Today my students made family trees. Best teaching moment on the island so far: one of the students asked me where she could draw her “big daddy”?
About an hour ago, an old woman at a cafe tried to force-feed me maekkali, or rice wine. She was so adamant about this that she poured it into my tea, to the embarrassment of both myself and the cafe owner.
I don’t know if this wrinkly person was flirting with me, or trying to be friendly, or just really drunk, but she was mixing her English with Korean and although the cafe owner’s girlfriend was translating and claimed I was deemed a “handsome Hungarian”, I also caught the old woman saying “monkey.” It was strange.
Also, the cafe is selling their piano. I said this wouldn’t come between us, but if I’m being honest, that was the cafe’s main selling point. Oh well.
My to-do list looks something like this right now:
1. Reading
2. Writing
3. Buy a (not going to spoil the surprise if it actually happens)
4. (not going to spoil this one either)
5. Feed Turtles
6. Go to the Gym
7. Piano
8. Make More Worksheets
9. (already spoiled this one to too many people)
10. Selling Stuff
11. Learn Korean
12. Clean Off My Bed
13. Clean Off My Couch
14. Clean Out My Refrigerator
15. Shave
16. Talk to the Newspaper
17. University
18. And so on.
My boss came into work today wearing a fancy purple sweater. I told him he “looked nice” in a way that let him know what I really was saying was “why can’t I bring in my pink handbag to work?”
His response: “Thank you for the compliment Aaron. My wife made it for me.”
So maybe my next move is to come in with pink pajama bottoms and say that my mother knitted them and shipped them in from New York. Or one of my co-workers. Or one of the women who work at the barber shops.
Speaking of which, I haven’t talked about the “barber shops” in a while. They confuse me. I don’t understand where the supply is or the demand. But more importantly, do any of them function as actual barber shops during the day? I wonder if there’s a certain time of the night when the barber shops become “barber shops”, or if it’s a flexible transition. I’d like to go to a barber shop one night and see if it transforms. Maybe you’re getting your hair cut and then at around 10:30 they stop cutting your hair and start giving you a lap dance. There’s a few ways to find out.
Also, if I had an infinite amount of money, I would set up a fake “barber shop” and have people come in at 1 am looking for women, and it would just be me standing there with smock and scissors, smiling and asking them if they’d like a trimming, and some discount hair gel.
You can see Jupiter in the night sky right now.
This weekend was the fish festival. I thought it was a “Phish” festival until I was not so painfully reminded that that band has split up and wouldn’t be doing any reunions on Jeju. Here are some pictures:
Here lies the remains of eight crabs who were already dead when we found them on our plate. Here’s a closer look, with a rotting apple core for good measure:
There was also some big money:
And some pretty festival sunset pictures:
Oh, and the frisbee? We’ll get to that in a later post.
Culture Time 