Me and the Octopus, or, Honky Talks Korean

 

I assume he's threatening my life, right?

Not a lot of people learn Korean. It’s a niche language, and really the only reasons one would even attempt it is because you plan on working in Korea (and if you’re doing that as an English teacher, it is almost laughably unnecessary), or because you want to dig deeper into K-dramas. When someone tries to learn the language, many Koreans get pretty excited: that you care enough, that you’re making an effort, that they might be able to one day not have to speak fucking English to you anymore. The problem, of course, is that as a learner, you quickly come across stumbling blocks, across language which you simply don’t know, and suddenly you have a bright, encouraging Korean sputtering away at you in their confusing devil’s tongue and oh god oh god why did I try speaking this in the first placecanigonow.

Weekly Waygook: Fire Butt

While this feature certainly did not turn out to be “weekly,” I am a big fan of alliteration, and thus the name remains. Rejoice as I bring you tidbits from abroad, the scraps of my life. As a man-child capable of blowing the slightest anecdote out of proportion into something burgeoning upon the word-limits of most short stories, prepare to be astounded and amazed as I communicate episodes of my life to you in but a few paragraphs at a time.

Teaching in winter gear. (Thankfully, HJ's Every Korean Girlness obscures her identity, and I feel okay posting this photo)

The Rabbit Parade: Hong Kong

I left my swollen, reddened companions of Thailand on a sunny Sunday morning: the weather was better than it had been for days, and the hotel drove me to the rustic, island-themed airport, where everything was outdoors, because why not. Within an hour or two I was in Bangkok, preparing for the quick flight to Hong Kong, and also the incredibly long, arduous line to get through immigration. Being anal and neurotic and also still worrying that I would turn soft like a baby kitten should I ever miss a flight, my anxiety began to build as time ticked by in the obnoxiously long queues, but I eventually broke through, and was soon seated on one of those ludicrous and awesome 380s, being fed more smoked duck and dessert than ever before (you guys: fly Emirates). Suddenly, I was in Hong Kong.

Happy Grad, All 200-Something-Odd of You

Shanty flower shops along the roadside, set up in front of EVERY SCHOOL

Apologies to interrupt our regularly scheduled neurotic deconstruction of my wicked vacations, but yesterdayTuesday*  was graduation day.

It seems weird to talk about it here, on the English-written parts of the internet where my former grade sixes will rarely venture and thus almost certainly never find (and if they do, oh god, uh oh), but here we are. A message to you, my teeming hordes: I might not know all of your names (there are a lot of them, and I’m not going to lie, they’re hard, at least twenty of you are named Jihye), and I might only see you once a week. I have no idea if I’ve had any real, lasting impact upon your lives or your growing noggins. But for whatever reason, and mostly by surprise, I care. I actually do care. I’m a little shocked, because I didn’t think I could find myself attached to hundreds upon hundreds of you at one time without the regular contact of having a home room, but here I am, caring. It’s probably helped by the fact that you lot keep saying you’ll miss me and hugging me, which is pretty much a criminal offence in my home country. When I asked you about graduation, and what middle school you’ll go to, you actually answered me in English (except for that one girl who I had to hector at in Korean before she eventually relented), which is pretty wicked. I hope that you know what I think of all of you, and I hope that teacherly pride translates beyond any language.

So be well. Be good. Don’t turn into the raging, horrific monsters that middle school (or as I like to think of it, the puberty gulag, where we isolate pubescents from decent society for our own well-being) can make you. And be nice to whatever weird foreigner they’ve shoved into your middle school, as they’ll probably care about you, too.

졸업 축하해 to the whole lot of you

*I got sick on Tuesday evening, and turned into such a big baby that copying and pasting this into the WordPress dashboard seemed arduous, an internet bridge too far to cross. As seems to happen when I sicken, a care package also arrived to lift my spirits once more. Huzzah!

Ballad of the Epic Sunburn

Koh Samui beaches have better food than most cities.

We spent our last day in Bangkok sight-seeing, and when the time came we rushed back to our hostel to be ferreted off through the city. A travel agent had booked us our train, bus, ferry, and hotel on the island to which we would travel, but we had not heard a thing in days. We were told to stand idly at our hostel’s stoop and wait, and then various Thai people would slink forth from the shadows with our tickets and usher us off into the unknown, or however it is things are done there. Indeed, soon a cabdriver appeared out of nowhere, saw four honkies milling about, and took us to his taxi. Because of traffic, someone was being sent over by motorcycle, or possibly unicorn or sorcery, to bring us our travel documents. I was never actually entirely positive that the next leg of our journey was actually concrete until it had passed, and even then it seemed certain that magic would somehow be involved to complete the task.

Chasing the Dragon: Hong Kong Photoglut

As posts continue to percolate in my swollen, post-vacation glob of a brain, I bring you more purty pictures from abroad. After Thailand I flew on a ludicrously nice plane to Hong Kong and stayed (for freesies!) with a friend in his family’s apartment. We explored the islands, and my shoes got wet, and also it was Lunar New Year, so there were craptons of rabbits and dragons all over the place. We didn’t eat stinky tofu, but we smelled it. Cadbury’s chocolate was widely, gloriously available. I will expand upon these in my later posts, but those are the (only) important aspects. For now, bask a hobbyists futile, masturbatory attempts to be arty.

One Night in Bangkok (Or Several)

I have thought of many ways in which to start this post about my first excursion out from the adopted homeland. Do I discuss more of my feelings on Korea? The nature of my desire to travel, and indeed its roots in the insatiable wanderlust of humanity? My connections to my real home, and this one, and how it feels to be away from both? How quickly one connects to travel partners? How living in Asia is like consistently dropping through the looking-glass, again and again, without respite? In reality, though, I know what is on my mind. I know what I should say first, just to get it out of the way, as its cool, salving memory whisks through my mind once more. Friends, I finally tasted foreign beer on a regular basis, beer that was not Cass or Hite, and sweet Jesus did it make me happy.

What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and this beer is the sun.

Temple Cat and Street Scorpion: Thailand Photoglut

Words. I have literally dozens of them jangling about in my addled monkey brain, trying desperately to make it to word document, then to blog post, then to your waiting eyes to tell you about my vacation. But these words take time to coalesce, to coagulate into something resembling actual human communication and not a series of ecstatic expository yelps ending each with an exclamation point, and no individual words exceeding the two syllable mark. In other words, I am stalling until I can write more. In the intervening time, to provide you with the bloggish sustenance you so clearly need to nourish your chapped, ravenous souls, I provide you with this, a photoglut of Thailand. “But Michael,” you cry, “we came for amateurish writing, not amateurish photography!” Well, today you get the latter until I can extrude the amateurish writing from my noggin in a pleasing, humorous manner. Behold: Thailand.

(All pictures from Bangkok, Surat Thani, Kanchanaburi, Koh Samui, and the travel routes in between.)