There, that reeled you in.

Hello and welcome to *cough* another invigorating installment of SoKoNotes! Please pardon the coughing, that's just my virus putting in it's two-cents. Turns out the high-fever and bouts of uncontrollable shivering were just the first two courses in a two-week long banquet of misery. Now I've moved on to the main course: Lungs stuffed with a gooey yellow phlem topped with a green mucus gravy. Yum!

For the past two or three years I only got sick once or twice a year, and it was hardly ever serious. It has been two months now and I cannot remember the last time I went more than five days without my sinuses getting infected and shutting down (which makes pronouncing N's and M's rather difficult). I've suffered from bouts of unexplainable nausea, diarrhea, fever, headaches, viral infections and weird rashes on my legs and back I suspect reflect the hardness of our water supply. After weeks and weeks of low-level infirmity, one starts to seek answers for the mysterious crap oozing from one's orifaces.

The internet is of little help. A google search brings up a number of websites dedicated to helping the armchair physician diagnose his ailment. Plug in your symptoms and hit 'enter' and then brace yourself for the horrifying list of possible maladies. To type in the words 'fever, sinus infection and runny nose' is to come face to face with a list of everything from the common cold to terminal blood cancer. Such a system only serves to kill off any optimism while at the same time feeding the anxious doubts whispering fearfully in the back of one's mind.

For example, starting last Monday (and this is quite humiliating, actually), for a couple of days I noticed a slight burning sensation whenever I took a piss. My immediate instinct yelled 'bladder infection,' and that made a lot of sense. With my immune system preoccupied with repelling the viral assault on my sinus cavity, I'm sure the policing of the normal one-celled riff-raff that call my body home, such as the bacteria in my bladder, came to a screeching halt. And while the master is away...

Logic and experience told me a bladder infection would clear up in a matter of days. Later, my mother (a former teacher) informed me that bladder infections are quite common among teachers (who can't simply leave class to go pee whenever they like). Still, those whispering doubts in the back of my head needled me: What if it's not a bladder infection. What if it's something worse, something that could seriously damage your, your...You know...I had to check it out. I sat down at my computer and decided to give the diagnstic websites another at-bat. I pitched the words 'burning' and 'urination' and hit 'enter.'

Chlamydia, the computer spat back out. You have VD. I starred dumbfounded at the webpage, slowly shaking my head. No, no, that couldn't be, I thought. That just isn't correct. I can't have VD! There has got to be another answer! There has to be something else wrong with me! For Chrissake, I haven't been laid in seven months!

There were other key, and much more severe, symptoms listed under 'chlamydia' that I didn't exhibit (and which I won't list here for the sake of your appetite). Furthermore, the computer also brought up 'urinary tract infection' further down the list.

After many quarts of water, countless vitamin C tablets and twenty-four hours of debilitating anxiety, my urinary tract returned to its normal, happy, non-burning state. So really all that I've discovered is that diagnostic websites are good for little more than freaking people out enough to go see a flesh-and-blood doctor.

OK, enough about my bladder already. Lets move on. I've decided to start a new section on SoKoNotes. Once or twice a week Mrs. Nam asks Gavin and I to check over the students' english journals. We edit for grammar, spelling and word choice. Most of the students write about the simple events in their pleasant, simple lives: Birthdays, holidays, Sundays, the first day back in school, movies, you name it. Most of the time, their grammar is attrocious, bordering on schizophrenic. I have known students to change verb tenses two or three times in a paragraph, or insert random punctuation (or forget about punctuation entirely). Details such as articles (a, an, the) and pronoun agreement (He/his) are rarely given any thought. Many a composition leaves my desk covered in so much red ink that it literally looks like it has been butchered.

Many of the students try out new phrases they've learned. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, or sometimes they can't quite remember a phrase, but they remember the Korean translation. Re-tooling the translation back into English never quite works out, or they get it right but screw up the grammar, and it can be a challenge figuring out what the student is trying to say. So, I thought I'd elicit some help from the readers of SoKoNotes.

I proudly present to you the newest section in the blog that continues to be a thorn in your English teacher's side: The Weekly Konglish Conundrum!

Yeah, I'll come up with a better title later. For now, sit back and wrap your mind around this new wackiness.

"I run at the nose."

"I have a very long tail to tell."

"My favorite somewhere is my home."

"I thought many kinds of something."

"I'm afraid to use the knife and fire, so I won't be able to clock."

"After lunch we packed to live."

Was that fun? Use the comment button and write in with your responses. What do you think they were trying to say? For those of you who don't feel like using your noodle tonight, here's the plain ole' Korean Files.

"Come enjoy the rich taste of world's best designer." (We've been fattening him up on fashion show buffet tables for months) --Shopping bag

"Anomoly-opening collection from Innovation designer of the word." (You said it) --Same stupid bag.

"Think wilt though let it slip useless away?" (Old English. As if normal English weren't hard enough) --Notebook

The streets of Nampo-dong have started to take on something like familiarity. When I first arrived here, such a thing would not have seemed possible to me. Every street corner seemed to have an identical assortment of ugly, hulking buildings playing host to a maddeningly homogenous assortment of PC Bongs, restaurants, cellphone stores and clothing outlets all festooned in neon signs. Finding a landmark in this mess was like trying to remember a wave in a stormy sea.

Six months of wandering those streets and allyways have turned the mysterious into the mundane. Strange, when I think of landmarks, I don't just picture buildings, but now people as well. Human landmarks. Oh, so you need to find the movie theater? OK, go down this alley past the sunglasses vendors. When you hit the main road, you should hear "Living the Vida Loca" blaring from a coffee shop across the street. Cross the street there and follow the brick alleyway to your first intersection by the wristwatch carts. You'll know you're going the right way by the strong smell of sewage. When the smell dissapates, turn right and walk a couple of hundred yards. When you pass the old fortune teller by the Coke billboard, you're almost there. Keep going strait past the dokpokki stands, take a left at the PIFF statue and you've made it.

People tend to be more distinct than the buildings they inhabit.



I wandered into a Hanbok shop and found these two saleswomen doing their level best to earn a living.



Some landmarks pick up and move periodically. Take this garlic salesman, for example. I see him, or people like him, everywhere. They wire a car battery to a boombox, strap it all to their cart, and wheel it around the market blaring their sales pitch. I buy fruit from them just to get them to turn the damn thing off for a minute.



I really enjoy the Gukje Market. With all of it's nooks and crannies, I feel like a little kid again, playing hide-and-go seek in my friend Wes' big old house. I found a little bridge from the Hanbok shop up onto the rooftop of the building across the alley Thursday, and took advantage of my birds eye view.



The weather has gone haywire. Whereas for most of November and December and even part of January we had nothing but day after day of cold, dry air and clear blue skies, now the weather has returned to being its normal unpredictable self. Wednesday morning my computer's weather widget said it would be cold and sunny. I stepped outside to dark clouds and a light drizzle. Point. Focus. *Ker-plunk*



ESS graduated the third-year middle school students on Friday. The ceremony was very long, with the students filing in to applause from the other Best Jr. students. It is my observation that the bond between students crosses ages and classes. I've seen older students talking with younger students and I've seen kids from beginner or lower classes shooting the shit with advanced students. Many of the first-year middle school students - the 1E's - were visably proud of and happy for the seniors as they calmly lined up on stage. Take Bit-na, for example



Then the 3Es proceeded to sing a long set of songs to the anticlimatic sounds of a Casio keyboard. There is nothing that drains a song of it's substance quite like cheesy accompaniment. Still, it was neat to watch and listen to them sing.



Afterwards, students from the rising class, the 2Es, came up and pinned plastic flowers to the graduates.



Part one of the Korean National Anthem was played.



Mr. Kim watched these proceedings from the back of the room.



Afterward, he came up and gave a speech and handed out diplomas. As each student approached the podium, Myeong-hee announced their visions for the future. Many of the students had very humble life plans. Two or three future police officers, an elementary school teacher or two and even an aspiring flight attendant crossed the stage and received their handsome burgandy diploma.



For some, it was a very emotional moment. This is a shot of one of Gavin's favorite students from 3E2, Do-yeon, who was teary-eyed for most of the program.



Next, Ah-jin, the sharpest knife in the 2E2 drawer, gave a speech to the departing seniors.



And then every 3E graduate gave a speech.



It's weird when someone cracks a joke that sends the entire room to laughing, but you don't get it at all because you don't speak the language.



It was good to see the 3Es graduate. They'll enter high school in March and begin the final leg of the marathon that is education in Korea. This weekend also saw the end of my Saturday classes. Apparently, there weren't enough 3E students interested in the Saturday classes to justify them anymore. That's fine with me, as I'm looking forward to having my Saturdays back in full. Still, it saddens me in some way. But I'm not going to go into that now, as I am tired. The good news is that I can breath through both nostrils without the aid of ephedrine, my stomach is in neutral, and my bladder is...Oh, sorry, I promised not to talk about that. With any luck, I'll have something more to write about than my poor health next week. Peace. --Notes