I'm beginning to become a regular downtown.......is that a good thing? I'm starting to show the newbies around. I'm on the verge of no-longer being a newbie. Sure I still haven't been to half the places in town, but Im starting to have "haunts" where people can usually find me. The bartenders know my black face, and even THE TAXI drivers are starting to stop me on the street, sometimes grabbing me and saying "HEY REMEMBER!! REMEMBER!" I'm like "remember what dude? oh yeah...I guess I did tell them"Doh-man-nah-yo" (which means see you again) I'm the only dark man that can use Korean. I didn't realize how much money I've spent on taxis this month. ...oooo....trying not to think about it. The taxi drivers just idle in a line by all the biggest nightlife spots, and you get to pick and choose. I always look for "VIP TEKSHI" because those guys are ex-street racers (or current...just with a taxi sign on top) who blow through red-lights and reach close to 140 kph. "Daegu drift" anyone?
One of my cutest students is named Jimi. He's 10 and is really excited to sing and is EXTREMELY SMART. We were learning "zoo" (lovingly pronounced JEW) animals and Jimmy says "teacher: rhino-saur!".....I didn't correct him. After all it was close. Yes Jimi. This is a "rhinosaur".....and in the next enclosure are the "Lygers"...or is it "Ligers?" As my kids would say, "TEACHER, SPELLING!!!!"
My honors class is ridiculously smart. I've had the honor of teaching the smartest classes in the school. One day I got sick because of the amount of sugar in the juices here and I just gave them their work, and told them there will be a quiz next week. They got this. If I don't watch out, they'll make my job too easy. Is it because I have a teaching degree? Who knows. I have many co-teachers, but my favorite is Jiny. She is HARDCORE. We share the same honors classes. Unlike the other Korean teachers who cycle in and out almost as fast as the foreign teachers, she has been in this same hagwon (private school) for 5 years. Her desk is always stacked high with work and her library of ESL books rivals the book-store downtown. Anywho, shes my favorite. One day huge parts of Korea lost power. It's amazing to think that pretty much the whole country lost power because it was so hot and we were all blasting the A/C. While most teachers like myself would just give their honors students all of the in-class work as homework during a power-outage and just say forget teaching, Jiny-teacher made her students go to the lighted stairwell and take their vocab quiz standing up while using the wall to bare-down on.....gotta love the teacher who is a heartless diva but is still down-to-earth enough to talk to you about brewing wine, help you with your YMCA Korean homework, Korean texting slang, and rocks Converse on Fridays. GET IT JINY-TEACHER
My first test with that class made one student say "Teacher, this test, oh my God!" Needless to say, now that I've scaled down my tests, Jiny has kept right on going. Now all they say is "Teacher, can we please study? Jiny teacher test: OH MY GOD!" I laughed out-loud and started giving them 5 mins to study for her class if they do all of my work. Some say she works too hard? Hmm? *Jane, if you're reading this, don't laugh too hard*
Weekend before last I was being an "MF-er" as usual at MF-bar with my girl Sinade (cool name right?). We were sippin', people watchin, and making ambitious drunken travel plans when we realized this one rather un-Korean-ly large girl who obviously was trying to wash away her Daddy-issues with waves of Soju. She had a tattoo (again, not very Korean-like) on her back. A full-scale pirate ship. Something video-game designers might use as a concept. It looked cool. But what happens when you start to sag and the wind in those "sails" starts to die? What happens when your young "Argghhhs" become old "Uggghhhs"? Sinade summed it up beautifully, "Ooo girl, maybe you shoulda just put that on a t-shirt...." : )
I really need to get on a normal sleep schedule. I was hoping that classes at the Y would mean I would start getting up in the morning. Oh how naive I was. It just means Im running around on Tuesdays and Fridays after a night of Korean-cramming, trying to get to class on time. Im starting to feel uber-metropolitan though with my bagel and coffee and Ipod morning music on the subway to downtown in the mornings.
"Meanwhile, back at the ranch"... I mean... the bar:
I was out meeting new people and the like. My co-worker is really good at just going up to people and starting a conversation. He can come off as somewhat forward and loud at first, but hey, it works for him. Sometimes I like going out with him. If he's the bait, I'm the fisherman. Usually what happens is he brings all types of varieties of fishies over to meet me and then I get to talking. If I really like 'em I'll buy 'em a drink. "The bait", however, he usually gets up within ten-minutes--he says he gets bored easy--leaving me to get their cell number. I don't think the bait realizes that we have a system going. One night while people-fishing I actually met someone named Steven then who I didn't know I would see again from my YMCA class I take now. We met again when class started. He sat next to me and the first thing he says is "Muhammad Ali is really from Atlanta right?" ....dude...what? Im thinkin. He says it again....Im still lost. Then he says "I'm sorry, but the last time we met. You remember, MF? The last thing you said to me was: 'Ali is from ATL' right?"......I had to take a sec to dig through my mental archives and drag out my thoughts from the dirty right corner of my brain in the beat-up, sticky case-file labeled "MF" written in fuzzy black sharpie. "ooooohhhh yeaaahhhhh" I said, not wanting to sound too guilty and give my self away. For it was that same night we had met that I had taken what I like to refer to as a "lil nappy" on the comfy chairs in that blue-tinted bar. I wasn't drunk, but that was night 4 of 4 for me each with only 4 hours of sleep. I'd been ragin' from Wednesday to Saturday. Unknowingly ---or unwillingly exhausted, I don't remember anything except almost leaving my wallet in the taxi at 6 AM the next morning. I still haven't figured out why there were blood streaks on my phone in the morning. I guess we'll never know. Just throw it back in the cold-case "MF" file bin in the right corner of my brain.
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