Thursday 15 October 2009

Yesterday I wore a mask on the subway and bus in the morning. I ain't gonna lie, I felt stupid. But I'll get used to it cause it's totally worth it when you're crammed into a train at 8am and maybe you're grouchy and you're thinking 'stop breathing you motherfuckers' or they're hacking up some shit.

Orientation was alright I guess. The first day we went to our groups that were split up by cities. My group was Bucheon and Paju. I pretty much stayed to myself. Friendly when someone talked to me, but I didn't feel like mingling. It's just all too forced. That and it was like high school. Some people were really awkward. Some of them didn't realize it. One guy in the group, first I was thinking, he's a big dork, but I think it's cool that he wants to learn Korean culture and he seems smart. The more he talked, though, the more I retracted. He still seemed smart, but he was too excited and involved. How do you describe that type? Like the kid that was a teacher's pet and then joined theatre. They put us into groups of three or four to come up with a conflict and a solution. Oh, and I forgot to mention. Nothing necessarily against the eat your kimchi people, but it's obvious they're eating up the whole foreigner = celebrity thing here. From an outside point of view, at least. So guess who's on my bus. I hear two people that are doing most of the talking behind me and then I hear blah blah blah Simon and blah blah blah Martina. They turn out to be speakers there. But, you know, good for them. They found their niche. So, Simon was a helper or whatever for my set of Bucheon/Paju people. I did sort of find out where to get a tattoo. He gave me a number to call because it's illegal to give people tattoos here if you don't have a license or whatever. So I have to call and try to get this guy to tell me where he is. In other words, it's some kind of underground hush hush thing, so I can't just look it up online and get a tattoo. I would have to call the tattoo guy and get his whereabouts first. Anyway, my group of three took a feminist standpoint and I would just like to say our topic had very little to do with me. The other girl in our group mentioned a gender situation and I said something related and then the guy (Mike, maybe) was like 'Yeah, and this... (other gender scenerio)' So we did our topic on that. Particularly on the situation of going out for dinner and drinking with your school. She said when the women left she had to leave. I said it depends though because my principal likes that I can drink beer instead of looking down on me for it. And the dude said the party totally changed when the women left. Hopefully that paints a picture.

After all that they put us in pairs with different people and told us to prepare a 10 minute lesson plan that would represent an entire class lesson. The girl they put me with right away said to me let's just meet 20 minutes or so before the class (instead of actually preparing). Then she picked a topic at random and was like 'how about this?' In hindsight I should've told her that I would pick it out if she didn't want to worry about it, but she seemed so sure of herself I went with it. Not that I have to lead, but I usually like to have an active part in group assignments. I just like to have my opinion in there and then work as a team. In this situation, I was thinking, alright cool let's do this a different way. On the other hand, I also refuse to do all the work and then the other person doesn't do anything but looks good anyway because you did all the work. So that had a part in it too.

After all the classes were over with, that night I decided to sit out and write, but before I could even get started this guy, Elisia, came up to me and said I had good style, which is absolutely ridiculous. But it worked to distract me, so we just sat out and had beers and talked about his obsession with women. Most people at this point are working on their presentations. I have no idea what my partner is doing. I never saw her. The next day I threw together a PPT and went to her room like she said. Knocked. Waited a sec and then started to walk away. Then she came out and was like 'Hey, I'm taking a nap so I'll just see you in class.' Just nonchalantly as if to prove how little it meant to her (because she was too cool for that, from what I gathered). Then she said we should just do this one snowball game that the kimchi people had introduced and I was like, 'For 10 minutes?' a bit incredulously. I didn't give a shit at that point. I was totally ready to throw her under the bus, which I kind of did. Our presentation sucked and they stopped us after about 5 minutes of the stupid game (I had done my PPT at the beg.) and I just sat down and left her to defend herself. Then she sat down and eventually moved to the seat next to me and began to try to talk to me but I ignored her or kept it short if we were forced to talk. Maybe she sensed that I let her take the heat, and if so she was put out by it (which is even more hillarious). On top of that, when we all got off at Songnae (after orientation) I was standing outside the station with Fernando and another guy Kevin and she came up and was saying whatever but I just avoided eye contact and waited for her to leave. Kevin asked if I didn't like her and I said she was rude.

Back to orientation. I checked the computers a couple of times (actually a few times) throughout the day and night to see if you responded to my no AIM email. Like that first night when at some point Elisia and I split up to our rooms to pee and met back downstairs. I started writing for a bit. I was working on my story, but I think another project would've been better with all the people around. Then the dude came back down and we hung out til about 12. He asked if I would sit by him in the auditorium the next day and I said ok. When I went to my room I put the keychain in the wall holder that powers the lights (including the bathroom) and they all came on while my roommate was sleeping. I felt like a jerk but I just tried to hurry instead of searching around to turn the lights off. The next day I went to the auditorium and looked for Elisia instead of sitting in the first seat I saw like usual. As I was getting to him, though, I noticed the seat was already taken and told him thanks for saving me a seat as I walked by. Like in a 'see, this is why I don't get involved with you fickle bitches.' I could definitely take it or leave it, though. I guess he made room for me after that and text me that I had a seat, but my phone was charging in the room. I've forgotten already the order of all of the classes. Like, I know we had another presentation in the auditorium. It was the one on Korean culture that I was already sent to by my school. Elisia sat in front of me and then tried to bs with me about chicks again, but I wasn't in the mood. I should have never gone along with it in the first place really. I like to talk about that kind of stuff sometimes, but then you'll get stuck talking to those people that only want to talk about that. Like talking with people about drugs. The night before I was writing so he was telling me that he paints and what he paints, etc. and that's what lead into it. It sucks because I want him to paint something for me, but I think he wants me to hang out at his house while he does and I don't want to do that.

Anyway, I met some people at orientation and hung out with them that last night. First they made everyone meet in the auditorium to have a dance competition and to play some really cheesy ice breaker games. The last one was to form an inner and outer circle, inner people facing the outer and to shake hands saying 'How are you,' 'Nice to meet you,' then pat shoulders and say, 'I love you, I love you,' then hold hands and dosey-doe type thing, then wave and say 'Bye bye bye' and rotate to the next person. I thought this was awesome and hilarious. Afterwards I went back out to write and got the great idea to do shotguns, but the dude was trying to hook up with some Korean chicks, so I was just going to do them by myself but Fernando called me over. I mentioned that I thought my roommate was gone because I hadn't seen her and all her stuff was gone and the Welshman, Graham, said she must be the girl that had malaria. So I had the room to myself but the only good thing about it was I got to steal her covers and pillows, although I was still paranoid that she was going to come back and I would be caught doing so. So we all just hung around in the walkway and drank and I made Graham, Fernando and Mike do a shot gun with me. Mike had been playing drinking games upstairs so he ended up barfing up the beer. After a while Fernando went to go to the bathroom and never came back and that was about the time everything was dying down anyway, so we all went to bed.

The next day everyone met again in the auditorium for closing. They made us sing again, which was really annoying. We got on our buses and Fernando had saved me a seat. So we talked for a while until the first stop cleared away some people and we could separate and take naps. When we got back to Songnae he said he was going to Costco and I went with him to see how it was. I just wanted ranch, but they didn't really have it. I can't decide if I want a membership or not. Oh, and before Costco he showed me where the post office was near Songnae and I mailed the packages to you guys and my sister. That was on the 1st and they're still not there !!!

ps. In retrospect, the high school tone to my blog makes it even funnier to me. In addition ... well, it was just a shitty blog, but I wrote about it too late after orientation :( sorry