Halloweird

(click to see the stranger's sofa I love so dearly)

The week's been great. The weekend was danergously close to being a do-nothing, but then at the last moment, me and Ben grabbed a few drinks and played video games and then Trevor joined us and we stole a sofa.

See, in general Koreans don't recycle furniture. They often replace it, but typically just put the relatively new old stuff on the sidewalk for the trashman. It's pretty standard fare for us shameless Weigooks (Korean for foriegner) to obscond with said perfectly-fine furniture. Knowing this, and knowing that my apartment was an underfurnished paradise of spartanism with but one actual chair, I've kept my eyes peeled for any discarded chesterfeilds. Early Saturday I happened on just such a pile of previously-loved furniture.

Later that night, the three of us (Moi, Ben, et Trevor) just happened to be walking by the very same collection, and I said 'feel like carrying a sofa for about 10 minutes?' and who in their right mind would say no, right?

Trying to slide a large sofa into a small apartment with little room to spare is a challenge under the best of conditions. At 2 in the morning with a night of drinking under your belt, it's really no easier. And certainly no quiter. But I'm pleased with the results. Intensely so. This sofa has changed my place from a mid-sized bedroom into a tiny apartment, and it makes me significatly happier to be here.

Speaking of being happy here, this week was Halloween - at the school, at least. See, the country as a whole doesn't celebrate it, but as an expensive private English school, we apparently try to immerse the kids in occidental culture. Of course, in the interest of getting everything western a little wrong, the school scheduled the 30th as Halloween and I was caught unawares.

I love dressing up for Halloween, but given 15 minutes to make a costume, I ran to the store and bought a garbage can. With some tape and scissors and stolen stationary, I added an eyehole and antannae for the world's crappiest Halloween costume. The kids liked it, but most called me garbage-can-teacher in either Korean or English. At least I learned the Korean word for garbage can.

It was adorable to see them in costume though, even if most of them were princesses, superheros or Snow White. Alex (the real bad kid whom I mind less lately) was Peter Pan. With a knife. That was probably the coolest, I must begrudgingly admit. Kevin's got a great Devil pose, though.

Outside of work, life's fine and dandy. It's funny, when I take pictures now I'm a lot more interested in capturing the humanity of this place than the scenery and such. Mind you, the art and achitecture and old and new are all still facitating, I'm just seeing ineteresting things that I didn't neccesarily notice before.

The subway, for instance, is a real bastion of most everything that is Korean. Between the stares and the homeless and the pushing and shoving and the loud and slient old and new and drunk and people selling everything imaginable everywhere imaginable; the underground is Seoul at its Seoulest. I'm becoming a lot less camera shy, too. Or camera-use shy that is. Where I once thought it rude to take out a camera and snap pictures of people just trying to live their life and mind their own business, now I realize that cameras are a way of life here. As is people not minding their own business. Speaking of which, I'm trying to start a series of cameraphone pictures that fall under the category of "Koreans who won't stop staring at me"

This week, I close with this poster full of Korean and shady photos of scantily-clad Koreans. It's of interest largely because of the only English words on it. The 'no touch' is kinda confusing. Or maybe the opposite of confusing, but shady, at the very least. The adopted Konglish word 'event' can apparently also mean some shady things in Korea as well.


The poster on its own hardly seems funny enough though, so I tossed in a truckload of pigs for the hell of it. They're actually piggy banks, and they're frighteningly prolific around here. Hence the truck filled with them.