Cabin… er… Wonrum Fever
aloha,
I have little inspiration today in the way of writing, but out of sheer boredom, restlessness, and a sense of obligation, here I go. I am now officially on the homestretch. I have hurdled the nine month mark of my teaching contract. Along the way, I have really become one hell of a good teacher. Seriously! Well, at least I think so. Daily, I put blood, sweat, and tears into my kindergarten class, trying to present a mixture of structure and spontaneity to my students’ spongy grey matter. I have taken them from English imbecility to the level of semi-intelligent conversation, have lifted them from merely learning integers to doing double-digit subtraction, have convinced them that art is more fun and more crucial to their well-being than math, and have whipped them from a room full of raucous chimps into a class of civilized human beings… for the most part! Occasionally, we all regress to chimpdom. A lot depends on my mood.
I officially have cabin fever. CFS/ME, my recently diagnosed condition, prevents me from taking part in any physical enterprises, like hiking or going to the gym, and as I attempt to baby my body back to health, I am forced to refrain from other fun, stress-relieving recreational activities, like drinking. A few recent attempts at very moderate exercise rendered me nearly dysfunctional, with debilitating brainfog and flu-like exhaustion. I am trying to self-cure, so I have been ordering meds from a company in the states. So far, no progress, but I’ll keep you posted. I finished “The Karamazov Brothers”, by Fyodor Dostoevsky, and I’d say it is the best novel I’ve ever read. If you have no social life, like myself at present, I highly recommend that you purchase this hefty novel and set forth to read it. Very satisfying!
Yeah, this is how boring things have been lately! Hopefully, Nic and I will take our first peek into the not-so-industrialized South, starting with Vietnam and Cambodia, this December. Things may change, though, as we both grow homesick and begin to pine for that big, expansive chunk o’ rock across the Pacific from us from whence we originally came. Then again, I think I’ll wait till Stephen Harper takes a walk. He is, as you’ll see if you follow the news, totally in bed with the Bush Administration and the global elite who orchestrated the tragedy of 9/11 and who are trying to make Orwell’s 1984 a reality on Earth… but this isn’t really the forum for that kind of talk!
I haven’t taken many pictures this month, but here are a handful:
Gwangali bridge, above, from the deck of the APEC building, where G8 summit meetings were held. Below, a giant baby snuggled in the sand.
We went to Seomyeon one afternoon, and I decided to start smoking again to see if it would alleviate my post-exertional symptoms, as it seems to have in the past. I was pretty thrilled to have my old “friend” back, but we parted ways again six days later on bad terms, as it didn’t seem to help at all, and just made me smell bad and constantly crave nicotine. Nic and I sat outside of a convenience store, sipped some beers, and watched the natives go to and fro, in their busy and mostly overdressed way.
Here’s a shirt we saw in a store window on the way home. Those wacky Koreans!
And below, the Korean equivalent of the late, great Jesus Christ: Yessu Kurissiddo.
Peace unto you,
suteebun
PS For those of you who don’t understand Korean grammar, my name rendered into Korean is suTEEbun. Emphasis is on the TEE and both u’s are very subtle. Also, the Korean alphabet has no equivalent to ‘v’, so ‘b’ is used for all ‘v’ sounds. Go ahead and try it!
