Folktales

Hey all,

Not a whole lot has been going on here in Seosan. The weather remains cold and I have given up hope that the wind will stop blowing. I also have managed to get a sinus infection, as the wee ones cough on EVERYTHING and I can't seem to wash my hands enough to keep the germs at bay. So, instead of telling you of my awesome adventures, I'll have to tell you an honest to God (I couldn't make this up if I tried) Korean folktale as it appears in one of the actual books I use to teach. You shalln't be disappointed. Without further ado, I give you the "Tale of the Farting Woman".

Once upon a time there was a nice and pretty woman. However, she had a problem. She couldn't control her farts. She farted very often and her farts were very loud and strong. In fact, her farts were so strong that she could make a pot blow away. Her father became very angry with her and told ther that she couldn't fart anymore as she was going to be married soon. So the woman decided to hold in her farts. When she could married she moved in with her husbands family and had several children. She did not fart for ten years. She became very ill. When her father-in-law asked her why she was sick, she told him it was because she was holding in her farts. He smiled at her and told her that she was allowed to fart at anytime she needed to, as it was natural. She made her family gather and hold onto a pillar as she knew that when she farted it would be very powerful. She final let it go and the fart was so strong that her in-laws were blown into the neighbor's house and her children were blown into a nearby field. The house was destroyed. From then on she was allowed and encouraged to fart when she felt the need. The end.

Wow.

Some call me Gimli, others call me Steve Jobs?

So, in my last post I promised to explain a few things about
my situation; mainly about where I am, why I’m here and what in the hell it is
that I’m doing.

It all started about a year ago when my relationship with Jayme fell to ruins. I was super depressed about life and things only got worse when my job at Vigilin (a software company in Wilsonville) went the way of the dodo a month later. The job market in Portland was horrid and the amount of underemployment was mind boggling. Needless to say it wasn’t the kind of market
one can find a job with any sense of ease. After months of throwing my resume out there and not getting any bites I started to get desperate for a job of any kind. As luck would have it, my friend Jill was in town and told me all about the year she spent teaching English in Korea. It reminded me of my time in Austria and how rewarding it was to teach. So, I decided on the spot that I too
would venture to Asia and once again teach English. I contacted a recruiter and got a job in
about a week. I started the paperwork and began the long process of waiting. Thanks to the FBI and a moron that took my fingerprints I lost the first job. Apparently, the FBI is picky about the type of fingerprint card they process and the aforementioned moron used the wrong one. It only took the FBI ten weeks to inform me of this error and well you can guess how I felt about the
entire ordeal. The words asinine and re-damn-diculous were used on multiple occasions following my learning of what transpired. Being a bit stubborn, I stuck with it and finally here I am; the only white man in a town of 160,000 people that has a beard.

Where is here you may be asking? I’m in a town called Seosan. Seosan is located
south of Seoul on a little peninsula that juts out into the East China Sea, where there are less than 1,000 non-Korean folk living. (For extra credit google it.) I work at a Hagwon named Seosan SLP, we lovingly (not really) refer to it as the Hagwon of hard knocks. My first day of actually teaching was a cluster-fuck mostly due to the fact that I was at work for 12 hours and the schedule wasn’t finalized until after the day’s teaching was finished. Having to teach without knowing what class you’re going to be in until a few minutes before hand is… stressful to say the least. I run the gambit in terms of classes, from Kindergarten all the way up to middle school level classes with everything in between. The kids love me and for some reason are convinced that I look like Steve Jobs. It’s really weird living here, as everyone stares at me wherever I go and by stare, I mean gawk at. When I was shopping the other day a small boy saw me ran around the corner and brought his dad back to have a good long look. I half expected them to throw some peanuts at me, but there must have been a sign written in Hangul warning the natives not to feed the foreigners…