Again, a brief note of interest...

The Korean students are often named by their foreign teachers, who are asked to give them "authentic" American names. Unfortunately I don't have any brand new classes, so I'm stuck with the names already given, but I do have one class of pre-schoolers who are named Tex, Vern, and Hank, and my challenge class (oddly enough called "Special Class" here) has a student named Batman. To me, this is the best thing ever.

Things seem very hectic on the first day, but I can see how the job will get a lot easier as time goes by. Dealing with younger kids will take some getting used to, as my legs clearly weren't made for a ten minute game of "Red Light, Green Light". I'll drop some more info about teaching later on, since it's not really fair of me to discuss until I've done it for a week or two.

First experience with Korean Fried Chicken is going down tonight and I couldn't be more thrilled. Who among you would have bet that I would be in Korea over a week before I ate fried chicken? Miracles do happen.

Saw first-hand last night why many Koreans hold an unfavorable stance on American GIs. At a club we went to, there were three shaven-haired American dudes wearing oversized throw-back jerseys and shit-kicking sneers. A lot of western hip-hop was played, and in a way that reminded me of some of my kids back at ACE, these guys did their best get-krunk dance while shouting along with stale shit like DMX and (STL Represent) Jaekwon. Maybe it was the shot of Jaeger I took with one of the departing teachers, but it seemed like they were grinding on quite a number of Korean girls, while the Korean men would often just dance with each other; in the most amazing moment of kinda-gay-but-(shrug)-that's-Korea bravado that I've seen yet, two Korean men took their shirts off and demonstrated their moves to each other to Beyonce's "Crazy in Love". Anyways, I didn't even dare talk to the military guys, out of fear that I'd drunkenly tell them to ease up on the sexual harassment on the dance floor, so I know it's not fair of me to judge based on my visual stance alone... on our flight from Incheon to Pusan, Mike and I met an American officer who was by all means a stellar bro, and I guess the chance exists that if I had talked to these rabble-rousers from last night that they would have been good guys. Who knows?

Last class is coming up, so I'll leave it at that.