It's So HOT here!

And yet, milk is such a wonderful choice...

(Written 9/19.)

Seriously, Bobby?

December year round? It's about 99 degrees here and always around 100% humidity. On the plus side, Tom, you were COMPLETELY right. You know what I'm talking about. So I've been here for two weeks, and while I miss the kind of things you can get in a cosmopolitan, uncrowded country with land that will grow anything (Dryers, a good haircut, cheese, wine, beer, fruit, Ipod accesories) I do like being one of twenty Westerners in a "provincial" town of 300,000 people who are so unused to foreigners they have absolutely no reservations about saying and doing some of the most hilarious racist things in the world. Kids and adults have asked me why my nose is so "high", why it's so big, if my eyes are really blue, what I do to my hair to make it look like that (I wish I knew, I'd love it if a Napoleon Dynamite 'fro became the style over here) They love to yank at your arm hair, and one of the black teachers had a kid try to rub the color off his skin, and has been called "chocolate man" and complimented on his smooth chocolate skin on several occasions. I feel like having my hair straightened and dyed black, and getting a nose job, just so the kids will pay attention.

The kids are a blast. I was worried they'd be super reserved like it said in all the guides, but except for a few of the shy ones, you can't get them to shut up. And they learn the wierdest words. Think it's off putting to be called beautiful by a 13 year old boy? How a bout a cluster of giggling schoolgirls (who as it turned out, all were on the way to the doctor for pinkeye) following you for a block yelling "handsome" in your face? What in God's name do you say to that? As for the shy kids, they are REALLY shy. As in, crippled with stage fright among 20 other kids their own age who they spend all day with when called on to recite a sentence that THEY wrote. I have one kid who's M.O. is to hide his face behind a sheet of paper when he says anything. But otherwise, they're nuts. Let them pick their own English names. I've seen Big Daddy too many times to pretend I didn't know what was coming. I ended up with three Monkeys, a Hitler, a Spaghetti, a Sanchez, an Eduardo, and a Keyser Soze. In one class I talked about America and American presidents first, and one kid decided to be George Jefferson. He realized his mistake and tried to correct it, but I was having none of it. 3rd period Friday is my new favorite hour.

Foods good, if you have no compunction about what you're eating. I've had snail soup, fish heads, tentacle omelettes, (tentacle everything really, this is a bad place to be a squid), and one soup that seemed like they dredged the bottom of a pond. Really brown, silty consistency, with seaweed and whole, unshelled crayfish. All of it tasted awesome. Only problem I have is that they never really caught onto butchery out here. Seems like they just hack at the animal wildly until something falls off and throw it on the fire. Bone-in everything, from chicken, to fish, to bacon. I've been thinking of opening a restaurant that just serves chicken fingers, salmon fillets, and prime rib. It'd blow their minds.

Culture's ok. I'm picking up the language as much as someone who left his dictionary and is miles from an English bookstore can. It's wierd. The written language was specifically designed by royal-appointed linguists so that "a wise man could learn it in a morning, a fool in ten days." I had it down in about 4. So I'm an illiterate who can read. I've learned not to sound out street signs near Koreans, because they assume I'm fluent and just hit me with a torrent of words I don't know, and refuse to believe I can't speak korean, cause I just read that sign. TV's ok too. Still waiting on cable, so I can get English language stuff, but there's this Korean show we've dubbed Old Lady Showdown. Some soap where middle-aged women stoneface stare at each other for at least one minute long scene every episode. Very intense.
Got to head to class. Keep fighting the good fight you guys.