It's Tuesday and I have the entire day off.

Well, sort of. I still have to waste away in front of a computer screen for 8 straight hours. I can feel the energy leak from my fingertips, down my keyboard and die a slow, painful death on the floor beneath my desk. It's exam time and I'm staring listlessly at a blue and white horizon that will every once in a while dazzle me with something gossipy. I am a middle-aged, middle-American, middle-class woman who lives vicariously through cheesy TV romance and talks about K-Pop and the Hills with friends over dinner. What the hell have I become?! An illiterate jackass who revels in other people's drama, while too dumb or skittish to face my own? This is a silly existence. Waiting to breathe, waiting for friends, waiting for phone calls, waiting for afternoon trysts, waiting for paperwork, waiting for fucking anything. Anything but this.

"I see no difference between romance and solitude." -CK

On a manlier note, I'm eagerly awaiting football season to start again. I've been spending a lot of my idle thoughts on how the Giants are going to be this year. It seems like so much has changed; the roster looks completely different and a hell of a lot younger. Burress, gone. Toomer, gone. R. W. McQuarters, gone. Ward, Gone. Our new draft picks look promising, but then again, all of them do during training camp. Our secondary really has something to prove along with our wide-outs. We'll see how preseason looks.

Sometimes I forget that I speak English. This might be because this ability atrophies more and more the less and less I use it. It's always really gratifying when I can sit next to another English teacher at lunch time and rattle off all the things I did during the weekend so effortlessly to remind my Korean teachers that I am capable of producing sentences with more than three words in them--sort of like this one--that I am capable of having an intelligent conversation and that I have thoughts and emotions that cannot be sufficed with: "How are you?" "I'm fine, thank you. And you?" This was one of the great things about my dad coming down. Being able to speak with him at a comfortable meter, with a comfortable vocabulary, with familiar conversation topics. Talking about streets and businesses back home. Talking about football. Talking about family members and other relevant things to my life. Because of teaching EFL, I don't theoretically know two languages, but in practice I do: simple English (mainly consisting of simple vocabulary, sentence fragments and buzzwording) and conversational English (similar to this).

For example, yesterday in class, we watched a few music videos, Michael Jackson's "Bad" and Weird Al Yankovic's "Fat." I asked them to think about the similarities and differences in the two videos. I explained what a parody was by saying, "This video makes that video a joke." Of course, in concert with lots of gesturing. There's a Korean cognate for the English word "same" which is "same same." I initially said, while making eye-contact with the Korean English teacher as to prompt subsequent translation, "I want you to think about the similarities and differences between these two videos." (It was probably phrased simpler than this, but this is the gist of what I said.) And then, after a moment of silence, I said, "Ms. ____, could you help me explain this?" Blank response. So I eventually said exactly this, with gestures: "Think...(points)...ego, ego ('this, this' in Korean)...same same and not same same." Finally, after that explanation, the teacher and the students simultaneously knew what I want asking. Utterly exhausting. But, this is the language I use in class, otherwise, the students don't understand, lose interest and start talking. Then, I yell, "jo yong hi hae" (Korean for "stop talking") and slam a bamboo on the desk and the cycle repeats itself. The consensus among foreign teachers is that I work at the roughest school in the city and sadly, I believe it. There are no guns or knives, but frequently there are fights and the boys are almost completely apathetic to anything I have to say. But frankly, I don't blame them. They go to school from 8am-10pm, recessing only for meals and they receive no grade in my class and are tested on none of its contents. I would sleep and goof off too if I were under the same conditions.

On a brighter note, like I mentioned before, my dad came to visit me for the past week and a half. It was great to see family after a seven-month drought and be had a really good time. My plan was to take him all over the country, and I sort of succeeded, but my itinerary was undermined by the elements. It rain for the last four days or so that he was here. This was no light drizzle. I've never seen cats or dogs this big. We went to Busan (which is on the southeast side of the country and I affectionately liken it to San Francisco), spent about $70 roundtrip for transport, arrived the first night without a hitch and the next morning were greeted with copious gallons of rain. Maybe a torrent would be more succinct and accurate. My umbrella inverted and broke and I slipped and fell four times. This, however, is not a point of shame because my dad fell once. After a 45 minute cab ride, we made it to this temple on the beach, which even with the rain was absolutely gorgeous. I slipped twice there. I blame my shoes. But the rest of my dad's visit was great. We hiked up a mountain near my house; we went to the beach and the annual Mud Festival in my town; he met my girlfriend; I introduced him to all kinds of interesting foods (including bbanddaegi which are essentially fried silk worm larvae). We had a great time and I have no complaints. I'll add pictures to this when I get home. Cheers.