I´ve traveled all over the states, and nothing really compares to NYC. It´s its own planet in the center of its universe. It glimmers with an unmentionable eccentricity while welcoming with a refreshing familiarity. People congregate from the world over, pulled closer by rumours and reputations of elegance, the promises, the hype, of a city worth the time, worth the name. New York is where all the world´s cultures overlap, intertwine, compliment and contrast. It is the crossroads of all civilizations, its the capitol city of Earth.
Although I didn´t have enough time or money to experience the city the ways its meant to be experienced, I did manage to walk for two days straight on blistered feet, seeing most of the major sights before flying to Reykjavik. It is a beautiful gritty city, where the people are genuinely friendly and helpful, while simultaneously crude and unapologetic. NYC is the best place to people watch. I saw the most comical of characters and eavesdropped on the most hilarious of conversations, while sitting in parks, and feelings the subterranean rumbling of passing trains beneath my feet. It is an intoxication city, and I am awaiting my next visit.
While NYC is at the center, Iceland is the lost planet, on the outskirts of existence, the little dwarf planet knocked out of the gravitation pull of its cosmos, adrift in a cold silent ocean, isolated, mysterious, a vestige of a time long gone.
I feel like a need a few more days to properly write about Iceland, absorb some more of its charm, let it sink into my skin. Here are some pictures for now.They aren´t uploading…oh well. I´m going on a two day road trip tomorrow, so I hope to rack up a collection of pictures to post in a few days.
I just finished watching the last episode of the last season of The Wire and I’m feeling rather lost–Now, how am I going to occupy my time? I haven’t been that connected to anything on television since Arrested Development. Maybe I’ll actually have to be productive for a little while.
I’m still having some problems with the website. I can’t post my own pictures, unfortunately. These videos and links will have to do for now.
My sister sent me this trailer. Maybe its because I’m still all too infatuated with Japan, or maybe it’s my film-snobbery, but whatever the reason, this trailer gave me chills…
I realize that I haven’t posted anything for quite some time. I’m a working man now, and I’ve still got to get settled into the flow of things around my workplace. I need to get my bearings still and make more time for writing and updating people back home.
To catch everyone up on what I’ve been doing with myself;
I teach very small classes of extremely intelligent 7-10 year olds for the first three hours of every workday. My favourite class has four students, one girl with a better vocabulary than most Canadian adults, another girl who I have personally molded into a confident and capable speaker in only three weeks, an ingenious and devilish 7-year-old who tries to trick me into buying him candy with almost Kantian philosophical poise, and another boy who was labeled a “trouble-child” in every other class he enters, but gives me no trouble at all because I was a hellion when I was his age and I know how to reason with his kind.
In the late afternoon I teach early teenagers, and just like teenagers everywhere, they are a handful. Little kids are so much easier to motivate. They want to learn, they are competitive and want to obliterate their fellow classmates and ridicule them mercilessly. All you have to do is mention BIO (assorted chewy fruit candies) and they straighten up in their chairs the their eyes widen, ready, in fully attention. However, the older students just want to fix their bangs and endlessly whisper gossip in their native tongue. I’ve finally gotten through with them, it just took some time.
In the evening, I teach some highschool students who are interested in reading English novels. Before I came they worked their way through several of the Harry Potter books, and currently I’m teaching them Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays with Morrie. The previous teaching taught them simply by drilling them; “Who did this at what time?,” and close to thirty other questions, all of which I think were uselessly sterile. I’m working on making these kids understand what they are reading, and not just regurgitate the direct words from the novels. It’s really challenging, especially since the Korean education system stifles thought, opinion-making and individuality. I’m starting to sway some of the kids. It’s slow-going, but when one of the kids gets the meaning of some obscure passage I can barely contain my excitement.
I’ve developed a pretty good teaching-alter-ego. I try to balance somewhere between cool, funny, attentive, understanding, yet at the same time, demanding. I’m also allowed to yell at students and send them from my classroom, which I’ve only had to do twice in three weeks. One boy was cheating for his vocabulary test and then murmured Korean insults at me when I caught him, and another girl was trying to anger me by obstinately refusing to answer the assigned questions. You know how psychologists who have studied prison guards or other authoritarian jobs have concluded that power can change people and make the average compassionate person drunk on the authority of their position, making them live up to the roles of a heartless and condemning goon; Well casting a child from your room gives you a similar cold chill of excitement, not that I’m getting power-drunk on yelling at 14-year-olds, but I definitely can see how “absolute power corrupts absolutely,” so to speak. I guess I will keep this in check…but it is really fun.
I went to Seoul last weekend for Lunar New Years.
I will explain my trip in a few details;
Downed a few bottles of raspberry wine on the bullet train from Gwangju to Seoul at 10:30.
Stayed up until dawn dancing with an eccentric group of holligans.
Sang at the top of my lungs with a room full of foreign teachers.
Ate burritos, pizza, hamburgers, and fish n’chips.
Made the acquaintances of a delightful Korean girl named Jungsu.
Spent too much money from my first paycheck.
Graded homework the whole train ride home.
It was a great time, and the company was amazing. My friend Emily truly helped my enterage out by giving us free rein of her spare room and touring us around town. She’s coming down in two weeks and I hope to help repay the favour.
That pretty much sums things up. Teaching all day, five days a week, and then dancing the weekends away. It’s a pretty good life.
Before I get to the best of the bests, here is the first installment of a little project Brad and I have been tinkering with, called Soju Socials.
Soju is Korea’s most famous contribution to the world of alcohol. It is a pillar of Korean culture and can be said that it is the cause and solution to all of Korea’s problems.
Now, without further ado, The Best Music Videos, Albums and Songs of 2008.
It’s strange how without warning one day tucks into another like tattered yellow-pages; how an entire week can so easily slip through one’s grasp like loose grains of sand; how another month can crawl across the cold terrain to reveal its ugly grey head.How exactly does this happen?Maybe its because I’ve been waiting for a visa confirmation with no set time-frame as reference.Patiently, I always thought to myself with optimism, tomorrow will be the day that I get the call, get the email, get the telegram, smoke-signal, carrier-pigeon, bat-signal, or any form of communication that grants me the peace of mind to focus on something else but the waiting; to end my expanse of listlessness; give me the desire to get outside and explore. For almost two months, each day passed the same as before, until weeks and months had evaded my recognition and escaped appreciation—wasted and worthless.
I realize, in the grand scheme of things, a day or two, some overlooked weeks, or even a few months is absolutely nothing, but at the same time, I can’t help but look at how I was for the first four months of travelling, and feel rather disheartened.While travelling, I felt it painfully hard to stand still in one place for more than five days—a week stuck anywhere was unacceptable, and a month was never even a remote consideration.I did something productive every single day—museums, temples, beaches, forests, parks, mountains, rivers, markets, festivals, anything that kept me moving, thinking, energetic and excited.I walked places without direction, got lost, found little hidden corners and crevices of cities forgotten by the eager gaze of time; I made friends with passer-bys and was invited into strange situations, to witness someone’s daily life, maybe a family’s reality, and revelled at what I before never knew existed.In comparison, I can’t help but feel these last two months were morally disappointing and unfulfilling, and right now, as I write this, I also think that waiting here in Korea has temporarily cheapened, if not sullied, the great times I had while on the road.It would be different if I had come home right after Singapore, but truthfully, I didn’t yet feel ready.If I had the resources, I would have kept going at full-force.The travel wasn’t always easy, and in my mind I can recall the hot, damp claustrophobia of over-packed bus-rides that made my skin crawl, but I always knew that the bus had an end destination, and I never felt fatigued enough to quit my wanderings.I came to Korea because I ran out of money, not will power, and I stayed because of my stubbornness—I needed to defeat Korea’s archaic immigration policies.What started as a moral crusade, soon turned into a long, drawn-out, bureaucratic mess, and my zeal got tangled up in red tape and my need for frugality.
Enough melodrama.The day I officially start teaching is January 5th.I could have started earlier, but to show my director’s good nature, she informed me that if I started earlier I would be shafted out of a paid vacation.Seeing how I only get two in a year, I figured it be best to wait a little while longer (Dun* Dun* Dun*) and start instead, in early January.Hot damn.
I meant to mention in the previous post, I’m no longer in Taiwan. I’m in South Korea.
Now that that’s out of the way, let me explain what I’ve done with myself for the last few days. Sunday I tried to go to Taipei in the middle of a raging typhoon (yes, another typhoon). All of the buses were cancelled so I went back to Jessica’s and she let me stay there another night. She was a very patient and hospitable host.
The typhoon was pretty wild. My taxi ride was a harrowing adventure. I saw huge sheets of metal gliding through the air like plastic bags in an updraft. Trees were falling over everywhere I looked, and despite the obvious peril, many people were still riding their scooters around town doing errands. The next day it rained for hours, but the winds had stopped. When I left Jessica’s, to my surprise, the city was already mostly cleaned up. I’m truly amazed at how comfortable the Taiwanese are with the destruction of a typhoon. Their attitude is, more or less, well typhoons happen, so stop complaining and clean up the mess. Only a few hours after the raging winds tore through the city, the people of Taichung had cleaned up almost all evidence of a typhoon (except for a few roofs and fences twisted, crushed or toppled).
I stayed in Taipei for two nights. I met a cool French Canadian at my hostel. We stayed up one of the nights drinking every kind of beer we could buy at the next-door 7-11, talking movies and music. We also explored Shilin marker, considered to be Taiwan’s best night market. I also explored a few temples and walked around Taipei until my feet bled.
Wednesday, I flew to Seoul (Incheon), and found my hostel in old Seoul. Its a great hostel, a little expensive, but still a good home base to explore the city. My Japanese dorm roommate is cycling across Asia, a pretty impressive vision, because I just ventured to all of the places he wants to go, and I did them by bus, taxi, car, boat and train, but definitely not bicycle. He is in for a world of pain once he gets to Laos. Those mountains are going to be hard as hell. We checked out the main tourist spots in Seoul, and tried to avoid the droves of Korean students. The worst of which took place in Gyeongbokgung Palace, where thousands of students of all ages rushed in and out of every building, nook and cranny. It made it difficult to get pictures without these little snot-nosed devils ruining my shots. The kids here are pretty cute though. They all have cell phones. I don’t have a cell phone, but these kids do.
Today I’ve been trying to find a job and get a police check. So far so good. I will have to wait until Monday to get anything else done because it is holiday time in Korea.
Seoul is a fun place. I’m liking it here so far. I’ve figured out the name of a cheap meal. I pronounce it Bi Bean Pap. It’s like a Korean Jambalai. It is really cheap and filling. I think this is the key to going to an expensive place like Korea, when you are a backpacker, such as myself…find a local cheap staple, learn its local name and then eat it one, two or three times a day. It will eventually get boring, but as long as its filling, you wont go hungry and waste away.
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On another note….
Here is the music that gets me through oppressively hot and bumpy bus rides or long and lonely nights…
Bon Iver – Skinny Love
Jose Gonzales – Teardrop
Jimmy Cliff – The Harder They Come
Skip James – Crow Jane
Santogold – Lights Out
Sigur Ros – Saeglopur
Chad Vangaalen – Molten Light <– Very disturbing music video
The Cool Kids – Black Mags
Lykke Li – Dance Dance Dance
I hope next time I post I will be a teacher…wish me luck.
When I think about leaving tomorrow morning the saying, “You don’t know what you have until it’s gone,” keeps coming to mind. I have been bombarded with congratulations and well-wishing from all of my friends and family and I’m now beginning to fully comprehend how much I will miss you all. Thank you. Inevitably, I will change on my travels and those of you staying here and moving on with your busy lives will also change, but for now, I just want to say this; I hold all of you dear and you will be in my thoughts where ever I go. I’ve also realized there is an inadequacy of the English language to describe how I’m feeling. If I were to coin a term it would have to be “euphorasadness”,eu·phor’a’sadness- excited to go, but sorry to leave.
Anyways, enough melancholy, here’s some cool songs…
It was my dad’s birthday a little while ago, and I bought tickets to the see the Blue Jays play the Baltimore Orioles this afternoon. Surprise, surprise, the Jays lost 9-5. Nonetheless, it was a great time.
Tonight I visited Doug Haynes to help him record a song. In case you don’t know Doug, he’s my neighbour/oldest friend. He’s an awesome guy and a hella good musician. I think all my readers (the three of you out there) should listen to his new song and check out his other songs by clicking here. He’s also in a band tentatively called, Moby Dick and the Sinking Ships, with Scott Holt, Brendan Daw and Graeme Bishop.
