, I should have concentrated on writing a good essay, since writing is my strength, and then gone back and just guessed at the math questions, since my chances of getting the correct answers would probably have been about the same, if not greater.

When the test was over, I had a minor panic attack in my rented car in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart near just down the block from the testing site. I guess it’s good that I managed to have the attack after the exam, and not during. Looking back now, I guess I probably did ok, but I won’t know if I passed the test until early October when the scores are released. Until then it’s a waiting game, which I don’t worry about too much, unless I think about it, like right now for instance.

The rest of my summer played out in a similarly murky fashion, but that will have to wait for another time…but not too long, I promise….

Oh and, for those who have kept checking the BoB during this long dry spell…Thank you, I do appreciate it.

Labels: The life of Brian, travel

Last night I ran a mile.

It's not the first time I've done that. When I went to college in Idaho I had to run a mile and-a-half within a certain time; something around 16 minutes. It was actually a requirement for graduation. Well, it was part of a phys-ed course that was a graduation requirement, and the running thing was required to pass the course, ergo... I put off taking the course until the very last term I went to that school. Even the math requirement came out ahead that time. But the point is, I did it, and actually sort of enjoyed it.

During the past two years I've run on the treadmill at various times, but found running on pavement too arduous and painful due to a bone spur in my right heel. Last summer I tried to go running with a friend of mine in Tucson, and was left nearly crippled afterward.

My heel seems to have finally healed, thankfully. About a week ago I went out for a walk, more or less as an excuse to get out of my parents house for a while, and found that I felt like running. The "adult living complex" (trailer park) where they live has wide, flat empty streets that are perfect for an evening run. I probably ran between half and three-quarters of a mile that time, and could have gone further except for the cramps I was getting in my side. In the morning to my surprise, although I had numerous muscle aches in my legs and abdomen, my heel was fine. There was no pain whatsoever.

I meant to get out and run again right away, but it took six days before I finally did. Maybe that's not such a bad thing. In the mean time I drove my (rented) car around around the trailer park and figured out a route that equals roughly a mile. so last night I went for it. As I approached the place where I had stopped the previous time, I found I wasn't cramping up this time, but was having trouble taking deep breaths. (cursing myself once again that I started smoking again.) Getting to a mile wasn't all that hard, and I could have gone on in fact, but I guess running to the point of collapse isn't the point is it?

So in my mind I'm already picking out my shoes for next year's Boston Marathon, but the reality is I should just try to run one more mile. Maybe I will do it today, maybe I will wait till tomorrow. Maybe a day to recover is not a bad idea.

Labels: The life of Brian

I know, I know...too long.

I may have more to say about that in the near future...we'll just see how it goes...

For now, my expressive outlet these days has become my photography. I've begun getting some shots now and then that don't suck. In fact, one of my photographs was chosen the other day as an Admin pic of the day for a street photography group I belong to on flickr. Here is the picture below.



Getting the shot was not easy. A few nights ago a large group came by one of the restaurants below my building well after midnight. I actually was getting set up to take a different set of photos that I'll talk about at another time maybe. The crowd looked sort of interesting though, so I decided to try and snap a few frames. It was too dark for the auto-focus to work, so I had to focus manually, which is fine except I'd never used it before except in a few practice shots, so I didn't exactly trust the results I was going to get. I mounted the camera on a tri-pod to steady it, but then I couldn't get a good angle on the street below. Finally, I just pointed the camera out the window and rested the barrel of the lens on the window sill to steady it. Some of the pictures did come out blurry, but some turned out ok. And yet, while I was fiddling around trying to get set up, everyone in the circle reached in and "clinked" their paper cups together. Now that would have been a killer shot.

Besides this one, I also posted one taken later, when the adjuma was cleaning up after everyone had left. Something about it just demanded that I process it in black and white, so that's what I did. I like both of them for different reasons.


So, this might turn into a photography blog. Well, it will never be entirely about that, but it will probably start getting thrown into the mix from time to time. Hey, at least I'm writing.

Labels: photography, The life of Brian

My recent postings have had a decidedly negative spin, so I thought I would take some time today and talk about one thing my school is doing extremely well: Better living through soccer.

There are a number of girls in my school who play on a girls' soccer team. They practice every day after school, even during vacation periods. They must play games sometimes, though I never hear about them. The girls on the team are not A students (at least not in my class). Though I've not been given specific information, I'd say it's a fair bet they are all disadvantaged economically. Some of them don't have school uniforms because they aren't able to afford them, so they wear their soccer warm-up suits to class every day. I also don't know the specifics of their home lives, but I assume they are, as Ally Sheedy's character in The Breakfast Club put it, "unsatisfying."

The thing is, these girls are happy. They are probably the happiest people in the whole school, including the faculty. They enjoy an extremely close camaraderie. They aren't locked away in Hakwons all night, and they get to do something they love everyday. To my knowledge, the girls also don't get into trouble, don't ditch school and smoke cigarettes behind the cafeteria, and don't beat up any little kids for spare change. I could be naive on this point. Of course I know very little of what really goes on at my school, but I do know which students seem to always be in the teachers' office getting disciplined, and it's never them.

I don't know whether this is a city wide program, or something that exists only in the region or only in my school. Logic tells me they can't be the only school doing this, else who would they play games against? Regardless, it appears to be working. If the girl who was expelled this week had taken part in this program (I have no idea if it was made available to her) I wonder if her story might have taken a very different path.

Labels: teaching in Korea, The life of Brian

This morning I was told that the problem student I mentioned two postings ago has been expelled from our school. Evidently there is no where else for her to go, so she will likely roam the neighborhood and cause more trouble. It's not that this country lacks the resources to handle such cases, but the knowledge and the will. It appears from the outside to be a case of "we've always done it this way," an attitude that is poison to any large organization. I agree that when a single student requires this much of the school's attention a change needs to be made, but merely turning a "wild" student loose into society seems like not the best solution either. There needs to be an in-between solution somewhere.

As if that weren't enough, immediately after the class where I was given this information, I was on my way back to my desk when I started down the main stairs just in time to see a teacher thwap a girl on the head with a thin stick. It was the same teacher I had seen hit a student last week. He backed the girl into a corner, reared back and hit her again as the girl cowered and tried to protect herself with her hands. This time I shouted out, "Hey!" completely spontaneously, the way I would had I come upon one student bullying another. My protest failed to even register with the teacher however. I briefly considered getting into the situation, but fearing an escalation finally walked away, throwing the papers in my hand aside in disgust. The teacher saw me pass. This all happened in a split second.

I felt powerless and frustrated as I walked back to my desk. I'm an outsider, and must do a considerable amount of biting my tongue. It's a different culture and it's not my job to tell Koreans how to discipline their children. On the other hand, what I've seen this teacher do is not discipline in my view, but child abuse.

It's not just about the students either. I happen to really like the teacher in question. I'd hate for him to be caught in the act of losing his temper by a student's camera phone and possibly lose his job.

At lunch today the teacher in question sat directly across from me, which freaked me out more than a little. He began talking in Korean to the Korean English teacher to my right, whom I had spoken about the situation with, but hadn't named any names. As he spoke he made gestures towards me, and the few words I understood seemed to suggest he was talking about what I had witnessed earlier. The English teacher also didn't explain what they were talking about, which was unusual. After quite some time had passed she finally offered awkwardly, "we are talking about the best places to see the cherry blossoms."

"I see," was my only response.

After lunch, the teacher tarried outside the lunch hall and seemed to want to spend a moment with me. He just asked how I was doing, and I told him how I had succumbed to temptation and smoked a cigarette, my first since January, and only my fourth since I quit smoking regularly last August. Our conversation was friendly and easy, though I was uncomfortable and really didn't want to talk to him. I made my excuses and came back to my desk to finish my lunch break.

I suppose I'll have to leave it like that. At least I've made someone aware of the situation. Though he's definitely crossing the line I guess he's not truly causing serious injury to these students. The next time I see something though, it will be harder to just walk away.

Labels: life in Korea, The life of Brian

An article I found through Digg this morning says 75 percent of all the blogs on Blogspot are spam. The article went on to claim that the majority of what's on the Internet today is spam. Apparently, but for the valiant efforts of a few sites like Yahoo and Google, the Internet would decay into nothing but an endless stream of penny stock scams, ads for body part enhancement pills and pleas from Nigerian probate attorneys.

Blogspot even thought the good old BoB was a spam blog for a time. A while back I tried to post an entry and found my posting privileges had been suspended. At the same time I got a weird notification that Blogger's splog detectors were on to me. They said the Blog of Brian had all the earmarks of a spam blog, such as several links to the same location and line after line of gibberish. Well, anyone is free to criticize my writing, but that's getting a little personal, don't you think?

Actually, what I think happened was their robot computer came across my New Year's entry where I typed out "Happy New Year" phonetically in Chinese and Korean. Since their computer only speaks American (how dense) it thought I must be up to no good. Fortunately, getting back in Blogger's good graces was fairly easy. All I had to do was sign in, enter a turing code, promise I was a real person, turn around three times and spit, and then weirdest of all, buy lunch for a guy in Mountainview California.

Seriously though...I've wanted to move to Wordpress for some time, but besides the fact that I'd have to pay for my own hosting, I don't think I have the technical skills right now to pull it off, and also don't really have the readership to justify it. So for the moment at least, here on Blogspot we shall stay.

I have further thoughts about blogging and the future of the BoB, but I will save it for another posting. That's enough gibberish out of me for one day.

Labels: Meta-blogging, The life of Brian

Last night I happened to see one of my old entries about my attempts to quits smoking last summer and fall, and realized I haven’t given an update on that for some time. So I thought I’d tell how it’s going these days.

It’s going very well.

Thanks. See you tomorrow.

No, really. It’s been nearly seven months since I gave up smoking as a vocation, and except for one crazy night on Ko Samui last January, have not lit up once in that time.

What happened back then was I had a little financial hiccup during my vacation and it gave me no small amount of stress. Added to this was the notion that by not smoking I was somehow missing out on something. It’s an insidious addiction. The odd thing was, during the crisis I held the compulsion at bay pretty well. It was only after it had passed that I finally gave in. I guess I let my defenses down too soon; a lesson for the future.

At dinner the night my liquidity was restored, the cravings were overwhelming, and not just for tobacco. In fact, smoking was more or less a compromise at that point–a safety valve to try and stave off more dangerous temptations. I got a pack of my old favorite brand, the same ones whose butchering I had described in a previous entry, and lit up outside the 7-11. It was…not that big a deal. I could taste the tobacco, which I never did as a regular smoker. Drawing in the smoke was burden, and I have to say I didn’t enjoy it much. With about a third remaining, I stubbed out the cigarette and went back to my hotel. Later that night I smoked two more, and was just going for my fourth when I had a vision of how hard it was to quit smoking (not to mention expensive), and was horrified by the thought of having to go though that again were I to get re-addicted. Although it was extremely tempting to have “just one more,” I put the cigarette back in the pack, then doused the entire container with water to render it un-smokable.

The following day, despite the noticeable heaviness in my lungs, the urge to smoke was strong. I had crossed the line once, it would be easier to do it again. Fortunately, I spent most of that day riding around Samui island on a rented scooter, so I was too busy to think much about smoking. The next day was taken up by a fifteen hour trip back Bangkok by boat, bus and train, so not much chance to smoke there. By the time I got back to Bangkok the cravings had pretty much subsided again, and you know what? They have never really returned as strongly as they were then. I hesitate to say it was just something I needed to do because it could easily have had dangerous consequences. But the fact it, having that experience helped me realize I’m missing absolutely nothing by not smoking. Smoking added nothing truly positive to my life. Not smoking has been nothing short of a miracle.

Labels: The life of Brian

Chris is like El Nino. He sort of shows up in my life now and then, unpredictably, and upsets the general order of things, and then leaves just as suddenly as he came. Where the analogy breaks down of course is El Nino doesn't send me text messages asking to come over for the weekend, and I don't answer those messages saying, "Sure Nino, CU l8tr! :)"

I do love Chris. I just never know quite what to think when were are together. See, we had a brief, stormy affair (with torrential downpours) a few years ago. Now we have grown and have settled into a long-term immature friendship. It's a friendship in which the boundaries aren't always properly defined however, so it gets confusing at times, at least for me it does. As far as I know, Chris is just having fun and all is good. I am having fun too. Most of the time I'm quite happy with our arrangement. It's just...well, i'll just say it gets confusing and leave it at that.

Here are a few of pictures I took of Chris over the weekend. I wanted to practice taking portrait photos, and he agreed to be my model.

Labels: The life of Brian

The Nano was in a weird mood this morning on the way to work. I set it to shuffle and the first song that came up was The Clash's "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" The next track was "Driftwood" by a less well-known band called Travis. By now I was suspecting a trend so I anxiously awaited the next song in the queue. It turned out to be "Make your own kind of music" by Mama Cass. You think you're so clever Mr. Nano, don't you?

The song set is interesting because it reflects the decision process I'm going through at the moment. Contract renewal season is coming up in about two months so with regards to Korea I'm asking myself, "Should I stay or should i go?" The lyrics turn out to be startlingly appropriate.




Ok...lest you think I'm that resentful of Korea, I should emphasize I mean this in a tongue in cheek manner...mostly.

"Driftwood" is a song I used to listen to when I was feeling especially sorry for myself. I am that piece of driftwood, I thought. No home, nothing to attach to, just drifting along with the currents, powerless to defend myself against whatever harm the world would inflict on me.

Ugh! Pathetic.

Thankfully, I (almost) never go to that place anymore. Hearing it today though, it gets me thinking once again about how I've been living outside of the United States for a number of years now. It's fun. It's an adventure and it has given me opportunities I never would have gotten at home, but it does get old, and think I'm ready for some stability. I'd be perfectly happy to wash up on a beach somewhere and start growing moss.

"Make your own kind of music" works nicely as a counterpoint to "Driftwood." Its message is to be the actor rather than the acted upon. I guess Nano is trying to tell me, "get off your ass and make a decision already."

Perhaps this isn't as random as it looks. I am the one who put the songs on the Nano after all. Plus I seem to be twisting facts to force them to fit my chosen paradigm, like the "Bible dipping" scene from Running with Scissors. Then again, it could be a sign from above. In fact, now that I look at my ipod a certain way, I believe I can see...yes it is...I can see the Virgin Mary in the scratches on the cover...and she says she has a message for me.

Labels: The life of Brian

Two years.

Labels: The life of Brian

To anyone who has been checking this site and wondering where the hell I’ve been, I most sincerely apologize. The only way I can explain my extended silence is that for a long time I was having a bad attitude, and I didn’t feel like writing because it all would have spilled over into the blog, and let’s be honest, how much of that does anyone really want to read? If I’ve bored myself with my own ranting, how much more bored must the general populace be? Then by the time my attitude improved I had fallen out of the habit of writing. It’s just one of oh so many things that fell by the wayside in recent days.

So I’m back, but I guess I’d better not get too ambitious right away. Let’s just get something posted and then take it from there. In the time I was away from here, I went away for real, to Thailand and back. Here’s a picture of me on Koh Samui. My head is a little fuzzy because the auto-focus didn’t quite fix on me just right. It’s also possible that the focus is fine, and my head is just a little fuzzy.

Labels: The life of Brian

For the past two weeks I've been in a slump, but I think I'm coming out of it now. During the slump I tried to write a piece exploring why I was in a slump and what I needed to do to get out of it, but the very fact of my slumpiness kind of made it hard to complete my work. I guess that's why they call it a slump.

Ironically, when I had classes to teach and lessons to prepare, I actually felt better than on the days when I was keeping a chair warm while the students prepared for and took their final exams. Now that finals are over I'm back in the classroom, and I'm doing much better now.

In the meantime when I haven't been slumping, I've been putting together a plan for my contractually obligated winter camp. The "camp" is not really a camp at all. It's just an extra class held at my school during the winter break. Last year my partner teacher and I put together a well-rounded, logical, coherent program. We made nearly 100 percent of the materials ourselves. I was really proud of the work we did. There'll be none of that this year. This year I have to teach the class alone, and it will only be students from my own school. My basic plan is to do a hodge-podge of activities. We'll do a song each day, a "game-of-the-day," and a worksheet from an activity book I like plus a follow-up activity. On top of that we'll watch a movie in bits during the week and do one or two other things.

The only thing I'm worried about is that all my activities are heavily centered on input, without much opportunity for production. That is, it's all listening and reading without much speaking or writing. At the level my students are at, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to give them lots and lots of controlled exposure to English usage. Still, I can't help feeling a little guilty that my plan isn't a little more balanced. Then again, at the end of the day my program will be enjoyable (I think) for the students, and the parents will be satisfied that their kids have spent time with a white guy native speaker. I will have done my job.

Labels: EFL teaching, The life of Brian

What I did today

This morning was my bi-weekly Saturday Business English lesson. I prepared for all of like 15 minutes late last night, and it showed. Luckily this is a good group so we basically just talked about stuff. Either I'm getting good, or I'm getting lazy. Either way, my lack of preparedness sort of forces the students to do more work, so I guess it's a good thing.

Last night, when I should have been preparing my lesson, I worked on my application for the Seoul teaching position. During the day I asked my old boss in Korea to send a reference letter, and he responded within like two hours. Chances are he copied at least part of the letter from something he had written previously, but I'm sure part was really about me as well. He said some really nice things about me, so I really appreciated it. Now if I could only get my current boss to complete the letter I asked her to write...

I'm up to Unit one, lesson six in my Korean studies, though to be fair, all of lesson five and half of lesson six was all about numbers, and I already know those. Tonight I'm going through the lessons again to try and catch some things I might have missed, or have forgotten already. So far I've learned, to walk, to run, to jump, to dance, to run away, to race (I think) to swim and to read. I've learned the prepositions on, under and inside, plus a whole bunch of nouns. I suppose I could write this whole list with the Korean translations, but remember what I said above about being lazy?

My apartment is disgusting. Most of the week I kept it orderly, but it always falls apart toward Thursday or Friday.

Bright ideas I've had

Should I try to go to St. Peterburg next weekend? Should I try to go to Tallin or Helsinki at all? What do you think?

Labels: EFL teaching, The life of Brian