OK, photos first. The first one is of an old shopkeeper catching a catnap. That labrat on the Korean treadmill is yes, me, your beloved author. The parking deck shot, far from being a work of any artistic merit, is a curiosity I came across while on my Crusade For The Last Shower Curtain. I don't think the Koreans are being sexist, because I've never seen a parking lot like this ever before. It must be some sort of cultural anomaly or throwback to a different time in Korea's history. Wierd. The flowers are, well, flowers. Yes, things grow here, bidding their time until mankind succeeds in eradicating itself. That guy on the ground in Nampo-dong is one of the two homeless people I've seen in this part of town. He drags himself around with his one good arm, pushing a basket with his head and asking for spare change. The guy with his hand in my camera is Steve, one of the adult ESS teachers, at a going away party for a co-worker.

I walked up the mountain today and traversed the sharp ridge to the opposite peak. Fall has come early to Busan and the dry, cool breeze and blue sky reminded me of home as I walked up to the rocky ridge. Grasshoppers were jumping all around me, some of them in the act of copulation while they leaped among the rocks. Whoa, I thought. That's got to be hard. Humping and jumping. Humping and jumping. With every footstep the stupid phrase popped into my head. Humping and jumping.

At the other end of the mountain stood a steel grove of radio antennas and weather vanes. Korean hikers rested and chatted over handfuls of Mandu Anju, dried fish snacks. Ugh. Whatever happened to gorp? I drank from my water bottle and climbed around on the rocks. I photographed a hiker sitting on a boulder overlooking Nampo-dong. Strangely, he is pointing to where I work with his hiking pole.



I think I have come to love all of my classes. The 3B and 4B classes still give me problems from time to time, likewise the 'thugs' of 5-6P. However, even on their worst days I can quiet them down and cram in ten minutes of learning here and there.

I sort of sympathize with the children: They're going to be working their little butts off in school one way or the other twelve hours a day six days a week until their 24...And then they'll get a job! Phew! Forgive me for sympathizing with their attempts to squeeze their childhood into the cracks in their busy schedule. I'm greatful they give me any attention at all.

My classes are like the ocean: Calm one day, a tempest the next, and just as unpredictable.

I'd say the majority of the kids are 'good.' In each of the bad classes there are only one, maybe two miscreants. However,it is these bad apples that can set the whole barrel to rotting. In my 3B, for example, there is an uncontrolled nuclear reaction named Min-gyoo with crazy hair and a penchant for obnoxious toys. He is stylishly late every day, challenging me with his blank, defiant gaze as he skips to his seat in the back. He starts talking the minute he reaches his chair as if I didn't exist. From his eyre in the back of the room he is yells, throws things and kicks the chairs so hard he periodically knocks himself onto the floor, laughing and screaming and sending the class into an uproar. When I go to discipline him, the class takes the sudden dirth of administration to drift into anarchy themselves. By the time that I've pacified Min-gyoo the rest of the class has picked up where he left off.

On the days that Min-gyoo is sick or absent, 3B is like a sunny day at the beach. In 4B, 5-6P and 5A there are similar children. To remove them is to defuse a bomb of sorts. With my benevolent dictatorship is not preoccupied quashing a rebellion, learning actually takes place.

Today I played a game with the 6As. That's about all you can do with twenty children who speak a totaly different language. The lesson for the day focused on the difference between the phrases 'a few,' 'a lot' and 'a little.' A child from each team took to the blackboard, chalk in hand. When the class was sufficiently quiet, I would say 'not many cars' and the students would have to craft a sentence using the pre-requisite phrase as well as draw the objects in their proportionate amount. So if I said 'many stars' they had to write 'there are a lot of stars' and draw two or three stars. First child to finish and correctly speak the sentence got a point.

This is where learning English can be funny as hell. At one point I said 'not much Coke,' knowing the children had been properly brainwashed by corporate America to know exactly what Coke was. What I didn't count on was their inability to spell the word 'Coke.' The girl's team, in their haste, wrote:

"There is a little Cock."

I almost died of laughter, especially when they attempted to draw 'a little cock.' I gave them an extra point for brightening their teacher's day and moved on with the lesson.

The Busan International Film Festival has arrived and Nampo-dong is ground-zero. For the next ten days my tiny slice of Busan will be packed with movie buffs, movie stars and yes, the movies they came to see. But now Mr. Lee says the school is closing and I have to go home, so I'll write more about PIFF later on this weekend. Please enjoy the photographs and drop me a line should the urge strike you. Peace. --Notes