Dead Leaves on the Dirty Ground

Fall is here now, you can feel it in the air. Everything's crisper (relatively speaking, given that air that's blue with smog can only be so 'crisp') and most days require a sweater now. It's almost time for me to figure out how the mysterious contraption on my wall can be adjusted to generate heat.

The leaves are even falling off the trees here. Even though I know it sounds like whiny homesick bullshit, but it's just not the same. The leaves don't turn yellow then red then golden brown on the branch. You don't see the spattered mosaics between the trees. The trees here are too eager to get naked - the leaves just drop and rot with little warning or fanfare.

Curiously, at the same time, the once-inconspicuous tree across from my apartment now bears fruit - literally. I think they might be oranges. I might try and get up to grab one just to see.

The week has been nice. The weekend was videogames with Ben and bars and some Korean barkeep saying I 'look like Orando Broom'. Somehow on my way home I found a pair of boxing gloves on the sidewalk. I did what anyone would - stole them and took them home for no good reason.

Speaking of wandering the streets at night, I never grow tired of how the night-time looks here. The electro-luminance of signs and neon and streets and cars. It's never fully dark here - there's always the glow of artificiality. There's a charm to it, the colourblind nightmare of garish flash at night. I'm sure there will be times when I'll ache for the silence of empty streets and trees and stars, but for now the novelty is still pretty fresh.

I'm just about on the eve of losing another friend and coworker, in that Ben's contract expires in about a week, and he's leaving to do travel then go back to Canada then come back to Korea much like Mike. That's gonna change the dynamic of daily living here in Korea, but if change wasn't what I wanted I wouldn't have come to Korea.

However, in the same breath, my former neighbour Cahill is coming to teach in about a week as well. That'll likely change the dynamic - plus it'll be good to see someone from home for the first time in over four months.

Speaking of faces I haven't seen in a while, Dan, the guy I replaced at work has returned to replace Ben. Dan's been teaching at the school for about 5 years now, so he's pretty well established, both with the coworkers and the students. He was surely a tough act to follow, but I've done well in my short time there.

When Clara (from work) was making up cute little penguin nametags for my students' lockers, I jokingly requested one. She made one up, and it's all kinds of awesome. It even overshadows the makeshift one I made from tape and a strange sticker one of the kids gave me.

I managed to snap a picture today that pretty much sums up the state of young students in Korea. At the music school across the hall from work, I saw a boy of about 10, still wearing his TaeKwonDo uniform, practically passed out from exhaustion at the piano. The amount of extra curricular schooling in this country is intense. Between all the extra schools they go to after school, it's not uncommon for kids of 13 or younger to be at school from about 9 in the morning to 11 or 12 at night. It's all part of some the heaviest college entrance competition in the world. It's actually illegal to hire private home tutors here, as it's said to give an unfair advantage.

Speaking of unfair advantages, I picked which toothpaste to purchase this week based primarily on the hilarious English mistake on the label.



I'm not exactly Calculus' biggest fan or anything, but I wouldn't wage a campaign against it or anything.