OK, photos first for all the Short Attention Spanericans.

These street dancers were gathered at the square in Yongdusan Park in the heart of Nampo-dong celebrating the harvest.







A group of monks put on a little show, too.



Love lives on in Busan.



While I was in Yongdusan, I couldn't help but watch the old men play GO.




A little Nampo street photography.



These two are of one of the Korean teachers, Young-in, teaching her nephew (who is in my 1-2A class) how to play the piano. The Koreans are very attentive to their children, though I wouldn't go so far as say they spoil their children.




It's been a pretty calm week all told. The weather warmed up and on Friday we finally got some rain. For most of the week the smog built up in the cool, dry air, hanging over the city and knocking a few minutes off of my daily 8-kilometer jog.

I've started classifying the hills I run up (and down) by duration and inclination. It's a highly scientific process: I count the number of swear words, factor in their strength and volume, multiply this sum by the amount of sweat pouring off my body and then divide the whole thing by the square of the number of times I stop and pray for death. I assign a hill a numerical rating between one and six, very similar to the system whitewater kayakers use to rate river rapids.

I never miss Mississippi quite like when I jog in the morning. Mississippi makes even the most modest of joggers feel like an African bushman. Millions of years ago Mississippi was flattened into a jogger-friendly grade by a couple of epochs spent on the bottom of an ancient sea. I could run at a brisk pace for miles and miles in Mississippi.

I was totally unprepared for the tragic ass-whupin' at the hands of The Land of The Morning Calm. Korea sits close to the Ring of Fire. While Mississippi was lounging around on the bottom of an ancient sea getting smoothed out for the future generations of overweight Americans who would be living there in a few million years, Korea was blasting its way out of the ocean in big, lava-hurling leaps and bounds. Mountains punched their way skyward for an epoch or two before letting erosion reign them into their current incarnation. A few weeks of jogging and Korea quickly went from the Land of The Morning Calm to The Land of The Burning Quads.

On the other hand, my calves are rockin.'

A little news: Chimpanzee in Chief, er, I mean President Bush, is coming to Busan for the APEC meetings in two weeks! Yeah! Security is being beefed up all over the city. Fresh-faced youths with tiny .22-calibre handguns in blue uniforms prowl the subways and city streets looking for, well, geez...I think right now all they are looking for is a quiet place to take a nap, but rest assured, when Chim...President Bush comes to town, they'll be ready and on the lookout for bad guys. As for me, I'll be in Haeundae, camera in hand, ready to document the usual Rioting Extraveganza that follows this idiot like stink on shit.

Now time for your weekly update of the Korean Files: Sayings from the Land That Slept Through English Class.

"Happy Virus" (I hope it infect the whole world! Notebook belonging to one of the Korean teachers. She said she likes to 'spread happiness')

"Sometimes They Yell Sorrow" (Like when Julie rents a Vin-Diesel movie. T-shirt)

"Zebra Mode" (For those times when you are being hunted by lions. T-shirt)

"Fatdog Mania" (Psychologists beware! T-shirt)

"Jeanist" (A new religion based on the teachings of the prophet Levi. Sweater)

"Luxury and Sexy DNA" (Man, nothing 'turns me on' quite like a half-naked double-helix in a leopard-print thong. Plastic surgury clinic advertisment in a train station).

Laughing yet? No? OK, I'll post that naked photo of myself next week.

For Halloween Julie gave me a pair of Elvis-style sunglasses complete with black, hairy sideburns. She donned a pink wig and we taught class in-costume Monday. All of the children loved the get-ups. Every classroom I entered erupted into raucous laughter as I set down my books and did my best Elvis impersonation. Of course, all the kids wanted to be The King, too. In a few classes I had an Elvis-impersonation contest. The following pictures depict the winners.




Yes, he is smoking a pencil.

I had a scare Tuesday during the 3E2 class. The hagwon's director, Mr. Kim, popped in for a few minutes. Now, this in of itself is not really a problem for me. I like Mr. Kim. He reminds me a lot of my Uncle Keeve. A few times a week he calls me into his office to help him sort out some new, strange American saying, phrase or concept he's come across. Last week I helped him sort out the origins of the English system of measurement. We discussed the yard (from your nose to the thumb on your outstretched arm), the inch (the width of your thumb), and the foot (duh).

Mr. Kim seems to be a fiend for random knowledge (I bet he's a killer Trivial Pursuit player). One time he gently repremanded me for wearing my shirt with the front coat tails untucked (that's actually the style. Thanks for nothing, Banana Republic). After I tucked in the shirt, he told me how long ago English gentlemen used the long coat tails as their underware (boxers and briefs having yet to be invented). A man would bring the coat tails up under his butt and button them to the other side of their shirt. Fascinating, isn't it?

Mr. Kim has this smile that never, ever, loses it's high-wattage. He can smile for twenty minutes strait. Often times we talk about the history of ESS or techniques for teaching English. After a firm handshake, I always leave Mr. Kim's office with a smile on my face and a bottle of orange juice in my hand. To me, Mr. Kim is nothing more than my kind, eccentric boss. To the Korean children, he is something akin to a God.

When Mr. Jones walks down the hall the children wave enthusiastically, yell out 'hallloooo Mr. Jones' and giggle or laugh or give me a high five. When Mr. Kim walks down the hall the kids come to attention and bow reverently as he passes. Nearly half the children in my 3E2 class named Mr. Kim as their ideal person, their hero. The normally gossipy Korean teachers never talk about Mr. Kim behind his back. He has two full-time female assistants that attend to his every need. Mr. Kim is indeed a masterful teacher. He always makes time every day to teach an auditorium class or two. As he calmly gives instruction all nintey children sit as still and quiet as a glass of cold water, eyes forward, wrapped in awe as this skinny, gray-haired Korean language god illuminates the shadowy difference between 'anything' and 'something.'

3E2 was in rare form Tuesday, doing their level best to ignore Mr. Jones as he tried to give a lesson on idioms. In just under a half-an-hour I had moved four of the boys and one of the girls, trying to dilute their power to ignore me by placing them next to people they don't normally talk to. Jee-hee was sitting with the boys, arms crossed, a hateful sneer (pointed at me) fouling up her perfect porcelien complexion. Gi-ho and Sang-hyeok were in the very back of the classroom, still chattering excitedly about their favorite W.W.E wrestlers. Hyeon-so was between them and the main group of girls and Chang-geun was on his second warning. The other boys tried their best to ignore Gi-ho and Sang-hyeok's chatter and pay attention. The situation was tense.

I have an old maxim for these types of situations: When in doubt, go insane. Yell, scream, gesture frantically, laugh loudly, fall down. Works every time. Get's everybody's attention. Idioms lend themselves to such a desperate teaching style. There is no better way to teach an idiom than to act it out. So I played Charades with the children. They loved it, yelling and clammering to get the right words as I bounced, ran and gestured frantically on stage. I was working on the "Merry" part of "Eat, Drink and Be Merry" when Mr. Kim calmly walked through the door.

Mr. Kim took a seat next to Sang-Hyeok, who went as stiff and white as if he were dead. The rest of the class noticed the abrupt absence of chatter and turned around. A girl in the front row, Da-ae, who had been wildly yelling "Happy! Happy! Happy!" when Mr. Kim silently walked in, gave out a short gasp, spun around and hung her head in shame. Most of the other reacted in similar fashion. Just when I needed them to be their normal, rambunctuous selves, Mr. Kim turned them all into statues.

Mr. Kim turned up the wattage on his radiant smile an aimed it at me. I smiled back, though my mind was racing. I quickly realized this was a battle of polarities, and the students were caught in the middle. Mr. Kim's presence demanded respectful silence, but Mr. Jones wanted them to be creative, loud and excited. They all gave me these pleading, confused looks, as if to say "What now?" I gritted my teeth.

We're going to finish our game of Charades. With the whole class watching and my boss, the Teaching God, sitting in the back of the room, I went right back into character as if nothing had happened. Maybe, I thought, maybe if the children saw me being my normal goofy self in front of Mr. Kim, maybe they would think it was OK and follow suit. It was a tremendous gamble. If it didn't work, I would just look outrageously rediculous. To my surprise, it worked. After ten minutes the children were back to yelling and celebrating as they guessed one idiom after another correctly. Mr. Kim nodded and walked out the door five minutes before class ended.

I got my 5-6P class back, but now it's called T5. I've nicknamed the class The Teacher Terminator and was quite relieved to learn the part-timer, Ashley, has it instead of me. After her first day I found her sitting at Mike's former desk looking glum.

"Really, tell me," she said, "they've given you all the smart kids and me all the bad, stupid ones, haven't they?" I asked her what classes she had. 3B, 5S, 5A, 2E2, 4A, T5, she said. Yes, I said. That's right. She went back to looking glum. As we planned for the next class, the usual sound of the monks chanting next door was spiced with the pleasant smell of incense.

One of my new favorite past times is watching the local news while I eat dinner. There is no other area of Korean culture as badly contaminated by American influence as the local news. Everything but the language is identical, right down to the cheesy camera angles, hot weather girl, and the obviously set-up shots of people in their stories. However, it is the lack of English that makes watching the news so much fun.

I like to pretend that instead of a news program, it's a sitcom about a bunch of scientists who have lost a batch of genetically-enhanced gerbils and have had to cover up their frantic search for the dangerous rodents by moon lighting as television reporters. The show is all about the wacky stuff that happens to them as they search for the gerbils. Hey, it's pretty funny, believe me.

No, the Kimchi hasn't gone to my head.

Allright, I gots to go. It's getting late and I got to get my beauty rest (like I can get any uglier). Peace. --Notes