Miss H's weaselly hagwon

I sure picked the wrong time to try and revamp my vlog. 

It seemed safe to expect things to calm down now that it's the end of the semester. They always do. Once the frenetic rush of grading and inputting is finished, events taper off. There's half a week where students are allowed to complain about their grades and plead on bended knee for clemency, and then the grades are finalized and printed and handed in. (I just did that today, as a matter of fact.) Then, after that...nothing. If you don't have summer classes, you're a free man for two whole months. From July 2 (the end of the finalization period) until the first Monday in September, it's vacation time. 

Customarily, things calm the heck down during that period. 

But not for us. Oh no. We lead a charmed life, Miss H and I. Just a scant two weeks before I leave for Vietnam, my fiancée's school decided to pull the rug out from under us. They asked us to move out of our apartment.

I know, right? 

We were shocked, of course. We've been here a scant four months. Moreover the whole reason Miss H signed a contract with this school is so we could have this huge apartment all to ourselves. That was the agreement. Now all of a sudden the school says "You have one month to move out"? Oh no they didn't!

So we went in and talked to Miss H's immediate supervisors in person last week. They backpedaled and clarified, assuring us that they wouldn't revoke our housing completely; this was simply an expensive apartment, too expensive to have just one teacher and her pseudo-spouse living in it. They'd provide key money and rent for any other apartment, as long as said rent was ₩400,000 per month or less. According to the contract they'd signed with Miss H, they were legally obligated to do at least that much. 

There wasn't much more we could do but agree to that. I'm the moocher here. I don't work for Miss H's school, and was allowed to stay with her in this apartment for no extra money down. But it just wasn't fair of the school to kick our stilts out from under us out of the blue like this. 

Miss H and I quickly decided that there was no way we could find a new apartment, rent it, pack up this apartment, and move everything we owned in the scant ten days remaining before I departed for Vietnam. It just wasn't happening. So we went into meet her supervisors again just a couple of days later and asked them if we could stay in this apartment if I forked over my share of the rent. The supervisors told us that our place costs ₩800,000 per month for the school to rent, and I'd need to stump up half. After a little hemming and hawing and a halfhearted attempt at bargaining, I acquiesced.

But now I'm rethinking even that. If I shell out ₩400,000 per month (roughly $400), that's almost three thousand dollars I'll lose by March 2015—for no reason at all. It's money which should be used to make a security deposit on a stateside apartment, buy a car, and acquire miscellaneous housewares. Miss H and I got it in writing that no one else would be billeted with us in this place, but unfortunately we never secured the school's assurance that we'd never be charged extra rent or made to move out. The school's got us over a barrel. 

I wasn't finished yet, though. On Thursday I marched to the Itaewon Global Village Center, which is on the same floor in the same building as the international clinic where I got my travel vaccinations two weeks ago. The Global Village Center, according to its own website, "offers a variety of services to support foreigners living in the area, and we have classes and programs that help to facilitate cultural exchange and understanding between foreigners and Koreans residents." Among those services is free legal consultation. I made an appointment at 10:00 AM on Tuesday the 8th to see a lawyer. 

Here's what he said: there's nothing in the contract to prevent the school from charging us extra for this apartment. They only agreed to let this apartment to the two of us exclusively. As the lawyer put it, "It was a favor, not a promise." However, there was one spot of hope: if we had a witness to corroborate the school's agreement to let us live here at no extra charge, then we'd have a case. He advised us to get in touch with Miss H's recruiter and obtain her testimony, which I thought was a good idea. I'll keep you posted on what comes next, but...

All this would be hard enough to deal with if I wasn't leaving for Southeast Asia on July 12. That sure complicates things. It's really put the pressure on both of us. But Miss H and I really don't want to move. It's costly, it's a lot of effort, and frankly, we feel that we were promised this apartment and shouldn't have to abandon it because Miss H's school is worried about the bottom line. Moreover, after what we went through in Gwangnaru (living side-by-side in a studio apartment and sharing a twin bed and all that nonsense) we feel that we're owed a nice big apartment for our final year here in Korea. 

And now you've heard the whole story. The fight's not over yet. I'm not going to pay those crooks a single won if I can avoid it. Stay tuned. 

30 Days to a Better Man, Day 6: update your résumé

Years ago I went to see a professional résumé-polisher in Boulder, Colorado. He lived in a spacious bungalow with an attached greenhouse, which my mother and I had to navigate to reach his desk, tucked away in a corner beside two huge windows looking out at the pine- and rock-strewn hillsides. He was a scholarly sort of man, tall, thin, white-haired, with spectacles and nimble fingers. He reminded me of one of my old English professors, but wasn't brain-burnt by decades of hallucinogens. He checked my puny résumé over, asked a few questions, cleaned up the formatting, added some strategic lines and font changes, eliminated the weak links, and handed it back to me. It was like alchemy. A few ingredients here, a few waves of the ol' wand there, a scatter of signs and symbols, and whammo — solid gold.

It's a bit of a jolt when you figure out that your résumé is two years out of date. I've switched jobs and done some volunteer work since 2012, all of which would be juicy additions to the old CV. There's my stint at Sejong University and the volunteer work I did up in Paju sending weather balloons laden with socks to North Korea. (I'd love to see what future prospective employers make of that.) 

But there's a problem. My résumé is too full.

Now, I know what you're going to say. "Oh, if there's not enough room, then you need to get rid of the old, weak stuff and add in the fresh stuff at the top." Fine and dandy. I'd do that if I was interested in being a teacher for the rest of my life. But I ain't. I'm a journalist, dang it. I want to work in radio. And the oldest thing on my résumé happens to be the year that I worked for Thunder Radio at North Dakota State University (2005, if you're curious). I don't want to ditch that. It's all I've got going for me if I want to get a journalism job.

I can't ditch any of the other stuff either: my job as an unpaid intern at the Victorville Daily Press in 2006; writing for the NDSU Spectrum as an opinion columnist between 2006-2007;  or working as a technical writer for the university's IT Help Desk in 2007. And I can't leave out the two hagwon jobs I've had in Korea: Reading Town in 2008-2009 or Avalon English in 2012-2013. Otherwise there'll be big, ugly gaps in my work history and my CV will look like a mouthful of rotten teeth.

And before you ask, I can't make the font any smaller. It's already sitting at 10 points. Any tinier and the interviewer will need a magnifying glass to read it.

Oh well. I'll figure it out. I have two hours and 13 minutes before midnight hits and it's on to Day 7. 

Wish me luck...

the four stages of (writing) enlightenment

Let me be clear:

Oodles of stuff has been written about writing. I'm adding my voice to thousands of others, many of them better, more experienced and more expert than I am. I'm a novice craftsman. I'm not trying to steal Stephen King's or James N. Frey's thunder, here; I'm just putting my two cents in.

Second, I like analogies. I use them all the time. They're useful, particularly when you teach ESL for a living. I used the example of a drunk person trying to talk to demonstrate the concept of incoherency in class earlier this evening.

I achieved a sort of writing epiphany this week, in the throes of NaNoWriMo. So I thought I'd share it with you, relating it to the four stages of enlightenment in Buddhism.

The interesting thing about these four stages is that they're not something one achieves in a single lifetime. It takes at least seven rebirths to get from start to finish, if you do everything right. The first stage, Sotāpanna (stream-enterer), is the lowest level. This means that you've embarked upon the Noble Eightfold Path, "opened the eye of the Dharma," and have complete confidence in the Three Jewels. You've jumped out on that road, as the Van Halen song goes. And you've pretty much secured yourself a get-out-of-jail free card: since you've attained, even at this initial stage, an innate knowledge of the inner workings of Buddhism, you won't be reborn as anything lower than a human in your next life. You'll probably wind up as human again for the second stage, but you won't become an animal or a demon. You're on the right track.

This is the stage that every fledgling writer goes through. You're in the bookstore, gazing with envious eyes at the names of all the published authors in your favorite section. You take one off the shelf and leaf through it. In a fit of ambitious fervor, you say to yourself, "I want a piece of the pie. I'm going to write a novel. If this guy/gal could do it, then so can I."

You rush home, breaking at least three traffic laws in your hurry to reach the nearest laptop or typewriter (or notepad and pen). You sit down...

...and discover that this is actually a lot harder than it looks.

Several hours, days, or possibly weeks later, with sheaves of wasted paper lying around the house (balled-up or blowing around intact), you admit that you've bitten off quite a bit more than you can chew.

This is it. The pivotal moment. The turning point. The critical juncture. Will you turn away from the path, forsake the way of the writer, and go off and do something more immediately and materially rewarding, like clearing minefields? Or will you stick to your guns? Keep seeking the elusive thrill?

It may take you a while to decide, but ultimately you come back. The typewriter calls to you. The laptop serenades you in your sleep. Every florid, stirring, eloquent bit of writing you've ever read comes back to haunt you, torturing you, taunting you to do better. After an indefinite period of soul-searching, caffeine, alcohol, denial, penury, penance, distraction and pain, you're back in front of a keyboard with your hair a mess, your colon on strike, your eyes bleary and your heart singing.

You've embarked on the path. You've entrusted your soul to the Three Jewels: Buddha (the highest spiritual ideal that exists within all beings, that of crafting tight prose, flowing style and the power to turn simple ink and paper into resonant gold); Dharma (the teachings of the Buddha, also called The Elements of Style); and Sangha (the community of those who have attained enlightenment, otherwise known as the bestseller list: the Faulkners, the Fitzgeralds, the Hemingways, the Plaths, the Lees, the Kings, the Grishams, et al).

Congratulations, you're a writer. Now what?

Stage Two: Sakadagami, the once-returner. You'll return to the human world once; after that, your rebirths take you progressively higher into the Pure Abodes. Now that you've cast off three of the worldly fetters (TV, the Internet, and cell phone games) and have gotten serious, you're on the fast track to success. This is the stage when you start to realize certain things about writing.

First, it's not as hard as you initially thought. If you practice, it gets a lot easier. The juices start flowing whenever you sit down at that keyboard. Some days are incredible, of course, and some are downright rotten; but you start to get the hang of getting the pure, immaculate picture in your head down on the page.

Second, you begin to let go of your search for perfection. As a stream-enterer, you were obsessed with getting things right the first time, and you savagely eviscerated any sentence, paragraph or page which didn't sing to you. There was nothing for you beyond the writing itself: no editing, no revision. You wanted it all down in one go, a finished product in the first draft. But when you got to the end and started looking over what you'd done, it all appeared puerile and hackneyed. So you tore it up, burned it, threw it out the window. Now, as a once-returner, you have a wider perspective. You may still edit as you go, and power to you; but you're more sanguine about letting things slide, checking them over in the editing, tweaking and pinching and shuffling things about. Writing is now about getting ideas and concepts down on the page; the revision process is where you tease out the fossils and unearth the gold.

Heaven only knows how long you remain in the second stage. I was there for almost three novel manuscripts and an unholy number of abortive attempts at short fiction. Now I'm not sure where I am: I think I'm sufficiently enlightened to embark upon Stage Three, but my short fiction, poetry, and nonfiction writings are just sucky enough to hold me back.

But let me explain the epiphany I had:

Relaxation.

Complete, utter, total relaxation.

This is my second NaNoWriMo. My first one was horrendous. I had all sorts of time, because Miss H was home in the states and I was still working at a hagwon, so I had the morning and a bit of the afternoon to write, write, write. But it was my first time writing on a schedule...and a rigid and demanding schedule at that. Earlier I had recognized the need to write on a daily basis, and get a sort of mental routine going; but I had been rather dissolute about implementing it. NaNoWriMo was a slap in the face, a wake-up call.

Now I have embarked upon a second year's NaNoWriMo. I'm being casual about it. I haven't logged in to the website. I haven't posted excerpts or word counts. I'm not keeping track of any of my fellow writers. I'm just penning the first 50,000 words of Novel #4. And it's easy.

You know why? 'Cause I'm chill.

Chiller than I've ever been before.

I outlined this book ages ago. It's the third installment of my magnum opus, my epic sci-fi action-adventure alternative history series. (Does that description get you excited? It does me.) For as many hours as I've spent actually writing the first three books of the series, I've spent at least ten times as many scribbling notes, random snippets of dialogue, and sketches of maps, vehicles, weapons, creatures, and characters in my various and assorted notebooks—dozens of them. I have hundreds of thousands of words in Notepad files and Microsoft Word documents: outlines, character bios, vignettes, timelines, back stories, synopses, summaries of events taking place before and after the main storyline, lists of vital statistics (names, birth dates, hair colors, eye colors, ages, nationalities, etc)...on and on and on. I have planned this shit out. Small wonder this third installment is rolling off my fingertips like Twinkies from an assembly line.

But it's more than that, though. I've learned to relax. I've learned not to worry about the many minor style errors, awkward grammatical constructions, contradictory characterizations, wooden lines of dialogue, shoehorned circumstance and contrived coincidence which worm their way into my writing. I reread at the beginning of every writing session, and my eyes unerringly find the problems and correct them. I've learned. And I'm still learning, a bit every day. I wouldn't say that I've developed my own signature style yet, but the gears are turning. I've come so far from the days when I would write drivel and fail to catch it in the editing. I'm starting to feel—to sense what great writing is, and how to approach it. I think I've even touched it on occasion. I've kept up with my reading: I finished Brave New World and am halfway through Part Two of Anna Karenina. Excellent works both. Read great writing, and ye shall produce great writing. Relax, and ye shall proceed. Take long walks (and go to the gym in the evenings) and your mind shall be cleared of clutter. Don't stress too much about your job or your filthy apartment or your poor lonely parents or your yellow teeth or your crazy cat, and you'll make out all right.

The third stage of writing enlightenment is learning to let go. Quit stressing about what Strunk and White scream in your ears. Don't disregard them, just don't let them intimidate you. Don't forget or forsake the rest of your life; don't be afraid to put down the pen and pursue it, either. Get a routine going, but keep your schedule open for introspective walks in the autumn sunshine, or a glass of beer with a friend, or a cup of tea on a rainy morning, or an afternoon with a pipe and a good book.

Relax. Chill out. You'll finish in due time. Have fun with the process. Keep working, keep practicing. Keep your feet on the path.

That was my epiphany.

Thanks to it, I think I'm at Stage Three: Anāgāmī. That means "non-returner." This is one who does not return to any human world after death. Having overcome sensuality, non-returners are reborn into five special worlds, the Pure Abodes. They are closing in on their goal: they have abandoned five out of the ten mortal fetters. They are well advanced.

I have two novel manuscripts completed, two more in the works, dozens of finished short stories, a smattering of novellas and novelettes, and even a couple of poems floating around. These were my stepping stones, my first tentative steps toward enlightenment, my awkward initiation into a larger world. Back then, writing was a chore, a nerve-wracking and embarrassing ordeal, like taking an exam that you hadn't studied for or having a conversation in a foreign language. Now it's like grabbing the tail of a runaway tiger—or a comet—and taking the ride of your life.

From here on out, the material I produce will continue to improve. I will tweak the stories I can tweak, abandon the ones I can't, and strive to climb higher up the ladder to the final stage. I aim to become an Arahant: a fully-awakened person. He has broken all ten fetters which bind souls to the cycle of rebirth, and will never be reborn into any plane or world again. These are the Faulkners, the Hemingways, the Fitzgeralds, the Frosts. These are the guys who just get it. As a second- or third-level acolyte, I can only imagine what the fourth stage has in store for me, but I can hazard a guess. I think that it's nothing more than the ability to sit down in front of a keyboard with a notebook, a pen, a dictionary and a thesaurus, bang out a really good novel and whip it into publishable shape in a month or so. No distractions, no (major) frustrations, no ineptitude, no self-consciousness, no insecurity, no hack writing, no fear, no harm, no foul: just skill. Talent. Practice. Ability. Perseverance. And well-deserved triumph.

The Arahant writer is like a master potter: able to walk up to a wheel and, with his bare hands, muscle memory, and a lifetime of hard-won knowledge and wisdom in his head, create a masterpiece. He may turn out a few stinkers now and then, but he'll be consistently good. And sometimes he'll be damn near perfect.

True craftsmanship, in other words.

That's the writer's enlightenment.

And that's what I'm shooting for. Wish me luck.

peninsular news

What I'm about to tell you is two weeks old already, because the newspapers I'm using were a week old when I picked them up, and it's been a week since I picked them up. So there. Yeah.

But anyway, the news was so interesting and so genuinely Korean that I had to share it with you. Y'might get a better idea of what goes on over here on this peninsula after reading these stories:

From an issue of the Joong-Ang Ilbo, dated May 3rd:

The rebuilding of Sungnyemun (also known as Namdaemun, literally "South Great Gate") has just been completed. This is what it looks like now:

                                                                                                        from Wikipedia Commons

Why was it rebuilt? Well, because in 2008, this happened:

                                                                                           also from Wikipedia Commons

Some ass-hat set fire to the darn thing and burnt it to a crisp.

That we may be clear, Sungnyemun is National Treasure No. 1 in South Korea. There used to be a huge retaining wall 20 feet high which encircled the citadel of Seoul, back in the Joseon Era (1392-1897). The gates were all built between 1396 and 1398, and they marked the cardinal directions. The northeast, northwest, southeast and southwest gates were the "Four Small Gates," and the north, south, east and west gates were the "Four Great Gates." Only six of 'em still exist today; I've been to four of them.

Sungnyemun (which literally translates to "Exalted Ceremonies Gate") is the best-preserved and most iconic. It shows up most frequently in travelogues and brochures about SoKo. It was nothing short of a tragedy when it was destroyed, and it was a long, torturous labor of love to set it to rights again. But now it's back, and reopened, and everyone can behold it in all its glory. The city government took pains to reconstruct the gate using materials and methods which were correct for the period, and they went slow and steady instead of rushing things (which has bitten them in the butt with previous restoration projects, I hear). I advise everybody to stop by the gate on their way through Seoul. It's worth your while.

Okay, onto the second news story:

The Korean SATs have been canceled.

No joke. It turns out that the office of the Korean Supreme Prosecutor (ain't that a badass title?) raided six college prep schools (hagwons) in Gangnam in February on suspicion that they were selling SAT questions which they sourced from Southeast Asia. In response to this information, the College Board canceled the test on the peninsula. Period.

This is unprecedented. The test has never been out-and-out canceled here before. A lot of Korean college students are going to be heavily disadvantaged by this. Just like in the U.S., SAT scores are an integral part of the university application process. Without 'em, students have little to no chance of getting into any sort of credible institution. It remains to be seen what the overreaching effects of this development will be.

And in the national news section of the Joong-Ang Ilbo, there was this little gem of a headline:

Filial attitudes get less respectful, says survey.

Here's the nut graph, just so you can get an idea of the article's message:

"As Korea's Confucian values continue to give way to modern or Western ways, a decreasing number of young people think they should be solely responsible for elderly parents."

Interesting, huh? I don't want to sound puffed-up, but this is something that I've been noticing myself in my discussions with students and young Korean people. The steady seep of Western films, music and philosophy into Korean culture has wrought its subtle magic, for good or ill. According to this study (conducted jointly by Statistics Korea and the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, which is apparently a thing), only 35.6 percent of Koreans between the ages of 15-24 said they intend to fully support their parents when they get old.

Just to give you some perspective, that figure was 67.1 percent in 2002. 

Increasingly, it seems, young Koreans are expecting the government to take care of the elderly, leaving them free to pursue their own hopes and dreams free of the financial burden of dependent parents. This is quite a turnaround. They don't have a Parents' Day in this country for nothing, you know. Time was that Koreans would sacrifice everything for their parents and grandparents. Nothing was more important than caring for and obeying one's forbears. (Every single story I read in Professor Jeong's Folk Tales from Korea reflected this to a degree.) The unconditional care and support the elderly would receive from their children when they became too old to work was...a given. It was universal. It was the Confucian retirement plan. It was a reflection of Kongzi's emphasis on filial piety and respect for the elderly. These two ideas were ubiquitously practiced in the East for centuries, so much so that they were identified in the West as an integral part of the Oriental mindset.

But all that's changing now. The influx of Western ideas, particularly those which emphasize individualism, are well on their way to supplanting the old Confucian ways in Korea. (Potentially elsewhere, too: I'm curious to know if this same thing is happening in far-more-liberal Japan or far-more-conservative China.)

I know it'd be trite to say that Korea is a "nation of contrasts"; but hey, I'm a hack writer, so I can say it if I want to. That's precisely what this country is. They lovingly restore a 700-year-old gate, and yet their young 'uns don't want to take care of the old fogies anymore. They practically kill themselves working and studying, but some of them seem perfectly willing to cheat to get ahead. All I can say is that I'm glad I'm on the ground to formulate these opinions firsthand instead of trying to construct a picture from newspaper clippings and TV talk shows.

Postie out.

your humble foreign correspondent?

Okay, here's the deal:

My contract with my current hagwon expires in mid-February. As a courtesy I've agreed to stay on until the end of that month and the conclusion of the current semester, just so I can finish up my classes and let my replacement start from a clean slate.

In the meantime, though, I need to find myself another job.

I figured I'd just get another teaching position down in Anyang where Miss H works. That plan went to crap a couple of weeks ago, when Miss H was informed that her school would be downsizing and (once again!) she'd have to be let go. This is the second time it's happened to the poor girl and she's rather downcast, but soldiering on courageously.

All the same, we didn't know what we would do. It was looking like we'd both be homeless and jobless at the end of February. But then one of my coworkers, a sweet young lady from Connecticut, drew my attention to something. It was a job posting on a popular ESL teacher's website and forum. The position was for a writer-editor with the NE Times and NE Times Kids, two periodicals edited by a single combined staff. I wasn't sure what kind of periodical it was (I later found out that it was a weekly kids' educational newspaper). But I applied regardless. Fifteen vacation days per year and a "competitive" salary—not to mention a chance at building my résumé—were too good to pass up.

The paper is based in the Mapo district of southwestern Seoul, just north of the Han River. This would be a heck of a commute from Anyang every morning, but I figured that was worth the price too.

Well, the Times called me back two weeks ago. They wanted me to come in and take their written test. I did it two Saturdays ago. Wish me luck, folks, I thought. This could be a whole new stage in Postie's life. I might soon be living like Hemingway, a print journalist in a foreign capital, rubbing elbows with great writers and luminaries.

The writing test went fine. I knocked it out of the park. The proctor (and my potential supervisor), a man I'll call J.S., told me that the test would probably take three hours. I did it in an hour and a half. I left the building feeling confident, shivered my way to the subway station and returned home.

A short while later, I was called in for an interview. My heart fairly quaked with excitement. I had passed the first round of the application process! I had gotten a callback! It was interview time! And for once, I felt that part went well, too. Normally I don't do very well in interviews. The close scrutiny of several high-ranking managers, asking me questions like Tell us about yourself and Why do you want to work here and What do you feel you could bring to the table and whatnot, turns me into a stammering mess. But this time (it happened this past Wednesday) everything went fine, I felt. I answered questions competently and without hesitation. J.S. and his two female co-interviewers looked quite impressed with my answers. The interview took precisely an hour. I had to wait 30 minutes for the big red intercity express bus, but it dropped me off on my doorstep in Bucheon, and I slept well that night.

Well, the roof fell in yesterday evening. I got an e-mail from J.S., explaining that it had been a heartbreaking decision and I had been second in line for consideration and I had all the talents they were looking for, but they couldn't offer me the position. In the end, they decided to go with someone who had more experience in English education.

I was rather crushed. I felt grateful for J.S.'s honesty and the courtesy with which I'd been treated, though. I understood their decision. But I couldn't help wonder what might have been: me working as a writer and editor in Seoul, Korea. That would have looked pretty good on a résumé. The loss was compounded by the salary I soon learned that I'd missed out on: 3.5 million Korean won per month. That's roughly $1500US more than I was making as an English teacher. Great googly-moogly. That would have made my future a whole lot rosier. Debts paid off, a nest egg accrued, money for traveling...

Ah well, it doesn't do to dwell on the past. I've moved on. Miss H has secured jobs for us at a kindergarten in south Incheon, so we're going in today (Saturday) at 10:50 a.m. for training and contract-signing. We still have to move at the end of February, but at least now we've go somewhere to go. I'm looking forward to taking on a new challenge (teaching at a kindy), exploring a new bailiwick, living closer to the ocean, scooting farther away from Seoul, and being on the same daily schedule as my girlfriend.

I am not, however, looking forward to moving. I'm looking around my apartment here in Bucheon and it seems we've a lot more stuff to shift than I originally thought. I've never moved from one apartment to another in Korea before. It promises to be an...interesting experience. Don't worry, I'll keep you informed.

Wish us luck, and stay tuned.

This will be our new subway stop. I'm looking forward to exploring it, hee hee.

the best of times in South Korea

Picture this:

Four people crowd around a small table in a one-room apartment on a tilted, crooked street. The street is in the second-largest town on the second-largest island off the southern coast of South Korea. Two of these people are English, one is Canadian, the other American. The lights are low. The drink has been flowing for several hours, courtesy of yours truly, your friendly neighborhood expatriate bartender-in-training. There's a bed, a few poles with clothes hung on them, a dresser, a derelict TV, a refrigerator, a tiny kitchenette, and a bathroom around the corner. By now, the linoleum floor is gritty with tortilla chip crumbs and dropped peanuts. The air is filled with the smell of alcohol, salty snacks, laundry detergent, Korean pepper paste, citrus, and maraschino cherries. The laptop is on. Several YouTube videos on the screen, one playing Curtis Mayfield's "Superfly"; Groove Armada and Oasis wait in the wings. Jokes are being cracked, stories told, laughs exchanged, fun had. Four plastic highball glasses (filled with rum daisies, tequila moonrises or Chelsea Hotels) are making the rounds between table and lips. Occasionally, one of the four people leaves to use the lavatory; sometimes the entire company adjourns to the rooftop to stargaze, or to look out over the uneven, haphazard, Mary-Poppins skyline of the city. All of us are in a drunken stupor, a happy haze. We've had a hard day of teaching hyperactive Korean children the finer points of the English language. Perhaps we graded 30 journals at a stretch, having to add in all the articles (or subtract all the excess) ourselves. Maybe little Tommy was acting up again and gave us a headache. Maybe it was hot as hell in the classroom because the head secretary's too goddamn cheap to turn on the A/C. Maybe we just had a bad day. But it's all gone now.

We're having a damn fine Friday night in.

monkey tests and chopstick wars

Symbolic convergence theory has got nothing on my Korean sojourn. There are dozens of inside jokes that my students, my fellow expatriates and I have cultivated over the course of this year, none of which would be in any way comprehensible to an outsider or a non-Newbie.

Consider, for a moment, the term "monkey test."

Our semesters at my hagwon are three-month blocks. At the end of every month we have what are imaginatively called "monthly tests": standardized progress tests to check comprehension and retention. On a whim, to brighten the prospect up for some of my younger students who didn't like taking these exams, I referred to them (pseudo-mistakenly) as "monkey tests." They cracked up. I did it all my classes, even the older ones. The older kids seem to have less patience for it, but the younger ones love it. Even now, months later, it never fails to get a grin out of them. It's really quite heartwarming to see their little faces break into grins and hear their voices sound in a chorus of "monkey test!" when I walk into the room on test day.

"Chopstick wars" is a slightly more nebulous term. We don't call it that; we don't have a set name for it, so I made up this phrase just for reference. Down the street from Reading Town is our favorite sogogi restaurant. To be clear, so is the Korean word for "cow" and gogi is the word for "meat." Sogogi is just beef, fried on an open grill at your table, dipped in salted sesame oil or ssamjang, put onto a leaf of mustard or lettuce, covered with marinated onions, greens, fried kimchi, mushrooms or garlic, and then wrapped up and eaten. The meat is brought to you, raw, on enormous platters, which you personally transfer to the grill and cook up. Inevitably, when there are four of us, there's an uneven number of meat slices, so one of us has to polish off the last one. The tradition is set in stone: Elaine grasps the bit of meat and holds it roughly a foot above the surface of the grill. Adam, Jeff and I poise ourselves for action (Adam and I use chopsticks; Jeff sometimes uses the cooking tongs). Elaine counts off and drops the delectable slice of juicy beef onto the grill, whereupon we three rapacious meat lovers dive for it. Whoever snatches it away eats the spoils. So far the score stands thus: Adam - 2, Andrew - 1, Jeff - 1 (with one assist). It's a refreshing little tradition we've started up that will likely last long after we leave here.

Korean children are clever. Once they get the general rules of the language down, they're quick to spot opportunities for comedy. By that I mean puns.

Some months back I was standing in class, argumentatively trying to get the class to realize some salient fact or other, and when one of them finally got it right (intentionally) I hissed out a long "Yessssssssssssss." At some point after that the occasion arose to answer one child with the word "yesterday." I don't remember what the question was; maybe I was assigning homework and he asked what the date was and it was yesterday. Chris, a burly elementary schooler who has a body like a tank and the brain of a puppy, took the obvious phonetic similarity between the words "yes" and "yesterday" and ran with it. From there until the class ended whenever I said "yes" he'd finish with "...terday."

"Johnny is going to..." I'd say.

"School!" Carl, the brightest but noisiest kid in the class, a cute little kid with a flat top and a perpetual grin, would yell.

"Yessssss," I'd hiss.

"...terday," Chris would finish. Everybody would giggle, myself included. Soon Chris has the entire rest of the class doing it. From now on whenever I hear somebody hiss out a "yes" like that I'll automatically think "...terday." Thanks, Chris. That's a phonemic snippet I'll remember until the end of my days.

Then there's the lengthy list of monikers that Adam, Elaine and I have developed for certain "special" students. All the kids are unique (if that statement makes any sense at all) but some of them are uniquely unique, if you take my meaning. They stand out, either due to their mental prowess, their cooperative attitudes or (quite often) their debilitatingly annoying or obstructive behavior. To name a few:

• Stony-Faced Laura: She's now left Reading Town, but while she was here she might as well have been an ornament on the wall. In class, she used to sit in the rear row, in the very last seat, way back in the corner. She never spoke, not even a single word, and if she ever did, her voice was inaudible. Her face was like a stone statue's: devoid of life, eyes downcast, mouth fixed in an immovable line. She looked absolutely miserable. It was perhaps unkind of us to bestow a waggish nickname like "Stony-Faced" upon her, but given the profusion of other Lauras, we had no choice. That was her distinguishing feature.
• Reliable Sandy: She's a little gem, and also quite cute. Her mother always dresses her in skirts and knee-socks and buckled shoes. She's awfully soft-spoken (I can barely hear her above some of the wackos in her class) but her answers are always dead on-target. She always does her homework, and that's rare: even some of the diligent older kids "forget" theirs once in a while. What's more, though, she has integrity. She forgot her book once and I forgot to take the necessary ten vouchers from her. As I turned away, I felt a tug on my arm. I looked down and there she was, her big brown eyes staring quizzically up at me, holding two five-voucher bills in her hand. What an honest little girl. Right then and there I bestowed her moniker upon her.
• Sinister Jim: James is a good guy, and he's knowledgeable for never having done his homework, like, once. But still, he gets in the way of the class sometimes. He, like 80% of the other Korean boys, is always making extremely off-color jokes. You ask the class why Strega Nona punished Big Anthony, and Jim will say "Because he needed to die." You ask why King Lion summoned the Iguana before him, and Jim will say "Because he was going to kill the iguana." You ask why Goldilocks went to the Three Bears' cottage, and Jim'll say "To kill the three bears." Kill, kill, kill. Die, die, die. That's all it is. I nicknamed him "Sinister" because he's always making death-related funnies.
• Little John: Tiny little boy, but with as much energy as a pocketful of firecrackers. I knew he was going to be unique right off the bat. Picture this three-foot tall munchkin with a gap-toothed smile on his kisser, his shock of black, wavy hair sitting tousled on top of his head, making blub-blub-blub noises with his lips all during class. That's when he deigns to actually sit in his chair: usually he's up and running around, climbing over desks, peeking over people's shoulders and whatnot. I can't get angry at him for this (I was the same way at his age). He's a cute kid, light as a feather and as happy-go-lucky as you could want. He's easily the smallest kid in the entire hagwon, hence his nickname.
• Amy of the Opera: A somewhat spoiled girl...with a voice like a screech owl. Amy (bespectacled and stringy with a fringe of brown hair reaching to her shoulders) is not accustomed to being quiet, and as such will offer her opinion on whatever subject is at hand, curricular or no, stridently as a bullhorn. Of all the kids in that class whom I've told to be quiet, I've told her at least three times more. Unsurprisingly, she's also one of the worst at raising her hand. Like the rest of the "spoiled" crowd, she'll just shriek your name until you give her your attention.

Some of these shared meanings that have been created aren't even jokes, but are no less memorable. I think I've mentioned before what my job description is. I spend my afternoons being a jungle gym and my evenings combating mood swings. The little kids who come in first at two o'clock just love to climb on me. I think I started it. I invited John (Little John) to hold onto my arm, then hoisted him into the air. The other kids were wowed, and soon enough I resembled an ape-monster in one of Robert E. Howard's stories, warriors clinging to every limb, a colossus covered with tiny scraps of humanity. Bella and Angel learned to latch themselves around my ankles and sit on my feet, like two little legwarmers with earrings and ponytails, as I waddled down the hall.

Then I began giving them "assisted jumps": I'd hold the kids' hands, count to three, they'd jump into the air and I'd lift them really high. These caught on like wildfire: particularly with one little girl, Leslie. She's just about the cutest little girl I've ever seen, and working where I work that's saying something. She's got almond-shaped eyes (always half-closed, like she's planning something, or about to give you the mother of all dirty looks); a little round nose; and a squeaky voice. Whenever I give an assisted jump we always count off thus: "One, two, THREE!" So now when Leslie pokes her adorable head in the door, she holds up three fingers and says "Teacher, one-two-three!" (Only with her Korean accent, it sounds like "One-two-thlee!") Anyone else would be mystified as to what she means. Now I know that I must get up and go into the hall and give her a jump (or six) or else she really will give the aforementioned mother-of-all-dirty-looks. She's good at them, too.

On a final note, I'd like to leave you with the Newbies' Official Induction Ceremony. You must be burned with Elaine's cigarette, slip on the ice and fall flat on your face. Jeff started off this time-honored tradition on the roof of my apartment building one ill-fated cocktail party a while back. We'd all joined hands (this is when we were too drunk to care about how nerdy we were being). Elaine neglected to notice she was holding a lit cigarette. The next thing we noticed was hot ash on our hands. Jeff sort of sprang back to dust himself off, encountered a patch of black ice on the dark rooftop and collapsed instantaneously into the push-up position. Some good-natured laughter and bruises later we decided to incorporate the proceedings into our initiation protocol. Some good came of it after all. When I leave here, I'm going to have some killer stories to tell...which nobody will understand.

tutoring Lily (my boss's wife)

I might've failed to mention this, but I'm tutoring my boss's wife.

She's a scary lady. She definitely wears the pants at Reading Town. She's tall (about as tall as her husband, who must approach six feet) and has long curly black hair. Her skin is on the pale side, somewhat similar to Esther's, though both she and Jacob are the eldest at Reading Town. That's no accident. Since the oldest are accorded the most respect under Confucian law and Korean custom, naturally the oldest folks wind up running companies with younger ones under them. She usually dresses severely, in dark colors and modest cuts, though occasionally she'll break with tradition and wear sweaters and skirts.

She's the head secretary at Reading Town, and runs the front desk with an iron fist. It's her face, though, that reveals her true nature. Whether it's beautiful or not is neither here nor there. It's the expressions she wears: a near-constant glower. Lily is something of a tyrant. Misbehave in her sight and you'll come in for a razor-sharp scolding. Should the kids act up in class and she is summoned (or worse, hears the ruckus and comes of her own accord) watch out! There's going to be a dressing-down. If a child has failed to transmit his parents' money from his parents to Lily's hands, she flies off the handle. All of us foreign teachers have either seen or heard Lily screaming (literally screaming) at the kids. She can really belt out a lecture, that woman can.

But that's not the scariest part. After she's through giving a child a tongue-lashing (at the end of which the kid will either be sitting silently in their seat, or staring at the floor, or crying gently, quiet as a mouse) she'll turn to us, give us an ear-to-ear grin (showing her humongous teeth) and leave the room like nothing happened. It happens all the time. She yells at the kids then turns to talk to us with her finest two-dollar grin on her face. The rapid switching of personalities (or the semblance of such) is disquieting.

Getting the picture?

This wouldn't be as awkward in a purely academic setting, but it happens everywhere. Lily is a born autocrat. She doesn't just administer Reading Town, she controls it. Time was, new and unused black board markers were kept in a box in the teacher's room for all to use. Lily apparently thought that they were getting used up too fast, because not long after I came she took them out of the teacher's room and put them in the conference room desk where only she and Jacob can retrieve them. So now, if we teachers need new markers (and we need them frequently; you can use up a whole marker during one writing class) we have to go and ask her and wait for her to get them.

The paper towel situation is rapidly becoming untenable as well. A few months back there were plenty of paper towels and toilet paper in the bathrooms. Now, I know not why, there aren't. No paper towels, no toilet paper. If you want any you've got to ask the desk. Lily apparently thought those were getting used up too fast, too.

Lily's always on the lookout for ways to cut costs, but either she doesn't realize the inconvenience she's putting everybody through or she doesn't care. She doesn't speak English. That's why I'm tutoring her, in fact. So whenever she needs to transmit a new edict to us, the foreign staff, she uses Jacob or Charles. Some of these edicts include:

• Don't turn on the air conditioning units yet because the children are suffering from the cold (when it was balmy outside and some of the classrooms had been heated by the sun into resembling conservatories).
• Don't let the kids pack up their bags too early. Keep teaching them right up until the moment the bell rings, then give them their homework assignment. (This is after she caught us giving them their assignments five minutes before the bell rang.)
• Do make the children finish their books. (This is impossible. The children all have textbooks and they're supposed to be completely filled out and handed in, classwork, homework and everything, at the end of the month. But the lazy ones don't do it, and there's nothing on heaven or earth that will make them. They leave their vouchers at home so we can't take them away, and they just laugh at study hall. Since those are the only two manifestations of discipline at Reading Town, our case is somewhat hopeless.)

As if these mandates weren't unreasonable enough, Lily personally enforces them. I've seen her prowling the halls many a time, peeking into classrooms to make sure we're following her wishes. I've been teaching with the A/C on, my students happy and content, and then suddenly Lily pokes her head in and switches it off, without a word to me or them. It's frustrating, to say the least. I feel sometimes like I'm working for her instead of Dr. Song in Seoul, or Jacob. The prospect is unattractive.

This month I began tutoring her, starting from Square One. She spoke just a few words of English, mostly loanwords that have entered the Korean lexicon, the bare minimum she needed to know to run the front desk. The textbook we've got is adequate, but somewhat repetitive. She has stated that she likes my lessons; I for my part must admit she's an able student. She tries hard, does her homework perfectly and promptly, and is attentive and studious. But the control freak in her finally won out. In our second-to-last lesson, I turned the page of our textbook to go on to the next lesson and she said firmly, "Next time." Remembering how she could explode, my courage temporarily deserted me. I leaped back and gave her a deferential "okay." Afterward I kicked myself. I am the teacher, I said to myself; she is the student. I dictate the pace, not her. I was ashamed of myself for my momentary lapse of backbone. Here, thought the devious part of my brain, was an opportunity to put the witch-woman in her place.
But I didn't go for it. We had gone over quite a lot of material that day. It was okay by me if we stopped there. I just wished I'd been the one to say it.

In the next lesson I got my revenge. So I gave her a pop quiz. It wasn't punishment; I'd planned to do it anyway, and had warned her that I might a couple of lessons back. But when she asked me when the next one would be, I refused to tell her.

"That's a surprise," I said.

Ha! I'd stood up to her! She could take me by the hair and demand to know when that quiz would be, but wild horses couldn't drag it out of me.

We shall see where this goes. Will our sessions together escalate into a battle of wills, an epic ideological conflict? Shall Lily get her way once again and reduce me to a quivering, obsequious, subservient pile of unmanned jelly? Or will the heroic Andrew T. Post, master of all he surveys, lord of the classroom and symbol of justice and proper Confucianist values, save the day and sock it to that dastardly control freak bottled up inside my boss's wife?

how I tore my favorite coat

You know what this is going to be, right? You've asked someone about something and they replied, "It's a long story." Haven't you? This is case in point. What follows is going to be the original "long story." Fasten your seat belts and prepare for a tale of suspense.

Let me introduce the major players. First of all, you have my humble self, who fancies himself an adventurer and is known to take stupid risks at luckily non-critical junctures. Second, you have my favorite coat. It's a duster, in the style of the Old West, a long coat that comes down to my calves, with wide sleeves and two camel pockets and a slit up the back (for riding a horse). It's light brownish-tan (embarrassingly labeled "Mustard" in Sportsmen's Guide), and smells a bit funky, but it's very close to my heart. When I put it on I just feel like I'm ready for an adventure, whether it's a showdown at high noon or a pirate voyage or an expedition to Alpha Centauri. It looks rather like this:

My folks purchased it for me way back when we were still living in California, before I went to college; it's gone everywhere I have since then (North Dakota, Wyoming, and Korea). I love the way it flaps about me whenever I move erratically; as a result, I tend to move erratically quite often when I'm wearing it. I feel like no one will mess with me when I'm wearing it, 'cause you can't tell what I have (or don't have) hidden under it. I feel cool, I feel competent, I feel ready for anything...and just a little bit silly. That's all fine by me; means I can break new ground and push a few envelopes without taking myself too seriously.

Third, you have Charles, Gaia, Esther, Julia, Jeff, Elaine, Adam, and Anne; all the people whom I've mentioned in previous entries from Reading Town and the Newbies (except Erica, who was dreadfully sick on Friday and who had to bow out of...well, you'll see).

The setting is a housewarming party in an apartment complex in downtown Gohyeon, just across from Lotte Invens, the nicest set of apartments you'll find in the whole city. I mean Lotte Invens, not the apartment complex across from it. Charles's building is about twenty years old. Some people might think it's shabby; I call it "character." It's got two bedrooms and one bath, a decent-sized kitchen, and a spacious living area. Charles had already set up a couch, TV, and kitchen table before we arrived. Charles and his girlfriend Anne had recently moved in together (shhhhhhhhhhh!) and had invited the entire academy staff, sans the director and his wife, over for dinner and drinks.

A couple periods before the 9:15 whistle, Gaia surreptitiously passed the hat and sneaked over to Top Mart across the road to buy booze. After the closing bell we all slid over to the parking lot and divvied up the spoils. Jeff rendezvoused with us there, and he, Charles, your humble correspondent, and the booze went in Charles's three-cylinder Daewoo Matiz downtown to the complex. Adam and Elaine hitched a ride with Gaia, Esther, and Julia. We arrived and unloaded and then sat down for a beer. At Charles's invitation, Adam and I put some tunes on; I selected some jazz. I thought that seemed to fit the mood and I hadn't heard any for a while. (Despite there being a Western bar in this city called "Jazz Bar," they play mostly pop.)

We just sat and talked and drank for a bit. After the initial awkwardness of being in somebody's new and still somewhat bare apartment with a bunch of people you work with but who are from vastly different backgrounds faded, we got on quite well. Before we knew it, the food had arrived, brought up in a couple of metal lockers by a short and harassed-looking fellow in thick dark clothes. These last were obviously insulation: he'd come on a scooter, the usual method of transportation for delivery-men in Korea. You see them winging their way through traffic all the time, square plastic boxes printed with the logo of the establishment they represent fastened tenuously on the backs of their thrumming Daelim mopeds.

The lockers were unhinged and their contents arrayed on the table: battered pork with sweet-and-sour sauce, called tangsuyuk (commonly known as "sweet-and-sour pork" in the States; this was Chinese food) and seafood medley with wasabi. Gaia went a little overboard when she added the wasabi to the seafood and kneaded it in (donning a pair of amorphous, transparent gloves which automatically made me think "rectal exam"). I took my first bite and nearly incinerated my nasal passages. Man, it wasn't spicy going down, per se, but wasabi fumes rose to your nose and really raised some hackles.

Charles divvied up this bounty between our high table (what Adam had jokingly referred to as "the kids' table") and the Koreans' low one, distributed some chopsticks (Adam got a pair of handsome golden ones) and we all chowed down. I should mention now, before the time comes, that there was an added bonus included in the delivery aside from the food: goryangju, Chinese liquor, supposedly 100 proof. It was Friday night; Adam, Jeff and I were aiming to get drunk. This seemed like a convenient byway; needless to say, the revelation of it first brought out of the locker sent a ripple of interest around the kids' table. After everybody had satisfied their immediate hunger, we cracked it open and poured some shots. The result was disappointing. It reminded me, both in scent and flavor, of Jägermeister. That there may be no speculation, I cannot stand Jägermeister. It reminds me of mouthwash. Italian-sausage flavored mouthwash. This wasn't much better. It certainly wasn't 50% alcohol, either. Five minutes later I weren't feelin' no higher.

We had better success with the whisky. Turns out Charles had a bottle of blended Scotch socked away; we partook of it gladly. Well, by and by the booze ran low. According to Korean tradition, the youngest guests at the party make the beer run, so Jeff and I sprang into action. Following Charles's directions, precise despite his buzz, we headed out into the night and located a Kosa Mart, a marginally seedy convenience store chain omnipresent in Korea. We snatched up four more pitchers of beer and a bottle of soju and some cider (at Elaine's behest; she was "soju warrior" for the evening and was working on mixers). A few hours and some increasingly alarming conversation later, these too were used up, so Jeff and I sallied forth again, only in a considerably less coherent state than before. We were far gone. Kosa Mart had closed up shop for the night, which left us inebriated bozos to locate an ulterior venue and procure fresh supplies. It was in the cards that we'd locate a playground instead.

You can imagine what happened next. Jeff and I, yelling our fool heads off, sampled some of the playground's motion-related delights. We found this one gizmo that I suppose was a stealthy attempt to tone students' abs while ostensibly giving them the ride of their lives. It consisted of two handles, stationary, over a platform on a hinged metal arm that swung laterally back and forth. There were two of these machines, facing each other. Jeff and I hopped on and did our dangedest to swing that mother into a 360. We couldn't quite get the trick of swinging in the opposite direction in perfect coordination; unsurprising given how much liquor we'd consumed. Hooting and whooping, we exited the playground with jubilant minds and throbbing abs.

And then, lo and behold! There was a GS25 (or a Family Mart, or whatever) just down the street. We entered and purchased some alcoholic reinforcements. I got more beer (and soju and cider for Elaine) while Jeff nabbed some baekseju (literally "thousand-year wine"), a finer Korean liquor distilled from rice and flavored with a variety of herbs. It's more expensive than soju but more highbrow. I'm not fond of the flavor; it reminds me of potpourri, to be honest. But it's fine sipping, especially when you're too drunk to really taste it appreciatively.

Somehow Jeff and I made it back to Charles's apartment. Esther and Julia and long since departed; Gaia was tenaciously hanging on to the bitter end. Finally we capitulated. We walked out into the night in search of cabs. Charles gallantly escorted Gaia to find hers while we waited. In the process of waiting, Jeff and I looked over and noticed yet another playground, this one attached to Charles's apartment complex. There was no denying the primal urgings of my inner wellspring of joy, which commanded me on no uncertain terms to go swing on the swings. Jeff and I, in a whimsical repetition of our escapades earlier that night, ran over and leaped into the saddles and in another moment were swinging through the cool night air. After a few seconds of this my inner wellspring of joy commanded me to jump, so I did. I leaped from the saddle at the peak of a particularly energetic swing, went flying through the air, hit the ground, couldn't sustain the Superman impersonation, lost my footing and landed heavily on my shoulder, rolling for a few feet before coming to a jolting, exuberant halt.

Finally, we foreigners flagged down a cab and went back to my apartment. When the chips are down and brains are at their soggiest, all roads lead to my apartment. I had to promise not to brew up any cocktails to coerce Adam and Jeff to come 'round. We sat around my place, listening to tunes, sipping baekseju and discussing God knows what. The party finally broke up at around 4:30 in the morning. I'd fill you in on the details of everyone's departure, their demeanor and parting words, and the thousand other small joys of the host; but I'm afraid I simply can't remember 'em.

It is here that we finally approach the principal reason I ripped my favorite coat, which up to this point had been hanging safely in my room for the entire evening, unmolested. Shortly before everyone left I somehow mustered the cohesiveness of mind to notice that I'd lost my watch. I'd stuck it in the breast pocket of my short-sleeved button-down after work and hadn't touched it since. After Adam, Elaine and Jeff lurched through my door and back to their respective domiciles, the realization came. Through the cloying, lethargic waves of drunkenness my brain somehow managed to put two and two together. The swingset. The leap. The roll in the sand. My watch must've fallen out at that crucial, asinine juncture and was probably even now lying embedded in the sand of the playground adjoining Charles's apartment building. I vacillated. I was still drunk as a lord. The hour was ungodly. Dare I stride down to Shinhwa Apartments, bold as brass, and search? Or should I await the sobriety of the morning and venture down in the full daylight, at the risk of chance passersby claiming the watch during the delay? In the end, stubbornness and an idiotically severe sense of frugality won out. I wanted to shut the book on the night in good conscience. I couldn't leave my watch lying on some playground. That would be like leaving a fellow party-goer out in the cold. More importantly, I'd paid 19,000 won for the blasted thing. I wasn't going to lose it to some schoolboy who noticed it glinting in the morning sunlight on his way to school. (Yes, there's school on Saturdays here.)

So, throwing caution to the winds, determined to get the thing over with, I donned my favorite coat, the aforementioned mustard duster, and strode out. I cursed myself for a fool almost immediately. The soonest glimpse of the eastern sky revealed it to be a shade of dark blue. The night had gone; dawn was approaching. Tomorrow wasn't a school day, but under the tenets of my recently-instituted code of conduct, I still planned on making my weekend days productive. That meant waking up sooner than noon, and in the state I was in that would be a tall order indeed. The last thing I needed to know was that I wasn't even getting a jump-start on daybreak.

Nonetheless, I pushed on. I'd come too far. I had just the sense to realize that I looked as ridiculous as I felt. My new ascetically-short haircut clashed horribly with the long, sweeping dimensions of my coat. When put to it, I couldn't even come up with a halfway sound reason why I'd donned it. Perhaps the half-articulated idea that I looked somehow fiercer and tougher when wearing it had dictated my choice. That instinctual need to conceal my true proportions and fool prospective enemies with the illusion of increased size, like a cat arching its back and raising its hackles, had impelled my hand to the coat-rack. Or maybe it was that goofy feeling I mentioned earlier in this treatise, and the readiness for adventure and the thirst for a quest I always feel when I put that coat on.

Whatever the reason, it was immaterial at the moment. I looked for cabs and there were none. Before I knew it I'd walked all the way to my destination, the better part of a mile, without incident. The sky was getting lighter all the time; I quickened my pace, fired by the urgency of a good morning's sleep. Instead of taking the long way around to the parking lot and entering the playground by the customary route, I hopped the fence. I passed the swingset and found my watch with absurd ease, even given my intoxication. I felt as Renton did in Trainspotting, discovering the opium suppositories on the "floor" of the Worst Toilet in Scotland: "Yes, a f---ing godsend!"

Then the unthinkable happened. Tragedy struck my seemingly foolproof attempt at lending closure to the night's festivities. As I hopped the fence to leave the playground, the voluminous sleeve of my favorite coat caught on one of the bars of the fence and ripped. For a moment my mind couldn't process that catastrophic bit of information. Then I examined the rip in the stark light of a streetlamp (and the soft glow of the burgeoning day) and cursed myself again. I found the watch, but it was small consolation. All the way home I chunnered away at my own stupidity and clumsiness, silently for fear that the cab driver would boot me out for a loony.

Home again at last, the light in the east now changing to purple and pink, I took off the coat, hung it up (fortunately it faced the door, so the right sleeve was nearest the wall and concealed from my view, meaning I would not be reminded of my folly), undressed and fell into bed.

There is now a four-inch gash in the bottom of the right sleeve, and I have nobody to blame but myself. I took out my paltry miniature sewing kit and surveyed the damage in the light of day (and sobriety), but it was a pointless exercise. The gash is too wide, and my needle and flimsy thread are not up to the task of repairing the heavy canvas. My only hope now is to access a clothing repair shop, either here or in Anchorage. Judge me as you will.

teachers-in-arms

I think it's high time I told you a bit more about my coworkers. Charles you already know, if you've been keeping up with this blog at all. But there are a few more I have yet to describe in detail. I want to make it clear right now that whatever I say next is said with the utmost seriousness, and I have no desire whatsoever to impugn anyone's integrity or cast their integrity or goodness into question.

I guess I'll start with the Korean teachers. The staff and studentry of our hagwon all take on English names (or "Anglo aliases," as I call them). The youngest Korean teacher (and in my opinion, the cutest) at Reading Town goes by the Anglo alias Gaia. She (currently) has dark, wavy brown hair. Her face is charmingly round, her eyes dark but cheerful. Her skin tone is somewhere between Esther's fair complexion and Erica's deep olive. She dresses like many young Korean women: baggy sweater jackets, long-sleeved shirts with hems that come down to mid-thigh, T-shirts with vests, paired with tights or ruffled skirts. Her feet, however, are incongruous with this immaculate raiment. Her feet are the feet of a peasant girl: big and rough. I do not say that in a negative tone. There's something strangely attractive about this cutesy Korean English teacher whose pretty street shoes conceal slab-like feet and toes. "How beautiful are thy feet with shoes..."

Under her girlish trappings, however, Gaia is a woman. She's nearly in her thirties. She's traveled to Canada; she lived there for a bit back in the day. Her English is excellent. She doesn't like Reading Town, however. She's worked here for quite some time; I think the kids have finally worn her down. She never hesitates to commiserate with us about a particular bad seed or chronic disruptor.

"Rrrrrr," she'll growl in her endearing, husky voice. "I hate him!"

Gaia seems to be a frustrated woman. She lives with her parents in Okpo, the next city over from Gohyeon, about twenty minutes' drive to the east. She is unmarried, and at her age she's within an inch of becoming an old maid. In Korea, if you're not married off by the time you're thirty, it's pretty much a foregone conclusion. After that, your parents step in and arrange a marriage for you. It would be sad by Western standards, but here she's not quite so badly off. First of all, unmarried women are expected to live with their parents, so at least she's got an accepting roof over her head. Second, Gaia doesn't want to be married. She's a free spirit. She's one of the heartiest party-goers among us, and can keep up with all of us when we drink or dance. Indeed, she usually outstrips us. But she's still forced to work at Reading Town, where she's set upon by both the management and the students.

Gaia is the most unpopular teacher at Reading Town. All the kids uniformly hate her. Every time I ask them why, they claim that she's mean and ugly, like some witch. I didn't come up with that simile, either: the kids automatically label any picture of aliens or monsters in our storybooks "Gaia." The going theory among the native teachers is that Gaia is strict, leading to a sharp downturn in her popularity. Nobody ever likes strict teachers, even if they get results. So Gaia whiles her time away, working at a job she dislikes by day, partying hard on weekends (and sometimes, judging by her zombified appearance on some afternoons, weekdays too). She's still friendly as all get-out, though. She's always up for conversation, never hesitates to recommend remedies for ailments or delicious foods to try, and even gave us her number the first time we took a trip to Busan in case ought went amiss. Apparently she's pulled Elaine aside several times and expressed concern that she (Elaine) is wasting away from starvation. "Elaine," she said, in a sentiment echoed by the other female Korean teachers, "you need to eat." She's a cheerful, outgoing sort of person, harangued mercilessly and unjustly by her students, inconvenienced by Korean social expectations (and the occasional weekday morning hangover). I like her.

Widely believed to be the most beautiful by the Reading Town student body, Esther is slightly older than Gaia, and unlike her is married with two children. She has straight black hair that reaches to her shoulders, big almond-shaped eyes, a delicately light skin tone, and a collection of very elegant outfits. I was particularly impressed the day she came in wearing a long grayish-blue pea coat with black leather gloves. Esther is in no way ostentatious, though. She lives in an apartment complex not far from Reading Town with her family. As such (and again, I mean to cast no disparagement whatsoever upon her by noting this) she is usually the first to leave at our get-togethers. She's a family woman, and though she'll still party and drink, her responsibilities are never far from her mind. She's an admirable lady; she seems to have the most aplomb with the students; I've heard Gaia and Erica yelling at their classes, but never Esther. (For the record, I yell too.)

Of all the Korean staff, Esther seems to garner the least criticism from the studentry. (Perhaps this has given rise to the belief that she is the most beautiful while Gaia is the most ugly.) Also unlike the rest of the Korean staff, Esther is a transplant: she's a native of Seoul. Everybody else is from around here, good old Gyeongsangnam-do, with its rough dialect that Esther gently teases Charles about sometimes. Esther is a gentle and benevolent woman. She wouldn't harm a fly. She tests my Korean every now and then, and doesn't slow down unless I ask her to. She's also very complimentary of my language skills. She loves a joke, too. Sometimes she will pretend to be conceited. She and Gaia are like sisters. They talk together and joke together and sometimes even make fun of each other together in English, much to our amusement. Being able to chaff in another language is a weighty achievement indeed. Whenever Charles and I are discussing Korean dialects, and there's mention of the harsher Gyeongsangnam-do dialect, Esther will stick in a pseudo-haughty "My Korean is perfect. I'm from Seoul."

Erica is the oldest female teacher at Reading Town, somewhere in her mid-thirties. She's also the roughest. She's the hardest drinker, the lustiest singer, the fiercest disciplinarian and the most casual dresser. I see her wear work boots and jeans more often than Gaia's trendy togs or Esther's elegant wardrobe. She has a darkish complexion, short black hair (which she curls), and a friendly, toothy smile. She speaks quickly, whether in English or Korean, and I must admit her accent is the most difficult to understand. She, too, does not appear to enjoy her job much. She seems frequently harried, though she's as friendly as the rest. She's always one to give you a big smile or a genuine thank-you. I've heard her out-and-out screaming at some of her more misbehaved students, though. I've found myself wishing I could match her sheer force of will (and lung power).

Erica and I have a special kind of relationship going, I guess. I showed her around my apartment a while back when she was apartment-hunting here in Gohyeon (she, like Gaia, is a native of Okpo, and was commuting here every day until she moved into a new place a few months ago). I also obtained her a bottle of Italian salad dressing from the foreigner's market in Okpo after she expressed an interest in trying some. All of us foreign teachers owe her a lot. She has relatives in Busan (even lived there a while, I believe), and it was she who's given us the most travel advice about moving about in Korea so far. (Charles is fast closing the gap, however...he found me some dirt-cheap flights to Jeju-do and even discovered one deal where you can rent a scooter for a day and sleep in a hotel that night for a combined fee of 40,000 won. Awesome!)

Erica royally saved our butts last September, when we were headed out to Busan for Chuseok. We were originally planning to take the passenger ferry out of Gohyeon; she piped up and told us that that would be impossible. That ferry would be packed to the gills. No seats would be had unless we'd booked months in advance. As we were collapsing in our chairs, resigning ourselves to a sweaty seven-hour bus ride through holiday traffic, she told us of a glorious alternative: take the bus up to the tip of the northernmost peninsula of the island, to the principalities of Guyeong or Nongso, and catch the larger and considerably cheaper car ferry to Busan. This we did, for eighty percent less than we would've paid on the Gohyeon ferry, and for a substantially better view and reduced sailing time, not to mention a more direct route. That was our saving grace; we never would've made it on time and that glorious trip might not have materialized at all (meaning we never would've spent all night drinking beer on the boardwalk overlooking Haeundae Beach and then doused our hangovers in the East Sea the next day).

Erica has many friends, though. She's quite passionate about having fun. As I mentioned, she really knows her way around a noraebang, and seems to know all the good ones in town. She can drink us all under the table and likely would've been the last to leave Charles's housewarming party, along with Gaia and us foreign teachers. She got very sick that weekend, unfortunately, and had to go to the hospital it was so bad. Sometimes none of the teachers at Reading Town seem to have any luck. They've all had some kind of unhappiness or personal tragedy or frustration (or all three) in their lives at some point.

Take Julia, for example. She's one of the newest additions to the staff, along with Charles. She was present at the conference in Changwon (Charles's hometown, remember) where we all met. I'm afraid I really don't know much about her. I believe she is also a native of Gyeongsangnam-do, but where she lived before coming to Reading Town in 2008 is up in the air. I do know that she's married and lives in one of Samsung's huge apartment blocks just down the road to the south, visible from the rooftop of the academy building. She is usually the second one to leave our parties after Esther, but not because she's got a family. Indeed, she would much rather stay out later, but she has a rather clingy husband. The man, I've gathered, is a traditionalist who does not like his wife staying out late after work. Heck, he doesn't even like the fact that she's working at all. He'd rather she stayed home and was his housewife. As a result, they get into the most tremendous fights when she gets home after a bash (by her own admission). I actually heard Julia say last time (at Charles's housewarming party; more about that later), "I'm going to have a big fight with my husband when I get home!"

The following Monday, as she walked into the teacher's room, she raised her fists in triumph and said, "I had a big fight with my husband when I got home!"

She's very amiable, and also quite good-looking. She has short black hair, a very slender build, an attractive yet modest wardrobe and a very soft voice. Her English, along with Charles's, is incredible. But the poor woman seems very tired all the time. I'm not mentioning any particulars, but she had a pregnancy-related tragedy not too long ago, too. I'm not sure how it's affected her. When she reappeared at work after recovering, nobody seemed to notice why she'd been gone. There was no exchange of gifts, nor expression of sympathy as I recall. Everybody just kind of glossed the whole thing over, and we foreign teachers (not wanting to drag the business back up if it had been buried) went along.

Julia never seems to get enough sleep. She also gets off early on Mondays and Wednesdays so she can catch the bus home; she does live a ways out of town. Sometimes, though, the management reneges on this accord and keeps her until the end. Then I don't know what she does. Perhaps Jacob stumps up for cab fare; perhaps not. It just seems like Julia might have the worst lot of all the teachers: a tough job, lack of sleep, a bus ride home, and a nagging husband.

But how could I forget my Geordie coworkers and that Canuck reprobate! I shall now introduce the Newbies, the name for the hard-drinking, hearty-partying clique of wet-behind-the-ears English teachers on Geoje-do. Founding members and acting administration consist of Adam, Elaine, Jeff, and yours truly.

Adam and Elaine hail from the Newcastle region of Northumbria, in Northeastern England. Adam is a youthful, vigorous 25 years old (wink wink) and got his degree in business. Unfortunately, he went and got himself a job in advertising for Maxim magazine. It was brutal work and unfulfilling, and what's worse, he never even caught a glimpse of a single model. Elaine started off in social work but her working environment wasn't ideal (if I can remember what she told me that night we all went to the beach and drank whisky). So they both quit and came here. This is just the start, too. After their contract expires in August they plan to head south to Bali for a while, then make a slow, shrinking spiral through the rest of Southeast Asia: Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia. Should take about seven months, money and visa acquisition permitting. Then they'll head back and get married in the winter of 2010. (I've been invited! Yippee! I'm so honored. A relaxed Geordie wedding, football matches at St. James Park, English breakfasts, Northumbria, the North Sea, downtown Newcastle, and more pubs than you could ever hope to drink dry.)

Adam is as tall as I am, six feet. His face is incessantly covered in stubble; he claims that a completely clean shave wreaks hell on his skin. Seeing as how I cut myself every time I try to shave, no exceptions, I can see his point. Anyway, the stubble suits him. His hair is usually kept short; if it gets too long it starts to get spiky. Elaine is also tall (for a girl) and willowy, with large eyes and short blond hair. Both of them are jolly, profane, and fun-loving, like me. Adam loves meat and Elaine can't stand seafood (although tuna is acceptable).

It goes without saying (heh heh, there's a pun) that A & E both have broad Geordie accents. To clarify, "Geordie" is the slang term for English folk in Northumbria who live along the rivers Tyne and...darn, what's that other river Adam told me about? Rats, I forgot. Wear! That's it. Tyne & Wear. That includes the cities of Newcastle and the surrounding villages, like Tynemouth (Adam's hometown), and farther down along the river and its vicinity. The theories surrounding the origin of the word "Geordie" are multifarious, but the one that sounds most plausible to me goes something like this: when the Scottish were rebelling, they hailed the English folks living around those two Northumbrian rivers (Newcastle and its environs are very, very close to Scotland) and asked them to join the cause. The English folk refused: they said nope, we're going to stick with King George. Hence, they were dubbed Geordies. See?

This is going to sound extremely subjective of me, but I warned you about that in the disclaimer, didn't I? It almost goes without saying that since Adam and Elaine (and Jeff) got here, my life in Korea has become approximately 87 million percent better. We knock around a lot: we frequent our favorite pub (the Local), we go out for sogogi, we head down to Arabian Nights and dance our shoes off, we went hiking up Gyeryongsan, we sampled sannakji (more about that later), and we all went up to Seoul together. They're the most fun people to be around, highly sociable, unendingly hospitable, as friendly as you could hope for and just jolly folk in general.

That goes for Jeff, too. He was raised in Ottawa, Canada. He's been around. He did the Inca Trail in the Andes a while before coming here, and during school vacation at his hagwon (Uniworld) he spent a few days in Borneo, the lucky bugger. Jeff is a tall, skeletally thin fellow with short brown hair and an unexpectedly deep voice. Being from the province that he is (Quebec) he speaks French, though he won't hesitate to tell you that it's Quebec French, somewhat differentiated from French French. Jeff is a good guy. He loves food; he's usually the last one eating when we all sit at a table together and can polish off unholy amounts of food. We left the equivalent of at least three huge Tupperware containers of food on the table at the conclusion of our epic Christmas feast; he polished it all off with his slow, methodical munch. The man's a bottomless pit, of friendliness and adventurousness as well as hunger. He invited us over to his place for fajitas once; he'd managed to smuggle some El Paso mix into the country, as well as procure some miraculous sour cream from the foreigner's market in Okpo. That was an epic feed, rivalling Christmas.

I'm ever so glad we all met, 'cause the four of us really work well together. Whenever we get together we have a tendency to bounce off one another and goad each other on into doing things we wouldn't sanely do; usually this means drinking a lot more than we planned and winding up blind drunk. Good times: those nights in Seoul, or at the top of Gyeryongsan, or in the bars and clubs of Gohyeon. Think of all the symbolic convergence we've created. As Jeff said, "We're going to have a lot of inside jokes that nobody else will understand." That's quite true.

Now I'm going to go play Crackoley. Figure that out if you can.