Answers Will Vary

(I'll do it anyway, so it makes no difference)

March is going away, making way for another month. But April isn't the rainy season here, that starts in July, and carries the much more sinister-sounding title of 'Monsoon Season'. That's old news, though; shit that was happening when I got here last summer. Now Spring is back, and the air conditioners are coming on already.

But where's all the green?

Well, St. Paddy's day was this weekend, if you'll excuse the cheap colour gag. Friday me and Ben grabbed a few drinks around Guro. We saw some sights typical of Korea. Strange murals that place Courtney Love next to Gandhi. Digital signs that show the ever-high air pollution rates in Seoul. One of the bars we went to was named JSA, after a famous Korean movie about soldiers being killed along the border with North Korea. I know when I think about death on the North Korean border, I think 'par-tay!'

Incidentally, as you can see from the sign here, Koreans truly celebrate Donk(e)ys for their chicken frying abilities. Or maybe the chicken is Donkey flavoured. Regardless, this is not the first Korean chicken joint I've seen with some variation of the word 'donkey' in its name.

Me and Cahill had plans Saturday to go to this big all-you-can eat and drink Irish party. However, like many plans left up to us retards for execution, they fell by the wayside. An original group of many friends planning to go dwindled to just us, so we decided to go to Hongdae instead.

Even there, we never had anything even as Irish as a pint of Guinness. We did, however, have a good time, between watching strange Koreans dance strangely and claw machines and bats and guns and tanks full of giant crabs and the like. See, there's this place we found in Hongdae with a batting cage and BB-gun firing range. Few things appeal more to an inebriated male than shooting a gun and hitting stuff with a bat.

Of course, then there's the ongoing struggle with the claw machines. I hardly pass them now without putting in a bit of change and trying for a lighter. This weekend, Cahill managed to score a pig lighter. It fires two flames - one from each nostril of its piggy little nose.

One of the things I like about going to Hongdae to is that Hongdae (or Hongik University) is the big art university in Korea. The area around it is one of the few places around here that feels truly artistic, or counter-cultural. In a city of ten million people, there are a surprising few that seem interested in going against the grain.

But around Hongdae, you can kinda feel the art. There's (decent) graffiti around. Stencils are pretty popular (even if the most common one is the hateful 'Fuck Japs' that some dickhead spread around). Maybe it's no mistake that one of the biggest foreign communities formed around here. Maybe these forward-thinking paint-hippies can accept us scary foreigners a little more comfortably. Whatever the cause, the bars and people are plentiful, and insofar as a Saturday night goes, I guess the paint is colourful icing on the cake.

And speaking of colour, it's been a while since I shared the some images from my colourful little characters known loosely as 'students'.

My former Kindergarten class has been split into two, and I teach both of them, and I work a lot more than I used to but the kids have grown a lot, and even when they're bad, they're more mature, and respect me a lot more. Their command of English is also impressive, considering they knew practically none when I met them in June. They speak full sentences now. It's kind of rewarding, since I realize that they learned a lot of that from me.

Even Kevin, who's in the 'less smart' class said of the awful gruel they were fed as a snack, "Peter, the taste is bad." I took his word for it. From the texture and smell, I judged that what they were eating consisted of the innards of an egg salad sandwich blended with sour milk.

Of course, I can't bring up my students so proudly without having a little fun at the expense of their limited English knowledge. Up first, I've got an older kid, whom I think was trying to tell me that there were too many people on the sidewalk to ride his bike quickly. However, that came out as "humanity is narrow". Or maybe he's just a 10 year-old philosopher-in-training.

Then I've got the infamous Kindergartener Gaby. The other day, the kids were doing this thing where they have to write a sentence. It was beyond their ability, so I was helping them on the board. Then Gaby screams "Teacher, I'm done!" I look at his book, and instead of the intended "The cat sat on the mat" he has...


"Answers will vary."

I break down laughing. Apparently, there's an answer key in the back of the book, and it took my clever-but-lazy student all but a few minutes to figure that out. He copied this, and having no idea what it meant, figured it was the right answer. In the end, we lost about five minutes of class time 'cause I really couldn't speak. The kids asked "Teacher is crying?" and between gasps, I said "No... laughing... that's the... funniest... ohmygod..."

It's a good thing these kids are so funny, it helps a lot with the frustrating moments.